Twisted Root - Anne Perry [120]
He found he was shaking, his hands clenched tight. "It is not only you who will hang—Cleo Anderson will as well!"
Her voice choked. "I know. But what can I do?" She looked at him, her eyes swimming with tears. "I will testify that I was there and that it was not she who killed him, if you want. But who would believe me? They think we are conspirators anyway. They expect me to defend her. I can’t prove she wasn’t there, and I can’t prove he wasn’t blackmailing her or that she didn’t take the medicines. She did!"
What she said was true.
"Someone killed Treadwell." He picked his words carefully, trying to hurt her enough to make her tell him at last. "If it was not either you or Cleo, the only person I can think of that you would die to defend is Lucius Stourbridge."
Her eyes widened, and the last vestige of color fled from her face. She was too horrified to respond.
"If you will hang for him," he went on, "that is your choice. But is he really worth Cleo Anderson’s life as well? Does she deserve that from you?"
She swung around to face him, her eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of such ferocity he was almost afraid of her, small as she was, and imprisoned in this police cell.
"Lucius had nothing to do with it. I am not defending Treadwell’s murderer! If I could see him hang I would tie the rope with my own hands and pull the trapdoor and watch him drop!" She took a deep, gasping breath. "I can’t! God help me, there is nothing—nothing I can do. Now go away and leave me at least to solitude, if not to peace."
Other questions beat in his mind, but his fury and his despair robbed him of the words. He longed to be able to help her, not to increase his own reputation or to defend his honor, but simply to ease the pain he could see, and even feel, as he watched her. She was only a yard away from him, and yet an abyss existed between what she experienced and what he understood. He had no idea at all how he could cross that space. They could have been in separate countries. He did not even know what else he felt: anger; fear that she was guilty; fear that she was not and he would fail her and she would be destroyed by the wheels of the law he was supposed to guide or by pity; even a kind of admiration, because quite without reason, he believed there was something noble in her, something beautiful and strong.
He left, walking out of the cells blind to the heat of the late afternoon and the passersby, the chatter of voices, wheels, hooves, all the clamor of everyday living. He hailed a cab and gave the driver Monk’s address in Fitzroy Street. He barely spared thought to how little he wanted to go into the house that Hester shared with Monk. It seemed secondary now, a wound to deal with at another time.
"I pleaded with her," he said, pacing back and forth in the front room where Monk received clients. Monk was standing by the mantelpiece even though the fire was unlit, the evening being far too mild to require one. Hester was sitting upright on the edge of the big armchair, staring at him, her face furrowed in concentration. "But she knows she will hang, and still refuses to tell me who killed Treadwell!" He threw his arms wide, almost banging against the high back of the other chair.
"Lucius Stourbridge," Monk said unhappily. "He is the only one she would hang for—apart from Cleo."
"No, it isn’t," Rathbone said quickly. "I assumed that also. She denied it with fury—at me, not at whoever did kill Treadwell. She said she would willingly hang him herself if she could, but no one would believe her, and she would not tell me any more."
Monk stared at him in bewilderment. Rathbone wanted an answer above all things, at this moment, but it was a very small satisfaction to see Monk just as confused as he was.
They both looked at Hester.
"That leaves either Harry Stourbridge or Aiden Campbell," she