Bitter Herbs Page 12

  ‘I’m not altogether certain that I want to discuss that,’ he said with new coldness. ‘It’s hardly relevant to your memoir.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Willow, her curiosity burning. ‘What a pity! I was wondering as I read some of her books last night whether perhaps she might have had a closer experience of actual violence than most of us. That could explain both her books and her clearly less-than-kindly treatment of subordinates.’

  Willow watched Plimpton’s face and thought she detected a slight warming in his eyes.

  ‘I do feel,’ she went on, ‘that, if it were so, referring to her experiences in the memoir might be an effective way to counter the kind of accusations Ms Hacket made.’

  Mr Plimpton drank a little of the Chablis Mrs Rusham had provided to go with the potted shrimps and then helped himself to a piece of thinly buttered brown bread.

  ‘Was she ever married?’ asked Willow, making him smile.

  ‘No. And not for want of offers.’

  ‘Then was it her father? Or perhaps her brother, which might explain why she and his daughter got on so badly. This is not prurient curiosity on my part. I genuinely want to understand her so that I can write something real.’

  ‘Ann was right about your intelligence, I see.’ Gerald drummed his long fingers on the well-polished mahogany table and then looked directly at Willow. ‘You’re right in a way, although she never said that either man ever hit her. All she told me was that her father was one of those men who cannot prevent himself beating his wife.’

  ‘How horrible!’

  ‘Yes, it is. Gloria rarely spoke about it, but it undoubtedly informed her whole life as well as her work.’

  ‘And do you think that her novels were the result of wishful thinking?’ asked Willow, adding as soon as the idea occurred to her: ‘Or perhaps a way of telling her mother that she could have prevented the violence if she had behaved differently – more self-sacrificially perhaps?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the elderly publisher, ‘and I never asked her any questions about it. The subject arose once as she tried to explain to me why she could not bear the thought of … of a close relationship.’

  Willow, who had heard from Ann about the many male writers who seemed to believe that they had droit de seigneur over their female editors, knew that she could never ask the distinguished-looking elderly man at her side whether he had had similar feelings about his female authors.

  ‘She was clearly very fond of you,’ she said, going as far as her conscience would allow.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ The coldness had returned to his voice and made Willow glad she had said nothing more direct.

  ‘Marilyn Posselthwate has told me that her aunt had named you as executor of her will. People don’t normally do that unless they have warm feelings for, and complete trust in, the person they have chosen.’

  He smiled slightly.

  ‘Perhaps. Splendid potted shrimps. I’ve always liked them.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Willow, who had thought them dull. Mrs Rusham must have been listening at the door for she came in just then to remove their plates and bring in the mixed grill, garnished with grilled tomatoes and small bunches of watercress. She also collected from the sideboard a small eighteenth-century decanter into which she had earlier poured a half bottle of Saint Emilion.

  ‘Can you tell me something about the will?’ Willow asked when her housekeeper had gone. ‘I assumed that her solicitor would refuse to divulge anything at all about her and so I haven’t even bothered to ask.’

  ‘Why do you want to know? Surely you can’t expect to put that kind of information in your book about her?’

  ‘I wouldn’t include it specifically,’ said Willow quickly, ‘but I need to know in order to put into perspective the sort of woman she really was. For example, Marilyn believes that her aunt disliked her so much and exploited her so badly that she will inherit nothing. I find that hard to believe of the woman you have described with such warmth.’

  ‘I see what you mean. Well, perhaps I can go so far as to tell you what the solicitor has already explained to Marilyn: she is among the major beneficiaries, as indeed am I. I am afraid that that is all I can tell you until the will has been read after the funeral.’

  Willow knew when she met an unmoveable resolve and started to eat her mixed grill, thinking about the space beside Marilyn’s name in the ‘Motive’column of her computer document. She also thought about the size of Plimpton’s inheritance and the fact that he was the only person to have spoken kindly of Gloria. Wondering if his advertised affection might not simply have been a blind, she asked him anodyne questions about what Gloria had been like in her youth and in the days of her great success.

  Gerald Plimpton spoke readily of his admiration for his author, for her professionalism and her charm, making Willow curious again only when he mentioned Gloria’s sense of humour.

  ‘That is something no one else has mentioned,’ she said, ‘and something I have not picked up from her books. What form did her humour take?’

  ‘Well, she could tell an excellent joke at a party – thoroughly professional timing and never too long or too dirty – and she undoubtedly enjoyed stringing along the pompous or the arrogant to make fools of themselves.’

  ‘Ah, a sense of humour but an unkind one, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’ Mr Plimpton smiled. ‘But how kind should one be to the pompous and the arrogant?’

  ‘Good point. What did she look like? I’ve just realised that I have seen no photographs of her at all, which is extraordinary.’

  ‘Not really. She considered the modern habit of slapping author photographs on to jackets, posters and so on thoroughly vulgar. And she rather disliked the way she was ageing. In her youth she looked very like her niece, if slimmer and rather more confident. She always longed to be taller.’

  ‘But she was pretty?’

  ‘I’d have said so, and increasingly well dressed as she earned more royalties.’

