Poison Flowers Read online

  ‘Not really,’ said the large man. ‘The train’s full of us. I just got rather pissed off with the bunch I was with and thought I’d pay a bit extra for some peace and quiet.’ He sat in brooding silence, staring at his knees for a while, and then lifted his head again to add: ‘They seemed to think it was a party. Poor Jim. I really …’ He broke off once more and stared out at the brown-and-green smear of country that shot past the sticky-looking windows.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ asked Willow politely, but with her mission in mind as well.

  ‘I used to,’ he said, still looking out of the window nearest to him and presenting the back of his head to Willow. ‘We haven’t seen much of each other these past few years, but … well, he was always there.’

  He turned back to Willow and for a moment she thought that there were signs of tears in his eyes, which seemed unlikely.

  ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘when one of you gets married you think everything’ll be pretty much the same and for a year or two it is: both the friend and the wife work hard to like each other for the husband’s sake, but then either it all comes to seem too much trouble and they move away, or something happens and you drift.’

  Willow thought that she could recognise in the man’s babble the loquacity that comes from a severe and sudden shock. Before she could say anything, he had started again.

  ‘But I never thought that just because I didn’t push hard enough to see him old Jim would go and die on me like this.’ He sighed. ‘I haven’t even seen him for nearly two years.’

  ‘Were you at Dowting’s together?’ asked Willow.

  ‘Dowting’s and school before that …’

  ‘Blockhurst?’ asked Willow, remembering that that was where Simon Titchmell had been educated.

  ‘God no! Nothing Scottish about either of us. We were at Michaelson’s. We really became doctors because of each other, spurred each other on, competed with each other … My wife could never really stand old Jim, but at the beginning she tried to pretend.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Willow surprised, ‘I thought it was his wife you meant when you talked about drifting apart.’ The large man shook his head, took out an enormous white handkerchief and gave his nose a thorough blow.

  ‘Hay fever starring early,’ he said defensively. ‘No, old Jim only got married about six years ago. I did it as soon as we qualified.’

  ‘Is your wife on the train?’ asked Willow.

  ‘Yes, she’s with that crowd down in the bar … having a whale of a time,’ he said bitterly. ‘What are you reading?’

  Willow obligingly held up her book.

  ‘Ah,’ said the man surprisingly, ‘And “Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment.” Well, that applies to poor old Jim all right.’

  ‘How strange that you should know Marcus Aurelius so well,’ said Willow, suprised without quite knowing why. Plenty of doctors were well read in subjects beyond their own. Perhaps it was his air of success and gins-and-tonics and hearty games that made the idea of his studying the musings of the ancient emperor-scholar so odd.

  ‘I find the old boy’s thoughts help when things get rough – like now. I say, d’you mind my interrupting you like this when you’re probably wanting a bit of peace to think of old Jim?’

  ‘No,’ said Willow smiling. ‘I feel a bit of a fraud coming to his service, actually, and was even thinking of turning straight back to London.’

  ‘Why on earth?’ asked the man, showing a little more interest in her. Willow shrugged in her well-cut black coat.

  ‘Well, you see, I only ever met him once. But he did me a singularly good turn and so …’ She made her voice tail off artistically, as she tried desperately to think of something the dead man might have done for her and a likely place for them to have met.

  ‘Old Jim was a bloody good man, whatever they said,’ said his erstwhile friend. ‘Pulled me out of more than one scrape. What did he do for you?’

  Willow suddenly smiled brilliantly.

  ‘He stopped me from trying to go to medical school as a mature student,’ she said. ‘And instead I started to write romantic novels and found my metier. I’d have been an awful doctor. When I read about his death, I thought it was the least I could do to come to the service. D’you think his wife would mind?’

  ‘Should think she’d be delighted. Damn good of you to bother. Not many people would,’ said the man. He straightened up and held out his right hand. ‘By the way, my name’s Andrew Salcott.’

