Bloody Roses Read online

  ‘Not just a pretty face, then,’ said Ronald Hopecastle, looking both surprised and pleased. He laughed and half stumbled as he went to pick up his own glass. ‘Yes, it is. Come and sit down and tell me all about it.’

  Willow followed him to a plump coral-coloured sofa that was filled with small tapestry cushions and sat, drooping in one corner of it. She put her glass down on a little table. Copying one of Emma Gnatche’s gestures, she scooped her hair behind her ears with both hands and gazed at her feet.

  ‘Well, it’s Richard, you see. I simply have to find something that his lawyers can use in his defence. I can’t believe…’ She raised her eyes to the dark ones in front of her and for once let all her terror for – and of – Richard show.

  ‘I don’t know that there’s much I can do, my dear,’ said Hopecastle, displaying signs of distress. ‘You see, I saw him lose his temper with her. Had to tell the police that when they asked, y’know. I really did.’

  ‘So they tell me. It’s just so impossible to believe that Richard could do anything like that. I’ve known him for years and he’s never once shown any signs of temper.’ The plea in her voice was not entirely assumed.

  Ronald Hopecastle spread his plump thighs and leaned back against the cushions. His florid face took on an expression of theatrical sympathy. Willow was not convinced by either the relaxation or the sympathy. He looked far too uncomfortable. She hoped that their combined arts were not going to lead him to pat her hand. If he did, she knew that she would have invited it by her own performance, but that would make it no easier to accept.

  ‘He was provoked,’ said Hopecastle shortly. ‘I must say I could have throttled her myself. I’m afraid it’s what comes of having women doing that sort of job.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Willow, trying hard to go on sounding fragile.

  ‘No man would have felt the need to fill the gap by chatting as she did. And no man would have been so damned silly as to pick a subject like tax fraud at such a moment.’

  ‘You sound as though you disliked her,’ said Willow, feeling uncomfortably certain that had this unhappily jovial man actually killed Sarah he would have joined the chorus of her admirers.

  ‘I did.’ He laughed. ‘She was a pretty tasty-looking creature, but she was out of place at the bank. I thought she was tiresome and in the way. And I didn’t like her sense of humour. Couldn’t understand why James Certes had such a lot of time for her. He insisted that she was the best of the assistant directors at the bank: older than a lot of the boys of course, but said to be more conscientious and more effective. Couldn’t see it m’self.’

  ‘She certainly had a high reputation,’ said Willow, still trying to find the source of his uneasiness.

  ‘Oh they’ve all been falling over themselves ever since she arrived to announce to the world how brilliant she is – sorry, as you were: was. Show that they’re not male chauvinist pigs, what?’

  ‘I see. I’d heard that they were almost the last bank in London to take on women as anything but secretaries.’

  ‘Biggleigh-Clart started it when he appeared as chief executive. I gather he’d known her before and persuaded her out of the research department at one of the other banks to join his corporate boys. Doubt if they’ll have any more, what?’

  Willow found his false interrogatives not only tiresome but positively confusing.

  ‘Do you really think that Richard killed her?’ she asked pathetically.

  ‘I’m sure he did. Must have.’ It sounded like an article of faith. ‘Can’t see who else did it – unless –’

  He stopped suddenly, looking even less sure of himself, put his knees together and crossed his arms across his chest. Willow mistrusted body-language experts, but she could not miss the message that his was transmitting.

  ‘What’s upsetting you so much?’ she asked, deciding that directness was her best weapon. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  ‘I’d hate to think she might have topped herself,’ Hopecastle admitted after a while and reached for his drink.

  ‘No, it’s a horrible thought,’ Willow agreed. ‘But better that, surely, than that someone else did it.’

  ‘Not really.’

  He got up, holding up his whisky tumbler, and went to refill it, banging the edge of the decanter on the glass. Willow thought for a bit.

  ‘You were very angry with her, weren’t you?’

  There was a grunt of agreement before the hiss of the soda siphon drowned it. Willow sat in silence, groping for a reason for his distress. She thought about everything she had heard about the fateful meeting and then remembered what his business had been.

