Fruiting Bodies Read online

She was distracted almost at once by the sight of her half-written synopsis, which was lying on the desk under her plan of Dowting’s obstetrics unit. She picked up the fifteen pages of typescript, guiltily asking herself how she could even contemplate trying to beat the police at their own job when she had plenty of work of her own in addition to everything she had to do for Lucinda.

  Skimming through the synopsis, she decided that it was puerile and boring, too, which was worse. She could not think how to improve it and wasted a lot of time picking up bits of paper and putting them down again, trying to tell herself that the novel would be all the better if she did a little successful detection first, but unable to let herself ignore it.

  Eventually she rang up her agent for some bracing advice. Eve Greville listened carefully to everything she had to say about the synopsis, interrupting only to ask a pertinent question here and there. At the end of Willow’s despairing account of her ‘useless idea’, Eve said: ‘I think it’s simply that you’re trying to do too much too soon.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me to concentrate on maternity, please,’ said Willow with deep feeling. ‘I was relying on you to say that having a baby need make no difference at all and to lash me on to finish the damn’synopsis and get a move on with the book itself.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Don’t sound so cross. And don’t be silly. It’s perfectly obvious that something as dramatic as having a baby is going to take time to absorb properly. It’ll probably add a useful dimension to your work if you let it. Most serious and difficult things do.’

  Willow sighed in relief. She was not quite sure whether it was Eve’s understanding that the whole business of Lucinda’s existence was difficult or the possibility that it might prove fruitful for her work that was making her feel better, but something was. She heard the front doorbell ringing, but ignored it since she knew that Mrs Rusham would deal with whoever was outside.

  ‘Besides,’ said Eve, ‘you did start the synopsis a bit too soon after finishing the last novel. I know why you did it, but I think you ought to take some more time to let the new idea bubble up of its own accord instead of forcing it. Ignore it for the time. Concentrate on something else: knitting or something like that. You’ll find that the novel will be all the better for a bit of a delay, and probably so will you.’

  ‘Thank you, Eve,’ said Willow fervently. Since she had never done any knitting in her life and never intended to do any, she felt as though Eve had given her permission to apply all her spare energies to the investigation. She put down the receiver.

  Almost at once Mrs Rusham pushed open the door to say: ‘Lady Roguely is downstairs. She called to enquire about your health and Lucinda’s and she’s anxious to see you if you’re not too busy.’

  ‘Oh, good! No, I’m not too busy at all. Mrs Rusham, would you be very kind and give her whatever’s suitable to drink at this time of day while I tidy myself up a bit? I’ll be down in the drawing-room as soon as I can.’

  When her housekeeper had gone, Willow ran along the passage in her bare feet to exchange the bright-yellow kimono for one of her most discreet maternity dresses. Made of heavy dark-blue linen, it fell in severe but unsewn pleats from her shoulders and it was extremely comfortable. Mascara and some discreet brown shadow on her eyelids, a dusting of peach-coloured blusher and a little terracotta lipstick made her face fit to be seen, and she vigorously brushed her chin-length hair. She had washed it several times since getting out of hospital but it was out of shape and badly needed cutting.

  Shrugging at her unsatisfactory reflection, she pulled out a pair of navy-leather espadrilles and put them on her bare feet. In her own house she thought she could get away without wearing tights.

  When she reached the drawing-room, she regretted both her bare legs and her unkempt hair. Mary-Jane Roguely was looking impeccable, and not at all overdressed, in a beige Armani trouser-suit with a cream-coloured silk T-shirt and a short string of remarkably fat-looking pearls. Her blonde hair was artlessly arranged, but so shiny that it was clear she had only recently emerged from her hairdresser’s, and her face was so well made up that it looked almost natural. She was standing looking out at the small garden, but she turned at the sound of Willow’s greeting, smiled and held out a large bunch of freesias.

  ‘Hello. How are you? I was so worried about you yesterday. I had to come and see you.’

