Poison Flowers (28 page)

As far as Willow could remember, the forensic pathologist had found a mixture of red wine and colchicine in Claire Ullathorne's stomach and it had therefore been concluded that the poison might have been mixed with the wine. The few dregs left in the wine bottle had shown no traces of poison, but the quantity of wine was so minute that it might have been impossible to isolate any poison from them even if it had been there.

Willow tried to think of ways to open a bottle of wine and recork it to look as though it had not been touched. The poison could have been introduced into an open bottle that had been re-corked either with the cork itself or a patent stopper, she thought, or by means of a hypodermic. She wondered how likely it was that someone opening a bottle would ignore a small puncture in the lead or plastic cover over the cork. A hypodermic would suggest a nurse or doctor, or perhaps a diabetic or drug addict.

‘Or even,' she told herself drily, ‘a DIY expert. After all, the best way to obliterate air bubbles in newly hung wallpaper is to inject paste into them with a syringe.' And then she suddenly remembered reading of a fashion during the early 1980s for home-made wine; she had even seen the necessary kits and supplies in chain-store chemists. There were packets of corks there and coloured lead covers. Armed with those, anyone could have tampered with a bottle of wine in such a way that it looked untouched.

Even so, she decided stoutly, there was a real possibility that the Claire Ullathorne case was not linked to the other three. Looking at her watch she saw that she had ten more minutes in which to concentrate on the coming interview and dropped all thought of everything except James Bruterley and his wife.

By the time her watch gave her permission to get out of the car, Willow had decided to be relatively frank in her approach to the widow: after all, not being able to ask Caroline Titchmell any direct questions had, she was certain, meant that she missed a lot of useful information and built up a wholly artificial suspicion in her mind. Willow did not see how talking frankly to Mrs Bruterley could cause trouble or give anything away to the poisoner. Willow felt sure that she knew aspects of the killer's character: murderousness concealed behind a bland exterior, manipulativeness, resentment, and a sick pleasure in revenge.

She still found the knowledge that all that hatred could be successfully hidden behind a civilised front extraordinarily uncomfortable, and wondered as she examined the few people she had met on the case, whether the front consisted of joviality, social aggression, kindness or arrogance. There was nothing to tell her and she looked from one to another of them in her mind, at one moment unable to believe that any of them were capable of killing and at the next afraid that all of them might be.

Bracing herself against her fear and reminding herself that Miranda Bruterley had been declared innocent by the police, Willow got out of the car, walked up the crunching gravel drive and rang the old-fashioned black iron bell outside the front door.

It was opened by Miranda Bruterley herself, looking far paler and even more ill than she had been at the memorial service. Perhaps her pallor was accentuated by the oddly unbecoming green sweater that she wore over her black trousers. Her long blond hair was lank and rather greasy and her skin looked dead, except for a few raw patches that looked as though she had been picking at incipient or imaginary pimples.

‘Mrs Bruterley, it is good of you to see me,' said Willow, holding out her hand. Miranda took it in a limp, damp clasp and invited Willow into the house.

‘I've sent the children and their nanny back to my mother's house,' she said as she led the way to the drawing room. ‘There have been too many journalists trying to get in here and too many policemen about.'

‘It must be hard enough for such young children to come to terms with losing their father without that,' said Willow with genuine sympathy. The woman in front of her turned her head and shrugged.

‘They hardly saw him, actually,' she said. Willow saw that there were new tears welling into her reddened eyes. ‘And he was quite tough with them when he was around … you know, wouldn't let them make any kind of noise in case it disturbed his rare rest, that sort of thing.'

‘Dear me,' said Willow inadequately, thinking that he sounded rather a difficult man.

Miranda opened the door of a large sunny room decorated prettily if conventionally in apricot, white and pale green.

‘Come and sit down. Would you like some coffee?' Willow shook her head, thinking that the fewer things that were put into her scoured stomach the better. She sat on a fat sofa and was surprised to see Miranda open a heavy silver cigarette case and take out and light a long cigarette.