  ‘Did you give her the knife? As a kind of souvenir of the deal?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’

  Willow had to strain to hear him.

  ‘Wish I hadn’t, actually.’ The decanter was banged down on the silver tray. Hopecastle downed his whisky and Willow heard him pour himself out another. He walked ponderously back to the sofa, looking even unhappier than he had earlier.

  ‘You see, m’dear, it’s a bit of a tradition to hand out presents at the end of a successful deal. They – the bankers – tend to give us acrylic embedments and we reciprocate.’

  ‘Embedments?’ It was such a bizarre word, particularly when spoken by a plummy-voiced businessman with too much whisky inside him, that Willow could not quite suppress a smile.

  ‘Acrylic embedments. Haven’t you ever seen one? They embed something, a miniature version of the contract usually, in a square of acrylic as a paperweight. And we usually pay them back with something connected to the business, what? I handed out paperknives.’

  ‘In the plural?’

  ‘Yah, but only hers, was sharp. It was a silly thing to do. Schoolboyish, you know. But I was so bloody angry. I thought she’d get the point.’ He shuddered and held his left wrist against his eyes, letting the glass in his hand bang against his right ear. ‘Oh, God!’

  Despite her horror of what had happened to Sarah Allfarthing and her continuing anxiety for Richard, Willow could not help noticing the infelicitous pun.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, making her voice as warm as she could.

  Hopecastle looked at her as a terrified child might look at his mother.

  ‘No intelligent woman – and everyone agrees that Sarah Allfarthing was that – kills herself because someone sends her a knife. It would have been far more likely to make her angry than suicidal. If she was so desperate that she couldn’t bear to live with herself any longer, which I don’t believe, she’d have killed herself some other way if you hadn’t provided the means.’

  ‘But you do see how I feel responsible,’ he said, still desperately seeking absolution. ‘Even, actually, if it… you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, I do see that. But whisky’s not going to help you.’

  The florid face flushed even more and Willow found herself feeling sorry for him. Tiresome and limited though he might be, he was in genuine despair. She tried to think of something to distract him.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ she asked, pointing to a charming pencil sketch that hung over the ornate pine chimneypiece.

  Hopecastle’s unhappy eyes lightened slightly and he nodded.

  ‘What does she do?’

  He seemed to gather himself together as though remembering something he had once been told. He put down his glass and concentrated.

  ‘Haven’t you heard of her? She’s a dressmaker – designer, too. Started in business a couple of years ago. Doing very well. I could introduce you, if you like,’ he said, squinting at Willow’s clothes. ‘Lovely figure like yours: she’d make you something smashing.’

  Willow felt increasingly sorry for him as he tried to do his best for his daughter’s public relations.

  ‘Who are her clients?’

  ‘All sorts. She started with schoolfriends mainly but in the last year she’s been branching out. Robert Biggleigh-Clart sent his wife.’ An expression of
pride and affection banished the horror from his eyes. ‘Mandy said she arrived looking as though she expected the village sewing woman and was surprised by the glamour. She ordered two evening dresses! That’s turnover of over fifteen hundred quid.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Willow, amused.

  ‘Yes; she’s going for the final fitting on Monday evening. She’s dressed by all the best people, you know. We’re hoping she’ll pass the word on so that it goes all the way; even to Kensington Palace, what?’

  ‘That would be a coup.’

  ‘I know. Look, why don’t you drop in? Say I sent you and Mandy’ll bust a gut for you. Here, I’ve got one of her cards somewhere.’ He lumbered up and went to scuffle in a muddle of papers on a pretty desk in the corner of the room.

  Irritably pushing aside a bundle of irrelevant documents, he knocked a pen tray to the floor. Red and blue ink spilled into the mushroom-coloured carpet, two fountain pens rolled under the sofa and a steel paperknife lay with its point towards Willow.