  ‘Cressida Woodruffe,’ said Willow, shaking hands with him. As soon as she saw the doubtful look on his face, she hurried to reassure him. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve never come across my books. They’re not at all your sort of thing.’

  His face cleared and he even smiled.

  ‘It’s true I don’t read much except science fiction and Dick Francis,’ he said. ‘Except for medical journals, of course.’

  Willow thought his smile rather attractive and approved of his wish for quietness on his way to his dead friend’s memorial service. She admired his obviously genuine regret for Jim Bruterley’s death, and wished that he did not present such a good opportunity for interrogation.

  ‘D’you think it’s true what the papers are saying?’ she asked.

  ‘Which one?’ he asked, and there was both anger and bitterness in his voice. ‘I’m perfectly certain that Jim would never have committed suicide – and certainly not over some trollop … sorry, some girl who was a patient. If anyone like that had started to blackmail Jim he’d have seen them off pretty damn quick, believe you me.’

  ‘And yet murder seems so unlikely,’ said Willow, making her face puzzled. ‘Could it have been an accident? Or one of those frightful maniacs who go round putting ground glass in tins and packets of food, do you think?’

  ‘Couldn’t have been that. First thing I thought of too,’ he said, smiling admiringly at Willow. ‘I asked Miranda if it was a new bottle, but she said no: only about a quarter full.’

  ‘And no one but he ever drank from it?’ said Willow. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Not many people,’ admitted Andrew Salcott. ‘I dare say he’d have unscrewed it for me and one or two others, but he wasn’t a great one for offering single malts to w … all and sundry.’ His voice tailed off as he reached the unfortunate word. Willow, tiring of his relentless ‘manliness’, spoke it for him.

  ‘Women and such like, I take it?’ she said, gritting her teeth and making herself smile.

  ‘That’s right. Had rather old-fashioned views about women, did Jim. I didn’t altogether share them,’ he hastened to add, ‘but they were part of him.’

  ‘Such as? I thought he was a gynaecologist; surely he can’t have disliked women. Did he disapprove of women doctors?’

  ‘He wasn’t really. That was the papers. He’d done various gynae jobs but he was a GP these days. He didn’t much like women as doctors. You see,’ he started, trying to explain his friend, ‘he had awfully high standards of feminine … charms, say, and he hated to see really lovely women wearing themselves out and making themselves ugly in the cause of work.’

  ‘So only ugly women should work?’ suggested Willow, again with the clenched smile. Andrew Salcott smiled too, rather sadly she thought.

  ‘Well they don’t get much choice, do they? Poor things,’ he said.

  Willow brushed her left hand over her eyes for a moment, trying to hide from him the despair that his assumptions aroused in her. When she looked at him again, she saw that he was embarrassed.

  ‘I say,’ he said, looking obviously at her ringless left hand, ‘I didn’t mean to suggest … I mean a smashing looking bird like you …’ His voice died completely.

  ‘Choice comes into it sometimes, you know,’ she said, and then deciding to take advantage of his confusion
added, ‘Tell me about Jim’s girlfriends … before he was married, I mean.’

  ‘He played the field a bit,’ said Andrew. ‘Always had his pick, you see. The most gorgeous creatures used to flock round him – and the other sort of course …’

  ‘What,’ said Willow, making herself sound disinterested, ‘the ugly ones?’ Andrew nodded.

  ‘He was so goodlooking and didn’t care a hoot for any of them until Miranda turned up again,’ he said. ‘Did you ever meet her?’

  ‘Miranda? No,’ said Willow. ‘He and I only met on that one occasion. What’s she like?’

  Dr Salcott’s heavy face took on an affectionate light.

  ‘She’s a duck,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Pretty, well-dressed, sweet, lovely mother, super wife, gentle, oh you know … We all wanted her in the old days, but she only had eyes for him. He just didn’t notice till later.’

  ‘I see,’ said Willow, wondering how to put her next question. ‘She must have been awfully hurt by the things the papers have said. Presumably if she’s that special there’s no truth in their innuendoes.’