  ‘How sweet of you! I’m fine now. But what about you? You don’t look well at all.’ Willow looked more closely and saw the lines beneath the pristine makeup, the shadows under the large grey eyes, and the dryness of the lips under their translucent raspberry colour

  ‘I didn’t sleep much last night,’ said Mary-Jane. ‘But that’s nothing. I quite often don’t these days, and since I don’t approve of sleeping-pills there’s nothing for it but to stagger through the day as best as I can, knowing that I’ll get a better night next time as a result.’

  ‘That’s brave,’ said Willow. ‘I do occasionally succumb to pills. Do sit down. Is Mrs Rusham getting you a drink?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually. I let her tempt me with the idea of iced coffee. I don’t think I’ve had any since I last had tea in Derry and Tom’s roof garden with my mother some time in the sixties.’

  Willow laughed. Of all memories of the 1960s that was the most incongruous she had ever heard. Clearly all the psychedelia, raves, happenings and demos of swinging London had passed her by unnoticed.

  ‘What?’ said Mary-Jane, sounding less gracious as she settled herself in Tom’s chair on the window side of the Adam chimneypiece.

  ‘Oh, I was just remembering Jinx and the others yesterday,’ said Willow, not completely untruthfully. They probably had not noticed the youth cults of the sixties either. ‘I liked them a lot and was very sorry to mess up their bridge.’

  Mrs Rusham appeared with the iced coffee in two tall glasses topped with whipped cream sprinkled with chopped toasted hazelnuts. There was also a plate of her most delectable biscuits, flavoured with a mixture of white chocolate and macadamia nuts. When she had gone, taking the flowers to put in water, Willow urged Mary-Jane to have a biscuit.

  ‘I shouldn’t, but perhaps … You are lucky to have a housekeeper like her. She seems marvellous.’

  ‘She is. She’s been with me for nearly ten years now.’

  Mary-Jane looked puzzled. Willow could not imagine why.

  ‘You’re such an amazing mixture,’ said Mary-Jane at last. She was frowning but she spoke tentatively. ‘A house like this, a long-term housekeeper, a husband in the police force, having your baby on the NHS, a friend of Alex Ringstead’s. It doesn’t sort of add up, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Willow leaned back against the arm of the sofa and swung her legs up on the seat cushions.

  ‘That’s better.’ Willow tried not to feel outraged, which was hard, and to remember that if she wanted to ask questions it would ill behove her to be obstructive of someone else’s. Speaking as politely as possible, she added: ‘It’s not really all that odd. A lot of people do have their babies on the National Health Service, even nowadays and even when they could afford to go private.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary-Jane at once. ‘I must have sounded awfully rude.’

  ‘No.’ Willow, who had once guarded her privacy like the most damaging of state secrets, decided to punish her a little. ‘Just surprisingly curious and perhaps a little unaware of life beyond the security of inherited money.’

  Mary-Jane blushed.

  ‘To satisfy the rest of your curiosity perhaps I’d better add that my husband’s been a policeman ever since he left the army. Although I have made a certain amount of money for myself, I had my baby at Dowting’s because I believe passionately in the NHS and I share the original idea that if it ceases to be a universal service and dwindles into not much more than a charity for the poor, standards will sink. It seems to me that we’re moving horribly fast towards that point. With all the talk of rationing, waiting lists and so on, more and more people w
ho can afford it are taking out private health insurance. But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You must have heard it all many times before.’

  ‘Not quite like that.’ Mary-Jane had recovered her complexion. ‘Although I do know that Alex was appalled by what was being done to the Health Service.’

  ‘So I gather. He’d had a run-in with the managers over rationing and budget cuts, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Several. They drove him mad, you know. The worst was a little pipsqueak who knew nothing about medicine but had been given an absurd amount of power. Alex couldn’t get him to see that the things he was doing just caused friction within the hospital and didn’t help the patients one bit.’

  ‘What sort of things was he doing?’

  ‘Oh, silly things mainly. Like pinching the consultants’car-parking slots. He told Alex they would have to rent themselves space in a commercial carpark. That might not have mattered but the wretched little man went on parking his own car at the hospital.’

  ‘How infuriating! Who on earth is he?’

