Bloody Roses Page 16

  Willow pulled one of the curtains aside and tried to assess the likely heat.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said, turning back into the room. Tom looked through a pile of shirts and offered her a choice between a plain yellow short-sleeved polo shirt and a long-sleeved office shirt made of thin white cotton woven with narrow blue stripes. She chose the striped one and wore it tucked into her old black trousers, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the neck wide open.

  Tom stood looking at her with such obvious approval in his face that she could not help laughing.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘you like this better than all those expensive suits and dresses. But I enjoy wearing them.’

  ‘That’s what matters,’ he said easily. ‘Come on. I’ll drive you to Kew and we’ll walk along the towpath. There’s hardly ever anyone there.’

  When he had parked the car and they had walked down the steps at Kew Bridge, he asked her whether she thought she would enjoy the next six months without the Clapham part of her life.

  ‘Definitely.’ Willow both felt and sounded tougher now that they had left the dangerous subjects of sex and love behind. The path narrowed and they had to walk in single file. ‘Not least being able to spend all my time in Chesham Place. I’ve discovered that I had come to loathe, really loathe, the Clapham flat, which is presumably why I haven’t got round to having the roof mended or the rooms redecorated.’

  ‘Could you really be happy in just one place after all these years?’ asked Tom from behind her. ‘The mixture seemed to suit you so well, even if you didn’t actually like Clapham while you were there.’

  Remembering Richard’s increasingly petulant criticisms of her fantastic deception and divided life, Willow felt grateful for Tom’s calm acceptance.

  ‘I think it may have served its purpose,’ she said slowly, ‘although I do know what you mean.’ She laughed. ‘I still have plenty of other fantasies I could put into practice if I find that full-time Cressidery is too much.’

  ‘Such as?’ There was amusement in Tom’s deep voice and pleasure too. Willow heard it and turned back for a moment to put a hand on his.

  ‘Oh, a little dark cottage somewhere, filled with primitively beautiful old oak furniture and seventeenth-century textiles. An old four-poster bed and big fires and lots of rain outside, and …’

  ‘And coming in through the old, old roof,’ he said caustically, but still laughing.

  ‘Exactly. Damp and dark and quite different from Chesham Place. But warm too. No, perhaps not damp. Or perhaps I could rescue it from the damp and decay; and make a garden.’

  More than willing to encourage her to distract herself from her doomed investigation, Tom asked what she would grow. The path widened again and they strolled on side by side.

  ‘A muddle of apple trees and roses and daffodils in the grass in spring. Nothing obviously designed. Plenty of mossy stone and paths of old brick in a herringbone pattern. Red brick that’s gone pale with age. Vegetables perhaps.’

  ‘It all sounds quite sensible – and well within your grasp.’ Tom was amused by both the modesty and the domesticity of her new dreams. ‘Why not look for a place?’

  ‘Perhaps I will when this is over.’

  Willow looked sideways at Tom, surprising an unguarded expression on his face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to be as gentle as he had been, ‘but I can’t forget R– the case.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said, thinking how badly he wanted to suggest that they should buy the cottage together. ‘I just don’t like to think of what you may have to face, when … if things go wrong.’

  Willow’s face grew bleak as they stared at each other.

  ‘Even if I fail to stop the trial and even if his counsel fails and he is convicted,’ she said at last, ‘there’s always hope. Thank God for Sydney Silverman.’

  Tom’s mind was so occupied with Richard Crescent that for a moment he looked puzzled.

  ‘Who campaigned in the House of Commons for an end to hanging, you ignoramus,’ said Willow.

  Tom grinned. ‘Come on, Will,’ he said, ‘let’s speed up. You need to walk off all that anxiety.’

  Recognizing her ambivalent reaction to Tom’s orders, Willow strode out beside him. They walked for about two miles past the Botanic Gardens and the Old Deer Park before her feet began to hurt and she suggested returning. Tom pointed to an old bench, half-hidden in the frothing white and green bank.

