Poison Flowers (34 page)

‘I must make a telephone call,' she said abruptly, pushing the sheets of newspaper off her bed and reaching for the bell.

‘Must you, dear?' said Marjorie, who had been watching her with bright-eyed interest. ‘Shall I see if I can fetch you a trolley then? I expect you want to ring your boyfriend?'

Her hopes of confidences were quickly dashed by Willow's blank stare of incomprehension, but even so; she went away to find a nurse and a telephone. When she came back with both she was wearing a peculiarly arch smile, which became her far less than the curiosity she had shown so obviously.

‘I'll draw your curtains, dear,' she said coyly, ‘so that you can be private.'

‘How kind!' said Willow and waited until she was lying in relative privacy to dial the number of Richard Crescent's flat. She was lucky to find him in, he told her, since he had innumerable multi-million-pound deals just coming to the boil and was about to go to the office again.

‘I'm so sorry to disturb you,' she said, her voice all synthetic honey. He laughed and she remembered why she had always liked him.

‘OK, you win,' he said, sounding like the man he was and not the banker he usually pretended to be. ‘What you do you want?'

‘I just thought,' she said, half-way between Cressida and Willow, ‘that you might prefer to hear this from me and not Mrs R: I've broken both my legs and am in Dowting's Hospital.'

‘I wish you wouldn't joke about things that really matter,' said Richard, sounding peevish.

‘I'm not. I have two broken legs, hung up in front of me like bandaged poultry carcases,' said Willow. ‘And, tied by the heels as I most genuinely am, I need your help again.'

‘May I come and see you?'

‘Yes, if you like, and if you promise to be discreet, if you see what I mean, but …'

‘Ah, Willow or Cressida?' he asked intelligently.

‘The first,' she said. ‘But before you come, I need a piece of information.'

‘What do you want to know?'

‘You know the woman we met at Caroline's dinner last week?' she began.

‘Sarah Tothill,' said Richard in such a cheerful voice that Willow knew that the murder could not have been reported in
The Times.

‘That's right. How long have she and Caroline known each other and have they ever quarrelled?' said Willow.

‘That's two bits of information,' said Richard. ‘And I'm afraid I can't be much help. I think they were at school together, but I'd only met the Tothills once before that embarrassing dinner and didn't really take to them. D'you want me to go and pump Caroline?'

‘Absolutely not!' said Willow so quickly that Richard was alerted.

‘I'll look in to see you later,' he said in a voice that sounded almost dangerous.

‘All right,' Willow was saying as the green-and-blue curtains were dragged aside and she saw Chief Inspector Worth standing there with a blaze of light behind him. His face was taut and his eyes were bloodshot with tiredness and very anxious.

‘I'll see you later then. Thank you.' Willow put down the telephone and was gratified by the speed with which Tom reached her bedside.

‘Will,' he said, grabbing both her hands. ‘Oh Will.'

‘Thank you for coming, Tom,' she said in a low voice that held a warning. She gestured to the other beds beyond her curtains. All chatter in the ward had stopped.

‘Even if the curtains don't keep the sound of our voices down,' he said loudly, ‘at least they give a measure of privacy.'

Almost at once several self-conscious conversations were started between the occupants of the other beds in the ward.

‘Tom,' said Willow urgently and quietly, ‘I must tell you …'

‘No. Wait, Willow. Your doctors have said that you're going to be all right, which is the most important thing, and I need … I need to ask you some questions.'

‘All right,' she said, ‘but …'

‘My superiors have at last decided that there is a serial poisoner at work,' said Tom, ignoring her protest, ‘and I'm in charge of the investigation. I'm about to apply for a warrant and I need to clarify what you've told me about Caroline.'

‘Aha,' said Willow, her eyes and her voice hardening. ‘I had wondered if Sarah Tothill died by mistake – instead of her frightful husband – but obviously not. What had she done to Caroline?'

The bleakness of Tom's face made her shiver. When he spoke his voice had lost all colour and character.