  ‘A man called Durdle, Mark Durdle, I think. But the car-parking row was almost irrelevant. The worst thing he tried to do was ration anaesthetics for women in labour.’

  ‘That’s outrageous,’ said Willow, forgetting everything else.

  ‘Just what Alex said. Apparently Durdle told him that women had done perfectly well with gas-and-air before epidurals were invented and he thought they should go back to that. It would be much cheaper because it doesn’t involve an anaesthetist.’

  Seeing that Willow could not speak for fury, Mary-Jane smiled and nodded.

  ‘I know. Alex was boiling with rage when we met for lunch after the meeting when all that cropped up. He told Durdle that when he’d been through a full labour he could talk about rationing anaesthesia for pregnant women and not until then.’

  ‘Good for him!’ Willow expected Mary-Jane to smile at her fervent approval, but she did not. Instead she sat in silence for a while and then said carefully: ‘Mrs Worth, how well did you know Alex? He never mentioned you to me, but Jinx was telling me yesterday that you were a friend of his.’

  Willow, who had been trying to remember whether anyone had mentioned seeing Durdle in the obstetrics unit on the night of Ringstead’s death, looked up and saw that Mary-Jane had a most painful expression in her eyes. There was unhappiness in it but there was suspicion as well and a hint of anger.

  ‘I hardly knew him at all,’ Willow said at once. ‘I was his patient; that was really all it was.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’ Mary-Jane put her coffee glass down rather too sharply on the table beside her chair, but the glass did not crack. ‘Why were you asking questions about him? I thought you must … he must … I thought he hadn’t told me about you because you were more than a friend.’

  ‘Nothing like that. Oh dear, this is awful.’ Willow saw that there were tears overflowing Mary-Jane’s carefully made-up eyes. Her lashes must have been dyed rather than coloured with mascara because the streaks that appeared on her cheeks were colourless.

  ‘I was his patient and I liked him,’ Willow went on. ‘He was killed while I was giving birth and I felt I had to find out more about him.’

  ‘You mean you were spying on me yesterday?’

  ‘No, not spying. I wanted to make sense of it all, to find out what had happened and why anyone should have wanted to drown a man like him. I’d heard that you and he were friends and I thought I might be able to talk to you and find out more about him. It was silly, I suppose, but I just wanted to talk about him.’

  At that Mary-Jane’s back crumpled and she bent over her beige knees sobbing into her hands. Even then Willow could not stop herself noticing that Mary-Jane’s nail varnish was indeed colourless and the nails themselves perfect and quite long. Those hands, however well-protected by gloves, could not have gripped the back of Alex Ringstead’s neck without leaving marks in the skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Willow said, hoping that her voice was as full of pity as her mind.

  ‘Could I go somewhere and wash my face?’ said Mary-Jane eventually, not looking at Willow.

  ‘Yes, of course. Come on upstairs.’ Willow led the way up to the spare bathroom, which was as immaculate as every room for which Mrs Rusham was responsible, and left Mary-Jane to reapply her makeup.

  ‘I am sorry to be so silly,’ she said when she returned to the drawing-room some time later. Willow could see that the whites of her eyes were slightly red, but that was the only sign of grief left on her face.

  ‘You weren’t. It must be hell for you to have to do your grieving so secretly.’

  Mary-Jane smiled with difficulty and bowed her head.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about me and Alex, but you clearly know that we were close. I hoped … It’s even sillier, but although I wanted to find out whether you and he … I just wanted to talk about him too.’

  With a silent apology to the absent Tom, Willow took the opportunity that lay in front of her begging to be used.

  ‘He and I were truly no more than doctor and patient. What made you think we might know each other better than that?’

  Mary-Jane’s cheeks coloured again and she looked up at the ceiling as though determined not to let any more tears seep out of her eyes.

  ‘It’s just,’ she said, still gazing upwards, ‘that when we fell in love he had to extricate himself from another relationship. And the awful thing was that the woman still loved him and couldn’t bear to let him go. He hated having to do it, but he had no option, honestly. I remember pitying her then and admiring the way she handled it. She was very dignified and I found myself once hoping that I’d be able to behave as well as she did when it was my turn to be supplanted. I just hadn’t thought that my turn might come quite so quickly.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need to worry about that any more because it hadn’t,’ said Willow. ‘But it was generous of you to admire her in those circumstances. Who was she?’