  ‘Her niece suggested that she suffered from a certain folie de grandeur. Would you agree?’

  Once again a smile transformed the severity of his face. He touched his lips with the damask napkin and looked around the elegant, well-furnished room.

  ‘What successful novelist does not?’

  Willow laughed to hide a mental wince. ‘Don’t you think that rather than folie de grandeur, it is often a mixture of a cloak for self-doubt and a natural development of spending so much time alone?’

  ‘No,’ he said bluntly.

  They both heard the telephone ring and Gerald Plimpton made a graceful gesture with his right arm, suggesting that Willow should pay no attention to him if she wished to deal with the call.

  ‘My machine will cope if Mrs Rusham’s busy,’ she said. ‘What else ought I to know about Gloria before I actually start writing?

  ‘She was an excellent and generous hostess. The last year or so she was really too tired for late nights, but in her heyday, her dinner parties were some of the best and her invitations highly prized.’

  ‘By?’

  ‘By her friends,’ he said, the ice back in his voice.

  ‘And who were they?’ Willow was determined to pursue it despite his snub. ‘Besides yourself, of course. Ann spoke of “the great and the good” but I never really know what that means.’

  ‘And you a civil servant! It means precisely what you think: politicians, Conservative naturally, judges, the occasional permanent secretary, the glamorous medical consultants, the more important journalists, a few Royal Academicians, one or two High Anglican churchmen. That sort.’

  ‘None of whom objected to her books?’

  ‘Her books were not relevant to her friendships.’

  ‘That seems strange,’ said Willow, knowing perfectly well that her own books were wholly irrelevant to her difficult current relations with Tom or her past affair with Richard Crescent. ‘Or perhaps they never read any of them.’

  ‘That, I s
uspect, is likely.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I was her publisher.’

  ‘Which even I know does not mean that you actually read them.’ Willow had decided that she had played the ingenue for long enough and switched into her more customary critical persona.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said with a charming, self-deprecatory smile.

  Willow suddenly realised why he looked familiar. It was his photograph that stood in an elaborate silver frame on Gloria’s bedside table.

  ‘I read some of the first book,’ he was saying, ‘when it was recommended by a junior member of the firm and I thought it showed possibilities. After that, I must confess I left them to my lady editors.’

  After they had both laughed at his admission, they managed to eat the apple meringue and drink the coffee Mrs Rusham made without annoying each other again.

  When he had gone, thanking Willow for her hospitality, she added his name to her computer document and made a list of the few solid facts he had given her. The most important, apart from the hints of violence in Gloria’s childhood, seemed to be that Marilyn was to inherit something at least.

  Willow picked up the telephone receiver and dialled the number of the house in Kew. Marilyn answered and said she would be delighted to answer any more questions Willow might have.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow. ‘And if I came this afternoon, might I have a chance to see the secretaries too?’

  ‘Of course. Any time before half-past five.’

  That settled, Willow replayed the earlier message and found that Richard had arranged to meet his barrister friend in chambers at six o’clock that same evening.

  ‘We’ll go on for a drink at El Vino’s and you can interrogate him there,’ went the message, adding that Richard expected Willow to dine with him afterwards as ‘a fee for the introduction’. Thinking that with all the eating and drinking she was having to do she would soon be having a heart attack of her own, Willow rang his office to say that she would try to get there in time but might be a little late as she had to drive out to Kew first.

  Chapter Nine

  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman, who spoke in the soft accent of the West of Ireland. She introduced herself as Mrs Guy, adding:

  ‘Marilyn told me you’d be coming. She’ll be back soon, but she had to take Peter to the hospital just after she spoke to you. She won’t be long.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Willow walking into the hall. ‘But it must be very serious. Last time I was here, he went on his own, I think.’

  ‘He always went alone before madam died. Marilyn had to be in the house then. Come on in now, and I’ll be putting the kettle on while you talk to the girls downstairs,’ she said, shutting the door behind Willow. ‘He hated it and so now she takes him. But he won’t let her wait for him there, so she’ll be back soon. Shall I take you down to the office now?’

  ‘That would be kind,’ said Willow, hoping that Marilyn would not be back before she had a chance to pump Mrs Guy as well as the two secretaries. ‘Marilyn said you were very fond of her aunt.’

  ‘Oh, to be sure I was. Come on down this way. The basement stairs are a bit steep and the light’s not so good, so be taking care now. She was good to me, you know, and I’ll miss her. She made me laugh.’

  ‘D’you know, you’re the second person today who’s said something like that, which is funny – I mean strange – because her books aren’t amusing at all,’ said Willow, obediently watching where she put her feet.

  ‘Well no, but they wouldn’t be, would they now? The fans, as she always called them, they wouldn’t have liked that at all. They liked their love stories straight, she told me once. They wouldn’t have been standing for any sarcasm.’

  ‘That sounds rather as though she despised them.’ Willow occasionally despised her own readers but was ashamed of it.

  ‘Well she did and she didn’t. Here we are.’ Mrs Guy opened a white-painted door and put her head round, saying: ‘It’s Miss King.’

