Fruiting Bodies Read online

‘I wonder what it is you really believe.’

  ‘I have told you. If you’re not convinced, there’s nothing I can do to persuade you. And if you’re about to ask whether I murdered him myself, I can assure you I did not.’

  ‘It never crossed my mind that you might have killed him,’ said Willow truthfully, an instant before she was seized by an attack of queasiness brought on by the recognition of just how easy it would have been for Sister Chesil to have done it.

  Always more interested in people’s motives for wanting someone dead than in the opportunity and means they might have had, Willow silently admitted that she had been ignoring one of Tom’s most important dicta on the subject of murder investigation:

  ‘Motive may be useful in building a case against a suspect, provided you first have some real evidence of his involvement, but it is rarely more than that. Once you start to use motive as a way of identifying possible suspects, you are landing yourself in trouble and aeons of wasted time.’

  Sister Chesil had been in and out of the delivery suites all night; she was one of the few people with the authority to summon Doctor Ringstead to the birthing pool. For her, he might well have knelt down to investigate something she could have put in the water for the purpose. She knew where all the clean, dry overalls were kept. And she, alone of the people Willow had interviewed, had felt the need to produce a plausible explanation of the killing.

  Trying not to show any sign of what she was thinking, Willow looked at the midwife and noticed the breadth of her shoulders and the strength of her spatulate fingers. She thought about the anger that had always hung about the woman like a miasma and began to long for the curtains to be opened again.

  ‘Since I’m here, I’d better have a look at you,’ said Sister Chesil.

  Startled out of her thoughts, Willow clutched the sheet that covered her. A surge of fear rose in her brain as she thought about the two severe haemorrhages she had suffered since Lucinda’s birth and tried to assess the possibility that they could have been the result of something someone had done to her when Lucinda was born. Sister Chesil would have had more opportunity than most for that as well. Perhaps she really had murdered Alex Ringstead and, afraid that Willow might have seen or heard something that would have given her away, decided that Willow, too, must die.

  Trying to sound perfectly cool and as confident as Emma, Willow explained that Doctor Kimmeridge had already examined her. Sister Chesil listened and nodded.

  ‘Yes, I know he had a look at you. I was briefed when I came on duty. Nevertheless I must do my job.’ She looked down at Willow with an indefinable expression before producing a small, cold smile and saying with audible sarcasm: ‘You are quite safe here, you know. And in any case there are plenty of people within earshot if you need them.’

  Half ashamed of her melodramatic fears, and yet still afraid, Willow closed her eyes, pushed down her bedclothes and let Sister Chesil get on with what she had to do. The examination was painless and over quite quickly.

  Sister Chesil stripped off her gloves with a sharp snapping sound, disposed of them and wrote some more notes on the chart. She then suggested that Willow stop wasting time fantasising in her unhealthy way about Mr Ringstead’s death and concentrate on her responsibilities to her child.

  Willow was left feeling a fool and still tingling from the adrenaline left by her access of fear. Before it had completely dissipated, Emma returned and her intelligent interest in the murder helped restore Willow’s emotional balance. Emma had plenty of questions to ask and as they talked Willow felt as though she were discovering a remarkable person.

  Eventually Emma said quietly: ‘You know, I can see that Chesil has the strength to have drowned Ringstead, plenty of opportunity, the anger necessary to cloud her judgment, and possibly even a slight motive, but she doesn’t convince me as a murderer. And if she had done it, wouldn’t she have been heavily splashed with water when she came back to deal with your haemorrhage? Surely you would have noticed that, even in those circumstances.’

  ‘I might not have because they were all wearing voluminous overalls at that stage. She could easily have put a dry one on over her wet uniform. They must have stacks of them somewhere.’

  ‘Even so, I can’t see it, Willow. Angry she undoubtedly was at the way Ringstead had treated Marigold, but she must have known that murdering him would hardly help restore her friend to happiness. I’d have thought this Durdle man a much better bet. From everything you’ve told me, he sounds the likeliest apart from Sir George Roguely, and you say that his alibi is watertight. Oh dear, how unfortunate! Unbreakable, I mean.’

