Rotten Apples Read online

  It struck her belatedly that she ought to have telephoned from the hospital as soon as she came round the previous morning to let Mrs Rusham know what had happened and when she might be home. She was just rehearsing an explanatory apology when Mrs Rusham emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a teatowel. At the sight of her employer she smiled, apparently bearing no malice at all.

  ‘Mrs Rusham,’ said Willow at once, determined to make amends, ‘I should have rung you yesterday. It was inconsiderate of me to disappear without a word like that. I am sorry.’

  ‘Please don’t apologise. You could hardly help being taken to hospital with burns. I was very concerned for you when I read the newspapers yesterday morning, but once I had rung the hospital to enquire how you were, everything was fine.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Willow, wondering for the first time what might lie behind Mrs Rusham’s refusal to expect anything from anyone and to keep all her own feelings and needs so tightly controlled. Both characteristics had been so useful in the days when Willow led her secret double life that she had never even considered their oddity. Now, after they had shared a much more human anxiety over Tom, Willow did find her housekeeper’s restraint curious, and she was even beginning to feel guilty for all the years of treating Mrs Rusham as though she were an unfailingly efficient robot.

  ‘I must get out of these revolting clothes and then make some telephone calls,’ she said, putting her keys on to the pewter plate in the hall.

  ‘Do you need any help getting undressed?’ asked Mrs Rusham. ‘Your hands look quite badly damaged.’

  ‘It’s really just the bandages,’ said Willow. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to manage.’ She swayed suddenly and put out a hand to steady herself against the wall, adding, ‘But I think I might spend the rest of the day in bed. Could you bring my post and stuff up there in a minute or two?’

  ‘Certainly. A great many people have phoned and sent flowers. I’ll bring them up so you can see them as they are and then I’ll put them in vases. Would you like some in your bedroom?’

  ‘Just a few, thank you, Mrs Rusham,’ said Willow as she straightened up.

  It was harder than she expected to undress, and her hands felt as though they were being burned all over again by the time she had finished, but she had managed to unzip and unhook everything she had been wearing. Having pulled a clean, soft, white-cotton nightdress over her head, she searched for her old spectacles and fumblingly took out her lenses, sighing in relief and blinking. It would probably take a while for her eyes to adjust to seeing through spectacles again, but at least they were not as painful as the lenses had become. One of them slipped from her bandaged hands and disappeared in the pile of the carpet. For a moment its loss seemed important until Willow remembered that she had a spare. She decided to let it disappear into Mrs Rusham’s Hoover in due course.

  Getting into bed a moment later and lying back against the extra-soft goose-down pillows, Willow wished that she had been able to bathe and wash her hair, but the hospital had warned her not to get her hands wet. Mrs Rusham would probably have helped her, but they were not on the sort of terms that would let either of them go through such intimacy without embarrassment Bathing would just have to come later, Willow thought. At least the nurses had washed her.

  As she slid down the bed, she became aware of more damage to various bits of her body that she had not noticed at the time. There was a powerful ache across her shoulders and down the top of each arm, and her neck felt as though she had been racked.

  ‘Superintendent Blackled is very anxious to talk to you as soon as you feel up to it,’ said Mrs Rusham, returning with her arms full of flowers. ‘These are from him. And here’s the number where you can find him this morning. He said he wouldn’t be in his own office again until late this afternoon.’

  She held out a huge fan-shaped arrangement of orange, red and yellow roses, pinks and freesias. Willow shook her head, thinking that anyone who could send a fire victim a bouquet of flame-coloured flowers must be more insensitive than Blackled had ever seemed during their few encounters.

  ‘Who are the others from?’ she asked, admiring the chaste mixture of white, cream, and the palest of lemon-yellows.

  Mrs Rusham opened the small, thick envelope, drew out a card and brought it to the bed.

  ‘Serena Fydgett,’ Willow read with difficulty. It seemed remarkably kind of Serena to have taken such trouble for a virtual stranger.

