Instead, he went out into the September afternoon and took a hansom straight to Primrose Hill. He did not expect his father to offer any answers; he went simply for the peace of the quiet garden in which to ease the wounds of a disastrous week, and to prepare his strength for the week to come, which promised to be even worse.
11
WHILE RATHBONE WAS SITTING helplessly in the courtroom, Monk began his further investigations into the details of Treadwell’s life. He had already asked exhaustively at the Stourbridges’ house and generally in the area around Cleveland Square. No one had told him anything remotely helpful. Treadwell had been tediously ordinary.
He began instead in Kentish Town, where Treadwell had grown up. It was a long task, and he held little hope of its proving successful. In time he began to fear that Miriam Gardiner was guilty as charged and that poor Cleo Anderson had been drawn into it because of her love for the girl she had rescued. She had refused to recognize that beneath the charm and apparent vulnerability, Miriam had grown into a greedy and conniving woman who would not stop even at murder in order to get what she wanted. Love could be very blind. No mother wanted to see evil in her child, and the fact that Cleo had not borne Miriam would make no difference to her.
His earlier pity for Miriam hardened to anger when he thought of the grief it would bring to Cleo when she was faced with facts she could no longer deny to herself. Miriam may not have asked to be loved, or to be believed in, but she had accepted it. It carried a moral responsibility, and she had failed it as badly as anyone could. The deception was worse than the violence.
He walked the streets of Kentish Town, going from one public house to another asking questions as discreetly as the desperately short time allowed. Twice he was too open, too hasty, and earned a sharp rebuff. He left and began again farther along, more carefully.
By sundown he was exhausted, his feet hurt merely to the touch. He took an omnibus home. Monk would earn no further money in this case, but he simply cared passionately to learn the truth. Lucius Stourbridge would have continued to pay him; indeed, he had still implored Monk to help only a week earlier. But Monk had refused to take anything further from him for something he was all but certain he could not accomplish. The young man had lost so much already; to have given him hope he could not justify would be a cruelty for which he would despise himself.
Hester looked at his face as he came in and did not ask what he had learned. Her tact was so uncharacteristic it told him more of his own disappointment, and how visible it was, than he would have admitted.
On the second day he gained considerably more knowledge. He came closer to Hampstead and discovered a public house where they knew Treadwell rather well. From there he was able to trace a man to whom Treadwell had lost at gambling. Since Treadwell was dead, the debt could not be collected.
"Someone ought to be responsible!" the man said angrily, his round eyes sharp and a little bloodshot. "In’t there no law? You shouldn’t be able to get out of money you owe just bydyin’."
Monk looked knowledgeable. "Well, usually you would go to a man’s heirs," he said gravely. "But I don’t know if Treadwell had any... ?" He left it hanging as a question.
"Nah!" the man said in disgust. "Answer to nob’dy, that one."
"Have a drink?" Monk offered. He might be wasting his time, but he had no better avenue to follow.
"Ta. Don’t mind if I do," the man accepted. "Reece." He held out a hand after rubbing it on his trouser leg.
Monk took a moment to realize it was an introduction, then he grasped the hand and shook it. "Monk," he responded.
" ’Ow do," Reece said cheerfully. "I’ll ’ave a pint o’ mild, ta."
When the pints had been ordered and bought, Monk pursued the conversation. "Did he owe you a lot?"
"I’ll say!" Reece took a long draft of his ale before he continued. "Near ten pound."
Monk was startled. It was as much as a housemaid earned in six months.
"That choked yer, eh?" Reece observed with satisfaction. " ’E played big, did Treadwell."
"And lost big," Monk agreed. "He can’t have lost like that often. Did he win as well?"
"Sometimes. Liked ter live ’igh on the ’og, ’e did. Wine, women and the ’orses. Must ’a won sometimes, I suppose. But w’ere am I gonna get ten quid, you tell me that?"
"What I’d like to know is where Treadwell got it," Monk said with feeling. "He certainly didn’t earn it as a coachman."
"Wouldn’t know," Reece said with fading interest. He emptied his glass and looked at Monk hopefully.
Monk obliged.
"Coachman, were ’e?" Reece said thoughtfully. "Well, I guess as ’e ’ad suffink on the side, then. Dunno wot."
A very ugly thought came into Monk’s mind concerning Cleo Anderson’s theft of medicines, especially morphine. Hester had said a considerable amount might have gone over a period of time. Maybe not all of it had ended in the homes of the old and ill. Anyone addicted to such a drug would pay a high price to obtain it. It would be only too easy to understand how Cleo could have sold it to pay Treadwell, or even have given it to him directly for him to sell. The idea gave him no pleasure, but he could not get rid of it.
He spent the rest of the day investigating Treadwell’s off-duty hours, which seemed to have been quite liberal, and found he had a considerable taste for self-indulgence. But there appeared to be several hours once every two weeks or so which were unaccounted for, and Monk was driven to the conclusion that this time may have been used either for selling morphine or for further blackmail of other victims.
The last thing Monk did, late in the evening, was to go and visit Cleo herself, telling the jailer that he was Rathbone’s clerk. He had no proof of such a position, but the jailer had seen them together earlier, and accepted it. Or possibly his compassion for Cleo made him turn a blind eye. Monk did not care in the slightest what the reason was; he took advantage of it.
Cleo was surprised to see him, but there was no light of hope in her eyes. She looked haggard and exhausted. She was almost unrecognizable from the woman he had met only a month or so before. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin completely without color, and she sat with her shoulders sagging under the plain dark stuff of her dress.
Monk was caught off guard by his emotions on seeing her. She stirred in him an anger and a sense of outrage at futility and injustice, more passionate than he had expected. If he failed in this he was going to carry the wound for a very long time, perhaps always.
There was no time to waste in words of pity or encouragement, and he knew they would be wasted because they could have no meaning.
"Do you know if Treadwell was blackmailing anyone else apart from you?" he asked her, sitting down opposite her so he could speak softly and she could hear him.
"No. Why? Do you think they could’ve killed him?" There was almost hope in her voice, not quite. She did not dare.
Honesty forbade him to allow it. "Enough possibility to raise a need to know how much you paid him, exactly," he answered. "I have a pretty good record of how much he spent over the last two or three months of his life. If you paid him all of it, then you must have been taking morphine to sell, as well as to give to patients."
Her body stiffened, her eyes wide and angry. "I didn’t! And I never gave him any either!"
"We have to prove it," he argued. "Have you got any records of your pay from the hospital, of all the medicine you took and the people to whom you gave it?"
"No—of course I haven’t."
"But you know all the patients you visited with medicine," he insisted.