Bitter Herbs Read online

  ‘Oh, who is that?’ asked Willow.

  ‘He is, but there are other people getting a bit too. Mrs Guy will get twenty-five thousand, which is at least twenty-thousand too much if you ask me, and the doctor gets the same and so does Patty Smithe. At least we think she does. The wording says “if she should be working for me at the time of my death”, and technically she was, although she hadn’t been to the house for nearly two weeks. Mr Plimpton gets quite a lot of the furniture and most of the paintings as well as whatever’s left over. But he doesn’t think it’ll be all that much after the tax has been paid and the others have had their legacies.’

  ‘Well that sounds most suitable.’ Willow could not imagine that Gerald Plimpton would have participated in a murder for the furniture and the residue of the money, but it was possible that twenty-five thousand pounds could have been enough to excite someone’s greed, and three hundred thousand and a beautiful house were infinitely more than the gains of many murderers whose parole forms she had read at the Home Office.

  ‘But I’m surprised,’ Willow went on aloud without too great a delay, ‘that Mr Plimpton should have told you all the details. You seemed so sure that he wouldn’t.’

  ‘I know.’ Marilyn’s face changed. ‘He was reluctant even after I’d told him about all the trouble this morning. But eventually I made him understand.’

  ‘What did happen?’ Willow knew that she sounded abrupt, but her curiousity was pricking furiously.

  ‘Peter and I had a terrible row,’ said Marilyn in a matter-of-fact way, ‘and I told him to get out of the cottage. He said I wasn’t in a position to throw him out of a house that wasn’t mine and that would probably be his as soon as all the probate business had been dealt with.’

  ‘You mean he thought your aunt was leaving it to him?’ Willow hoped that she did not sound quite as astonished as she felt.

  ‘So he said. He thought she’d promised to leave him the cottage and the house months ago. When he said it, it seemed horribly likely.’

  ‘But why, Marilyn? Why do you think she liked him so much? After all he was your friend, and you’ve told me often enough that she treated you really badly. Why should he have been different?’

  ‘I used to think,’ said Marilyn, ‘that she just did it to spite me, which would be utterly typical of her. It’s the kind of thing she’d enjoy. But recently I’ve been wondering if it wasn’t simpler. He used to butter her up all the time, flirt with her, tell her how magnificent she was and just like Queen Elizabeth I.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Willow, amused. ‘He must have seen himself as the Earl of Essex. Talk about folie de grandeur!’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But it’s what he used to say to her. I heard them at it often. It makes me feel quite sick to think of it!’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Willow, not altogether truthfully. She was extremely surprised that Marilyn should have continued to house and feed a man who sucked up to her hated and tyrannical aunt in such a way.

  ‘I nearly hit him this morning when he told me all over again how much she adored him, and I knew I couldn’t bear to stay in the house any longer if it really was going to be his. When I told Mr Plimpton all about it, he decided I ought to know the facts about the will after all. And so then I told Peter, which was absolutely the best thing that I’ve ever done.’

  ‘That was lucky then.’

  ‘I say, shall we go up?’ said Marilyn as they reached the foot of the spiral staircase up to the gallery. ‘I never can when I’ve Sarah with me. She gets awful vertigo.’

  ‘Let’s,’ said Willow, moving to let the other woman lead the way.

  They walked up the steep, twisting stairs in silence, concentrating on their feet until they reached the gallery, from where they could look down at the wonderful mixture of greens and browns of the leaves below them. The scent seemed different up there, less musty, and the air was fresher and cooler. Willow asked no questions, following her guide in silence. Eventually, Marilyn stopped and leaned her elbows on the broad iron rail of the gallery’s edge. Her face looked hard. Staring down at the spreading leaves of a squat tree below her, she started to bite her lips.

  ‘Isn’t that a marvellous sight?’ Willow pointed to the second staircase that could be seen rising out of the dense forest to their left, almost smothered by the leaves of what looked like a giant bamboo. ‘It’s like something out of a weird dream of pursuit and escape.’