  ‘I say,’ said Salcott, staring out of the window, ‘we’re nearly there. I must go and collar my wife. I dare say I’ll see you at the service. Thanks.’

  ‘For what?’ asked Willow, surprised.

  ‘Providing a spot of peace and quiet and minding about Jim,’ he said as he left the compartment.

  Willow felt guilty for having disliked his attitudes towards women. She was sorry for his wife and felt forming in her mind the single dismissive syllable ‘men!’ that so infuriated Richard whenever she had said it after he had provoked her by silliness or arrogance. But then she thought warmly of Tom Worth for a moment and of Ben Jonson. Neither of them showed any signs of the ‘women are really only good for one thing’habits of mind, and Tom was … Willow could feel her face relaxing into a smile and she wondered what was happening to her. Until the eruption of Tom Worth into her life she had never, ever, caught herself daydreaming about love.

  She stood up and, balancing one knee on the opposite seat, examined her face in the rectangular mirror that was screwed to the wall too low to be used in any comfort. Adding a little extra mascara to her eyelashes and another coat of lipstick helped to deal with the slightly travelled look her face had taken on, and a light dusting of powder removed it altogether. Then she lifted the expensive hat from the rack and tried it this way and that until she had achieved a becoming angle, when she skewered the hat in place with a long Edwardian jet-tipped pin. By the time the train stopped she was ready, both for the memorial service and for her enquiries.

  Having taken a taxi to the church, Willow was rather early for the service, but went in and allowed herself to be shown into a pew fairly near the back. That suited her because she could watch the rest of the congregation. They came in singly and in couples and family groups. It was easy to recognise Andrew Salcott’s group for they had obviously enjoyed themselves on the train and, although they were compelling their faces into suitably sad expressions, their eyes were too bright and their cheeks too flushed to hide their excitement.

  The church smelled of damp, slightly rotting flowers, mildewed hymnbooks and expensive scent. The flowers were all white, as though for a wedding, and curiously there were pink candles in all the holders. Willow had never seen pink candles in a church before and wondered about them. She sat in her hard seat, watching the mourners and waiting for something, anything, to strike her as revealing. Various other people were shown into her pew and she stood politely to let them shuffle apologetically past her. None of them looked as though they might be particularly useful. There were a few single women in the church, but none who looked desperate enough to be a spurned mistress, and several men on their own. The dead man’s colleagues were obvious, as were his family. Willow was rather shocked when at last the widow arrived, with two small children clinging to her hands. A memorial service did not seem to her to be at all suitable for children as young as three and five.

  In one respect the tabloid newspapers were right, she thought, the widow was extremely beautiful. As tall as Willow, but a lot more graceful, she had thick blond hair that had been brushed up into an elaborately plaited bun, rather like a Viennese loaf, on which she had perched a small black hat with a veil. Her suit was made of thick corded black silk and it seemed to have been made for her, so closely did it follow her excellent figure. The children were not dressed in black. The younger boy had a navy-blue duffle coat over his shorts and jersey and the elder was dressed in grey flannel, perhaps his school uniform.

  As soon as the widow and her offspring were settled the vicar appeared, dressed in black and gold vestments over his white surplice. The organ rolled and the congregation stopped whispering and stood up to sing, ‘Fight the good fight, with all thy might.’ Willow, who had always liked the tune, sang cheerfully. She rather admired Mrs Bruterley for choosing such a rousing hymn. As she was looking round, singing the words by heart, she caught sight of the first familiar face and stopped singing at once.

  Willow could not think of any reason on earth why Emma Gnatche should be at the service, but there she was, wearing a prettily cut black dress with slightly puffed sleeves; her large-brimmed black hat was tilted on the back of her blond head, making her face look even more innocent than usual. The burly, white-haired man standing next to Willow politely handed her a service sheet, as though he thought her sudden silence had been caused by lack of words to follow. She smiled to thank him and started to sing again.