  ‘A nurse at Dowting’s. A nice woman, intelligent and attractive. I felt sorry for her, but they’d run out of what was good between them and it had turned into no more than duty. In a way it was ruining both their lives. That probably sounds horribly cruel, but it’s true. It had been wonderful and she’d been very good to him after his divorce, but …’

  ‘He’d got bored with her,’ suggested Willow brutally.

  ‘Yes.’

  Willow respected Mary-Jane Roguely for that simple assent. It would have been so easy to make excuses for Alex Ringstead.

  ‘Have you seen her since? Do you know what’s happened to her?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her, but I know she’s working at that new private hospital out at Chiswick. Alex got her the job. At least he arranged for her to be head-hunted by them. He’s an old friend of one of the owners. He thought it was the least he could do once she’d decided she had to resign from Dowting’s. She’s earning much more at Chiswick than she did in the Health Service and she’ll get over him. I’m sure she will.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Willow shrugged and waited.

  ‘Marigold, if you can believe it,’ said Mary-Jane with the first suggestion of antagonism to her predecessor. ‘Marigold Corfe. He called her Goldilocks.’ Tears gathered in her eyes again and she looked at Willow as though she were begging for something.

  ‘What did he call you?’ she asked, trying to provide it.

  ‘Just Mary-Jane.’ The tears fell and she sobbed once and caught her breath. ‘He said that this was too important to water down with silly nicknames.’

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Willow. ‘He must have loved you very much.’

  At that Mary-Jane gave in to such a storm of tears that Willow felt she needed help and went to fetch Mrs Rusham, who seemed quite capable of doing everything that was necessary. Willow herself, hearing Lucinda crying, ran upstairs to rescue her.

  The maternity dress
had not been designed with feeding in mind and Willow had to undo the long zip at the back and pull the dress down round her waist while Lucinda lay in her cot, crying with ever-increasing frenzy. When she was sucking strongly, Willow stroked her soft, fuzzy hair, which to her great relief still looked more brown than red, and thought about what Mary-Jane Roguely had told her.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Mary-Jane had left, well enough soothed by Mrs Rusham to remember to ask to see Lucinda and say all the right things about her, Willow telephoned the glossy new private hospital in Chiswick. A beautifully spoken receptionist answered and Willow asked to speak to Marigold Corfe adding: ‘Unless she’s still on night duty.’

  ‘Are you certain it’s Sister Corfe you want? She has never been on night duty since she started working here.’

  ‘Hasn’t she?’ said Willow. ‘I thought someone said she had been doing nights for the last three weeks.’

  ‘No, you must be thinking of someone else. Hold on a moment.’ Within a very short time the receptionist was saying: ‘Could it possibly be Nurse Curtis you were thinking of? She’s certainly been working nights.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Willow, wondering how to get out of the mess she had made of her attempt to establish an easy alibi for Marigold Corfe. ‘It really is Sister Corfe I want. Marigold Corfe.’

  ‘Very well. Hold on a moment and I’ll see if she’s available.’

  Willow waited, rehearsing her opening remarks, but it was the same efficient, attractive voice that eventually said: ‘I am afraid she is tied up just now, but she should be free within ten or fifteen minutes. Would you like to leave your name and number so that she can get back to you?’

  Willow gave her name as King and dictated her telephone number. As she sat waiting for the call, it struck her that Marigold Corfe must be one of the very few people who would have had trouble escaping notice in the obstetrics unit of Dowting’s Hospital. Anyone who still worked there could move in and out of the various rooms and wards without worrying about being conspicuous, and any stranger would be assumed to be a relative of one of the women giving birth. But a nurse who had once worked in the hospital and then resigned would be bound to cause comment. Someone would have recognised her and wondered what she was up to. The telephone rang under Willow’s hand and she picked up the receiver at once, saying merely: ‘Hello?’