  ‘Oh, Christ, no!’ Hopecastle backed into a chair and sat like an image of despair.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure we can get the ink out,’ said Willow, getting up. She picked up the paperknife. ‘Where do you keep the cleaning materials?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, m’dear. Be careful of that!’

  ‘I will,’ she said, testing its edge with her thumb. ‘But it’s not sharp. It’s quite safe.’ She laid the knife on the desk and knelt on the floor to collect the two pens.

  The sound of a key grating in the front door made Hopecastle throw up his head. An expression of surprising relief crossed his face.

  ‘Darling? I’ve bogged it again. There’s ink all over the carpet.’

  ‘Oh, Ronnie.’ A light voice, more sorrowful than angry, heralded the appearance of Mrs Hopecastle.

  A gentle-faced woman in her early fifties, she took one look at the mess on the carpet, flashed a smile at Willow and patted her husband on the head.

  ‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said.

  While she was gone, Hopecastle offered Willow the card he was holding in his hand.

  ‘Here y’are.’

  She took it and thanked him. ‘I ought to go,’ she said. ‘I’ll only be in the way of the rescue operation, but I’ll certainly call on your daughter.’

  Mrs Hopecastle returned with a bowl of steaming water, a plastic tube of stain remover and several cloths. Willow murmured more farewells and left them to it.

  The visit had not told her much that was likely to be of any use, but it had given her a possible entrée into the life of ‘Mr Big’s’ wife, which might help. Willow walked home through the sunlit evening, planning how best to use it.

  By the time she let herself into the flat in Chesham Place, she realized how tired she was. She had planned to use the health-club guest ticket to continue to build up her picture of Sarah Allfarthing, but she felt as though she could not face the prospect even of working a rowing machine, let alone running or pulling weights. Telling herself that as it was Friday most of Sarah’s fellow members of the club would probably be on the road to their weekend cottages, Willow decided to salve her conscience by dealing with the messages on her answering machine.

  Mrs Rusham had already gone for the day, leaving a casserole in the oven, so Willow made free with her own kitchen. Ignoring the delicate cakes and biscuits laid out on the tea tray, she switched on the kettle to make a pot of tea and assembled a thick smoked-ham and Gruyère sandwich as she had had no lunch. When she had poured herself a cup of tea she went to listen to her messages. Hearing Eve Greville’s voice, sounding as nearly angry as it had ever been, Willow dialled Eve’s number, hoping that she would be answered by the agency’s machine.

  ‘Eve Greville.’

  Disappointed, Willow gathered herself together to make certain that she did not sound pathetic or defensive.

  ‘Eve; it’s Cressida here. I’m so sorry that I haven’t been about when you’ve rung. It must have looked as though I was ducking your calls.’

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Eve’s deep, smoky voice was sarcastic.

  ‘Certainly not. But a friend of mine has been arrested for murder, and –’

  There was a gale of laughter at the other end of the telephone, which roused all Willow’s self-defensive coldness.

  ‘In twenty-five years of literary agency I have never heard a more creative excuse. Just for that I’ll almost forgive you.’ All the sarcasm had been dissolved into laughter.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a reason rather than an excuse, Eve.’

  ‘You don’t mean it’s true? God, Cressida, I’m sorry. I, see: I mean, I can understand why the charms of your synopsis have palled. But I really must have something to tell the Americans soon. Can’t you give me anything?’

  ‘I’ve still got four months until the delivery date, Eve. Don’t despair. This murder business is taking all my time at the moment, but as soon as it’s sorted, I promise that I’ll give everything to the book.’

  ‘Can I just tell them what it’s about? Then at least they’ll stop nagging me.’

  ‘All right,’ said Willow, racking her brains for something to say. ‘It’s about a girl, not particularly clever but bags of native intelligence, whose father sets her up in a dressmaking business.’

  ‘Bit dull, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, wait: she starts off making droopy dresses for schoolfriends, but slowly she gets some proper grown-up customers – through her father’s business contacts mainly – and learns how to make clothes that are less droopy: probably takes on a professionally trained partner or something. Then as she’s learning her job and developing her business skills, she stumbles on evidence of some massive swindle. A big charity. You know those lunches that cost hundreds of pounds to attend. Something to do with that.’