  Willow acknowledged Emma’s unintended slip with a slight smile.

  ‘But Durdle’s so smooth. I can easily accept that he might have wanted to get his own back on Ringstead and even resorted to every possible kind of petty bureaucratic revenge, but physical action seems way outside his capabilities. It really does.’

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for that. After all, I’ve never met him. But you said at one moment that you thought you’d seen him before. Are you absolutely convinced that it could only have been at a clinic?’

  ‘Well, it’s much the likeliest, Emma. Marigold said that he used to attend the clinics with a stopwatch … No.’ Willow almost shouted and sat up much straighter. ‘Emma, you are brilliant. You’re right: it wasn’t at a clinic. I did see him on the night Ringstead was killed.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Emma with manifest satisfaction. ‘Where?’ ‘There was a man in a grey suit standing under the canopy over the main door, watching the WOMB demonstrators rioting. I’m sure it was Durdle. I couldn’t see him all that clearly at first, but he did come out into the light for a second. I’m sure it was him. The figure I saw had all his dapperness and was about the right height.’

  ‘But didn’t Marigold tell you that no manager is ever to be found in the hospital outside office hours?’ said Emma, playing devil’s advocate for once.

  ‘Yes, she did. But that doesn’t mean much. It’s the sort of thing the medical staff might well say. All the nurses seem to have been up in arms about something Durdle had tried to do to control them. If it was him … I wonder.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Emma.

  ‘And just what exactly are the two of you wondering about?’

  Willow and Emma both looked up, startled, to see Tom walking towards them, carrying a bundle of newspapers.

  ‘This and that,’ said Willow, holding out her hand. Tom took it between both of his, letting the newspapers slither on to the bed. ‘My mind doesn’t work at all well these days. It used to be so precise and analytical. Now all it does is wander fruitlessly round and round questions and wonder about the answers.’

  ‘Does it?’ he said drily. ‘Never mind. You’re looking much better than you were this morning, and the brains will sharpen up again soon.’

  He kissed his wife and then turned to shake hands with Emma, adding: ‘Will told me you were back in our lives, Emma, and I’ve been looking forward to this. It’s really good to see you. How are you?’

  She stayed with them for long enough to hear about Tom’s new job at Scotland Yard and tell him about her plans for the course in criminology. He was more enthusiastic about that than Willow would have expected and talked about two of his colleagues who had done the course and found it helpful.

  ‘I’m glad. I’ll pass that on to my dear brother the next time he starts pontificating about the waste of time he’s sure it’ll prove to be. He has a great respect for law’n’order.’

  ‘Even so, he’d die of chagrin if he thought you might join the police,’ said Willow. Emma let out a ringing peal of laughter and when she could talk again said: ‘On that note, I’d better go. It was bliss to see you both. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Goodbye, Emma.’ Tom stood up to kiss her cheek. When she had left the ward, he turned back to Willow. ‘I’m glad she’s back. I suspect you’ve missed her.’

  ‘D’you know, I think I may have. It hadn’
t occurred to me before. Now, d’you want a turn with Lucinda? She’s been behaving beautifully.’

  ‘Has she? She’s a good little baggage, isn’t she? No, you stay there. I’ll get her.’

  He cradled Lucinda in his left arm, using his right forefinger to stroke her as he crooned endearments. Willow looked at them askance, hating herself for not being more pleased that Tom was so much at ease with their daughter. As though she could understand everything that her mother was feeling, Lucinda started to cry.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom,’ said Willow with entirely false brightness. ‘She’s probably just hungry. Hand her over and I’ll feed her.’

  ‘Okay. Look, I ought to be getting back in any case. Don’t flog your brain too hard, Will,’ said Tom, bending down to place Lucinda in Willow’s arms. ‘Boscombe and her team are good at their job, and it is their job. I know you can’t forget Ringstead or stop thinking about who killed him, but try not to tear yourself apart over it.’

