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Another blind alley.
Hester bit her lip. "Then we must find out if it was Major Stourbridge. However unpleasant, if that is the truth, we should know it."
"It would make sense," Rathbone admitted, pushing his hands into his pockets and taking them out again immediately. He had been taught not to put his hands in his pockets in boyhood, because it looked casual and pulled his clothes out of shape. He turned to Monk.
"Yes," Monk agreed, not to the likelihood but to accepting the task before Rathbone could ask him. "I should have pursued it before. I didn’t look at the Stourbridges, either ofthem."
"I don’t know what you can find in a day or two," Rathbone said wretchedly. "I’m going in with nothing! I have no other reasonable suspect to offer the jury, only ’person or persons unknown.’ Nobody’s going to believe that when Cleo and Miriam have perfect motives and every appearance of guilt."
"They may be guilty," Monk reminded him. "Or one of them may, perhaps in conspiracy with someone else."
"In the Stourbridge household?" Rathbone said with some sarcasm. "That has to be Miriam. And why, for the love of heaven?"
"I don’t know," Monk said angrily. "But there is obviously some critical feature about the whole story that we haven’t found—even if it is only the reason both women would rather hang than tell the truth. We’d better damned well discover what it is!"
Hester looked from Monk to Rathbone. "How long can you prolong the trial, Oliver?"
"We seem to spend our time asking him to sing songs while we scramble to find something vital," Monk said bitterly. "I’ll start tomorrow morning as soon as it’s light. But I don’t even know where to look!"
"What can I do to help?" Hester asked, more to Rathbone than to Monk.
"I wish I knew," the lawyer confessed. "Cleo admits to taking the medicines. There is nothing we can do to mitigate that except show how she used them, and we already have all the witnesses we need for that. We have dozens of men and women to swear to her diligence, compassion, dedication, sobriety and honesty in all respects except that of stealing medicines from the hospital. We even have people who will swear she was chaste, modest and clean. It will achieve nothing. She was still paying Treadwell blackmail money, and he had all but bled her dry. The only decent meals she ate were those given her either at the hospital or by the people she visited. She even dressed in cast-off clothes left her by the dead!"
Hester sat silently, steeped in misery.
"I must go home," Rathbone said at last. "Perhaps a good night of sleep will clear my mind sufficiently to think of something." He bade them good-night and left, acutely conscious of loneliness. He would lie by himself in his smooth linen sheets. Monk would lie with Hester in his arms. The clear, moonlit night held no magic for him.
Tobias was in an expansive mood when he called his first witness t
he next day, but he was careful not to exaggerate his manner. He was too clever to alienate a jury by seeming to gloat over his triumph, although Rathbone, sitting at his table, thought his care unnecessary. As things were going at present, and from all future prospect, Tobias could hardly lose, whatever he did.
Neither Hester nor Monk was in the court, nor was Callandra Daviot. All of the Stourbridge family had yet to testify, and therefore were forbidden to be present in case anything they heard should influence what they themselves would say.
Tobias’s first witness was the Stourbridges’ groom. He took great care to establish his exact position in the household and his so-far blameless reputation. He left no avenue, however small, for Rathbone to call into question either his honesty or his power of observation.
Rathbone was quite satisfied that he should do so. He had no useful argument to make and no desire to try to blacken the man’s character. It was always a bad exercise in that it offended the jurors to malign a person who was no more than a witness and in no way involved in a crime. And it had the great advantage—indeed, at the moment the only advantage—in that it took time.
All that he showed by it, unquestionably, was that Treadwell had on a number of occasions driven Miriam from Bayswater back to her home in Hampstead, or had collected her. He had also once or twice delivered messages or gifts from Lucius to her, in the early days of the courtship, before Lucius himself had done so. Undoubtedly, Treadwell knew her home and had spent time in the area.
Next, Tobias called the keeper of the local inn, the Jack Straw’s Castle Inn, on the corner of North End Hill and Spaniards Road, who swore that Treadwell had stopped there on more than a few occasions, had a pint of ale and played darts or dominoes, gambled a little, and struck up casual conversation with the locals. Yes, he had seemed to ask a lot of questions. At the time the landlord had taken it for concern for his employer, who was courting a woman who lived in the area.
The landlord of the Bull and Bush, farther up on Golders Hill, said much the same, as did two locals from the Hare and Hounds, a short walk farther along. There he had asked more particularly about Miriam Gardiner and Cleo Anderson. Yes, he was free with his money, as if he knew there would be more where that had come from.
"What sort of questions did he ask?" Tobias enquired innocently.
"About her general reputation," the witness replied. "Was she honest, sober, that kind of thing."
"And chaste?" Tobias asked.
"Yes—that, too."
"Did you not think that impertinent of the coachman?"
"Yes, I did. When I caught him at it I told him in no uncertain terms that Mrs. Gardiner was as good a woman as he’d be likely to find in all Hampstead—and a damn sight too good for the likes of him!" He glanced at the judge. "Beggin’ yer pardon, me lud."
"Did he explain why he asked such questions?"
"Never saw him again," the man said with satisfaction. He glanced up at the dock and gave both women a deliberate smile. Miriam attempted to return it, but it was a ghost on her ashen face. Cleo nodded to him very slightly, merely the acknowledgment courtesy demanded. It was a small gesture, but kindly meant.