  There followed prayers, two readings and an address, which was of more interest to Willow than all the rest. The vicar stood in his pulpit and addressed his congregation in a pleasantly authoritative voice. It became clear during his first few sentences that Jim Bruterley had been a reliable member of the church. Willow found that surprising and listened with increasing attention. The vicar referred to ‘the tragic accident that has deprived Jim’s family of a devoted husband and father, his colleagues and his patients of an excellent doctor, and the rest of us of a much cherished friend.’ He talked, too, of the dedication of a man who could have become a rich Harley-Street specialist, but had decided instead to serve unspectacularly as a general practitioner; and he talked of the universality of sorrow.

  At that, the man sitting beside Willow gave a convulsive start and she heard him whispering to the woman on his other side:

  ‘Sorrow for Bruterley won’t be exactly universal, will it, m’dear?’

  Willow could hear only a ‘shhhh’sound from his wife. With the rest of the congregation she stood to sing ‘Christian dost thou see them?’, which seemed an even odder choice of hymn than the first. The elderly man by Willow seemed to take exception to the hymn as well as the address, for when the congregation sang, ‘Christian, up and smite them, Counting gain but loss;’ he muttered to his wife, ‘Damned accountants’hymn.’

  A suppressed smile tweaked at Willow’s lips as she heard the sotto-voce comment, but as they reached the last verse, she thought that perhaps she understood why Miranda Bruterley had wanted to have that particular hymn sung:

  ‘“Well I know they trouble,

  O My servant true;

  Thou art very weary,

  I was weary too;”’

  At the end of the hymn they all knelt again for more prayers for the dead man, for his ‘family and friends’and for the peaceful future of mankind. Another reading, this time from The Revelation, allowed the congregation to sit. As the words rolled down the stone aisles of the great grey Gothic church, Willow thought that she could understand the vast anger of the woman who had arranged the service.

  ‘But the fearful and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’

  After that, the last hymn – ‘God be at my head’ – came almost as balm to the rasped nerves of all those sensitive enough
to share the anger. When they reached the final verse, ‘God be at mine end/ And at my departing’, Willow felt a lurch of genuine emotion, a mixture of regret that anyone so young should be dead and fury that if, as she and Tom suspected, Bruterley had been murdered, anyone should have thought their private satisfaction or revenge worth the loss of his life. Her quest was beginning to seem almost personal, and she wished that she had some more direct way of tackling it.

  At the end of the service, she let all the others past her and waited by her pew until she saw Emma coming down the aisle and then said quietly:

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘Hello? Goodness, Cressida. How extraordinary! Mummy, this is Cressida Woodruffe: you’ve heard me talk about her. Cressida, my mother.’

  ‘How do you, Lady Gnatche?’ said Willow, shaking hands. ‘Emma, I didn’t know you knew Jim Bruterley.’

  ‘I didn’t really, but Mummy knew him on the Conservatives. She’s chairman of the local party, you know,’ she added, seeing that Willow was lost. ‘And since I’d come home for the weekend, I’ve come with her.’

  ‘Of course, you live near here. I’d forgotten.’ They walked together down the long aisle and out into the sunshine. Lady Gnatche left them to fetch her car.

  ‘Are you coming up to the house, Cressida?’ asked Emma as they watched her go.

  ‘Lord no,’ said Willow. ‘I didn’t know them that well. It was nice to see you at Richard’s the other day, Emma.’

  ‘I liked it, but I did feel very young,’ she said. Willow laughed.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, telling lies again, ‘that school you were talking about with Caroline Thingummy seems to be awfully famous; the people in my pew today were talking about it, too.’

  ‘Well, Miranda Bruterley was there,’ said Emma. ‘Oh golly, there’s Mummy with the car; she loathes being kept waiting. I’d better go.’

  ‘What was her surname before she married, do you know?’ asked Willow, making sure that she did not grab Emma’s shoulder to keep her as she wanted.