‘One of Sarah Tothill's first large catering commissions was to supply the food for Simon Titchmell's twenty-first-birthday dance,' he said. ‘Something went badly wrong and almost forty per cent of the guests suffered food poisoning. One of the worst affected was Caroline, and because of it she was so ill that she couldn't take that year's exams at university and had to retake the whole year's course …'

‘How odd that she should have even considered using Sarah to do her wedding food, then,' said Willow before she could stop herself. Tom's face hardened even more.

‘Not at all,' he said bitterly. ‘She obviously needed an excuse to keep track of Sarah's movements and to get into her house in order to poison the horseradish sauce.… That's how it was done, you see,' he added, seeing that Willow's expression was puzzled. ‘There was an enormous amount of grated water hemlock root in the horseradish sauce she put in her cold-beef sandwiches. Her husband never ate it. Luckily – for us – the jar was a relatively new one and so there was plenty of sauce left for us to test.'

‘But no finger prints, of course,' Willow said slowly and very quietly.

‘She knows far too much to leave prints,' he said impatiently. ‘I've already checked that none of the ones on Bruterley's malt whisky bottle were hers.' Willow stared up at him as though she could not believe what she saw.

‘What's the matter?' he asked irritably. ‘I know you liked her, but …'

‘Tom, you don't mean that you think Caroline killed them all?' said Willow. He made an odd gesture with both hands, as though he were brushing aside her protest.

‘Look, I know that we both believed no one could be mad enough to do what she's done, but the evidence has mounted up horribly … besides, there was a witness to your so-called accident, Will. The description of the car fits hers – and so does the registration number. I'm afraid that she must have done it.'

‘But she hardly ever drives,' said Willow, unable to believe that Tom had so badly misunderstood what had been going on. ‘And surely you know by now that she's not mad at all, that she's had nothing to do with any of the deaths except for providing unwitting incitement?'

‘What?' said Tom, screwing up his eyes and peering at Willow.

He sounded exhausted and at the same time absolutely furious. ‘What on earth are you talking about?'

They were interrupted just then as a firm hand swished back the checked curtains and a posse of white-coated doctors appeared.

‘These are some of my students, Miss King,' said Doctor Wakehurst. ‘Do you mind if they ask you some questions?'

‘Doctors must be trained,' said Willow conscientiously, ‘but would it be possible to do it later? Chief Inspector Worth is asking me some questions of his own just now.'

‘Don't worry, Will,' said Tom quickly. ‘I'll have another word with the chap outside and come back when you're finished.' He got up.

‘Don't go,' she said, wishing that she were not imprisoned by her weights and pulleys. ‘We must talk.'

‘Yes we must. I'll be outside. You won't be long, will you doctor?'

‘Quick as we can,' answered Dr Wakehurst crisply.

The young students were too embarrassed to look Willow in the eye and confined most of their remarks to their teacher. After a while Willow got tired of lying like a piece of meat for their inspection and started to give them a few explanations and instructions herself. Quite soon after that the doctor led her charges away. Before Tom could reappear, Marjorie put her head through the curtains.

‘A film is just starting on television. Shall we get the nurses to wheel you into the day room?'

‘No, thank you,' said Willow. She managed to put more gratitude into her voice than she had earlier as she realised that she and Tom would probably have the ward to themselves for the next half hour. As soon as the woman withdrew, Tom took her place. Before Willow could say anything he said:

‘Now you must tell me what you mean.'

‘Of course I will,' she answered. ‘I've been trying to tell you ever since they brought me in. Come and sit down.'

Before Tom could settle himself in the visitor's plastic-coated chair again another hot-drink trolley was pushed through the ward.

Willow declined again and the nurse told her that she really would have to start taking food and drink soon.

When the heavy, clattering trolley had been pushed away, Tom said curtly:

‘Why aren't you eating or drinking?'

‘Because I daren't until Ben Jonson is in custody,' she said.

‘Ben Jonson? You must be mad,' said Tom. Then he came back to her bedside and put one of his hands on her scarred one again. He looked down at her battered face, with the bruises yellowing at the edges and the cuts and scratches dark red.