  There was a ring at the street door downstairs. Mrs Rusham laid the flowers on the end of the bed, crackling their transparent bags, and handed Willow a sheaf of telephone messages.

  Willow squinted at the various notes, trying to decipher their messages before dropping the small squares of paper on the floor by her bed as she finished them. She did not dare let herself think about her hands and whether the doctors had been over-optimistic in their reassurances.

  ‘More flowers,’ said Mrs Rusham, returning with a blue-and-white mixture wrapped in cellophane and tied with shiny blue ribbons. She detached the note.

  ‘You read it,’ said Willow, deciding that she did not want to use her hands or her eyes at all if it was not necessary.

  ‘It’s from the minister,’ said Mrs Rusham, displaying more instinctive deference than Willow would have expected. ‘I’ll put all these in water. Would you like anything to eat or drink?’

  ‘Something cold and fruity to drink would be nice.’ Willow looked down at her swathed and padded hands, adding, ‘Have we got any straws? I’m not sure I could hold a glass comfortably.’

  When the housekeeper had gone, Willow wished that she had asked her to put the telephone on the bed before she left. Swearing at the pain in her hands, she managed to pull the telephone off the table at her side and tumble it into her lap. When she had wedged the receiver between her ear and her shoulder, she pressed the numbers from the piece of paper Mrs Rusham had given her and asked to speak to John Blackled.

  ‘Will? That you? Good to hear your voice. It’s a bit hoarse, isn’t it? But I gather you’re okay. I called the hospital and they said you’d been discharged. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Sore and sick. Altogether vile really, but okay. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Not a lot. I just wanted to find out how you were feeling. Oh, and I was wondering if maybe I could pop in later with one of my colleagues.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Willow knew that her rasping voice had grown cool. Blackled’s casualness seemed horribly artificial.

  ‘Yes. I don’t want to worry you or anything, but we need to eliminate the possibility that you and Tom could have been targets of the same person.’

  ‘What?’ Willow, who felt as though the smoke had affected her brain as well as her throat and lungs, could not imagine what Blackled was talking about. A moment later it hit her. ‘You’re not telling me it was arson, are you?’ she said.

  ‘Probably. Almost certainly. We’re not handling that investigation here, but we’re in touch with the lads who are, and they want to talk to you. I thought it’d be easier for you if I came over with one of them so that you’re not exposed to complete strangers in your bedroom. I take it you are in bed? You ought to be.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Willow, trying to come to terms with the idea that someone might have started the fire deliberately. ‘I’m compos, if dazed and a bit silly. When d’you want to come?’

  ‘Any time. Now, perhaps. We could be with you in about half an hour. Suit you, Will?’

  ‘All right,’ she said, wishing that she could add a demand that he call her anything but that.

  He arrived thirty-five minutes later with another man, whom he introduced as Chief Inspector Harness. Willow thought that he must be in his late thirties, perhaps a dozen years younger than Black Jack, and considerably more attractive, with well-cut fairish hair, neat features and big grey eyes. He was also much more tidily dressed than the older man.

  Harness’s finely striped cotton shirt was beautifully ironed and his dar
k suit looked as though it had been brushed and pressed within the last twenty-four hours, unlike his senior officer’s, which as usual might have been slept in for every night of the previous month. Side by side the two made her think of Charlotte Bronte’s description of Mr Rochester and St John Rivers as Vulcan and Apollo. The memory made her smile in spite of her increasingly uncomfortable thoughts.

  She nodded to both men and was surprised when Harness came to the side of her bed to shake hands. When he saw the bandages over hers he flushed and smiled with unexpected sweetness.

  ‘Silly of me,’ he said in a light, rather charming voice. ‘How are you, Mrs Worth?’

  ‘I’ve been better, but I’ll live.’

  ‘It’s good of you to see us at such a moment.’

