Page 89 of The Twisted Root (William Monk 10)

"Phillips the apothecary." She kept her temper with difficulty. "I need to speak with him."

The first young man frowned at her, looking at her more closely now. "You shouldn’t be looking for medicines; if one of the patients is—"

"I don’t want medicines!" she said. "I need to speak with Mr. Phillips. Do you know where he is or not?"

The young man’s face hardened. "No, actually, I don’t."

One of the other young men relented, for whatever personal reason.

"He’s down in the morgue," he answered. "The new assistant got taken a little faint. Gave him a bit of something to help. He’s probably still there."

"Thank you," she said quickly. "Thank you very much." And she all but ran along the corridor, out of the side entrance and down the steps to the cold room belowground which served to keep the bodies of the dead until the undertaker should come to perform the formalities.

"Hello, Mrs. Monk. You’re looking a little peaked," Phillips said cheerfully. "What can I do for you?"

"I’m glad I found you." She turned and regarded the young man, white-faced, who sat on the floor with his legs splayed out. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

He nodded, embarrassed.

"Just got a scare," Phillips said with a grin. "One o’ them corpses moved, and young Jake ’ere near fainted away. Nobody told ’im corpses sometimes passes wind. Gases don’t stop, son, just ’cos you’re dead."

Jake scrambled to his feet, running his hands through his hair and trying to look as if he was ready for duty again.

Hester looked at the tables. There were two bodies laid out under unbleached sheets.

"Not as many lately," Phillips remarked, following her glance.

"Good!" she said.

"No—not died here, brought in for the students," he corrected. "Old Thorpe’s in a rare fury. Can’t get ’em."

"Where do they come from?"

"God knows! Resurrectionists!" he said with black humor.

Jake was staring at him, openmouthed. He let out a sigh between his teeth.

"D’yer mean it?" he said hoarsely. "Grave robbers, like?"

"No, of course I don’t, you daft ha’porth!" Phillips said, shaking his head. "Get on with your work." He turned to Hester. "What is it, Mrs. Monk?" All the light vanished from his face. "Have you seen Cleo Anderson? Is there anything we can do for ’er, apart from hope for a miracle?"

"Work for one," she said bleakly. She turned and led the way back up the stairs.

He followed close behind, and when they were outside in the air he asked what she meant.

"Someone else was being blackmailed as well, we are almost sure," she explained, stopping beside him. "Treadwell spent a lot more money than Cleo gave him or he earned..."

Hope lit in his face. "You mean that person could have killed him? How do we find out who it was?" He looked at her confidently, as if he had every faith she would have an answer.

"I don’t know. I’ll settle at the moment just for proving he has to exist." She looked at him very steadily. "If you had to ... no, if you wanted to, could you work out exactly how much medicine has gone missing in, say, the four months before Treadwell’s death?"

"Perhaps ... if I had a really good reason to," he said guardedly. "I wouldn’t know that unless I understood the need."

"Not knowing isn’t going to help," she told him miserably. "Not charging her with theft won’t matter if they hang her for murder."

His face blanched as if she had slapped him, but he did not look away. "What good can you do?" he asked very quietly. "I really care about Cleo. She’s worth ten of that pompous swine in his oak-paneled office." He did not need to name Thorpe. She shared his feelings, and he knew it. He was watching her for an answer, hoping.

"I don’t really know—maybe not a great deal," she admitted. "But if I know how much is missing, and how much reached the patients she treated, if they are pretty well the same, then he got money from someone else."