"That’s not how I work, Mrs. Anderson." He did not bother to correct her as to his title. It seemed remarkably unimportant now. "If you took the medicines, I have two options: either to plead mitigating circumstances and hope that they will judge you from the charity of your intent rather than the illegality of your act, or else to try to misdirect their attention from the theft altogether and hope that they concentrate on other matters."

"Other matters?" She shook her head. "They’re saying as I killed Treadwell because he was blackmailing me over the medicines. You can’t misdirect anybody away from that."

"And was he?"

She hesitated. Something inside her seemed to crumple. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Yes."

He waited for her to say more, but she remained silent.

"How did he find out about the medicines?" he asked.

"I suppose it wasn’t hard." She stared ahead of her, a shadow of self-mockery in her expression. "Lot o’ people could have, if they’d wanted to think about it, and watch. I took stuff to about a score o’ the old ones who were really in a bad way. I don’t know why I talk about it in the past—they still are, an’ here’s me sittin’ here useless." She looked up at him. "There’s nothing you can do, Mr. Rathbone. All the questions in the world aren’t going to make any difference. I took the medicines, and it’ll be easy enough to prove. Treadwell worked it out. I don’t know how."

There was no argument to make. He heard footsteps along the corridor outside, but they continued on and no one disturbed them. He wondered briefly if the jailers here sympathized with her; even were it possible, they might sooner have had the law turn a blind eye to her thefts. Maybe they had little time for a blackmailer.

It was academic, only a wish. The power was not in their hands. Maybe it was a thought each would have had individually and never dared voice.

She was regarding him earnestly, her eyes anxious.

"Mr. Rathbone-don’t let them go talking to all the people I took medicines to. It’s bad enough they won’t get any help now. I don’t want them to know they were part of a crime— even though they never understood it."

He wished there was some way he could prevent that from happening, but it would soon enough become common knowledge. The trial would be written up in all the newspapers, told and retold by the running patterers, and in the gossip on every street corner. What should he tell her?

She was waiting, a flicker of hope in her face.

He regarded her almost as if he had not seen her before, not been speaking to her, forming judgments those last ten minutes. She had risked her own freedom, taken her own leap of moral decision in order to help the old and ill who could not help themselves. She had faced the most painful of realities and dealt with it. She did not deserve the condescension of being lied to. She would know the truth eventually anyway.