The Twisted Root Page 0,149

tall?"

She thought for a moment. "About same as me, ordinary, bit less."

"Thank you, Miss Parkinson - thank you very much."

"She all right, then?"

"No, I fear very much that she may be the woman whose body was found on the Heath."

"Cor! Well, I'm real sorry." She said it with feeling, and there was sadness in her face as well as her voice. "Poor creature."

Monk turned as they were about to leave. "You didn't, by chance, ever happen to notice her boots, did you, Miss Parkinson?"

She was startled. "Her boots?"

"Yes. The buttons."

Memory sparked in her eyes. "Yes! She had real smart buttons on them. Never seen no others like 'em. I saw when she was sitting down, her skirts was pulled sideways a bit. Well, I never! I'm real sorry to hear. Mebbe Mrs. Dewar'll let me go to the funeral, since there won't be many others as'll be there now."

"Do you remember her name?" Monk said, almost holding his breath for her answer.

She screwed up her face in the effort to take her mind back to the past. She did not need his urging to understand the importance of it.

"It began with a Z) " she said after a moment or two. "I'll think of it."

They waited in silence.

"Bailey!" she said triumphantly. "Mrs. Bailey. Sorry - I thought it were a D, but Bailey it was."

They thanked her again and left with a new energy of hope.

"I'll tell Rathbone," Monk said as soon as they were out in the street. "You see if you can find her family. There can't have been so many midwives called Bailey twenty-two years ago. Someone'll know her. Start with the doctors and the hospital. Send messages to all the neighboring areas. He may have brought her in from somewhere else. Probably did, since no one in Hampstead reported her missing."

Robb opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind. It was not too much to do if it ended in proving Cleo Anderson innocent.

It was early afternoon of the following day when the court reconvened. Rathbone called the police surgeon, who gave expert confirmation of the testimony Hester had given regarding the death of the woman on the Heath. A cobbler swore to recognizing the boot buttons, and said that they had been purchased by one Flora Bailey some twenty-three years ago. Miss Parkinson came and described the woman she had seen, including the buttons.

The court accepted that the body was indeed that of Flora Bailey and that she had met her death by a violent blow in a manner which could only have been murder.

Rathbone called Aiden Campbell once again. He was pale, his face set in lines of grief and anger. He met Rathbone's eyes defiantly.

"I was hoping profoundly not to have to say this." His voice was hard. "I did know Mrs. Bailey. I had no idea that she was dead. I never required her services again. She was not, as my innocent scullery maid supposed, a midwife, but an abortionist."

There was a gasp of horror and outrage around the court. People turned to one another with a hissing of breath.

Rathbone looked up at Miriam in the dock and saw tile amazement in her face, and then the anger. He turned to Harry Stourbridge, sitting stiff and silent, and Lucius beside him, stunned almost beyond reaction.

"An abortionist?" Rathbone said slowly, very clearly.

"Yes," Campbell agreed. "I regret to say so."

Rathbone raised his eyebrows very slightly. "You find abortion repugnant?"

"Of course I do! Doesn't every civilized person?"

"Of a healthy child, from a healthy mother, I imagine so,"

Rathbone agreed. "Then tell us, Mr. Campbell, why you had the woman staying in your house- - so that your scullery maid carried up her meals to her on a tray?"

Campbell hesitated, lifting his hands. "If - if that was done, it was without my knowledge. The servants ... perhaps they felt... I don't know ... a pity - " He stopped. "If that ever happened," he added.

Tobias took his turn, briefly.

"Was that with your knowledge, or approval, Mr. Campbell?"

"Of course not!"

The court adjourned for luncheon.

The family of Flora Bailey arrived. Rathbone called her brother, a respected physician, as his first witness of the afternoon.

The gallery was packed. Word had spread like fire that something new was afoot. The tide had turned.

"Dr. Forbes," Rathbone began, "your sister spent time in the home of Mr. Aiden Campbell immediately before her disappearance. Were you aware of that?"

"No sir, I was not. I knew she had a case she considered very