‘Have you always smoked?' Willow asked, with a distinct memory of Tom's having told her that the widow was not a smoker.

‘No,' said Miranda, taking a deep mouthful of hot smoke. ‘Not since my marriage. But I've needed something to help me control things since Jim … Sorry, would you like one?'

‘No, thank you,' said Willow and waited to be asked why she had come. Miranda Bruterley said nothing, just prowled around the room dragging on her cigarette as fervently as though she were a navvy used to sixty a day. After a while Willow took the initiative.

‘Mrs Bruterley,' she began.

‘I do wish you'd call me Miranda,' said the widow a little plaintively.

‘Miranda,' said Willow, staring again, ‘I've come on an errand that is going to sound odd.'

‘You said you wanted help,' she said, interrupting her guest. ‘I'll do what I can. In fact I really could do with a job just now. Which charity is it for?'

At last Willow understood the widow's lack of curiosity and outrage at the invasion of her house by a stranger. As a woman of independent means, without a career and with a nanny and plenty of other help in the house, Miranda Bruterley would have been an obvious target for anyone wanting either voluntary workers or money raised for a good cause.

‘It's not quite like that,' said Willow. ‘I've come to ask you questions about what happened to your husband.'

‘Oh God! You're not another journalist, are you?' said Miranda, anger taking over from the unhappy weariness in her face.

‘No,' said Willow. ‘I'm a friend of Caroline Titchmell's.'

‘Titch? Good heavens! What's she got to do with any of it? What ever happened to her?'

‘She herself is all right,' said Willow, ‘but about two months ago, her brother was killed.'

‘Poor old Titch,' said Miranda. ‘I vaguely remember him, I think. But how can I help?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Willow, ready to take the plunge into indiscretion, knowing that Tom Worth would be furious, ‘but the way he was killed is horribly similar to the way that your husband died. The police apparently don't think that there is a connection, but I can't help wondering about it, and I do want to help Caroline if I can. Of course I haven't said anything at all to her about your husband's death.'

At last Miranda Bruterley stubbed out her cigarette; flung open a tall window as though to let out the smell of smoke, and came to sit on a low stool in front of Willow.

‘I'm concentrating now,' she said, sounding much less limp and almost intelligent. Even her lacklustre eyes seemed to have sharpened. ‘What do you want to know?'

‘First,' said Willow scanning her mental notes, ‘whether there was any connection between your husband and Simon Titchmell. Had they ever had any business dealings together? That sort of thing.'

It had occurred to her that Titchmell must have bought his drugs from someone, who might just conceivably have been Dr Bruterley.

Miranda stared at her black patent-leather pumps as they rested on the moss-green Wilton carpet and twisted her huge diamond engagement ring round and round her finger.

‘I don't think they'd ever met,' she said at last. ‘We've … we'd been married for six years and Simon Titchmell has certainly never been here in that time. Jim never, mentioned his name as far as I can remember, and I don't see how they would ever have met.'

‘You say that you met him, though,' said Willow.

‘Yes. Years ago – while we were still at school – Titch's parents brought him to one Speech Day, I think. He wasn't at any of the boys'schools we used to do things with so he was quite a curiosity. But it was as casual as that,' said Miranda, smiling at Willow and blinking a little as though to demonstrate her innocence of any malice or subterfuge.

‘You mean that you never knew him properly, never went to stay in the school holidays or anything like that?' asked Willow, trying not to stare into Miranda's tear-stained face.

‘Oh God no,' said Miranda, actually laughing at the absurdity. ‘Titch was one of the clever ones and I was a thicko. The only thing I was ever any good at was biology and that wasn't very useful.' She stopped laughing but there was an odd, reminiscent smile on her face. For a moment Willow could see past the pastiness of her complexion and the red swellings around her eyes to the beautiful woman she must be in normal circumstances, and indeed had appeared to be at the memorial service.

‘You look as though that pleases you,' Willow said, letting herself sound puzzled. Miranda's pale skin flushed slightly.

