The Twisted Root Page 0,128

powders, to give her day-by-day recounting of all he had had.

She would have given any price she could think of to be able to promise them it would save Cleo, but she could only offer hope, and little enough of that.

When she arrived home at quarter past ten, Monk was beginning to worry about her. He was standing up, unable to relax in spite of his own weariness. She did notice that he had taken his boots off.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

She walked straight to him and put her head on his shoulder. He closed his arms around her, holding her gently, laying his cheek to her brow. He did not need her to explain the emotion she felt; he saw it in her face, and understood.

"It's wrong," she said after a fewlhinutes, still holding on to him. "How can we do it? We turn to our bravest and best when we are in danger, we sacrifice so much - fathers and brothers, husbands and sons - and then a decade, a generation later, we only want to forget! What's the matter with us?"

He did not bother to answer, to talk about guilt or debt, or the desire to be happy without remembering that others have purchased it at a terrible price - even resentment and simple blindness and failure of imagination. They had both said it all before.

"What did you find?" she said at last, straightening up and looking at him.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Yes." She went towards the kitchen, but he moved ahead ofher.

"I'll bring it." He smiled. "I wasn't asking you to fetch one for me - even though I've probably walked as far as you have, and to as little purpose."

She sat down and took off her boots as well. It was a particular luxury, something she would only do at home. And it was still very sweet to realize this was her home, she belonged there, and so did he.

When he returned with the tea and she had taken a few sips, she asked him again what he had learned.

"A lot of TreadwelPs time is unaccounted for," he replied, trying his own tea and finding it a trifle too hot. "He had a few unusual friends. One of his gambling partners was even an undertaker, and Treadwell did a few odd tasks for him."

"Enough to earn him the kind of money we're looking for?" She did not know whether she wanted the answer to be yes or no.

"Not remotely," he replied. "Just driving a wagon, presumably because he was good with horses, and perhaps knew the roads. He probably did it as a favor because of their friendship. This young man seems to have given him entry to cockfights and dog races when he wouldn't have been allowed in otherwise. They even had a brothel or two in common."

Hester shrugged. "It doesn't get us any further, does it?" She tried to keep the disappointment out ofher voice.

Monk frowned thoughtfully. "I was wondering how Treadwell ever discovered about Cleo and the medicines in the first place."

She was about to dismiss it as something that hardly mattered now when she realized what he meant.

"Well, not from Miriam," she said with conviction.

"From any of Cleo's patients?" he asked. "How could Treadwell, coachman to Major Stourbridge in Bayswater, and gambler and womanizer in Kentish Town, come to know of thefts of morphine and other medicines from a hospital on Hampstead Heath?"

She stared at him steadily, a first, tiny stirring of excitement inside her. "Because somewhere along the chain of events he crossed it. It has to be - but where?" She held up her fingers, ticking off each step. "Patients fall ill and go to the hospital, where Cleo gets to know of them because she works there as a nurse."

"Which has nothing to do with Treadwell," he answered. "Unless one of them was related to him or to someone he knew well."

"They are all old and live within walking distance of the hospital," she pointed out. "Most of them are alone, the lucky few with a son or daughter, or grandchild, like old John Robb."

"TreadwelPs family was all in Kentish Town," Monk said. "That much I ascertained. His father is dead and his mother remarried a man from Hoxton."

"And none of them have anything to do with Miriam Gardiner," she went on. "So he didn't meet them driving her." She held up the next ringer. "Cleo visits them in their