Poison Flowers (23 page)

‘Did Bruterley drink whisky every evening?'

‘Apparently not; only when under particular stress.'

‘Ummm,' murmured Willow. ‘Shall we eat? It's getting pretty late.'

‘Whatever you say,' answered Tom, getting off the sofa and offering her his hand. She managed to stand up without his assistance.

They discovered that Mrs Rusham had already laid the dining room table for one and so Willow went to fetch more cutlery, plates and glasses while Tom took a heavy cast-iron pot from the slow oven in the Aga and found a bowl of salad waiting in the refrigerator beside a jar of dressing. He fatigued the salad and took both dishes into the dining room.

‘There's probably some kind of potato somewhere,' said Willow, passing him in the doorway. ‘I'll go and investigate.'

She found an oval gratin dish full of potato slices cooked in a very little stock with onions and garlic, and carried it back to the dining room, where Tom was waiting. Willow helped herself to what proved to be a stew of squid in tomatoes and its own ink.

They ate for most of the time in companionable silence, occasionally making a remark to each other, and it was not until they were sitting over their coffee and small glasses of 1962 Armagnac that Willow brought up the subject of the case, by saying:

‘I meant to tell you. I think I've discovered why Commander Bodmin might have believed that batty suggestion of Simon Titchmell's having put the aconitine in his own cereal.'

Tom looked up from his glass, his dark face taut and watchful.

‘Why?' he said abruptly. As she told him what she had learned about Titchmell's drug habits from his sister, Tom's face relaxed into an expression of satisfaction.

‘Yes, that could explain it. And his slight shiftiness is presumably caused by his thinking that his father ought to have reported Titchmell. Well done, Will. Thank you for clearing that up. It had been worrying me.'

‘By the way, did you get the mistress's name?' said Willow, childishly pleased by his approval.

‘Sarah Rowfant,' said Tom, breathing in the sharp warm scent of the brandy.

‘Maiden or married?'

‘Maiden, I understand,' said Tom. He reached into the inner pocket of his tweed jacket and brought out a small black-leather-covered notebook. Flicking through its pages he said, ‘Never been married. Nothing known against her until this …'

‘Which can't be said to be “known” yet, can it?' said Willow, suddenly afraid for the absent woman. If Miranda Bruterley had been away for ten days, then the doctor would have been free to devote all his time to his mistress. Perhaps she had even moved into the house, in which case she could easily have substituted the poisoned whisky.

‘True,' said Tom, watching her with an odd expression in his dark eyes. ‘Willow, are you all right?'

‘Yes, of course, I am,' she said crossly. Then she let herself smile at him. ‘I do find it all a bit depressing, though, this searching people's lives for enough misery to make them kill each other,' she said, determined not to let him know how frightened she was.

‘Yes, but that's always been part of the job,' answered Tom. ‘The skill is in finding a way to involve all your mental faculties and none of your emotions.'

Willow looked down at the nut-brown liquid in her glass.

‘But if you don't let your emotions get involved, how can you ever discover what might have motivated your murderer?' she asked.

‘Ah yes,' said Tom. ‘In real – I mean ordinary – police work, motive always comes a poor third to means and opportunity. The difficulty with this case – if it is a single case – is that neither means nor opportunity are narrow enough categories to help. That is why I wanted you involved … I suppose,' he added slowly, watching her face, ‘that I have been exploiting you.'

Willow thought about that for a moment and discovered to her surprise that even if he had been she did not mind. Uncertain what to tell him about that, she asked another question instead:

‘Is there any way that you can find out whether Sarah Rowfant knew Simon Titchmell?'

‘I'm not sure. The Titchmell case is officially closed. Can't you ask his sister?'

‘Tricky without explaining why I want to know. She probably already thinks that I'm unspeakably nosey after all my questions on Sunday. And there're her feelings, too. I don't want to keep reminding her about her brother's death just as the raw patches are skinning over,' said Willow.

Tom smiled across at her.

‘But you could at least discover whether Rowfant was the girl in the Hampshire Place scandal,' suggested Willow. Tom nodded and that was the last either of them said about the murders that evening.

