Festering Lilies (14 page)

When she had gone, Willow looked at Emma, wondering what she thought of her ‘friend'. Emma looked back and then nodded, a charming smile on her face.

‘I know,' she said. ‘But she really is nice under it all.'

‘I'm sure she is,' said Willow, ‘if noisy. But you were telling me about Algy and how he talked to you. What sort of things did you talk about?'

‘Oh everything really. He used to talk about my career and what I ought to do. He didn't think that being a secretary in the House would be a good thing. He said that it didn't give one enough scope and that so many of the girls who did it got stuck and middle-aged and full of fantasies and bitter. He thought I ought to do something of my own, not be a bottle-washer for someone else.'

Well that was something positively useful for him to have done, thought Willow, wondering whether she had been trapped into misjudging him by Richard's reminiscences. She said nothing and Emma, clearly pining to talk about her hero, finished up her soup and went on.

‘And sometimes he told me things that were worrying him.'

‘Things about his constituency or the department?' At that question, Emma looked speculatively across the table.

‘They were really pretty confidential,' she murmured, and Willow patted her hand in an auntly fashion.

‘Don't you worry about it then. I just thought you wanted to talk. Have you decided what you are going to do? Why not university?' asked Willow, well aware that people with secrets long above all else to tell them to novelists; it was one of the odder phenomena she had discovered since the publication of her first book, but it cropped up again and again. Emma proved to be no exception.

‘I suppose since he's… dead.…' Her voice broke and Willow wished that her informant could have been just a little older or more hard boiled. ‘Since he isn't alive any more, it doesn't matter, and you won't pass any of it on, will you?' Willow shook her head.

‘Well, personal things, usually. About his brother and things like that. But hardly anybody knew he had a brother, you see. I mean, even I didn't until that evening when he was so upset that he kissed me. You see he'd been telling me how worried he was about his brother.' She looked anxiously at Willow, but seeing nothing in her face except polite interest decided to get it all off her chest.

‘His brother was a terribly pathetic sort of man, you see, a failure, Algy used to say, but so jealous of him that he was always thinking up schemes to embarrass Algy or the government or something. Algy knew that he couldn't – I mean, there wasn't anything Algy had done that would have embarrassed anybody. But Algy was afraid that if this brother of his tried, he'd make such a fool of himself that even he would realise how he'd sunk and then perhaps he'd commit suicide or something really frightful like that. It was so difficult for him to help his brother, you see, without making him feel useless.'

‘Heavens!' said Willow, inadequately. The story was preposterous. She wondered whether Algy had been spinning stories for Emma's benefit or whether he had really succeded in deceiving himself. But there was a hint of a possible motive there. If the brother were really useless, he must be incapable of earning a living, in which case he must be in desperate need of money. For some reason, she remembered an amateur production of
Salad Days
she had seen at Newcastle University and suddenly thought of a reason why Algy might have been walking across Clapham Common.

If Algy's brother were a black sheep like the one in Julian Slade's musical, perhaps he would be destitute and sleeping rough. If Algy had been walking across the common towards Clapham Junction, might he perhaps have had an assignation there? No; that really would be too absurd, she thought and turned back to little Emma.

‘Did you know if Algy was going to leave the brother something in his will?' Willow asked. Emma shook her head.

‘He never talked about that sort of thing. I mean, why should he? He was only thirty-nine. And it's honestly not the kind of question one would ask someone one… oh, you know.' She turned away from Willow and blotted her eyes on the paper napkin before giving her nose a thorough blow. Willow had to smile, but the amusement was removed from her face when Emma turned back to say:

‘You don't mean that you think that Algy's brother might have… might have killed him, do you? Do you think I ought to tell the police?'

‘I imagine that they'll have thought of it already, and they've probably got a copy of his will, so they'll know far more than we. Don't you think so?' said Willow, carefully removing any hint of resentment out of her voice. She still could not forgive Inspector Worth for having so much easy access to vital information.

‘Yes, of course,' said Emma, ‘And they must be inundated by people thinking that they know who did it. What a relief!' She looked suddenly immensely relaxed, as though she had been released from some quite serious anxiety.

