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.
"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?"
"Only Fermin Thorpe, willingly—or at least not willingly but for the prosecution," she amended. "He’s going to hate having to say that anything went missing from his hospital. He won’t know whether to make light of it, and risk being thought trying to cover it up, or to condemn it and be seen on the side of the law, all quivering with outrage at the iniquity of nurses. Either way, he’ll be furious at being caught up in it at all."
"Is he not likely to defend one of his staff?"
The look in her face was eloquent dismissal of any such prospect.
"I see," he concluded. "And the apothecary?"
"Phillips? He’ll cover all he can—even to risking his own safety, but there’s only so much he can do."
"I see. I will speak with a few of the other nurses, if I may, and perhaps Mr. Phillips. Then I shall go and see Sergeant Robb."
It was early evening by the time Rathbone had made as thorough an examination of the hospital routine as he wished to, and had come to the regrettable conclusion that it required considerable forethought and some skill and nerve to steal medicines on a regular basis. The apothecary was very careful, in spite of his unkempt appearance and erratic sense of the absurd. Better opportunities occurred when a junior doctor was hurried, confused by a case he did not understand, or simply a little careless. Rathbone formed the opinion that in all probability Phillips was perfectly aware of what Cleo had been doing, and why, and had either deliberately connived at it, or at the very least had turned a blind eye. Against all his training, he found himself admiring the man for it, and quite intentionally ceased looking for evidence to support his theory.
Consequently, it was after seven o’clock by the time he went looking for Sergeant Robb, and was obliged to ask for his address at home in order to see him.
He found the house quite easily, but in spite of Michael Robb’s courtesy, he felt an intruder. A glance told him he had interrupted the care of the old man who sat in the chair in the center of the room, his white hair brushed back off his brow, his broad shoulders hunched forward over a hollow chest. His face was pale except for two spots of color on his cheeks. The sight of him gave a passionate and human reality to the work Cleo Anderson was prepared to risk so much for. Rathbone was startled to find himself filled with anger at the situation, at his own helplessness to affect it, and at the world for not knowing and not caring. It was with difficulty that he answered Michael Robb in a level voice.
"Good evening, Sergeant. I am sorry to intrude into your home, and at such an uncivil hour. If I could have found you at the police station I would have."
"What can I do for you, Sir Oliver?" Michael asked. He was courteous but wary. Rathbone was of both a class and a profession he was unused to dealing with except in court, where the duty of their offices prescribed the behavior for both of them. He was acutely conscious of his grandfather sitting, tired and hungry, waiting to be assisted. But he was by nature, as well as occupation, a gentle-mannered man.
"I have undertaken to defend Mrs. Anderson against the charge of murder," Rathbone replied with a faint, self-deprecating smile. He could not pretend to anyone he hoped for much success, and he did not wish Robb to think him a fool. "The question of theft is another matter."
"I’m sorry," Michael said, and there was sincerity in his face as well as his voice. "1 took no pleasure in charging her. But I can’t withdraw it."
"I understand that. It provides the motive for the murder of Treadwell."
"Are you talking about Cleo Anderson?" the old man interrupted, looking from one to the other of them.
Michael’s face tightened, and he shot Rathbone a look of reproach. "Yes, Grandpapa."
Rathbone had the strong impression that if Michael could have escaped with a lie about it he would have done so to protect the old man from knowledge which could only hurt. Had he any knowledge how much he also was compromised? Did he guess the debt he owed Cleo Anderson?