  ‘How about a little sit?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Willow. She looked at the long grasses, already curving under the weight of their ripening seeds, at the cow parsley and the angelica, the dandelions and the nettles and wondered whether to change the decoration of her dining room.

  ‘That silvery pink is rather stuffy in hot weather,’ she said vaguely.

  Tom looked at her with eyes that were both amused and quizzical. ‘What are you thinking about, Will?’

  ‘What? Oh, just my dining room. This green and white is so … restful: I was thinking about redoing the dining room.’

  Tom thought of several questions he wanted to ask Willow about the way she protected herself from the things she could not bear to think about, but he did not want to make her angry – or to hurt her.

  ‘Why was it, do you think, that the civil service suited you so well?’ he asked at last.

  Willow turned at once with a wide smile. There had been absolutely no comment in his question, let alone criticism.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she said honestly. ‘Originally I assumed that I needed to have a job I wanted to escape from in order to have the necessary impetus to write escapist fiction. Then I wondered whether it was all part of my horror of completely committing myself to any one thing.’

  ‘And now?’ he said, suppressing a smile.

  ‘Now?’ she said, drawing out the vowel. ‘Now I think it may have more to do with not wanting to stop playing.’ She looked straight ahead through the green-and-white lace that concealed the river.

  ‘I’m not sure that I understand.’

  Willow frowned, not in anger but in an effort to find accurate words to use to explain something that she herself had not fully understood. The uncertainty was a new experience for her and she was both interested and disturbed by it.

  ‘While Cressida Woodruffe was a game,’ she said slowly, ‘it did not matter terribly what the books were like or what anyone thought of them.’

  She stopped talking and concentrated on the glittering patches of water that were revealed by tiny gaps in the tangle of wild flowers.

  ‘DOAP was still the real world. It was hard work, dull, frustrating and completely safe. If I get rid of that safety net then what was entirely frivolous becomes reality and starts to matter. I’m rather afraid that I simply won’t be able to write escapist tosh any longer.’ She turned to face him again. ‘D’you see now?’

  ‘Would it matter so much?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Catching sight of the expression in his brown eyes, she added a warning: ‘Don’t tell me I ought to write something serious.’

  Tom got up and held out a hand. Willow took it after a moment’s hesitation and allowed him to pull her up from the bench. They set off in silence back along the towpath.

  ‘Why not?’ Tom asked about ten minutes later when they were once again walking in single file.

  ‘Because,’ said Willow, who was ahead of him, ‘people need escapist tosh; I’m good at providing it; there’s nothing wrong with it; and I loathe it when people make me feel defensive about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said in a friendly voice. Willow was left feeling that she had been unreasonable, but she was too tired – and too reluctant – to try to explain herself any further.

  When they reached the car, Tom wanted to take her out for tea, but Willow shook her head.

  ‘I’d be horrible company,’ she said, ‘and I want to get back.’

  ‘May I come with you? Will, I’d never ask if
things were normal, but they’re not. I’d like to be about just in case you need anything. I’ll read the papers and sit quietly. Please?’

  Torn between wanting to be alone with her anxieties and her feeling that she had never matched his generosity or tolerance, Willow at last agreed.

  True to his promise, Tom settled himself on one of her sofas with the day’s newspapers while she retreated to her writing room and telephoned Andrew Salcott once again. That time he answered.

  ‘Hello, Andrew. It’s Cressida Woodruffe here.’

  ‘Well, hello! How are you? Still scribbling away?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well and truly recovered now, I hope. How are your legs?’

  ‘Not bad at all. I’m fine, really, despite trying to force myself on with the new book, which is giving me a few research problems.’

  ‘Do I detect a sly request for professional advice here?’

