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He must think only of the case. They had a common cause, one that mattered as fiercely as any they had ever fought. The lives of two women depended on it.
"Very little," he replied, moving a step closer to her. He caught a warmth, a faint air of some perfume about her. He ached to move closer still. She was so different now, so much less vulnerable than before. And yet in so many ways she was exactly the same. The will to battle was there, the stubbornness, the unreason, the laughter he had never completely understood, the arbitrariness that exasperated and fascinated him.
There was a very faint flush on her cheeks, as if she guessed some part of his thoughts.
He looked away from her, avoiding her eyes, pretending to be thinking deeply of legal matters.
"I have been to see both Cleo Anderson and Miriam Gardiner. Both deny either conspiracy or murder, but Miriam at least is lying to me about the murders. She knows who committed them, but I believe her when she says it is not she. I have not met Lucius Stourbridge."
Hester was startled. "Do you believe he could be guilty of killing his own mother?"
"I don’t think so, but it would seem to have been someone in the family, or else Miriam Gardiner," he reasoned.
She looked up and down the corridor. "Come into the waiting room here. There is no one needing it at the moment. We can speak more easily." She opened the door and led him in.
He closed it, trying to force his emotions out of his consciousness. There were far more important issues between them.
"Major Stourbridge?" he asked. "Or the brother, Aiden Campbell?"
She looked miserable. "I don’t know. I can’t think of any reason why they would hurt either Mrs. Stourbridge or, still less, Treadwell. But he was a blackmailer. If he would blackmail Cleo, then maybe he would blackmail others as well. William says he seemed to spend more money than he could have had from Cleo, so there will have been other victims."
"Lucius?"
"Perhaps," she said quietly. "That would explain why Miriam is prepared to defend him, even at the price of being condemned for it herself."
It was possible. It would explain Miriam’s refusal to tell the truth. But he still found it hard to believe.
"I cannot think of anything we could argue which would convince a jury of that, especially in the face of Miriam’s denial," he said, watching Hester. "And she would not let me try. I have promised not to act against her wishes."
A smile touched the corners of Hester’s lips and then vanished. "I would have assumed as much. I would like you to be able to defend Miriam, but I am more concerned with Cleo Anderson. I hope she did not kill Treadwell, but she cannot have killed Mrs. Stourbridge. I am absolutely sure she would not have conspired for Miriam to marry Lucius, or anyone else, for money. That part of it is simply impossible."
"Even to put to a good cause?" he asked gently.
"To put to any cause at all. It would be revolting to her. She loves Miriam. What kind of a woman would have her daughter marry for money? That’s prostitution!"
"Hester, my dear! It is the commonest practice in civilization. Or out of it, for that matter. Parents have sold their daughters in marriage, and considered it as doing all parties a service, since time immemorial—longer. Since prehistory."
"Isn’t that the same?" she said tartly.
"Actually, no. I believe ’time immemorial’ is in the middle of the twelfth century. It hardly matters."
"No, it doesn’t. Cleo would not sell her daughter, and she certainly would not conspire to murder someone who got in the way. If you knew her as I do, you wouldn’t even have thought of it."
He did not believe it either, but it was what a jury would believe that mattered. He pointed that out to her.
&nbs
p; "I know," she said miserably, staring at the floor. "But we’ve got to do something to help. I refuse to hide behind an intricacy of the law as if it excused one from fighting."
He found himself smiling, but there was no laughter in it, no light at all, except irony. "Murder is not an intricacy of the law, my dear."
She looked at him with utter frankness, all the old friendship warm in her eyes, and suddenly he was short of breath. The final bit of denial of his emotions slipped away. He forced his mind back to the law and Cleo Anderson.
"How much medicine is missing, and exactly what?"
She looked apologetic. "We don’t know, but it’s a lot—a few grains a day, I should think. I can’t give you precise measurements and I wouldn’t if I could. You would rather not know."
"Perhaps you are right," he admitted. "I won’t ask again. When the matter comes to court, who is likely to testify on the thefts?"