  Willow looked up at him, glad that he understood so much and was not trying to make her ignore the murder.

  ‘And make sure you get plenty of sleep tonight,’ he went on. ‘If the baggage makes a row give her to one of the nurses for soothing and turn over and go to sleep again. It’s what they’re paid for.’

  ‘All right.’ Willow put up her free hand to hold Tom’s cheek for a moment. He kissed her hand with a flourish and then disappeared, missing the arrival of Mrs Rusham by a bare five minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Mrs Rusham said as she put the box down. ‘Shall I come back later when you’ve finished feeding her?’

  ‘No, don’t. It’s lovely to see you.’ Willow was surprised by quite how much she disliked the idea of being left alone in the hospital. She kept telling herself that she could not really be frightened, but what she was feeling did seem disturbingly like fear whenever she let herself think about it.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Rusham?’

  ‘Well, thank you. I’ve brought you another picnic basket as well as the mail and all your messages. I wasn’t sure how long you would be in this time, and so there isn’t all that much food.’

  ‘I hope they’re going to let me out again tomorrow,’ said Willow devoutly and then tried to cover her fervour by adding casually: ‘I’m awfully sorry about the mess I must have left at home.’

  ‘No, that’s fine. Don’t worry about it. The washing machine is dealing with the sheets at the moment, and I think the mattress will come up quite well. Are you in much pain?’

  ‘Not a great deal now and they’re generous with their pills.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Mrs Rusham bent down to open her heavy-looking shopping-bag and brought out a tied bundle of envelopes. ‘Here’s the post. Several more deliveries of flowers have come: a huge arrangement from your American publishers and several bouquets and plants. There’s a list of the senders here. Oh, yes. A Miss Wilmingson called round in person.’

  ‘Miss Who?’

  ‘Wilmingson. Noel Wilmingson? She said that she was secretary to Sir George Roguely and she had come in search of a scarf his wife had left behind when she visited you. Miss Wilmingson said it was a Hermès scarf, which Lady Roguely particularly treasured because her husband had given it to her. I said that I had not seen anything like that but that I would ask you about it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Willow frowned. ‘I don’t remember seeing a scarf at all when she arrived, and I certainly didn’t notice one hanging about after she’d gone. What about you?’

  ‘I simply didn’t look to see what she was wearing at all. I do apologise.’

  ‘Good heavens! It’s not your fault, Mrs Rusham. Mary-Jane probably left it in her car or something. I’ll give her a ring and sort it out. Thank you for bringing all these.’

  ‘It was a pleasure. I’d better get back to the washing.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll probably see you at home some time tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well. Goodbye.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Willow ignored her letters and messages, determined to let Lucinda take her time feeding. Tom was right: she could not stop thinking about Alex Ringstead. The all-too-horrible probability that his murderer was somewhere quite close to her was beginning to take over her mind. She did her best to think about Lucinda, but she was not very successful. When the baby had given up bothering to suck at all, Willow gently withdrew her breast, wiped Lucinda’s minute mouth and propped her up against her shoulder, patted her once or twice and thought of something else that might keep her mind away from murder. She began to open her post around Lucinda’s back.

  The first envelope was a stout brown one, out of which fell a clutter of press cuttings. There was a short note attached to the first in Richard Crescent’s spiky black handwriting:

  Willow, here’s all I could find about George Roguely. You seemed very interested in him. I hope this helps in whatever it is that you are up to. I also hope the infant has stopped being sick and that you’re recovering from all the beastliness. Although I must say, for someone who’d just been through all that, you looked magnificent. Let me know when you’re up and about again. I’d like to fix a celebration dinner for you and Tom.

  Love, Richard.

  Lucinda produced a satisfactory bubble of wind just then and

  so Willow laid her back in her cot. She herself sat down in one of the visitors’chairs to read through the cuttings. They went back several years and consisted mainly of short paragraphs about takeover battles George Roguely had won, acquisitions he had made, or announcements about his enormous – and apparently ever-increasing – annual salary package, but there was also a long interview with him from one of the main Saturday broadsheets.