  Making herself smile, Willow said: ‘Actually, yes. You’re obviously a brilliant diagnostician. What I’m after is some information on blood clotting, and –’

  ‘Can’t help, I’m afraid. I’m no haematologist.’ He laughed. ‘I used to think that phagocytes were places where gender-benders met.’

  ‘It’s not particularly specialized information,’ said Willow repressively. Much as she enjoyed word games, she had more urgent things to think about. Besides, she was not sure what phagocytes were and did not want to display any greater ignorance than was necessary. ‘I was just wondering whether there’s anything like haemophilia that affects women.’

  There was a short pause and then the sound of a cigarette lighter and a deep inhalation.

  ‘Well, yes; as far as I can remember there are several known causes of hypoprothrombinemia. Von Willebrand’s disease affects both sexes, for example. Not enough work has been done on blood coagulation, though; they keep discovering more and more odd conditions that cause prothrombin deficiency. And there’s always the effect of the anticoagulants.’

  ‘What?’ It all sounded hopeful to Willow, especially the bit about more and more odd conditions, and she cursed herself for having wasted so much time before talking to him.

  Her ignorance seemed inexcusable. After all, she had considered haemophilia during her meeting with Biggleigh-Clart and yet had dismissed it. If she had had Emma’s humility she might have asked the necessary questions days ago. Willow disliked admitting her own inadequacies and in a sudden access of self-consciousness remembered how doubtful the two bankers had been about her sleuthing ability.

  ‘What are the anticoagulants?’ she asked.

  ‘Warfarin, heparin, phenindione – all given to patients at risk of thromboses.’

  ‘Warfarin? Isn’t that rat poison?’ Willow could not ignore a memory of Richard’s disgusted face one evening when he told her that mice had been found in the building next to his flat and threatened to invade it.

  ‘It is used as a rodenticide, but in therapeutic doses it prevents clots in humans. In bigger doses, it deals with human clots, too. Hah! Hah!’

  Willow took a moment to laugh dutifully and then asked her next question.

  ‘Would it prevent clotting altogether or simply delay it, and if so, for how long?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say without more data.’ Salcott’s voice still held overtones of his rollicking laugh, but he was sobering as he talked. ‘They all have different timings. If I remember right, warfarin, for example, when taken by mouth rather than intravenously or intramuscularly, is most effective thirty-six hours after it has been taken and passes off after about forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Oh. But it would be true to say that there are conditions, naturally occurring or medically induced, that would slow down the normal clotting of blood in women?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And would they show up in a postmortem?’

  ‘Crime novels now, eh? That’s a new departure.’

  Willow said nothing and Salcott, his voice still sounding his amusement, proceeded to answer.

  ‘Warfarin and the rest would be very easy to detect. I take it that you want something undetectable by ordinary work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, say you have a body with its throat cut and the blood still dripping: I need some explanation for the blood still being liquid about half an hour after the killing. Is there anything?’

  Salcott laughed. ‘An inordinate number of things. What is the position of your body?’

  ‘Half suspended on a chair with its head down and the blood dripping out.’

  ‘Then it would go on dripping for hours.’

  ‘Really? But I thought blood clotted almost as soon as it met air,’ said Willow with a vivid memory of the haemophiliac victim in one of Dorothy Sayers’s novels.

  ‘’Fraid not. All sorts of things could affect it.’

  ‘Tell me a few that I might be able to use,’ said Willow, wondering why everyone concerned had apparently accepted that the time of death was limited by the freshness of the blood.

  ‘Apart from the ones I’ve already given you, I’d suggest a Vitamin K deficiency that would affect the formation of prothrombin and stop the platelets adhering normally. There are plenty of other things, too, but I haven’t even thought about any of this since I was a student. You’d do better looking it up in a decent medical encyclopedia or talking to a competent pathologist.’

  ‘Except that I probably wouldn’t understand an encyclopedia,’ said Willow with deliberate and not wholly artificial pathos. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thank you, Andrew.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. You sound more cheerful. Dinner one of these days?’