  ‘Slightly better, but I’ll need more.’

  Willow forced her mind to work. When she was worried about something her imagination needed no spur to create realistic pictures of disaster for her. When she needed it for her novels, it sometimes played possum.

  ‘And falling in love with one of the people who is genuinely involved in the charity – a brilliant, brave, self-denying doctor,’ she said, improvising quickly, ‘who’s come back from a war or a famine zone – she determines to find out what’s really happening.’

  ‘More, Cressida. Come on.’

  ‘I can practically feel the lash across my back, Eve. Give me a break.’

  ‘There’s no time.’

  ‘All right. Our heroine sets out to find out who the chief swindler is, is violently warned off and just becomes more determined, all the while falling more and more in love with the blameless hero. Only at the end does she discover that the swindler is an old friend of her father’s, or one of his best customers or something, or perhaps the doctor’s elder brother. Then she has a terrible choice between good and evil, daddy and the boyfriend, success and failure and so on.’

  ‘It’s got possibilities, but I suspect you’re thinking it out as you speak. Work out a decent synopsis with plenty of colour and interesting background details and it might just do.’

  ‘I think the plot has possibilities,’ said Willow, becoming more enthusiastic as she thought. ‘It’ll have all the glamour of the idle rich at their lunches, upwardly mobile young businesswoman, true love, mystery, moral choice, the vital hint of reality in the daddy-versus-boyfriend ingredient, glitz and sex.’

  ‘Not too much of the last two. Don’t forget these are the caring nineties, and she sounds rather young. Glitz and sex are really for jaded heroines in their late twenties and early thirties.’

  Willow pushed off her shoes, laughing. ‘You’re so cynical, Eve.’

  ‘Nonsense. This is a business and you’re making – or supposed to be making – a saleable product. Once you forget that, you’ll be in trouble and start wallowing in pretension. I must go, Cressida. Get me the synopsis by the end of next week.‘

  ‘I’ll do my best,�
�� she said, her voice flattening as she remembered Richard and what she saw as her real job. It was a fantastic relief to be free of the civil service at least. The prospect of resigning properly at the end of her sabbatical began to seem not only attractive but right, too. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Willow put down the telephone and allowed the tape with the rest of the messages to unroll. There was one from Jeremy Stedington telling her that the chief executive had given permission for ‘Miss King’ to sit in on a client meeting at eight thirty on Monday. Stedington added that one of the lawyers who was to be there had also attended the meeting when Richard had shaken Sarah Allfarthing. Willow smiled as she listened.

  The only message that needed any immediate action was one from Emma Gnatche pleading for something to do. Willow drank her tea and then telephoned Emma to invite her round to the flat the following morning so that they could go through everything Willow had learned so far and plan their campaign.

  ‘Thank you, Cressida,’ said Emma. ‘You’re the only hope poor Richard has.’

  Before Willow could say anything, Emma had put down the telephone. Her faith made Willow feel guilty not only of laziness but also of treachery to Richard. Yet try as she might she could not completely banish her doubts.

  Suddenly the prospect of exercise seemed more enticing than relaxation and so, instead of taking a drink into her bathroom for a long, self-indulgent soak, she looked for the guest ticket that the chief executive had given her to his health club. When she had found it, tucked into a pocket of her handbag, she telephoned the club to check whether there was a shop selling clothes and equipment on the premises and took a taxi straight there.

  Confused by the array of different kinds of Lycra clothes for the various activities the club promoted, Willow eventually settled for a plain green bathing costume, a pair of white tennis shorts and a black T-shirt. When she explained to the assistant that before her swim she planned to exercise in the gym, she was shown several brands of ‘aerobic boots’. Deciding against them, she chose the simplest of the available tennis shoes and a pair of white socks. It did not surprise her that her purchases totted up to well over a hundred pounds, but her long-entrenched frugality made her wince when she thought about the likely use to which the clothes would be put.