They spent the night together happily and, as they parted in the empty street just before six o'clock the next morning, Willow felt relieved to recognise how little of an invader Tom had proved himself. They had made love, but he had not crowded her emotionally or demanded any undertakings from her. She found that she trusted him.

Willow crossed the Thames from one life into the other in a mood of peaceful happiness that lasted until she reached her Abbeville Road flat. Discovering that her internal front door swung open as she pushed her key into the lock, she was visited by a horrible sense of
déjà vu.
Expecting to be faced with the devastation she had seen in Belgravia, she pushed the door wide and walked into her flat. There was a dreadful smell of damp wool, but none of the mess she expected. A quick glance around her living room showed her that the old black-and-white television she had hardly ever watched had been removed, but nothing else seemed to be missing. In the kitchen she discovered that she had lost her cheap food processor and toaster. She walked on towards her bedroom, congratulating herself that she could have suffered far more badly.

It was there that she discovered the worst damage. There was a large square of some kind of board attached to an obvious hole in her ceiling; the damp smell was coming from a large patch of wet carpet just below the board. Before she could decide what had happened there was a ring at the front door.

‘Yes?' she called in what she hoped was a confident voice.

‘I heard you and thought I ought to come up and explain,' said the voice of her ineffectual neighbour from the flat downstairs.

‘Thank you, Mr Smith,' said Willow. ‘What happened?'

‘We got back last night to discover that we'd been burgled and when the police came they couldn't find any sign of forced entry except through the hall door. They came on up here and discovered that they'd got in through your roof, forced their way out and gone on to us. I got a man I know to do something to keep the rain out of your bedroom and we've a locksmith coming this morning. Maggie's going to wait in for him.'

‘Thank you very much indeed,' said Willow, really grateful. ‘Have you lost much?'

‘All Maggie's jewellery,' he said sadly, ‘and things like the electric drill. You?'

‘The television, that sort of thing. I don't have jewellery. I suppose I'll have to get a roofer. Why couldn't they have broken a window like every other burglar?'

‘I know,' said Smith sympathetically. ‘The police would like to talk to you. I've written down the number of the Crime Desk and the reference number you'll need for your insurance company.'

‘Thanks,' said Willow. ‘I wish I had time to see to it all this morning, but I've got to be in Whitehall in …' She looked down at her watch, ‘an hour and a half. I'll ring the police. Do you think your wife could ask the locksmith to put new locks on my door? I'll leave a blank cheque with her.'

‘She was planning to do it anyway,' said the neighbour. ‘She's planning to join the Neighbourhood Watch, too. Would you like some of the leaflets?'

Willow shook her head and as soon as she had got rid of the man she went to telephone the Crime Desk of the local police station.

When she had told the officer who answered what she had lost she said:

‘Isn't it a bit peculiar that they should have gone to such trouble to get into a house with nothing very much to steal?'

‘Not really,' said the intelligent-sounding policeman at the other end of the telephone. ‘Roofers working on the house next door to you had left ladders unsecured and the scrotes just climbed up and hopped over the parapet wall. They've been doing it quite often in Clapham in the last year or so.'

Scrotes? thought Willow to herself, but she said no more.

Going to make herself a cup of coffee before setting off for DOAP, she suddenly thought of the possible significance of the burglary and all desire for coffee left her. Feeling sick, shivering and unable to stop looking behind her every few minutes, she found a black plastic bag from the kitchen drawer and flung into it every tin, bottle and packet of food in the house. She ransacked her small freezer and threw everything into the bag along with the salt and pepper and all the bottles of gin, whisky and sherry from her sidetable. Having carted her heavy burden down to the dustbins, she switched off the fridge to defrost it, emptied the kettle and, having washed her hands with great thoroughness, proceeded to scrub it out. Then she thought of the water tank in the roof and wondered whether the intruder could – or would – have poisoned that.

She ran into the bathroom and turned the taps full on, leaving the plug out of the bath, so that she could empty the tank, and she resolved to drink water only from the kitchen cold tap, which led directly from the mains.