  ‘Why?’ Marilyn’s voice was flat and incurious, but Willow answered her question, trying to explain her own moment of vivid imagination.

  ‘If you ignore everything except the trees, you can imagine being in some steamy tropical forest, trying to get away from your pursuers – slavering dogs, perhaps – and suddenly you see that graceful white staircase and start flying up it away from all the hell on the ground.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t. If you could get up it, so could they and their dogs.’ Marilyn’s literalness made Willow sigh.

  ‘It was just an idea I had.’

  ‘Oh. Well, anyway, when I told Peter to get out and accused him of only living with me to weasel his way into my aunt’s affections, d’you know what he said to me? He said that no one would ever have wanted to live with a dreary, suburban skivvy like me for any other reason.’

  Her outrage, which at last seemed justified, stopped Willow’s wandering thoughts.

  ‘What a shit he must be,’ she said more frankly than she usually spoke to Marilyn. ‘I’m not surprised you were angry.’

  A faint light flickered in Marilyn’s brown eyes.

  ‘Not half as angry as he was when I told him that he had to go and why. He was so sure, you see. But he was wrong.’ Her voice rose again as she added: ‘In spite of all those candlelit dinners I had to watch them at, and all his horrible charm, she liked me best.’

  Willow was both amused by Marilyn’s childishness and disturbed by her spite. They leaned on the white iron railing, watching a steady drip of condensation making a pool on the floor below. Willow began to wonder for the first time whether Marilyn had shared more than her physical appearance with her aunt. Downtrodden though Marilyn had been, perhaps now that she had the power that money always brings she would take the same pleasure her aunt had found in punishing other people for her remembered sufferings.

  ‘How did you and Peter come to be sharing the cottage in the first place?’ Willow asked, setting off towards the downward spiral staircase.

  ‘I asked Aunt Ethel if he could live with Sarah and me after he came out of hospital,’ said Marilyn more calmly. ‘He wrote to tell me that he needed us then, you see, even though he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with us before.’

  ‘That sounds,’ said Willow carefully, ‘as though he might be Sarah’s father. I’m sorry if I sound intrusive.’

  ‘I thought you knew he was.’ Marilyn laughed shrilly. ‘But I don’t know why. How could you have known?’

  ‘Did your aunt know?’

  ‘I never told her,’ said Marilyn after a pause. ‘It always seemed better that she shouldn’t know for certain, whatever she might have guessed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, because she had a lot to say about the horribleness of men and she might never have let Peter live with us.’

  ‘Well, she’d have been right about him, wouldn’t she?’ said Willow.

  Marilyn looked startled for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but I didn’t know that then. She never asked about Sarah’s father, you know, not once. And we’d already been living in the cottage for five years before Peter came. There didn’t seem any point telling her.’

  They reached the stairs and Willow started down, thinking how pleasant it was to be in the palm house alone. The only other time she’d been in there had been one Saturday afternoon when people had had to queue for the stairs and children’s shrill voices had bounced off the glass sides and roof, punctuated by the exasperated commands of thei
r fretful parents.

  ‘Perhaps he told her he was Sarah’s father,’ said Willow, half to herself, ‘and that’s why she got so angry just before Christmas and decided to change her will.’

  There was a slithering sound and a curse behind her. Willow half turned to see something coming towards her, but before she could do or say anything, she was hit forcefully across the shoulders. Falling forwards, Willow saw the steep spiral stairs surging up towards her. Panic-stricken and beyond thought, she flung out her right arm towards the decorative banister. One of her gloved fingers banged into a leaf-shaped panel and was bent agonisingly back on itself. Despite the pain, she just managed to get a grip of the banister.

  But the speed of her fall pulled her fingers away. She desperately tried to hang on, her teeth gritted and every muscle fighting for safety. Her shoulder was ferociously wrenched and she felt herself falling towards the harsh greyness of the steps. They seemed to plunge downwards for miles ahead, a sickening spiral of fear. Flinging up her hands to protect her head and face just before the impact, Willow felt the steps crunch into her thighs and stomach and breasts and elbows.