‘What else did you think you ought to tell them?' asked Willow tentatively and was surprised to see Emma blush once again. She started to speak and was then saved by the waiter coming to clear away their soup plates and bring the steaks and salad. When he had gone, she whispered:

‘It was just something that I'd promised Algy I'd never talk about – most frightfully secret. But it did occur to me that if it was so secret, then it might… that perhaps I ought.…'

Something about the unhappiness in Emma's face and her obvious loyalty to her late employer got through Willow's defences and she found herself really minding that the child should be relieved of some of her distress.

‘About Amanda Gripper, you mean?' said Willow and saw from Emma's expression of astonishment that she was right.

Willow, relieved to have Gino's gossip finally confirmed, was more interested in comforting Emma, and explained as kindly as possible that a secret as fascinating as that one was not likely to remain secret for very long and that it was likely to be shared by several people in Special Branch and probably in the various Civil Service vetting departments, as well as selected ‘trusted'friends of each of the participants.

Emma digested that piece of worldly wisdom in silence. Then she looked up at Willow with a hopeful expression. ‘So you mean that you think the police will know about it already?'

‘I'm sure they will, Emma,' said Willow.

‘Thank God,' said the child and turned back to her steak with far more interest than she had shown before. She finished it all, accepted Willow's suggestion of
tarte aux pommes
and then coffee.

Just before they parted, when Emma had thanked ‘Cressida' profusely for the delicious lunch, Willow said:

‘I think Algy was very lucky to have you, Emma. You must have helped him a lot.'

‘Do you really think so?' asked the girl, looking so earnest that Willow understood why Anthony Gnatche would have been so furious when he witnessed Algy's attempted seduction.

‘You loved him, didn't you?' said Willow gently and then was sorry when Emma burst into real, gulping, howling tears. Passers-by stopped and peered, but Emma seemed oblivious.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said over and over again as Willow searched ineffectually for handkerchiefs. In the end she had to go back into the restaurant and beg some paper napkins from one of the waiters. When Emma had mopped her eyes and managed to stop crying, she apologised yet again. Willow broke all her unspoken rules and put an arm around the girl's shoulders.

‘Don't apologise, Emma. It was cruel of me to have reminded you.' She took her arm away and said more briskly: ‘Now, where did you leave your car?'

‘Just down Maiden Lane. I'll be all right, Cressida. Thank you so much. I am sorry to have been a nuisance.'

Realising that anything she said would provoke only more apologies, Willow said good bye and turned decisively away.

Since she was in Covent Garden she decided to investigate the exhibition Grania had mentioned. It was some time since she had added to her small but choice collection of paintings. She had begun to have serious doubts by the time she had discovered that the so-called gallery was merely the basement of a shop that sold fantastically expensive knitted clothes. Regretting the probable embarrassment involved in walking out of so small a shop without making a purchase, she climbed gingerly down a precipitous helical staircase into a small whitewashed room hung with double rows of pictures and inhabited by a single person.

He was a pleasant, untidy, stammering young man, of about thirty-five who stood up to greet his only customer and blushed as she asked if she could look round. She was touched by his lack of arrogance and decided to buy something even if she hated it, knowing that she could always give it to Mrs Rusham if she really could not bear it, or even hang it in Abbeville Road.

Willow walked slowly round the small whitewashed basement, her spirits rising with each step she took. The pictures were oils, mainly landscapes, but what enchanted her was their gaiety. Each painting seemed full of light and an indefinable atmosphere of happiness, as though the painter had been smiling with every stroke of his brush. Willow knew enough about the business of creating something to know that that was most unlikely, but the results were a delight.

She turned back to the young man, an irresistible smile on her own face that woke an answering one from him.

‘Did you paint them?' she asked. He nodded and blushed again.

‘I like them very much,' she said. ‘Have you a price list?' He handed her a typewritten list and she liked the fact that he had not thrust it at her when she first walked in. She circled the little gallery once again, consulting the list in her hand and then came back to the improvised desk and told him that she would like to buy numbers eleven, fifteen and twenty-two, which came to a total of £2,567.50.

