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"I see." There did not seem much else to say. She had resolved without question or doubt that she would do all she could to help Cleo, it was a matter of thinking what that would be. Already, Oliver Rathbone’s name was in her mind.
Cleo grasped her wrist, holding hard, startling her. "Don’t tell the sergeant!" she said fiercely. "It can’t change what he does, and ..."—she blinked, her face bruised with hurt— "and don’t tell old Mr. Robb why I’m not there. Tell him something else ... anything. Perhaps by the time they try me, and ... well, he may not have to know. He could be gone his-self by then."
"I’ll tell him something else," Hester promised. "Probably that you’ve gone to look after a relative or something."
"Thank you." Cleo’s gratitude was so naked, Hester felt guilty. She was on the edge of saying that she intended to do far more, but she had no idea what it could be, and to raise hope she could not fulfill was thoughtlessly cruel.
"I’ll come back with the soap," she promised. "And the spoon." Then she went to the door and banged for the jailer to let her out.
The next thing she did she expected to be the most difficult, and it was certainly the one of which she was most afraid. She felt guilty even as she walked up the steps and in through the hospital door. She returned the stare of two young medical students too directly, as if to deny their suspicion of her. Then she felt ridiculous, and was sure she was blushing. She had done nothing yet. She was no different from the person she had been yesterday or this morning, when she had been perfectly happy to confront Fermin Thorpe in his office and rack her brain to defend Cleo Anderson. Would Callandra in turn have to rack her brain tomorrow to defend her?
And yet she could not escape it. Quite apart from her fondness for John Robb, she had given Cleo the promise. She had tried to form a plan, but so much depended upon opportunity. It was impractical to try stealing Phillips’s keys, and unfair to him. Added to which, he really was extremely careful with them, and might be the more so now.
How long would she have to wait for a crisis of some sort to present a chance, the apothecary’s room open and unattended, or Phillips there but his back turned? She was suddenly furious with herself. She had been alone with Cleo and not had the wits to ask her how she had accomplished it. She had just blithely promised to do the same, without the faintest idea how to go about it. It was very humbling to realize her own stupidity.
She stood in the middle of the passage and was still there when Kristian Beck reached her.
"Hester?" he said with concern. "Are you all right?"
She recalled herself swiftly and began speaking with the idea only half formed in her mind. "I was wondering how Cleo Anderson managed to steal the morphine. Phillips is really very careful. I mean, how do you think it happened, in practical detail?"
He frowned. "Does it matter?"
Why did he ask? Was he indifferent to the thefts? Was he so certain Cleo was guilty that the details did not matter? Or was it even conceivable that he had some sympathy with her?
"I don’t want to prove it," she answered steadily, meeting his eyes with complete candor. "I would like above all things to disprove it, but failing that, at least to understand."
"She is charged with murdering Treadwell," he said softly. "The jury cannot excuse that, whatever they privately feel. There is no provision or law for murdering blackmailers or for stealing medicine, even if it is to treat the old and ill for whom there is no other help." The lacerating edge in his voice betrayed his own feelings too clearly.
"I know that," she said in little above a whisper. "I should still like to know exactly how she did it."
He stood in silence for several moments.
She waited. Part of her wanted to leave before it was too late. But escaping would be only physical. Morally and emotionally, she was still trapped. And that was trivial compared with Cleo—or John Robb.
"What do you think she took?" Kristian asked at length.
She swallowed. "Morphine, for an old man who has consumption. It won’t cure him, but it gives him a little rest."
"Very understandable," he answered. "I hope she gave him some sherry in water as well?"
"I believe so."
"Good. I need a few things from the apothecary myself. I’ll go and get the keys. You can help me, if you would." And without waiting for her answer, he turned sharply and strode off.
He came back a few minutes later with the keys and opened the door. He went inside and left her to follow him. He started to unlock various cupboards and take out leaves for infusions, cordials and vari
ous powders. He passed several of them to Hester while he opened bottles and jars, then closed them again. When he had finished he ushered her out, relocked the door, took some of the medicines back from her, then thanked her and left her standing in the corridor with a small bottle of cordial and a week’s dosage of morphine, plus several small paper screws of quinine.
She put them quickly into her pockets and went back towards the front door and out of it. She felt as if dozens of eyes were boring holes in her back, but actually she passed only one nurse with a mop and bucket, and Fermin Thorpe himself, striding along with his face set, hardly recognizing her.
John Robb was delighted to see her. He had had a bad night but was a trifle better towards late afternoon, and the loneliness of sitting in his chair in the empty house, even with the sun slanting in through the windows, had made him melancholy. His face lit with a smile when he recognized her step, and even before she entered the room he was tidying the little space around him and making ready for her.
"How are you?" he said the moment she came through the door.
"I’m very well," she answered cheerfully. He must never know about Cleo if there was any way it could be prevented.
She could not warn Michael without explaining to him the reason, and that would place him in an impossible situation. He would then have either to benefit indirectly from the thefts, which he would find intolerable, or else have to testify against Cleo from his own knowledge. That would also be unbearable, for the old man’s sake as well as his own. Such disillusion and sense of betrayal might be more than his old and frail body could take. And then Michael’s guilt would be crippling.