‘You're still frightened, aren't you?' he said much more gently. ‘But you mustn't let it distort your judgment. Will.'

‘Will you just shut up for one moment, Thomas?' said Willow coldly. ‘There is nothing the matter with my brains any longer, even though my head aches foully and my legs are so painful that there are times when I would like to cut them off. I can cope with that, but I cannot cope with your brushing aside what I say as though I were an idiot. Wait, ask questions, and
listen
to the answers, if your ego will let you.'

‘My ego is at your disposal,' said Tom with resignation. ‘Tell me why you think Jonson should have done it – and how he could have.'

‘He loves her,' said Willow, ‘really desperately. He looks up to her. He wants to make up to her for everything she has suffered before she met him. He is kind to her, she once told me, terribly kind.'

‘That all sounds admirable,' said Tom, ‘but I still can't see him doing all this for her even if she wanted him to.'

‘She didn't, you clot. I told you she's completely innocent. But she's obviously told him about her past and he must have decided to take revenge for her on all the people who have hurt her.'

‘That's absurd,' said Tom. Willow paid no attention to his protest.

‘He's a very angry man, you know: angry, chippy, and much poorer than she is. He thinks he has nothing to offer her that she could value, because he doesn't value himself, just as he doesn't understand her or what she needs.'

‘How do you know that he is angry?' asked Tom, completely serious and at last apparently willing to believe her, but having some difficulty in following her thought processes.

‘I can't remember,' said Willow, putting a hand to her bandaged forehead, ‘if you ever talked to him?'

‘Never,' said Tom.

‘He has the softest voice I've ever heard in a man,' said Willow, ‘but it's a voice of fantastic control. I hadn't thought about it before, but you can almost hear the effort he exerts to make it sound light, gentle, calm. Even when he was throwing Sarah Tothill's husband out of his house, he sounded gentle. That makes me suspicious to begin with. But have you read any of his books?' Tom did not even bother to answer that question; he merely shook his head.

‘Well, I read one on the way back from Newcastle,' said Willow. ‘I'd been meaning to read it for ages and ages, but never got to it until then. If only I had, I might have realised what was going on and stopped it before Sarah Tothill …' Her voice broke, but she recovered herself after a moment and went on as coolly as though she were delivering a report to the Permanent Secretary.

‘Would you pass me my handbag?'

Tom obediently picked up the shabby black leather bag and handed it to her. Willow took out Ben's book and opened it at the place she had marked with a clean paper handkerchief.

‘Listen,' she said.

‘I'm listening,' said Tom. Willow cleared her throat.

‘“Martin sat, impassive, at her feet. She had no idea that in his mind he had bound her like one of Hans Bellmer's dolls with tight, straining wire, so that her flesh bulged out in plump, quilted squares. In his mind, she was controlled. The wire would hurt her; but, better, it would keep her there. While her clacking, nagging voice tore into his brain, shredding his eardrums, he had her where he needed her.”'

‘That's horrible,' said Tom, looking almost as sick as Willow had felt. ‘No wonder his books don't sell.'

‘Yes I know,' said Willow. ‘But it's far more revealing than that.'

‘Cruel, certainly,' said Tom, looking at Willow through narrowed eyes. ‘But what makes you think that these deaths could have been caused by someone like him? There's been no physical brutality, no tying up or rending …'

‘You didn't listen properly,' said Willow. ‘Concentrate, Tom. The woman in that paragraph wasn't tied up, she wasn't in pain, she wasn't “where he wanted her”. She was clacking and nagging at him. Only in his mind was she in his control. The whole book is like that. You haven't time to read it, so take in on trust: the story itself is simple and very little happens outside the mind of the “hero”. Within that mind, though, the most appalling fantasies are unwound.'

Willow put the book down and took a deep breath. She realised that to someone like Tom Worth, whose interest in other people appeared to have nothing to do with the possibility of controlling them, Ben's compulsions could seem incredible.