‘No; I was just remembering unkindly how superior we used to feel to the clever ones,' she said. It took Willow a moment to understand what she meant.

‘You mean because you were prettier?' she suggested. The blush deepened, but Miranda raised her reddened eyes. Looking at Willow directly, she said:

‘It is a bit shaming now, but at the time it seemed normal. There was a group of us – five or six I suppose – who all had quite a lot of money of our own – trusts and things – and were really quite good-looking and had nicer clothes than the rest and knew lots of people.… Not that it's done me much good,' she finished with a small shrug.

‘You must have known Dr Braterley then,' said Willow, not feeling quite up to commenting on the assumptions Miranda had betrayed in her unpleasant little confession. ‘Wasn't he at one of the schools close by?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘That's really what I meant. He was always terrifically sought after – at those grisly school dances and at home, of course – and he was always very sweet to me.… And look what happened in the end.' She forgot her amusement and burst into tears, burying her face in her smoothly manicured hands. Willow waited until Miranda had regained some kind of control and then suggested that they had some coffee after all.

When it had been made and poured into Royal Worcester cups, Miranda looked recovered enough for Willow to mention the old school scandal. The huge grey eyes filled with surprise.

‘You mean when one of the seniors got pregnant? Wasn't it ghastly? But what's it got to do with any of this?' she asked.

Willow was staggered by the idea that Miranda might not have known that her husband had been the culprit, but she could not quite bring herself to make the announcement.

‘I just wondered,' she said instead, ‘whether you knew who the father had been.'

Miranda shook her blond head.

‘Goodness, no! It was kept the most deathly secret. We thought it must be one of the boys from Michaelson's, but I don't know which. You don't mean that in fact it was Simon Titchmell, do you?'

Willow merely shook her head and shrugged.

‘Did you see much of your husband while he was training at Dowting's?' she asked, trying to approach the subject from an easier angle.

‘No, not really at all. I was still at school, of course, when he started there and then I went to Paris for a bit and did various things and we didn't meet up again properly until he qualified.'

‘But you didn't marry quite then, did you?'

‘Not for ages,' said Miranda with a smile hovering around her pink lips again. ‘He was a bit of Don Juan, you see, and I was pretty certain that if I'd let him know how much I wanted him then I'd be on the scrapheap with all the others in no time at all.'

She turned away and stared out at her immaculate garden through the rapidly dissipating haze of cigarette smoke.

‘He was awfully sweet when he finally came round to the idea of wanting to marry me,' she said. ‘He told me that he'd seen how silly and unhappy that sort of a life was and that …' Her voice trembled and she turned away again. After a few moments she tried again: ‘That falling in love with me had made him change completely. And I believed him – until this.'

The name of Sarah Rowfant had not been spoken, but Willow knew quite well that it was sounding as loudly in Miranda's mind as in her own. Willow wished that she could offer the woman some kind of comfort, but there was none.

‘That was why it was so particularly awful to discover that he was having an affair, you see,' said Miranda after a while, still staring away from Willow. ‘It made me wonder how many others there had been, whether Jim had ever in fact had any of the thoughts about me he'd talked about, whether he had ever loved me, whether it was just my money he wanted, whether the things I thought were important about myself meant nothing at all, whether I'd have been better to have been quite different.'

She swung back to face Willow again and shrugged.

‘Whether, for instance, I'd have been better and happier if I'd been more like poor Titch.'

‘Why do you despise her so much?' asked Willow, so curious that she ignored her interrogation for the moment.

‘I don't think I do,' said Miranda, sounding much more social and self-conscious than she had before.

‘Oh yes you do,' said Willow with a false gaiety. ‘Why? Because she wasn't pretty at school?'

‘No!' protested Miranda. ‘Well, no … I suppose it was the fashion to be a bit dismissive of people who worked that hard and looked like that. I'm sure she's not at all like it now, but in those days she was awfully fat as well as embarrassingly short and she had revolting spots – absolutely revolting.'