  ‘Lovely. May I ring you?’

  ‘Be sure you do. Last time you said that, the next I saw of you was with both your legs in plaster.’

  ‘That was hardly my fault.’

  ‘No. I’m glad you’re keeping in touch. See you soon. And take care.’

  Willow thanked him and went into the drawing room. Tom looked up, let the Independent drop to the floor and got up.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Something encouraging. I came to ask whether you’d like tea. Mrs Rusham will have left us something. I know it’s rather late, but what about it?’

  ‘I’d like it a lot.’

  They went together to the kitchen and found the usual selection of savoury sandwiches, keeping fresh under a clean, damp teatowel, and a plate of small cakes. Tom filled the kettle while Willow reached into one of the immaculate cupboards for a teapot. She took the first one her fingers met, which proved to be of Herend porcelain, dumped it on the worktop beside the kettle and removed the teatowel from the sand-wiches.

  ‘Hm, crab and watercress. Good,’ she said, putting two tiny brown-bread triangles together and taking a bite of both.

  ‘You look hungry,’ said Tom with a wide smile.

  ‘I’ve just realized that I am,’ she said. ‘I’ve been finding eating difficult, but things are looking up.’

  ‘Don’t –’ Tom began and then stopped. The kettle switched itself off and he warmed the pot, added three spoons of Earl Grey tea and then turned back to face Willow, who was still eating. There was an expression of triumph and conscious greediness in her face.

  ‘Don’t what?’ she said through her mouthful of bread and crabmeat.

  ‘Don’t build too much on whatever it is.’ Watching the increasingly stubborn look in her pale-green eyes, he hastily added: ‘I’m not asking you to tell me what it is, merely to guard against disappointment.’

  He carried the teapot to the table and put it on a cork mat. Willow swallowed and collected two matching cups and saucers and sat down at the table.

  ‘If I tell you,’ she said, ‘would you feel obliged to pass it on to Moreby?’

  ‘Not necessarily. If you were about to make us all look like fools or worse, I might have to warn her, but not if you’ve just had a wizard wheez
e.’

  Willow managed to laugh.

  ‘Nothing like that. It’s just that the main reason for them to suspect Richard was the condition of the victim’s blood. It was still completely liquid when they were found; there was no jellifying, no clotting, no separation into the clot and the serum. Everyone seems to have taken that to mean that the blood was shed only a few moments before the computer man found Richard with the body.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Tom cautiously. ‘There’s also the short-circuiting of the keyboard. That alerted him and it must have happened as soon as the blood got into the machine.’

  Willow poured out the tea and added milk from a carton out of the immense fridge while she thought. After a while her face cleared.

  ‘Listen, Tom; there’s a perfectly good explanation. The body was hanging head downwards when Richard tried to lift it, which is partly why it would still have been dripping blood. We know that he stumbled and generally made a terrific mess. He probably kicked the keyboard nearer the dripping blood, which would mean that the time when the computers went down was immaterial after all.’

  ‘That’s possible, but –’ Before Tom could finish, Willow had rushed on.

  ‘Or perhaps it was Richard who tipped over the flowers so that it was their water that caused the trouble and not the blood at all. He did say that the flowers were all over the floor when he first saw the body, but he could have been muddled.’

  Tom looked sceptical.

  ‘Even if either of those were true, I don’t see that they really help. He is the only person in the place who could have killed her.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Willow more robustly than she would have believed possible before her talk to Salcott. ‘If she died even half an hour earlier, then she could not have been killed by Richard.’

  ‘Then who did kill her? There was no one else there.’

  ‘You’re not thinking, Tom, or else Moreby hasn’t briefed you properly. There was the chief executive, for one. He was alone in his office from the time that his secretary left; he has his own bathroom, in which he could have washed off any bloodstains before he changed; and he was late for the dance.’

  ‘What would he have done with his bloody clothes?’ asked Tom, watching her in pity.