  Her body slithered agonisingly on, blood rushing into her head and making it intolerably heavy. She tried to swing herself across the stairs to stop the terrifying fall. Her half-protected head cracked against one of the banister rails and she gasped.

  The next twist in the spiral allowed her to jam one hand against the broad central pillar. Her leather glove pressed against the white-painted iron and slowed the descent a little. Her body was still moving, but for a moment she thought she might be safe.

  A split second later, her hand was struck heavily by one of Marilyn’s booted feet and her neck by the other. Marilyn’s whole weight fell on to Willow’s body, forcing her head further down. On they fell as though they were on some hellish version of a helter-skelter. Scrabbling with her hands for purchase to stop the momentum, Willow scraped her palms even through her gloves and banged her head and bruised her ankles.

  At last she managed to get both hands round one of the plain rails. Gritting her teeth against the force and the pain, she let her body swivel and slammed her booted feet into the central pillar and eventually managed to get herself the right way up and her feet in front of Marilyn so that she, too, could fall no further.

  The blood seemed to recede from Willow’s painful head, leaving it aching. She leaned her back against one of the heavily moulded iron banisters and caught her breath. Looking up, she realised that they had fallen only about fifteen feet. It had felt like fifty.

  Breathing in deep, tearing gasps, she managed to say with all the sharpness induced by real physical terror:

  ‘How could you be so stupid? Why didn’t you hang on to the sides?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Marilyn?’ she said even more sharply. ‘Are you all right?’

  Twisting her painful body, Willow levered herself upright enough to look at the other woman’s face. It was yellowish white and completely expressionless, the eyes closed and the mouth slack. A large dark bruise was already forming on the side of her forehead. Realising that Marilyn must have knocked herself out when her head hit one of the hard steps or the banisters, Willow let some of her anger go and tried to think.

  Waiting until her own breathing was almost normal, she stood up, feeling all her bruises and wrenched muscles, and took off her coat to prop Marilyn safely against the banisters. When she was certain the other woman could not fall again, Willow made her way down the rest of the twisting stair, holding on to both rails and stepping carefully around the worn, slippery patch in the centre of each tread.

  She was trembling by the time she reached the bottom and felt horribly dizzy. Only the thought of fresh air made her able to loosen her hold on the iron rails so that she could walk on out of the steamy heat.

  Breathing great gulps of painfully, wonderfully, cold air, she ran down the hard asphalt paths towards the main gate. Her breath hurt her throat as it was forced upwards by her pumping heart and there was a stitch in her side to add to her increasingly sore bruises. She was sweating from the effort but her body was bitterly cold.

  At last she reached the gatehouse and a welcoming woman with short hair and a helpful smile. In the face of her incredulity, Willow gasped out her story and asked for help.

  ‘Is it bad enough for an ambulance?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t have thought so,’ Willow said, leaning against the wooden sides of the hut, panting. ‘I can’t see how she can have broken anything, since I was underneath her and I’m only bruised.

  But she’s too heavy for me to lift on my own and her house is way down towards the bottom of the green. Can you help?’

  ‘I can’t leave the gate, but don’t worry. I’ll get you some help.’

  ‘I know what we ought to do,’ said Willow, wondering how she could have forgotten the doctor’s devotion. ‘Ring Doctor Trenor’s surgery and see if he’s there. Tell him Marilyn Posselthwate has had an accident. She’s a patient of his. I haven’t got his number, but it’ll be in the book.’

  ‘It’s all right, I know the number.’ The dark-haired woman smiled again. ‘He’s my doctor, too. You’d better come in and sit down.’

  ‘I must go back to her. If he can’t come, will you let me know somehow?’

  ‘All right. You go on back.’

  Dr Trenor came running into the palm house twenty minutes later, by which time Marilyn had come round briefly and complained of a headache and bruises and then apparently sunk back into unconsciousness. He flung himself on his knees at her side, saying furiously over his shoulder to Willow, who had descended the stairs again to get out of his way and was waiting at the bottom, sitting on the edge of the nearest flower bed:

  ‘What have you done to her?’

