Poison Flowers (21 page)

‘I have no idea,' said Willow, lying without compunction. ‘So, she never had any kind of fling with Dr Bruterley.'

‘Absolutely not! I say, I must go now. But let's make a date for next week. Monday? It's my first night of freedom.'

‘Monday would be fine,' said Willow. They agreed to meet at a restaurant in Chelsea, where she had never eaten. She said goodbye and put down the telephone, feeling happier than she had for some days. Her investigation had progressed to the extent that she could banish her unrealistic suspicions of Caroline Titchmell. With a source of information about Bruterley all ready to talk to her, Willow had plenty to do.

She went back to her synopsis, determined to polish it off before she talked to Andrew Salcott, so that she could free her mind for her inquisition. She had completed the notes for two chapters before she thought of the woman who had been thought to be blackmailing Dr Bruterley. Had her name been Sarah? Willow could not remember whether the
Daily Mercury
had gone so far as to put a name to the ‘disturbed'patient, but into her novelist's brain flashed a complete synopsis for a novel – or a crime.

If leggy, blond Sarah had been made pregnant at school by Bruterley, she would presumably have come under the untender care of the matron who had been so unsympathetic to Caroline Titchmell. That matron was Miss Fernside. An unsympathetic, unimaginative matron of the old school – probably a virgin herself – might well have caused a pregnant schoolgirl terrible unhappiness. And perhaps, terrified of having the child and ruining her life, she had in the holidays gone to see an old girl of the school, known to have had an abortion. That could have been the actress Claire Ullathorne, who might have recommended an abortionist.

Working back, using the known ages of the people involved, Willow decided that the pregnancy scandal must have happened some time between 1972 and 1977. She grinned at herself suddenly, having forgotten how old she was; her imagination had been suggesting some pre-Abortion Act, backstreet practitioner. Nevertheless, it was possible that something had gone wrong with Sarah's operation for which she had blamed the matron, the actress and the father of her unborn child. Perhaps she had buried the hurt and anger at the time and they had resurfaced only when Bruterley once again led her into a sexual relationship and rejected her.

The only trouble with that unhappy but forensically promising scenario was that Willow could not imagine how Simon Titchmell and his girlfriend might have played parts in it.

After lunch she accepted a cup of espresso coffee from her housekeeper and said:

‘By the way, Mrs Rusham, what happens to the newspapers I leave on the breakfast table?'

‘I take them to the recycling bins near my home on Monday evenings,' answered the housekeeper, looking rather affronted. ‘Have you some objection?'

‘Good heavens no!' said Willow. ‘I'm impressed by your concern for ecology. I'd just hoped that last Thursday's
Mercury
might still be readable.'

‘I'm afraid not. If you wish me to keep the papers in future …'

‘No. No, thank you, Mrs Rusham,' said Willow with a polite smile. She carried her coffee into the drawing room, silently cursing the housekeeper's efficiency. In her small irritation, the bleakness of the room annoyed her and, forgetting both coffee and investigation for the moment, she opened one of the drawers in the Pembroke table that carried the telephone and took out her paint and fabric samples.

Having held them up against the walls and squinted at them through ninety-per-cent closed eyelids, she confirmed the tentative choice she had made the week before and telephoned the interior decorator who had organised the original decoration of the flat.

He sounded delighted to take on the chore of finding decorators and upholsterers to tackle the work, and asked whether ‘Cressida' wanted him to select paintings and furniture to substitute for the irreplaceable things she had lost.

‘No, don't worry about that, Martin,' Willow said. ‘I'll gradually find them myself. Of course, if you happen to see anything nice you could let me know about it … but I rather enjoy the final choosing and buying myself.'

‘That's understandable,' he said. ‘I'd hate to live surrounded by furniture chosen by someone else, but you'd be amazed by how many people do.'

‘Perhaps your other clients are lazier than I,' said Willow, amused as she always was by the foibles and absurdities of the very rich and thinking ‘good copy'.

‘Actually, my dear,' said Martin, exaggerating his languid voice, ‘I think a lot of them are just rather unsure about their taste.'