  Willow read through it with interest, intrigued to see how much the interviewer had admired George Roguely. Among his other attributes was apparently a deep loyalty to his staff, which was surprising in view of what Richard had said about his ruthlessness. Willow stared at the transparent side of Lucinda’s cot, seeing nothing as her brain began to add up all the separate bits and pieces of information she had been given. Eventually, arriving at no useful sum, she shrugged and went back to the cutting.

  The journalist went on to comment on Roguely’s superb management, his legendary drive, and his breadth of interests. At the end of the remarkably laudatory article came the interviewer’s final question:

  ‘And what, Sir John, would you say was the secret of your extraordinary success?’

  ‘Luck.’

  ‘That sounds very modest.’

  ‘Is it? It’s true, though. I have had the luck of being born optimistic, which has meant that I am not crippled by fear at times when I need all my energy for whatever project is underway. I have had the luck to be married to the perfect wife, who has given me everything a man could want including undeviating loyalty, which I can never sufficiently repay. And I have had the luck to work with excellent colleagues, who have all become friends and without whom I could never have achieved a tenth of what I have.’

  Re-reading the last paragraph, Willow had to remind herself that Roguely had been in the States on the night Lucinda was born. If it had not been for that, as Emma had said, he would have been the ideal suspect: a ruthless, efficient man, who was still in love with his faithless wife, and who must have known at least something about the hospital for which she was working so hard.

  Willow went so far as to consider whether it would have been possible for Roguely to sneak back to London, perhaps on Concorde, drown Ringstead and fly back to New York in time to be seen there at breakfast time the following morning.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she told herself silently as she saw through her longing to discover that the culprit had nothing to do with the hospital in which she was imprisoned for another night at least. ‘If the police got as far as Marigold Corfe, they‘ll certainly have checked something as obvious as Roguely’s alibi.’

  Looking again at the last few lines of the interview, Willow tried to imagine what it
was that Roguely had done to require so much loyalty from Mary-Jane that he had to mention it in public. She also wondered how he had managed to go on believing in his wife’s loyalty once he had become aware of her affair with Alex Ringstead. The date on the cutting showed that the interview was only a week old, which meant that it must have been written well after Roguely had learned about the liaison, indeed possibly after Alex Ringstead’s death. Perhaps Serena Fydgett had been right about Roguely’s ‘emotional sophistication’.

  ‘Hello!’ said a cheerful voice. ‘You’re looking very stern.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Willow, surprised by the salutation from an apparently strange woman. It took her a moment to identify her visitor. ‘Goodness, Ros! I hardly recognised you.’

  The strawberry leggings, heavy black hiking-boots and sagging cotton sweater of the WOMB demonstrator had been replaced by a short-skirted black linen suit, cream camisole and matt-black tights. They could have been worn by anyone in advertising, public relations, publishing or journalism. Ros’s face was beautifully made up, too, and her hair gleamed with conditioner and careful blow-drying.

  ‘You’re looking remarkably smart,’ said Willow, noticing that it was not just Ros’s clothes that were different. There was something about her glowing skin and ecstatic expression that suggested the sleekness of a woman well and truly stroked. ‘Have you been promoting WOMB on telly or something?’

  ‘No. I had an information-gathering lunch in that new restaurant Nine-Nine-Nine,’ Ros said, tossing back her hair. She wriggled. ‘Amazingly good though it was, I’m not sure it was worth dressing up like this. I can’t wait to get back into leggings; I hate skirts and high heels. But I thought I’d drop in and see you first and find out whether we couldn’t perhaps do each other a bit of good.’

  ‘Really? I can’t imagine why. And how did you know I was back here?’

  Ros’s beautiful face took on a self-conscious smirk.

  ‘I heard that you’d had another haemorrhage, and I thought you might need some help from us.’