Fruiting Bodies Read online

  Willow did not think it would be sensible to list the people she had come across who had had reason to dislike – or even hate – him.

  ‘He seemed pretty wonderful whenever I came across him,’ she said. ‘The last time must have been only about half an hour before it happened.’

  ‘But what was it that happened? The dreadful thing is, it sounds funny, you know – “Obstetrician drowns in his own birthing pool”. What a headline! And think of the photo.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Willow after a pause. ‘Perhaps if I hadn’t known him, I could see the joke too.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know. I’m too flip. But what did happen?’

  ‘I’m not sure. No one is yet, as far as I know. Tell me something, Jane?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is it true that he was having an affair with Lady Roguely?’ Jane raised her eyebrows as she nodded. Her eyes glittered and all the muscles in her face tightened slightly, lifting it.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it? I confess I did a quick check about where her husband was that night.’

  ‘The States, I’m told,’ said Willow.

  Jane nodded once again. ‘Isn’t it annoying? So you’re as curious as I am. I thought you would be. What have you found out?’

  ‘Not much. The police must have discovered something by now, but they’re playing their cards very close to their chests and I haven’t been in a fit state to go finding things out for myself.’

  ‘But doesn’t your equally gorgeous husband tell you about what they’ve found?’

  ‘You must be joking, Jane. Tom never told me anything even in the days when he was involved with investigations, which he isn’t any more. I get more from your newspaper than I ever have from him. Listen, there he is now. You can ask him yourself and see if you get any further than I have.’

  ‘Goody,’ said Jane, ‘although I can’t stay long or I’ll miss my chance of wowing the proprietor. Hello, Tom! How wonderful all this is. I think the new arrival is a paragon of brains and beauty.’

  Willow was silently amused at Jane’s rehearsal of her wowing technique. Since she had not even glanced at Lucinda, her compliments were more than absurd. Tom knew Jane pretty well by then and took them at their real value.

  ‘It looks to me as though she’s been fast asleep for a while. Have you actually had a chance to assess her brains?’

  ‘You know me – razor-sharp intuitions from fifty feet.’

  Tom laughed and came to kiss Willow.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Wonderful. Quite myself again. And this bubbly you laid in is delectable.’

  ‘Good. So why are you looking so smart, Jane?’

  ‘Off to a do in Eaton Square. I say, Tom, how’s the Ringstead murder hunt going?’

  ‘God knows. I’m stuck at the Yard these days, arguing about policy. I don’t get to hear about operational details of other people’s cases.’ He pulled down the knot of his tie and undid the top button of his striped shirt. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘D’you want a swig out of my glass?’ asked Willow.

  ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll go and get one out of Mrs R.’ He turned round so that he could wink at Willow without being seen by Jane.

  ‘I’d better go or I’ll miss all the movers and shakers at the party,’ said Jane, standing up and showing off her long legs. ‘I’ll walk down with you, Tom.’

  When he came back five minutes later he was laughing.

  ‘Your friends, my love! I don’t know whether she thinks I’m susceptible to such gross buttering-up or whether she was just teasing me about my job.’

  ‘She’s a lot brighter than she lets herself seem.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But I was damned if I was going to give her anything. Now she’s gone, I can tell you that the principal suspect for the murder has just been released.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man whose wife had had a baby at Dowting’s a month or two back. There was some problem with the delivery and the baby was seriously damaged. The parents seem to have blamed Ringstead for it and the father was heard to make some pretty violent threats. That wasn’t enough in itself to justify an arrest, but I gather that Boscombe and the team collected a bit more and they were interviewing him for most of yesterday. Unfortunately they’ve had to let him go.’

  For a moment Willow could not say anything. She was so full of gratitude for Tom’s taking the trouble to find out what she wanted to know and trusting her with it that she could only look at him. He stretched out a hand and she took it between both of hers.

