The Twisted Root Page 0,11

cooks are a blessing no household discards lightly, and she has been loyal to the family since before my sisters time." He looked around the stable towards the empty space where the carriage should have been. "The fact remains, Treadwell is gone, and so is a very valuable coach and pair, and all the harness."

"Has it been reported to the police?" Monk asked.

Campbell pushed his hands into his pockets, swaying a little onto his heels. "Not yet. Frankly, Mr. Monk, I think it unlikely my brother-in-law will do that. He makes a great show, for Lucius's sake, of believing that Mrs. Gardiner had not met some accident, or crisis, and all will be explained satisfactorily. I am afraid I gravely doubt it. I can think of no such circumstance which would satisfy the facts as we know them." He started to walk away from the stable across the yard and towards the garden, out of earshot of Billy and whoever else might be in the vicinity. Monk followed, and they were on the gravel path surrounding the lawn before Campbell continued.

"I very much fear that the answer may prove to be simply that Mrs. Gardiner, who was very charming and attractive in her manner, but nonetheless not of Lucius's background, realized that after the first flame of romance wore off she would never make him happy, or fit into his life. Rather than face explanations which would be distressing, and knowing that both Lucius and Major Stourbridge, as a matter of honor, would try to change her mind, she took the matter out of then-hands, and simply fled."

He looked sideways at Monk, a slightly rueful sadness in his face. "It is an action not entirely without honor. In her own way, she has behaved the best. There is no doubt she is in love with Lucius. It was plain for anyone to see that they doted upon each other. They seemed to have an unusual communion of thought and taste, even of humor. But she is older than he, already a widow, and from a very ... ordinary... background. This way it remains a grand romance. The memory of it will never be soured by its fading into the mundane realities. Think very carefully, Mr. Monk, before you precipitate a tragedy."

Monk stood in the late-morning sun in this peaceful garden full of birdsong, where perhaps such a selfless decision had been made. It seemed the most likely answer. A decision like that might be hysterical, perhaps, but then Miriam Gardiner was a woman giving up her most precious dream.

"I have already told Major Stourbridge that if I find Mrs. Gardiner I would not attempt to persuade her to return against her will," Monk answered. "Or report back to him anything beyond what she wished me to. That would not necessarily include her whereabouts."

Campbell did not reply for several minutes. Eventually, he looked up, regarding Monk carefully, as if making some judgment which mattered to him deeply.

"I trust you will behave with discretion and keep in mind that you are dealing with the deepest emotions, and men of a very high sense of honor."

"I will," Monk replied, wishing again Lucius Stourbridge had chosen some other person of whom to ask assistance, or that he had had the sense to follow his judgment, not his sentimentality, in accepting. Marriage seemed already to have robbed him of his wits!

"I imagine they will be serving luncheon," Campbell said, looking towards the house. "I assume you are staying?"

"I still have to speak to the servants," Monk answered grimly, walking across the gravel. "Even if I learn nothing."

ester shifted from foot to foot impatiently as she stood in the waiting room in the North London Hospital. The sun was hot and the closed air claustrophobic. She thought with longing of the green expanse of Hampstead Heath, only a few hundred yards away. But she was here with a purpose. There was a massive amount to do, and as always, too little time. Too many people were ill, confused by the medical system, if you could call it by so flattering a word, and frightened of authority.

Her desire was to improve the quality of nursing from the manual labor it usually was to a skilled and respected profession. Since Florence Nightingale's fame had spread after the Crimean War, the public in general regarded her as a heroine. She was second in popularity only to the Queen. But the popular vision of her was a sentimental image of