Poison Flowers (33 page)

‘I don't think I do,' said Willow, pushing ineffectually at the bandages that covered her head. The words ‘memorial service' triggered her memory and she knew that she could put a name to him. ‘What did I say?'

‘Whenever I addressed you as “Cressida” or even “Miss Woodruffe” you called me “Aunt Agatha”. It was very odd,' he said with a slight smile.

‘Heavens! I must have been hallucinating,' said Willow. Most of her mind was beginning to work again. She knevr precisely who she was, and who he was and why they had met, and she silently thanked whatever Furies were involved in her fate for keeping her discreet about herself. If she had to be tied to hospital with broken legs it was better that she should be there as Willow than as Cressida and so it seemed almost miraculous that she should have chosen to go to Newcastle without substituting Cressida's documents for Willow's.

‘How bad are my legs, doctor?' she asked.

‘Not all that good, I hear, but I wouldn't know,' said the doctor. ‘I'm not in charge of putting people back together again. My name's Salcott, by the way. I'm a gastroenterologist, but I happened to be in the corridor when you were brought in. Your doctor will be up here again in about half an hour – Georgina Wakehurst. I'll look in again when I'm passing.' He left and Willow felt a weight lifting from her mind as she watched him go.

When Doctor Wakehurst appeared, Willow had drifted off into sleep again, but she was woken by a nurse to hear the verdict delivered in a crisp, sensible voice:

‘You needn't worry too much about your legs. They're not nearly as bad as some I've seen. The car seems to have flung you very hard against the ground and they're badly bruised as well as broken, but the breaks are surprisingly clean. I can't imagine how anyone can have been driving fast enough on a road like that not to be able to stop.'

‘Perhaps I wandered out into the road,' said Willow, trying hard to remember what had actually happened. ‘Although I can't think why I should have done any such thing. I wish my brain was working.'

‘It'll come back,' said Dr Wakehurst with a smile. ‘Don't force it, whatever the police try to make you do.'

‘Police?' Willow asked. The doctor explained that the police were anxious to find out exactly what had happened and whether Willow could give them anything to identify the hit-and-run driver.

‘What time is it?' she asked suddenly. ‘And where am I?'

‘You're in Phyllis Ward in Dowting's Hospital on the river and it's half-past eleven on Saturday morning,' said Dr Wakehurst. ‘Don't be anxious about your office; we found your identity card in your bag and will telephone DOAP first thing on Monday. They will know what's happened and where you are.'

But Tom doesn't, thought Willow, beginning to remember a little more. She asked for a telephone trolley. The doctor promised to ask one of the nurses to bring one as soon as possible; then she asked Willow how she was feeling, did various tests and left her with the devastating intelligence that her legs would have to be suspended from that weighted pulley system for the next four weeks at least.

Willow could not imagine how she was going to keep her dual identity secret for that long. With a little snort of painful laughter, she admitted that she also did not know how the Permanent Secretary was going to be able to cope with his rage at her absence for that long either, and foresaw a series of visits from members of her staff with problems, papers and policy documents.

Her amusement died as she began to think about what else she had been doing. If Tom had wanted to ensure that she could use only her brain and imagination on his behalf and refrain from any more direct interference or questioning, he could not have done a better job than the driver of the car.

As Willow articulated that thought in her mind, she began to think about the accident and tried to remember what it was that she had understood as it happened. All the terror she had felt in the split second between the impact of his car on her flesh and her loss of consciousness came back to her in a sickening, horrible tide that washed through her brain and left every nerve tingling but there was something vital that she could not dredge up from the depths of her mind. She put a finger on the bell to call a nurse and kept it there until a harrassed first-year student came to stand by her bed and ask her to desist.

‘I must have a telephone,' said Willow through her teeth, suddenly becoming aware that amongst all her other more serious injuries she must at some stage have bitten deep into her own tongue. It felt swollen and sore, and by experimenting with it on her lips she could tell that the indentations made by her teeth were still there.