  Suddenly she knew the answer to Richard’s question. He had always been just as frightened of intimacy as she had been, but Tom had been brave enough to risk it; and he never gave up. There had been many times since their first meeting when he and Willow had fallen out, when it would have been much easier to part, or at least drift into a state of polite neutrality, and yet Tom had always been prepared to try again.

  ‘Was it lack of evidence?’ she asked eventually, wrenching her mind back to the investigation.

  ‘Not so much that, I gather, as an unbreakable alibi. He didn’t come across with it at first, but once he was actually charged and heard the text of the new caution, he decided to produce it.’

  ‘Pity. He was one of my likelier suspects, too.’

  ‘Was he? Sorry about that. You’re right about this champagne. It is good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tom, since we’re talking about poor Alex Ringstead, do they yet know how he was tripped into the pool? I mean, it would have taken someone about ten feet tall actually to overpower him. Were there any marks on his shins that could suggest a trip-wire? Or on the back of his knees? I suppose he could have been felled with a blow there from a baseball bat or something.’

  ‘Apparently not. The only marks I’ve heard about were the bruises on his neck.’

  ‘Damn! I don’t see how it was done then. It would have taken someone of quite incredible strength to force him down on to the floor and push his head into the water.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Tom, showing the first signs of reluctance to discuss the murder with her that evening, ‘that the current theory is that he must have been asked to look at something or fish it out of the pool so that he was already kneeling down when he was assaulted.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Some. His right sleeves were pushed a long way up his forearm. That’s the white coat, the jacket of his suit and his shirt sleeve. And his right arm was in the pool when he was found, even though the left was hanging down outside it.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Yes, good. That does make sense. One other thing: have you managed to find anything out about the ambulancemen?’

  Tom sighed. Catching sight of Willow’s face, he produced a faint smile.

  ‘I passed on a hint of what you suspected to Inspector Boscombe. I’m sure she’ll have looked into it. But that’s enough of that, Will. How’s my daughter been today?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ said Willow, wishing that Tom would stick to the point. There was still a great deal that she wanted to know.

  Lucinda suddenly started to cry with short, urgent, angry bursts of noise. Willow forgot her frustrated investigation as she flung back the duvet and embarked on a long and increasingly frightening exploration of the baby’s distress. Her nappy was clean and dry. There was nothing sticking into her. She was not hungry. She did not want to be rocked. Singing did not help. She just cried and cried until two hours later when, as suddenly as the frenzy had begun, it stopped.

  Tom, who was holding her at the time, walking up and down their bedroom, stopped moving. Hardly daring to breathe, Willow watched him begin to walk again very slowly and then lay Lucinda down in her cot with infinite care. Nothing happened. He looked over his shoulder at Willow and pointed towards the door.

  Together they crept out of the room and downstairs to where Mrs Rusham had laid out their dinner before she had left for the day. Willow sat at the dining-room table, feeling more exha
usted than she would have imagined possible. She put both elbows on the table and laid her aching head on her clasped hands.

  ‘We’d better eat,’ said Tom after a while. ‘This sort of thing may go on for months. We’ll need food.’

  Dragging up her head, which felt as though it were six times heavier than usual, Willow looked at him.

  ‘D’you think we’ll ever make it?’

  ‘We’ve got to.’

  She looked at him and thought: yes you can’t stop half-way through a parachute jump. You either make it or die.

  Chapter Nine

  That night Lucinda woke for her usual midnight feed and then again at six-thirty, but in between she slept. Willow did not do as well, waking every hour or so to check that the baby was still breathing. She seemed none the worse for her tantrum and, when Willow changed and washed her after the early-morning feed, she could not find any sign of anything wrong at all.

  Both she and Tom were appalled at the memory of Lucinda’s unassuageable distress and still afraid of what it might mean. They practically grabbed Mrs Rusham when she arrived.

  She listened to their account of the previous evening and said that she thought the crying fit sounded more like the result of over-stimulation than anything else and suggested that no visitors should be received in Lucinda’s presence after five o’clock in future, that the light should be kept dim after that and all sounds should be carefully controlled.