By the time she had finished scouring the flat of anything edible or drinkable that might have been contaminated, it was far too late to go into DOAP. She hastily changed out of her jeans into a thin grey suit and white shirt, dragged her hair back from her face, signed and dated a cheque and took it downstairs to Mrs Smith, who promised to get a receipt for her, and then rushed out of the flat to catch the bus to Whitehall.

As she was running to the bus stop, Willow realised how hungry she felt and even managed to smile as she remembered one of the few remarks Tom had made as they had been eating Mrs Rusham's luxurious pudding the night before. He had asked her how on earth she kept her straight slim figure if she ate such food all the time.

‘You've been to supper in Abbeville Road. Doesn't that explain it?' she had said then. Determined not to let herself think of who might have been the mysterious and efficient burglar until she had a chance to talk to Tom Worth, Willow kept her mind on questions of diet and slimness as the bus lurched over the potholes towards Whitehall.

When she reached the dull, grey building in Northumberland Avenue, she was relieved to see that she was not the last of the selectors to arrive. Both the commissioner himself and the headmistress were absent. Michael Rodenhurst, the psychiatrist, looked up from his newspaper at the sound of Willow's arrival and gave her a smile of cheerful friendliness. She responded with a small wave and went to fetch herself a cup of coffee and a bun. They at least must be safe, she told herself.

Having greeted the industrialist, who was also sitting reading a newspaper, Willow went to sit beside Michael.

‘You look tired,' he said.

‘It is rather a strain,' said Willow, ‘having to keep my work under control before breakfast and after dinner and then sit here all day, listening to …' She did not specify what it was they had to hear, but saw from his quick grin that he understood much of her frustration.

‘Is there so much pressure at DOAP then that you can't deal with the urgent things on Mondays and Fridays?' he asked.

‘Didn't you know? I'm a part-time Assistant Secretary. I work there only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which is why this board is such a nuisance,' answered Willow.

‘How odd that they should have put you forward for it,' said Michael. Willow laughed bitterly.

‘When I was first told that I had to do it, I assumed that it was the Perm's way of punishing me for something he disliked, but it's just dawned on me that he may have wanted me out of the way while he tried to get something past the Minister,' said Willow, thinking with some satisfaction that Elsie Trouville was more than a match for the Permanent Secretary. ‘Ah, here we go. Let's hope this week's candidates are a more inspiring lot than last week's.'

They got up and fell in behind the industrialist, who led the way to the committee room, and settled down for the day's interrogations.

That night, as soon as she got home, Willow dictated a message on to Tom's answering machine, retrieved her bicycle from behind the dustbins and rode off to a large supermarket in the Vauxhall Road. There she loaded a trolley with replacements for the food and drink she had thrown away. As she waited in the queue to pay, she saw that it had started to rain heavily and she began to dread the exhausting bicycle ride back to the flat.

So involved was she in her own thoughts that she unloaded her trolley-full on to the check-out conveyor belt without even realising what she was doing, and handed over her Switch card like an automaton.

‘What a pretty name!' said the motherly woman at the till as she took the card. ‘How do you pronounce it?'

‘Cressida,' said Willow absently and was surprised when the woman looked worriedly back at the plastic rectangle.

‘I don't think so, dear,' she said, knitting her brows. Willow managed to laugh despite her horror that she was beginning to mix the two separate halves of her life.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, making herself smile. ‘I wasn't thinking. It's pronounced Will-a-meena. But I've been called Willow ever since I was at primary school.'

She loaded everything back into the trolley and pushed it out into the car park, where she had chained up her bicycle. Turning up the collar of her mackintosh, she transferred the bottles and packets into both panniers and the front basket of her bicycle, buckled the straps and unlocked the padlock. Pushing the bicycle out into the Vauxhall Road, she felt the rain beginning to trickle down the back of her neck and cursed the burglar who had forced her out on such a night. She had to stop at the first zebra crossing and thought it unfair of the pedestrians, who all had umbrellas, to make her wait in the rain without any covering at all.