‘Now, now; you're still not quite yourself,' said the girl accurately but infuriatingly. ‘As soon as there's a telephone free someone will bring it to you, but you mustn't excite yourself. There's nothing so urgent that it can't wait a little while. After all,' the student nurse went on, trying a soothing smile that sat badly on her frightened face, ‘you're going to be here for quite a while yet. We mustn't let ourselves get too impatient, now must we?'

‘I don't much care whether you get impatient or not,' began Willow, ‘but I … Never mind. Please do your best for me.'

The young woman scuttled away on her squeaking shoes, leaving Willow feeling very much worse than she had when she had first woken. She dosed her eyes and tried to achieve a calm that would help her to deal rationally with her fears, but it was beyond the reach of her battered mind or body.

The familiar sound of rubber soles squeezed against polished vinyl made her open her eyes and smile a little in anticipation of a telephone and the possibility of reaching Tom Worth, but all she saw was a pair of tree-trunk-like thighs dressed in dark-blue serge trousers. Raising her eyes, she saw a silver-buttoned tunic and a crested helmet. Higher than that was a fresh young male face and a pair of anxious blue eyes. Willow felt extraordinarily relieved by the existence of this young, but protective-looking policeman.

‘Do you feel up to answering a few questions?' said the constable sympathetically. ‘The doctor said it would be all right to ask you some now.'

‘Have you been here long?' asked Willow.

‘Since they reported the hit-and-run, yes. Miss. Now, can you tell me everything you remember?'

Willow knew that Tom Worth had to have all her information first and so she decided to be sparing with the truth.

‘I can hardly remember anything. I heard an engine revving and the tyres, but I thought it was just some stupid driver who had nothing to do with me,' she said. ‘I'd stepped off the pavement and did not realise that I was at risk at all until he had hit me. By then it was too late to look. I'm awfully sorry.'

‘No registration number, I suppose?' asked the policeman.

‘Sorry,' said Willow shortly.

‘And now, may I ask what you were doing in that part of London, Miss? That might help us because I understand that you live in Abbeville Road, SW12 and work in Clapham High Street.'

Willow thought for a while, put a hand to the bandages covering her aching forehead and shut her eyes.

‘I simply don't know,' she said, lying easily. ‘I can't think straight. Can you persuade them to let me have a telephone? I really must make a call – an urgent call.'

Watching the young policeman's face, Willow saw suspicion pouring into it and even more she longed for Tom Worth.

‘I'm sorry,' she said to the constable. ‘When I've cleared my mind a bit, I'll do my best to tell you some more. Will you be here?'

‘If there's more to come I suspect I'll be here,' he said wryly. ‘I must make my report now.' He left without thanking her or expressing any kind of sympathy for her injuries and she knew that he had put her down as a trouble-maker or worse.

When she did eventually manage to get a telephone trolley, Willow tried Tom's office only to be told that he was ‘unavailable'. She left a message, explaining where she was and saying that she needed to speak to him urgently, and then dictated a fuller one on to the answering machine at his flat. Before she had finished doing that, she was presented with a disgusting-looking meal that had obviously been cooked hours before.

Willow picked up the stainless steel knife and fork that had been laid on her tray and cut a small piece off the dried-up slab of liver on her plate. She had just raised it to her mouth when she felt herself gag and retch as violently as she had after the bad oyster.

On the tray in front of her was a piece of card with her name and the number of her bed. Anyone could have put anything they wanted into the food that had been allocated to her. Controlling the nausea her ideas had brought her, Willow dropped the cutlery back on the tray. In that moment she became determined not to eat anything provided by the hospital that had been lying around with her name on it.

When a middle-aged nurse came to collect the tray she remonstrated like a nanny, but eventually accepted Willow's explanation that she simply could not face eating anything. She was just about to go when Willow grabbed her wrist.

‘What is it, lovey?' she asked, kindly detaching Willow's grasping hand.

‘Can I have some pillows?' she asked pathetically. ‘I hate lying flat like this.'