‘Oh, bitchy, bitchy, Martin,' said Willow, even more amused. ‘Well, I like mine and so I've chosen the colours and the fabrics. Would you like me to send them?'

‘Why don't I come round and pick them up. It would be lovely to see you, and …'

‘And you could just check on my taste and send me a big bill for your professional time?' said Willow, sounding to her slight dismay more like the Civil Servant than the rich novelist.

‘Bitchy yourself,' said Martin, but he was laughing. ‘All right, send them. I've got all the old measurements on file and so I can put in the orders without coming to measure up. But the cutters will have to cut the covers on site, you know.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Willow. ‘But you could fix that with Mrs Rusham for any time on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday,' she went on. ‘I'm out all those days and so it won't hurt me.'

‘And the decorating? Do you expect me to have that done within three days?'

‘Absolutely,' she said, sounding like Lady Bracknell. ‘And don't tell me it's not possible. The panelling is in very good condition, so all they'll have to do is wash it down and then apply three coats of paint.'

‘There's always the ceiling and the woodwork, dear,' said Martin. ‘But I suppose I could arrange it so that they work three days one week and three days the next if you insist.'

‘You are a little treasure,' Willow informed him. ‘And I'll pay your bill with exemplary promptitude. It should be quite nice for you, because the chintz I've chosen is ludicrously expensive. Your thirty-three per cent – or however big the commission is nowadays – will come to quite a lot. Let Mrs Rusham know when you need access to the flat.'

‘I will. Thank you for the order; I may say, in spite of your rather – shall we say acerbic? – attitude, you are one of my easier clients,' said Martin. ‘Goodbye.'

Feeling refreshed by the interchange, Willow drank her cold coffee, shuddering from the strength of it, and then dialled the number of the
Daily Mercury.

‘Jane Cleverholme, please,' she said, and then a moment later: ‘Jane? Good. Cressida Woodruffe here. Thank you for those cuttings. I'm afraid that I need to pick your brains again.'

‘I think I still owe you, Cressida, for your discretion last year after I'd spilled the beans about my boss's wife,' said Jane. ‘What can I do for you?' Willow could hear the millions of cigarettes she must have smoked in the huskiness of her voice.

‘Mrs Rusham has thrown out my last week's
Mercuries
,' she said, ‘and I've forgotten the details of the disgruntled mistress of the glamorous murdered doctor. D'you remember the piece?'

‘Cheltenham, wasn't it? Yes I remember. But why do you want to know?' The suspicion was even clearer in Jane's voice than the cigarettes.

‘You've never quite dropped the idea that I might be freelancing for a rival gossip column, have you?' Willow said. ‘But I promise that I am not. Did you read anything anywhere after our last discussion? No, you did not. I just need to know, and I'm too discreet to tell you why.'

‘Will you promise that when discretion is no longer necessary you'll tell me all?' Jane asked. ‘And give me the story a micro-second before everyone else?'

‘Yes, I promise that,' said Willow when she had had time to think it over. Then she spelled out her promise: ‘When discretion is no longer needed, I'll tell you before any other journalist has had a chance.'

‘Good. I'll go and look up the story. Do you want to hang on or shall I ring you back?'

‘I'll hang on,' said Willow, who was long past the stage of minding how high her telephone bill was in Chesham Place. Her Abbeville Road telephone was quite another matter, of course, and if it rose above her budgeted maximum she was seriously displeased.

‘It's not surprising you didn't remember much,' said Jane. ‘We hardly printed any of it. Damned lawyers, you know. All we said was that she was blond, a former mental patient, beautiful and unhappy.'

‘Leaving your charming readers to fill in the gaps: ex-mental patient equals mad equals homicidal; blond and beautiful equals promiscuous and so on. Tell me what you didn't put in the article.'

‘Come on, Cressida,' said Jane crossly. ‘That's more than my job's worth. Haven't you heard of slander? It's just as bad as libel …'

‘But less easy to prove. Don't tell me your telephone calls are all taped?' said Willow.

‘I wouldn't put it past my paranoid chief, the famous Gripper-the-pig. Oh Lord! Well, if he's listening to all our conversations, he'll have known long ago that we all loathe him. Got that?' she called in a different voice. Reverting to her normal tones, she went on: ‘You could always ask specific questions and I'll see whether I can answer them.'