  ‘As simple as that,’ said Tom, leaning forwards almost as though he were about to kiss her. ‘Mrs Rusham, you’re magnificent. I’ll be off then. Take care, Will. And if you need me, ring the Yard. I’ve got an eight o’clock meeting, but I should be in my own office from about ten-thirty.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Willow, still unable to let herself stop worrying. When he had gone she went back to bed and managed to get another forty minutes’sleep until Lucinda woke again, crotchety but not nearly as bad as she had been the previous evening.

  When Mrs Rusham brought Willow’s breakfast tray upstairs at nine o’clock, she said: ‘You asked me to remind you about the bridge lunch. Do you feel up to it or would you rather I telephoned to cancel?’

  Willow decided to go. Tired though she was, she thought that getting out of the house and seeing other people might help to remind her that there was a world beyond Lucinda’s terrifying fragility and unknown needs.

  Having tried painfully to express some milk, Willow eventually succumbed to Mrs Rusham’s suggestion that she should make up a bottle of formula milk for whenever Lucinda showed signs of hunger. At last, feeling guilty but determined to get away for a while, Willow dressed in a loose but reasonably stylish linen jacket and skirt and set off by taxi for the Roguelys’house to the west of Kensington Gardens.

  Half-way there, she asked the cabbie to take her first to a small jeweller, from whom she had bought several things in the past. The need for Lucinda to have something blue to ward off the evil eye seemed urgent after her screaming fit. Willow knew that she was being absurd, but she was prepared to indulge herself.

  Ten minutes later she was standing in the cool of the jeweller’s shop, looking at a collection of turquoise necklaces, brooches, bracelets and pendants. The owner of the shop seemed quite unsurprised by Willow’s explanation of what she wanted to buy and he waited quietly for her to make her choice.

  Eventually she picked a plain necklace of turquoise beads, which could be hung on the wall of Lucinda’s bedroom until she was old enough to wear them. They were a particularly good, clear colour and their matt texture was pleasing. Willow, who usually negotiated fiercely when she was buying any piece of jewellery, paid the asking price without complaint, took her package and left the shop, feeling that she had done everything she could to protect her daughter.

  Twelve bridge tables had been set up on the ground floor of the Roguelys’big house in Kensington. There were two in the square hall, four in each part of the double drawing-room and two in the conservatory. When Willow arrived she found that there were already several women standing on the doorstep chatting to each other. Their hostess, easily recognisable from the newspaper photograph, opened the front door and greeted most of them by name. When she saw Willow, she held out her right hand, saying: ‘How do you do. I’m Mary-Jane Roguely.’

  ‘Willow Worth.’

  ‘Of course. You asked for a ticket only the other day, didn’t you? It’s so good of you to be helping us out like this.’ She shut the door behind the last arrival, kissed her, and then turned back to Willow, saying: ‘Come on into the drawing-room and meet the others. How did you hear about us?’

  ‘In Dowting’s itself, actually. I was there having a baby, my first in fact, and someone gave me a list of all your functions.’ Willow smiled, but she suddenly felt surprisingly weak. ‘I didn’t feel up to an evening do, but the thought of getting away from the crying for a while was marvellous.’

  Mary-Jane pulled forward a chair and made Willow sit down. ‘You look awfully pale. Was it very recent, the birth?’

  ‘Well, it was nearly two weeks ago,’ said Willow. ‘I’m not sure why I’m quite so wobbly because I’m perfectly fine, except that last night was a bit tricky.’

  ‘You’re mad to have come out so soon. I’ll get you something to drink. What would you like? There’s coffee made or some of the wine we’ll be having with lunch or fizzy water, juice, anything.’

  ‘Fizzy water, please.’

  Mary-Jane went to speak to one of the chattering women, who nodded and then came over to where Willow was sitting. The woman was slim and pretty with strikingly glossy black hair tucked behind a padded velvet hairband. Big gold earrings and efficient makeup stopped her looking too much like a schoolgirl.