‘Of course you can't,' said the nurse. ‘Your legs are weighted. In a few days they may be able to adjust the pulleys, but not yet. Do you want anything before I go?' Willow shook her head slightly, wincing. ‘Shall I leave your curtains shut or would you like a bit of company?'

That was the first time Willow realised that she must be in a ward of other people. The blue-and-green checked curtains that hung from the ceiling about three foot from her bed had given her the illusion of being in a room on her own. She realised that her senses must have been even more disordered by the accident than she had thought.

‘Leave them shut, will you?' she said. ‘I don't feel up to company yet.'

Lying back, wishing that someone would come and visit her and bring her some wholesome fruit she could eat. Willow began to hear the other women on her ward chatting happily amongst themselves. They discussed their treatment or their injuries, their children, their husbands, their hysterectomies and the workings of their bowels, about which they spoke in terms of extreme – and graphic – frankness.

The sound of their inoffensive voices began to grate against the pain in her head and she wished that they did not exist. She reminded herself of Marcus Aurelius's injunction to accept whatever experiences the fates bring you and settled down to wait for Tom.

He did not come. A nurse came round with a trolley offering her patients a variety of hot drinks. Willow refused them all, although she was tempted by the Horlicks, which she had not tasted since childhood. Then came the pill trolley and a new batch of painkillers for Willow, which she did accept as she watched the nurses tipping them out of a large bottle. She could not imagine anyone poisoning a whole bottle of painkilling drugs and putting the entire hospital at risk.

The first non-medical person Willow saw after her accident apart from the young policeman was the patient in the bed next to her own. Willow had refused her depressing supper of breaded, fried gammon chop and watery vegetables an hour and a half earlier and had been trying not to think how hungry she was. There was only circumstantial evidence to suggest that the driver who had run her over was the poisoner, but she decided that she had taken enough risks with her life.

Lying with her eyes closed she became aware that someone was standing beside her bed, quite near her head. Willow decided that it was not a nurse: it neither smelled nor sounded like a nurse. She opened her eyes and saw a dumpy woman in a quilted nylon dressing gown standing there looking at her with kindly curiosity.

‘Feeling a bit better now, dear?' she said, obviously hoping for a lovely chat. ‘My name is Marjorie, by the way.'

‘How do you do?' said Willow coldly. ‘I am better, thank you, but still very tired.'

‘Oh, I'm sure you are,' said Marjorie, ‘and I won't disturb you. But I did notice you were asleep when the newspaper trolley came round this morning, and I thought you might like to have a lend of mine.'

Willow struggled to find the patience and civility that she owed the inoffensive woman.

‘Thank you,' she said at last. ‘That's very kind.'

‘That's all right. I'll just pop to my locker and fetch it.'

A moment later the
Daily Mercury
was lying on Willow's chest. Still trying to show a modicum of appreciation, she picked it up and held it above her eyes. The first thing she saw, in huge black lettering on page one, was:

‘Private catering company director found poisoned in Wimbledon.'

Willow looked up to see her fellow-patient staring at her face intently. She smiled.

‘Isn't it awful, dear? That poor woman was just eating her sandwiches and she died.'

‘Awful,' agreed Willow, turning back to the paper. She realised why Tom Worth had been unavailable for so long and read on to discover that it was Sarah Tothill who had died after eating water hemlock. Willow stared up at the paper appalled. The muscles in her arms felt suddenly weak and she let them relax, dropping the paper on to her chest.

For the first time she had met and talked to one of the victims and she felt stricken with guilt. She found it unbearable to think that if she had worked a bit harder, she might have been able to prevent Sarah's death. Her hunger disappeared and in its place was a sickness and a distress that seemed to absorb all her energies.

To control the immediate instinctive horror, Willow forced her mind to work. Either the effort or the shock she had suffered was effective and at last she remembered the one vital piece of information. She tried to imagine what Sarah might have done to deserve such revenge and wondered whether she had eaten something intended for her unspeakable husband.