The Twisted Root Page 0,125

minds they believed Cleo and Miriam guilty. They would have to be forced from that conviction, not merely shown that there was another remote possibility.

Cleo finished dictating the list. There were eighteen names on it.

"Thank you." He read it over. "How much do you earn at the hospital?"

"Seven shillings a week." She said it with some pride, as if for a nurse it was a good wage.

He winced. He knew a constable earned three times that.

"How long do you work?" The question was out before he thought.

"Twelve or fifteen hours a day," she replied.

"And how much did you pay Treadwell?"

Her voice was tired, her shoulders slumped again. "Five shillings a week."

The rage inside him was ice-cold, filling his body, sharpening his mind with a will to lash out, to hurt someone so this could be undone, so it would never happen again, not to Cleo and not to anyone. But he had no one to direct the anger towards. The only offender was dead already. Only the victim was still left to pay the price.

"He was spending a lot more than that," he said quietly, his words coming between clenched teeth. "I need to know where it came from."

She shook her head. "I don't know. He just came to me regularly and I paid him. He never mentioned anyone else. But he wouldn't..."

It was on the edge of Monk's tongue to ask her again if she had given him any morphine to sell, but he knew the answer would be the same. He rose to his feet and bade her good-bye, hating being able to make no promises, nor even speak any words of hope.

At the door he hesitated, wondering if he should ask her about Miriam, but what was there to say?

She looked up at him, waiting.

In the end he had to ask. "Could it have been Miriam?"

"No," she said immediately. "She never did anything he could have made her pay for!"

"Not even to protect you?" he said quietly.

She sat perfectly still. It was transparent in her face that she did not know the answer to that - believe, possibly, even certainly - but not know.

Monk nodded. "I understand." He knocked for the jailer to let him out.

He arrived home still turning the matter over and over in his mind.

"There was another source," he said to Hester over the dinner table. "But it could have been Miriam, which won't help at all."

"And if it wasn't?" she asked. "If we could show it was someone else? They'd have to consider it!"

"No, they wouldn't," he answered quietly, watching her face show her disappointment. "Not unless we could bring that person to court and-pTOve that he or she was somewhere near the Heath that night, alone. We've got two days before Rathbone has to begin some defense."

"What else have we?" Her voice rose a little in desperation.

"Nothing," he admitted.

"Then let's try! I can't bear to sit here not doing anything at all. What do we know?"

They worked until long after midnight, noting every piece of information Monk had gathered about Treadwell's comings and goings over the three months previous to his death. When it was written on paper it was easier to see what appeared to be gaps.

"We need to know exactly what his time off was," Hester said, making further notes. "I'm sure there would be someone in the Stourbridge household who could tell you."

Monk thought it was probably a waste of time, but he did not argue. He had nothing else more useful to do. He might as well follow through with the entire exercise.

"Do you know how much medicine was taken?" he asked, then, before she could deny it, added, "Or could you work it out if you wanted to?"

"No, but I expect Phillips could, if it would help. Do you think it really would?"

"Probably not, but what better idea have we?"

Neither of them answered with the obvious thing: acceptance that the charge was true. Perhaps it had not been with deliberate greed, or for the reasons Tobias was saying, but the end result was all that counted.

"I'll go tomorrow to the hospital and ask Phillips," Hester said briskly, as if it mattered. "And I'll go as well and find all the people on your list and see what medicines they have. You see if you can account for that time of Treadwell's." She stared at him very directly, defying him to tell her it was useless or to give up heart. He knew from the very brittleness of