  The door was opened more widely from the inside and a tall, well-built young woman with magnificent shoulders and very blonde hair appeared, holding out her hand.

  ‘Do come in. Patty and I are ploughing through vast amounts of paper, so I hope you’ll forgive the mess. I’m Susan Robinson by the way and this is Patricia Smithe.’

  Willow smiled at them both, noticing that Patty Smithe looked as though she had been genuinely ill. Her triangular face was sweetly pretty, but her skin was greyish and there were heavy bags under her dark eyes. Susan pulled forward the one comfortable-looking chair in the big, gloomy room.

  ‘Do sit down, Ms King,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you get depressed working down here all the time?’ asked Willow, seeing how little light came through the barred windows and how oppressive the low ceiling made the room. It was not how she had intended to start the interview, but it served her well. Susan laughed and answered her with more warmth than she could have expected.

  ‘Gloria believed absolutely in keeping her employees below stairs, but on very good days Patty was occasionally allowed through the back kitchen into the garden during her lunch hour. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Provided she wasn’t having a lunch party,’ agreed Patty, not smiling at all.

  ‘She does sound rather difficult to work for,’ Willow said, trying to gauge the precise degree of resentment in Patty, who interested her more than Susan, even though it was the latter who had been working for Gloria at the time of her death.

  Patty looked nervously back at the papers in her hands. She put them down on the desk and smoothed out the crumples.

  ‘Well yes,’ she said, pushing her heavy brown fringe away from her face and making it look much less triangular but just as sweet. ‘She never seemed satisfied with anything I did and sometimes … I really think that sometimes she didn’t tell me the right thing.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Willow, instinctively looking to the other woman for a translation.

  ‘Like many bullies,’ said Susan, dropping her hand protectively on her friend’s shoulder for a moment, ‘she engineered situations in which she could criticise. Unfortunately, Patty let her do it.’

  ‘Well, I could never really be sure that my memory was right. Susan always tells me I’m dreadfully wet.’

  ‘You two seem to know each other well,’ said Willow, wondering at the obvious bond between them.

  ‘Oh we do. We share a flat,’ said Patty with a weak smile, ‘which is why Sue knew that I was desperate a couple of weeks ago. She persuaded me to go sick.’

  ‘I see; and you stepped into the breach.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Susan, moving away. ‘I’ve been working as a temp since I walked out of my last job four months ago, and it struck me that if I could see exactly what Gloria did to her secretaries I could help Patty a bit more than just listening to her in the evenings.’

  ‘And did you discover anything?’

  ‘Sure.’ She shrugged her swimmer’s shoulders, looking more than a match for any unreasonable employer. ‘She played the most idiotic games, dictating something she didn’t mean and then pretending that I’d got my shorthand wrong when she checked my typing. Sometimes she’d give me the wrong name for the person I was supposed to be telephoning. That sort of thing.’ Susan laughed. ‘She pretty soon discovered that I wouldn’t stand for it and after a bit we got on quite well. I even came to enjoy some of the games.’

  ‘I can’t think how,’ said Patty, shuddering. ‘I was always terrified of her and the harder I tried to get things right, the worse it became until I really was making mistakes. I did once try to stand up to her, as Sue told me I should, but it just caused a horrible row.’

  ‘Why on earth did you stay working for her?’ Willow asked, uncomfortable in the presence of such misery.

  Patty got up and stood with her back to the others, peering up at the light through the barred window.

  ‘
I suppose because I thought I’d be just as useless anywhere else.’ Her voice wobbled and she took a deep breath: ‘At least I had a job, and one near the flat. I can’t bear public transport and you see I can walk here. I like the house, too. We did sometimes … I mean, occasionally, she’d invite me to lunch in the dining room and show me things she’d bought and be quite kind to me. I suppose, looking back, I was hanging on, really, waiting for more of that kindness.’

  ‘Another victim,’ said Willow to herself and was appalled to realise that she had mouthed the word distinctly and that Susan had read her lips.

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ she said sternly, making Patty turn to ask:

  ‘What’s not fair?’

  ‘What Gloria put you through.’ Susan spoke kindly before turning back to Willow and saying much more briskly: ‘Now, how can we help you, Ms King? I’m sure you’ve got lots to do and we certainly have, sorting out all these papers for Mr Plimpton and the lawyers.’

  Noticing that Susan was almost patronising in the way she protected her weaker friend, Willow asked questions about the libel case, which added nothing to her knowledge. She went on to the subject of Gloria’s books and discovered that Patty quite enjoyed them although Susan thought they were dreadful.

  ‘Did you have much to do with them, Patty? In your work, I mean.’

  ‘Well, I had to type them out for her, of course. Sometimes from her handwritten version; sometimes from dictation. And occasionally I had to ring up Weston & Brown for her, but nothing more than that.’

  ‘Whom did you deal with there?’

  ‘Vicky Taffle. You ought to talk to her.’ Patty’s gentle voice hardened noticeably. ‘She could tell you even more about Gloria than I could.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Willow, hoping for more. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well Gloria was sometimes quite nice to me. From what Vicky said, she never saw that side of her at all. All she ever got was rows and criticism. She had an awful time.’