  ‘Isn’t it ghastly?’ she said with a cheerful smile. ‘I don’t blame you for needing to get out of the house for a while. I always do. It really does seem like a prison sentence, doesn’t it, however much one loves the little darlings. We’ll start playing soon and then you’ll feel better.’

  ‘If I can remember anything about the game,’ said Willow, feeling idiotically pathetic and hating it.

  She reminded herself bracingly that she was lucky to have anyone as reliable as Mrs Rusham to take over Lucinda’s care. Plenty of new mothers had no chance of getting away from their babies for important matters, let alone something as frivolous as bridge – or uninvited detection.

  ‘Have you played much bridge, Mrs Worth?’

  ‘Off and on since I was at university,’ said Willow, ‘but I haven’t played regularly for years. I’m very rusty.’

  ‘You sound as though you know much more than any of us. Most of us only started a couple of years or so ago.’

  ‘D’you all know each other then?’

  ‘Lots of us do. Mary-Jane and I were at school together, along with Susie over there and Pippa; and a lot of the others live round about so we know them too.’ The woman waved her heavily ringed left hand towards the group. Willow, mesmerised by the size of the solitaire diamond on her wedding finger, could not identify any of the people she was talking about, but it did not seem to matter.

  Mary-Jane returned with a tall glass of mineral water with ice and lemon floating in it.

  ‘That looks wonderful,’ said Willow. ‘Thank you very much. I’m so sorry to be causing so much trouble.’

  ‘You’re not. Look Jinx, why don’t you take Mrs Worth into the conservatory and I’ll send you two others and you can start playing straight away. There’s no reason to wait for the whole lot.’ She whirled away to answer the front doorbell.

  ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ said the woman, hoisting the chain of her Chanel handbag higher up her shoulder. ‘By the way, I’m Camilla Chaldon. Mary-Jane should have introduced us but she’s a bit preoccupied just at the moment.’

  ‘Why did she call you Jinx then?’

  ‘At school they always said that I put a jinx on things,’ she said over her shoulder as she led Willow through the back drawing-room to the conservat
ory. ‘If I was involved in any escapade we’d always get caught. Any car I was in would get a puncture. Any train would be late. Jinxed by me.’

  ‘Poor you! That’s awful.’

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ she said with a warm giggle. ‘It wasn’t half as bad as a lot of the things the others were called. Stinky and Fatty and that sort of thing. And I always think Jinx sounds rather jolly now; you know: young and frivolous. I should sit there. It’s much the most comfortable chair.’

  Willow sat down in the shade of a large palm tree and felt the softness of down-filled cushions all round her. She did not normally like conservatories because of the glare and stuffiness, but the Roguelys’was a haven of cool greenery, with efficient blinds covering the entire glass roof, several open windows, and an octagonal pool floored in green glazed tiles and continually refreshed with water from a spout in the wall above it.

  ‘It’s wonderful. You are kind.’

  ‘Not at all. Now, can I grab you for my partner before the others find out how long you’ve been playing or do you think we ought to be honest and cut for partners?’

  ‘I’ll fit in with whatever you decide. But before they come,’ said Willow, deciding to seize her opportunity, ‘tell me about Lady Roguely. Is she all right? I wanted to say something helpful, but she seemed so in control that I didn’t dare risk it.’

  Jinx’s face was absolutely but politely blank.

  ‘About Alex Ringstead,’ whispered Willow. ‘He told me how he adored her and ever since I heard what had happened to him, I’ve been so worried about her.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you’d known him that well,’ said Jinx, her smile returning. ‘It’s so awful for her not really being able to let go. I mean, George didn’t mind at all that she was seeing Alex, obviously, or she’d never have done it, but he’d be pretty upset if she went into some kind of mourning now, and so she’s got to pretend not to mind. She’s awfully fond of George and wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.’

  ‘Did he really not mind? I know Alex found it hard to believe.’ Suddenly Willow, who had never minded lying before, felt ashamed of exploiting the immediate friendliness of Jinx Chaldon.