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He drew in his breath to ask her the usual question as to her feelings, or to offer some words of encouragement, true or not, but they would be empty and a waste of precious time and emotion. It would make almost a greater division between them, if that was possible. Honesty, his honesty, was all they had.
"Mrs. Gardiner, you must tell me the truth. I was silent today because I have no weapon to use against Tobias. He knows it, but if make a show of fighting him, and lose, then the jury will know it as well. Now they think I am merely biding my time. But I am walking blindly. I don’t know what he may know that I don’t. Or what he may discover—which is worse."
She turned half away from him. "Nothing. There is nothing he can discover."
"He can discover who killed James Treadwell!" he said sharply. The time for any consideration of feeling was past. The rope was already overshadowing not only her but Cleo also.
She turned slowly to look at him. "I doubt that, Sir Oliver. They would not believe it, even if I were to tell them. And I won’t. Believe me, it would cause far greater injury than it would ever heal. I have no proof, and all the evidence you have, as you have said, is against me."
The cells were warm, even stuffy, but he felt chilled in spite of it.
"It is my task to make them believe it." He feared even as he said it that she had closed her mind and was not listening to him. "At least allow me to try?" He was sounding desperate. He could hear it in the stridency of his voice.
"I am sorry you don’t believe me," she said softly. "But it is true that it would cause more pain than any good it would do. At least accept that I have thought long and very hard about it before I have made this decision. I do understand that I will hang. I have no delusion that some miracle is going to save me. And you have not lied to me or given me any false sense of comfort. For that I thank you."
Her gratitude was like a rebuff, reminding him of how little he had a
ctually done. He was going to be no more than a figurehead, barely fulfilling the requirements of the law that she be represented. The prosecution need not have called in Tobias, the merest junior could have presented this case and beaten him.
He found he was shaking, his hands clenched tight. "It is not only you who will hang—Cleo Anderson will as well!"
Her voice choked. "I know. But what can I do?" She looked at him, her eyes swimming with tears. "I will testify that I was there and that it was not she who killed him, if you want. But who would believe me? They think we are conspirators anyway. They expect me to defend her. I can’t prove she wasn’t there, and I can’t prove he wasn’t blackmailing her or that she didn’t take the medicines. She did!"
What she said was true.
"Someone killed Treadwell." He picked his words carefully, trying to hurt her enough to make her tell him at last. "If it was not either you or Cleo, the only person I can think of that you would die to defend is Lucius Stourbridge."
Her eyes widened, and the last vestige of color fled from her face. She was too horrified to respond.
"If you will hang for him," he went on, "that is your choice. But is he really worth Cleo Anderson’s life as well? Does she deserve that from you?"
She swung around to face him, her eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of such ferocity he was almost afraid of her, small as she was, and imprisoned in this police cell.
"Lucius had nothing to do with it. I am not defending Treadwell’s murderer! If I could see him hang I would tie the rope with my own hands and pull the trapdoor and watch him drop!" She took a deep, gasping breath. "I can’t! God help me, there is nothing—nothing I can do. Now go away and leave me at least to solitude, if not to peace."
Other questions beat in his mind, but his fury and his despair robbed him of the words. He longed to be able to help her, not to increase his own reputation or to defend his honor, but simply to ease the pain he could see, and even feel, as he watched her. She was only a yard away from him, and yet an abyss existed between what she experienced and what he understood. He had no idea at all how he could cross that space. They could have been in separate countries. He did not even know what else he felt: anger; fear that she was guilty; fear that she was not and he would fail her and she would be destroyed by the wheels of the law he was supposed to guide or by pity; even a kind of admiration, because quite without reason, he believed there was something noble in her, something beautiful and strong.
He left, walking out of the cells blind to the heat of the late afternoon and the passersby, the chatter of voices, wheels, hooves, all the clamor of everyday living. He hailed a cab and gave the driver Monk’s address in Fitzroy Street. He barely spared thought to how little he wanted to go into the house that Hester shared with Monk. It seemed secondary now, a wound to deal with at another time.
"I pleaded with her," he said, pacing back and forth in the front room where Monk received clients. Monk was standing by the mantelpiece even though the fire was unlit, the evening being far too mild to require one. Hester was sitting upright on the edge of the big armchair, staring at him, her face furrowed in concentration. "But she knows she will hang, and still refuses to tell me who killed Treadwell!" He threw his arms wide, almost banging against the high back of the other chair.
"Lucius Stourbridge," Monk said unhappily. "He is the only one she would hang for—apart from Cleo."
"No, it isn’t," Rathbone said quickly. "I assumed that also. She denied it with fury—at me, not at whoever did kill Treadwell. She said she would willingly hang him herself if she could, but no one would believe her, and she would not tell me any more."
Monk stared at him in bewilderment. Rathbone wanted an answer above all things, at this moment, but it was a very small satisfaction to see Monk just as confused as he was.
They both looked at Hester.
"That leaves either Harry Stourbridge or Aiden Campbell," she said thoughtfully. "I suppose Treadwell could have been blackmailing Harry Stourbridge. He had been in the house for several years. He drove the carriage. Maybe Major Stourbridge went somewhere or did something he would pay to hide?"
"What about the brother, Campbell?" Rathbone asked.
Monk shook his head. "Unlikely. He lives in Wiltshire somewhere. Only came up for the engagement party. I did check, and as far as the other servants knew, he barely saw Treadwell. He had his own carriage and driver, and no one ever saw him go anywhere near the mews while he was staying there. And Treadwell never went to Wiltshire in his life. And as for Campbell’s killing Mrs. Stourbridge, they were very close, everyone agreed on that, had been ever since they were children."
"Even close siblings can quarrel," Rathbone pointed out.
"Of course," Monk agreed a touch sharply, staring down at the polished fender where his foot was resting. "But no one with enough cold-blooded nerve to murder rather than pay blackmail is going to kill the sister who is his only link with a fortune the size of the Stourbridges’. Now she is dead, he has no claim at all. He is not especially close to either Harry or Lucius. They are friendly enough, but they will not continue Verona’s generosity."
