Page 103 of The Twisted Root (William Monk 10)

"Was there ever a body found? What happened? Didn’t the police ask?"

Cleo waved her hands in denial, her eyes desperate. "No— no body was ever found. He must have hidden it."

It was all pointless, completely futile. Rathbone felt a sense of despair drowning him as if he could hardly struggle for breath, almost a physical suffocation.

"You said yourself that she was hysterical." He tried to sound reasonable, not patronizing or offensive to a woman who must be facing the most bitter disillusion imaginable, and for which she would face disgrace she had not deserved, and a death he could not save her from. "Don’t you think the loss of her baby was what she was actually thinking of? Was it a girl?"

"I don’t know. She didn’t say." Cleo looked as if she had caught his despair. "She seemed so—so sure it was a woman... someone she cared for... who had helped her, even loved her... I—" She stopped, too weary, too hurt, to go on.

"I’m sorry," Rathbone said gently. "You were right to tell me about the baby. If Campbell was lying, at least we may be able to make something of that. Even if we do no more than save Miriam’s reputation, I am sure that will matter to her." He was making wild promises and talking nonsense. Would Miriam care about such a thing when she faced death?

He banged on the door to be released again, and as soon as they were outside he turned to Hester.

But before he could begin to say how sorry he was, she spoke.

"If this woman really was killed, then her body must still be there."

"Hester—she was delirious, probably weak from loss of blood and in a state of acute distress from delivering a dead child."

"Maybe. But perhaps she really did see a woman murdered," Hester insisted. "If the body was never found, then it is out there on the Heath."

"For twenty-two years! On Hampstead Heath! For h

eaven’s sake..."

"Not in the open! Buried—hidden somewhere."

"Well, if it’s buried no one would find it now."

"Perhaps it’s not buried." She refused to give up. "Perhaps it’s hidden somehow, concealed."

"Hester..."

"I’m going to find Sergeant Robb and see if he will help me look."

"You can’t. After all this time there’ll be nothing..."

"I’ve got to try. What if there really was a woman murdered? What if Miriam was telling the truth all the time?"

"She isn’t!"

"But what if she was? She’s your client, Oliver! You’ve got to give her the benefit of every doubt. You must assume that what she says is true until it is completely proved it can’t be."

"She was thirteen, she’d just given birth to a dead child, she was alone and hysterical..."

"I’m going to find Sergeant Robb. He’ll help me look, whatever he believes, for Cleo’s sake. He owes her a debt he can never repay, and he knows that."

"And doubtless if he should forget, you will remind him."

"Certainly!" she agreed. "But he won’t forget."

"What about Monk?" he challenged her as she turned to leave.

"He’s still busy trying to find out more about Treadwell and the corpses," she said over her shoulder.

"Hester, wait!"

But she had walked off, increasing her pace to a run, and short of chasing after her there was nothing he could do— except try to imagine how he was going to face the court the next morning.