Willow felt once again the bitter envy the amateur feels of her professional counterpart. Unlike the police, Willow would never be in a position to subpoena anyone or demand their files or make them give her a signed statement.

‘Is her name Sarah?'

‘Yes.'

‘What is her surname?'

‘Can't say.'

‘Blast!' said Willow with un-Cressida-like primness. ‘Has she ever had an abortion?'

‘No record here.'

‘Where does she live?'

‘Cheltenham,' said Jane, sounding happy to be able to give her friend something.

‘I know that, you idiot. Where in Cheltenham?'

‘Honestly, Cressida, I
cannot
tell you things like that.'

‘All right. Is there anything you can tell me?' asked Willow, burying her irritation because she thought she could hear real sympathy in Jane's smokey voice.

‘Nothing else, I'm afraid. Sorry. Oh well, perhaps it would be OK to let you know that we can't find her. She seems to have done a bunk. The police are probably looking for her and we certainly are. But that really is all.'

‘Don't worry. I'll get it somewhere else. Thanks, Jane. I'll see you soon, I hope,' said Willow. They said goodbye to each other and Willow was left with an ever-growing bundle of loose ideas in her mind and a sense of horrible frustration. She decided to walk it off and went to change out of her soft black suede shoes into something more suitable for out of doors.

It was a short walk through Lowndes Square and across Knightsbridge into Hyde Park, and Willow was soon picking her way across the grass towards the Serpentine. The grass was almost dry, but still freshly green, and the trees were much further advanced than she had realised from her forays among London's streets. The horse-chestnuts already had their soft cones of white flowers out among the leaves, but other trees showed only a fuzz of greenness among their still-sharp black branches.

As she circled the ornamental lake, Willow was surprised to see that there were still uniformed nannies pushing waist-high, swan-necked, prams in glossy dark-blue or black. One passed her and she noticed a pristine broderie anglaise canopy attached to the pram to shield the baby from the sun. The whole equipage looked as archaic as those house-party photographs from the Indian summer before the First World War. Willow looked away and was relieved to see a far more familiar group of children on bicycles and skate-boards, shepherded along by two nannies of the new school, who were dressed in skin-tight leggings and sweatshirts and had pink flashes dyed into their spikey hair and heavy black makeup around their eyes.

She walked on, thinking of nothing very much but hoping that her mind would clear eventually, until she had crossed into Kensington Gardens and found herself amid the fountains at the end of the Long Water. The symmetry of the formal arrangement of pools pleased her and she decided to sit for a while to rest her feet.

The fountains'spray was blowing wildly in the wind. Willow watched in detached amusement as a group of children charged through the wettest of the paths, getting soaked in the spray and squealing in mixed delight and terror, but she became less amused when the wind suddenly changed direction and a gust blew a cold shower over her.

Perhaps it was the cold or perhaps the exercise had its usual beneficial effect on her mind, but whatever it was, by the time she had walked past the statues and round the Round Pond, she knew that her next move in the investigation had to be to interview Miranda Bruterley. However much Willow disliked the idea of intruding on a woman so recently widowed, she knew that she could get no further without asking questions to which only Miranda could know the answer. Willow hurried back to her flat and telephone.

As soon as Willow got back inside the flat she went into her pale, pretty bedroom and, without taking off her coat, picked up the telephone and dialled the number of Tom Worth's office. When she was told that he was talking to someone else on another line, she left a message for him to ring her back urgently, took off her coat and shoes, and lay flat on her back on the antique Irish lace counterpane.

Staring up at the ivory-coloured ceiling, she waited for Tom and thought about the person she was pursuing. There must be a sourness and a sick delight in the murderer, she thought, as well as the vanity and the inadequacy of which the psychiatrist had warned her. She could imagine the murderer taking pleasure in the sense of power the killings must have provided, both during the long, intricate planning and in the aftermath. Willow tried to imagine what that aftermath must have been like. Would satisfaction have been uppermost or fear or even a kind of sick hangover? What outward signs could those feelings have created in the killer?