  Willow’s mind started working again. Knowledge of the changed will flashed past pictures of the doctor’s intense anxiety and Marilyn’s stated affection for him, her inheritance, his loathing of Peter Farrfield, his certification of the death without any kind of post-mortem examination, his anatomical knowledge, Marilyn’s clearly desperate need to be free of her aunt’s temperament.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Willow with what she felt was remarkable coolness. ‘She did it. She slipped somehow and banged into me and the two of us went tumbling down. I’m bruised but she’s the only one to break her crown.’

  It was not until she saw the doctor’s outrage that she realised she had been quoting from ‘Jack and Jill’and thought she must be lightheaded herself.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m a bit shaken. She was awake a few minutes ago and seemed perfectly normal, if bruised. I’m not sure if she’s fainted or what.’

  ‘Yes; I see. Stay there. I’ll attend to you later.’

  He touched Marilyn’s face, calling her name over and over. Willow disobeyed his instruction, wanting to know exactly what Marilyn’s first words to him would be.

  They were disappointingly banal.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You fell,’ said Doctor Trenor, holding her hands. ‘But as far as I can see there’s no serious damage. Can you sit up?’

  She did as he asked, wincing. When he asked her very gently what hurt she stretched out one of her arms. Willow noticed for the first time that she had remarkably small hands.

  ‘It’s my wrist. It really hurts.’

  He manipulated it carefully and said she’d sprained it.

  ‘It won’t kill you, luckily.’

  She managed a shaky laugh and he added: ‘Come on, young Marilyn, up with you. Miss King and I will help you back to the house and I can give you a proper examination there and some strapping for the wrist.’

  ‘Willow? She was falling, too. Is she all right?’

  Willow moved out of the shadow of a large tree with fern-like leaves and smiled slightly. She was still angry, and the terror of facing that plunge downwards had not left her, but there seemed no point in yelling about her feelings.<
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  ‘Luckily my injuries seem to be superficial. Nothing hurts badly except my shoulder and that’s probably just wrenched.’

  The doctor handed her the coat she had used to wedge Marilyn against the banister. Willow put it on, wincing as she moved her right shoulder, while he helped his patient to her feet. With him on the side of her sprained wrist and Willow on the other, they moved slowly along the central aisle of the glasshouse and out into the cold once more.

  It took them fifteen painful minutes to get back to the main gate, where Willow offered to fetch her car so that she could drive Marilyn the hundred yards or so to her house.

  There they discovered that Mrs Guy had already gone, even though it was only twenty-past four. Being under notice, she must have decided she no longer needed to work a full day. There was no sign of Peter Farrfield either. Under Marilyn’s instruction the doctor telephoned the cottage, but there was no answer.

  ‘Selfish toad’s probably sulking somewhere,’ he said angrily.

  ‘Or drinking in the pub,’ said Marilyn bitterly. ‘That’s what he usually does when we’ve had words.’

  ‘What about the secretaries?’ said the doctor. ‘Can’t one of them make you some tea while I get you to bed?’

  ‘Don’t let’s worry them,’ said Willow quickly. ‘I can do that. I know where the kitchen is.’

  Neither of the other two protested and so Willow left them walking slowly up the stairs towards the second floor, amused to think of herself with the freedom of the house. At the head of the steep basement stairs Willow stopped, suddenly assailed with what she assumed must be vertigo.

  The mixture of dizziness and swooping fear was not something she had felt before. Pressing her hands flat against the wall and not looking down, she started her descent, wincing at each step as she jarred her bruised body.

  Poking about in the cupboards in search of cups, a teapot and a milk jug, she saw that Gloria had owned two sets of china: one, presumably for her own use, was modern Sèvres; the other was a basic, heavily glazed, dark-brown farmhouse set. Willow chose the French porcelain for the tray she soon carried upstairs.