‘Oh, I say,' said the young painter breathlessly. ‘You really don't have to, you know.' Willow laughed.

‘No, I know I don't. But I like them very much indeed.' At last she managed to persuade him that she was not being charitable, agreed to leave her purchases with him until the end of his exhibition, signed a cheque and left him, thinking how well he would do as a friend for Emma Gnatche. They had a lot of the same gentleness, and a humility that was seriously appealing. Willow rather hoped that the ghastly Grania would introduce them.

Having nothing to carry, Willow decided to walk back to her flat so that she could think. She had discovered long ago that when one of her novels went dead on her and she could not think what to do with a tiresome character or difficult plot, the only thing to do was walk. Sitting worrying over the problem was never as effective as striding along the London pavements and just allowing a solution to come to her.

Setting off down Long Acre towards the West End, she hoped that the same process might help her sort out her apparently still-born investigation into the murder.

It was a pity, she thought, that she had allowed her sympathy for Emma Gnatche's broken heart to stop her from asking more about the Grippers. Emma was unlikely to know much about them, of course, but it was dotty not even to have discovered what she did know.

The walk did help Willow's absurdly slow mind a little, because as she was passing the statue of Eros in the middle of Piccadilly, she realised that she had had a splendid opportunity of finding out about Gripper the previous day and had wasted it.

Her publisher's publicity manager would be sure to know about him, and might even be in a position to introduce him to her star author. After all, the publicity department must be dealing with journalists most of the time. Willow was irritated to think that she had had the whole of Friday to telephone her publisher. Now she would just have to wait until Monday.

The least she could do, she thought, was to buy a copy of the
Daily Mercury
and see what sort of thing Gripper wrote. It was not a newspaper that Willow King would have dreamt of touching in the ordinary way, full as it was of prurient gossip, simplistic tub-thumping, and photographs of naked teenage girls presumably designed to titillate the jaded palates of frustrated middle-aged men and pubescent boys. Willow bought her copy at a newsstand near Green Park tube station and stood transfixed in the middle of the street.

‘Murdered Minister In Rent Boy Scandal?' screamed the headline.

Someone walked into Willow and produced an apology that was so loaded with accusation that she realised she would have to get out of the way. Dazed by the headline, she backtracked down Piccadilly to a café she sometimes used and ordered a cup of coffee.

Carrying it to a table at the far end of the restaurant, she sat down and perused the scandal sheet. When she got to the end of the article she realised that it was a masterpiece of innuendo and unjustified speculation. She went back to the beginning and re-read it slowly to see whether there were any facts in it at all.

‘Close friends of glamorous minister, Algernon (‘Algy') Endelsham deny categorically that he had ever been a homosexual. Nevertheless recent speculation about his private life might have led people outside his charmed circle to think otherwise.

‘Did they include members of the South-London vigilante group whose recent gay-bashing activities include the smashing up of Junction pub The Pig's Ear last week?

‘A youth involved in that punch-up is said to be “helping the police with their enquiries”.

‘The leader of the band said last month, “We hate rich pouffs taking advantage of homeless lads”.

‘Inspector Tom Worth, leading the Clapham-based enquiry into the minister's murder had no comment to make on the pub brawl.'

Willow drank her coffee and considered the newspaper. The pub fracas to which the article referred must have been the source of the talk about The Pig's Ear that she had overheard at DOAP, but as far as she could see, the paper had neither made nor even claimed any connection between it and Algy's death. They had merely interwoven speculation about the one with a brief report of the other. But at least one thing was clear to her: she now knew where the DOAP messengers had got the idea that the minister might have been a homosexual. The
Daily Mercury
had always been their preferred reading, and it did not take an intuitive genius, Willow thought, to work out why the paper might have wanted to suggest that the minister's sexual preferences might have been a little unorthodox. If the secret of Gripper's wife's affair with Algy were beginning to leak beyond what the paper called ‘the charmed circle', then Gripper himself might well want to draw a red herring across the trail.