  Willow smiled at him, liking both his politeness and his gentle manner. She told Mrs Rusham to bring them both chairs and asked them if they wanted anything to drink. Both declined and Mrs Rusham left the room as soon as she had arranged two small white cane chairs to the left of the bed.

  ‘What makes your “lads” think I might have been a target of the arson, if that’s really what it was?’ Willow asked, wanting to get the upsetting theory into perspective as soon as possible. She clung to her natural scepticism and added hopefully: ‘It seems most unlikely.’

  Black Jack wagged his big head from side to side, grimacing. ‘It was an idea that passed through the minds of Harness here and some of his colleagues when they read in the paper that you’re poor Tom’s wife. He got on to me and, unlikely though it is that there’s someone with a violent grudge against you both, I thought he’d better look into it straight away, if only to eliminate the idea altogether and get everyone on to more useful work.’

  Willow turned to the other man, who appeared to be too sensible to waste time on such improbable fantasies. ‘How were the fires started?’

  ‘We’ve no details yet, Mrs Worth,’ said Harness, taking a notebook out of the inside pocket of his suit. ‘But we’re pretty sure it was electrical, possibly attached to some kind of timing device, possibly—’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ Willow said without waiting for him to finish, ‘it’s highly unlikely that I was the target. Thank God for that!’

  ‘Why unlikely?’

  ‘No one could have known that I’d be in the building that late, even if they had any idea that I was working there at all. The timer must have been set to start the fire at, what? Half-past nine or ten at the very latest? That’s well outside working hours. Whoever it was must have been after the building, not anyone in it.’

  There was a particular stillness about both men that made Willow wary. ‘What is it?’ she demanded.

  ‘What’s what?’ said Black Jack, smiling at her, his sharp teeth looking almost sinister in his artificially hearty grin.

  ‘There’s something you haven’t told me, something important.’ She looked from one man to the other and then back again. ‘You’ve both got it written all over you. Out with it’.

  ‘She’s quick, isn’t she?’ said Jack to his colleague, clearly deferring to him even though Harness was his junior in rank. Willow’s suspicion of them both grew, and with it dislike.

  ‘Come on, tell me,’ she said, almost shouting at them in frustration. She coughed and then swallowed in a useless attempt to ease her throat. ‘I don’t care which of you does it, but I want to know now. Or else you can go. I’m too worn out and sore to play games.’

  The men glanced at each other again.

  ‘You know her better than I,’ said Harness. ‘Up to you.’

  Black Jack shrugged and turned back to Willow. ‘All right, Will. It’s just that we didn’t want to worry you if you were a bit delicate, but you’re clearly your old self again. They found a body when they’d put the fire out.’

  Willow felt as though she had been plunged right back to the nightmare of heat and smells and terror. She shut her eyes, unable even to ask whose body it was.

  ‘It’s been identified as that of a Mr Leonard Scoffer, the tax inspector, we understand,’ said Harness, watching her carefully. ‘The body was found in his office. The identification is provisional until we get his dental records, but it’s probably him.’

  Willow was so surprised that she opened her eyes again, frowning as she tried to absorb the shock.

  ‘That makes it not only arson but possibly murder as well,’ said Blackled. ‘It’s certainly manslaughter. We have to get it sorted quick.’

  Willow stared into the space between her two visitors as she remembered the sight of Scoffer’s office before the flames had completely hidden it. She thought that his door had been shut, but she could probably have got through the flames and opened it if she had known anyone was there. The thought of what he must have suffered while she was escaping filled her with horror.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you didn’t know anyone was around?’ said Harness.

  Willow nodded, wincing as a strand of hair caught on the edge of the pillow and pulled. She realised that her scalp must have been singed as well as the skin of her face. She also realised belatedly that Harness’s tone had suggested that he suspected her of deliberately leaving Scoffer to die.

  ‘I thought they’d all gone,’ she said slowly. ‘Kate Moughette was the last. And she didn’t say anything about his still being there when she came to my office. Surely she’d have known. Their rooms were next door to each other.’

  Something about Kate’s appearance in her office seemed important, but Willow could not remember what it was. Frustrated, she shook her head against the pillow and then wished she had not as pain shot across her scalp.

  ‘Odd was it, that he’d be hanging about so late?’ said Blackled casually.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Willow, blinking and wishing that she knew exactly what the two men were thinking. ‘Are they certain that he was killed by the fire?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ Harness’s voice was hard with suspicion.

  ‘He always left in time to catch the five forty-five back to East Croydon. I overheard someone say that on my first day. Can’t remember how. The only reason I can think of that he might have been still there is if he’d been unconscious. No, that doesn’t fit. Someone would have noticed. Although he did always keep his door shut when he could. He hated interruptions. Oh, God! It’s…’

  Willow realised that she was rambling and tried to stop thinking about Scoffer as a man and concentrate on the intellectual problem of how he had died and why.

  ‘Have you talked to his wife? I imagine she’d know if he had any other plans for that evening.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Harness, ‘but some of my people are dealing with it now.’

  ‘Are they sure what killed him yet? Has the pathologist done the post-mortem?’

  ‘The body’s pretty badly burned. They’re doing the PM now. Last I heard there weren’t any signs of violence, and they think he died of asphyxiation.’ Harness was still examining Willow’s face. He added deliberately: ‘When a corpse is found slumped in the middle of a burned room, you can usually assume the person was killed by smoke and fumes. If he’s by the door, it’s more likely the flames got him.’

  Willow felt sick. She could not speak, even to object to Harness’s interrogation technique.

  Black Jack smiled less wolfishly than usual. ‘They do think that the main fire may have started in or around his office, but that could have been chance,’ he said, ‘which is why it occurred to one bright spark—sorry, unfortunate choice of words—that you might have been the target.’

  ‘Don’t flannel,’ said Willow, finding it easier to be angry than to let herself feel anything real. ‘They can tell precisely where a fire started and what started it these days. Either it was his office or it wasn’t. He was a smoker. Pipe. Perhaps it wasn’t arson. It could have been smouldering tobacco in the wastepaper basket, or perhaps a lit match dropped on to the visitor’s chair. It was probably stuffed with the old sort of quick-burning foam.’ She
shook her head, remembering that the stairs had been on fire, too. ‘But what was he doing there so late? I wish I could think properly.’

  ‘Actually, Will,’ Jack said, ‘we hoped that you might be able to tell us what he was doing. After all, there were just the two of you in the building. Alone. You know the score. What was it all about?’

  Willow closed her eyes and lifted a hand to push the hair away from her forehead, forgetting her bandages for the moment. The gauze felt very rough on her reddened skin.

  ‘What on earth are you suggesting? That I was having a romantic assignation with Len Scoffer? Or that I wanted him dead because he was rude and unpleasant?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Jack, making the other man blink at him.

  ‘Careful, sir. She’s a sick woman.’

  ‘She’s not that sick.’

  For the first time Willow wondered what Tom’s colleagues thought about his late marriage and what they said about her in the canteen. She waited to hear what the two in front of her wanted to know.

  ‘All right,’ said Harness after a sticky silence, which neither of the others seemed prepared to break. ‘First of all, satisfy my curiosity and tell me what you were doing in that tax office in the first place.’

  ‘That’s easy.’ Willow relaxed against her pillows. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know. I was sent there by the Minister for Rights and Charters to look into an investigation they’ve been carrying out into the affairs of a woman who killed herself a fortnight ago. Her name was Doctor Fiona Fydgett. Clear?’

  ‘As crystal.’

  It struck Willow then that if she genuinely had been the arsonist’s target, his motive would have been much more likely to be the need to stop her investigation into the Fydgett case than to get back at her or Tom for anything they had done in the past She felt her neck muscles relax against the pillow. Tom might be safe after all in his hospital bed, and as soon as her burns had healed she would be able to look after herself.

  ‘This Scoffer: was he the investigating officer on the Fydgett case?’ asked Harness.