Poison Flowers Read online

  Tom went to sit beside her, carefully leaving two feet between them, and took a mouthful of water. The room might lack ornament, but there were flowers in vases on the mantelpiece and on a small table near the windows. New books lay on a wide stool in front of one of the sofas with the day’s newspapers. The small fire burning in the white Adam fireplace warmed the room and its fickle light combined with that of the silk-shaded lamps to create an atmosphere of luxurious peace.

  Willow felt completely relaxed as she lay back against the replacement foam-filled sofa cushions, but after a while it occurred to her that Tom did not share her ease.

  ‘What is it, Tom?’ she asked. ‘Those murders?’ He shook his head and the firelight accentuated the shape of his broken nose and the smooth planes of his cheeks and forehead.

  ‘No,’ he said, and his voice sounded even deeper than usual. ‘I was wondering about that chap, the one you introduced me to the night I came here before Christmas.’

  ‘Richard, you mean,’ said Willow, easily identifying her old friend and sometime lover. ‘What about him?’

  Worth turned away from her to put his glass down on a small table. Then, unencumbered, he turned back to face her. He took her free hand and held it in both of his. This time he did not grip, but she could feel the strength of his fingers and she was at once afraid of the implications of his strength and of the sensations he produced in her. She was afraid that she might be falling in love with him and knew that if she did, she would have no protection left against the hurt her peculiar upbringing had forced her to dread. Richard had never seemed so positive – or so threatening to her self-sufficiency – as Tom Worth.

  ‘Willow,’ said Tom with difficulty, ‘I know that I have no right to ask this – and I don’t know that I even expect you to answer – but is he … are you and he … well, lovers?’

  Willow pulled away instinctively, but Tom kept his hold on her hand. Honesty fought with her fear of intimacy and won.

  ‘We were,’ she answered truthfully. Even in her own ears, her voice sounded strained. ‘But since … We have not been lovers – technically – since that night when you and I … that night in the middle of the Endelsham case when you stayed with me in Clapham.’

  As she spoke Willow thought of Richard’s astonished resentment when she had tried to explain to him that the simple, happy arrangement they had shared for the previous three years had ceased to seem simple to her and that she no longer wanted to be his lover, however much she still valued his friendship. She had been nervous about broaching the subject, feeling absurdly that it was considerably more intimate than any of the lovemaking they had shared. Perhaps her nervousness had made her voice and manner colder than she had meant.

  ‘Damn it, Willow! Why didn’t you tell me?’ Richard had burst out when she had said her piece after they had had dinner together one night.

  ‘I am telling you now, Richard,’ she had answered, trying to keep her voice unemotional, knowing that he hated scenes as much as she did.

  ‘I had a right to know. You should have told me when I got here this evening …’ Willow had begun to feel angry as Richard sounded more and more resentful.

  ‘Do you mean that you’d have made me pay for dinner if you’d known that I wasn’t going to sleep with you? I’ll be happy to give you a cheque,’ she had said very coldly.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he had retorted, more coldly still. Willow had waited for him to go on, but he had just stood on the pavement outside her flat, looking as though she had done something unspeakable.

  ‘Richard,’ she had said then, trying to explain to him (and perhaps also to herself) why she was breaking up their satisfactory arrangement. ‘I …’

  ‘Can’t we talk about it inside? It’s not a subject to be broadcast about Belgravia.’

  She had let him into her flat and tried again.

  ‘You see,’ she had said at one moment, ‘I realise that I’ve been using you. I like you enormously; I hope that we can be friends; but I have come to understand that I do not love you,’ she had finished with difficulty.

  ‘I never supposed that you did,’ he had said, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t know that I love you, but why must that destroy everything? What if I want to go on being used?’ Willow had shivered at that question.

  ‘I know that it was convenient for us both …’

  ‘Surely more than that?’ Richard had said, making Willow feel so unsafe that she longed to take refuge in cold severity. Since she cared about him, she had not been able to do that.

  ‘One of the things that made it all so easy was that unlike other women you never seemed to want to complicate it all with messy feelings,’ Richard had said at last.

  ‘I’m sorry, Willow.’ Tom’s deep voice brought her back to the present.

  Willow shuddered as she thought of the full messiness of the feelings she was just beginning to recognise. They seemed much more real than the easy, uncommitted, unthreatening affair with Richard that had been her first essay in the world of passion.

  ‘Was I looking very stern?’ she asked, wondering what it was about Tom that had made her take such destructive action against Richard, who had never done her any harm and who had indeed given her much simple pleasure and a great deal of friendship in the years they had been semi-detached lovers.

  ‘A little formidable,’ he answered. ‘But then you often do.’ Willow knew that, of course, but however valuable the look was in the Civil Service it was not appropriate to Cressida Woodruffe.

  ‘It wasn’t you making me annoyed,’ she said with deliberate gentleness. ‘Why did you ask about Richard?’ Tom smiled at her question, but he looked nervous, too.

  ‘Because I should like very much to …’ He shook his dark head and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘This is exceptionally difficult, and I cannot think of a way of saying it that is unthreatening enough not to frighten you off but not so coy as to irritate the pair of us. To hell with it!’

  At that Willow smiled too, and Tom seemed to take some comfort from her amusement.

  ‘I asked because I want to make love to you – not necessarily tonight and so you needn’t look like that and prepare your speech of refusal – and I would not want to embarrass you by asking you to make love with me if you were involved with someone else. What happened between us on that one night was … No, never mind.’ He took his hands away and picked up his glass again.

  Trying to be as honest and sensible as he had been, Willow took a pull at her own drink while she decided what to say.

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ she began.

  ‘For nothing, Will,’ he answered, smiling at her properly again.

  ‘I can’t deny that I have sometimes thought about that night too – or that it was because of you that I asked Richard … told Richard that I couldn’t go on as we were. But I don’t know …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said quickly. ‘I wasn’t trying to demand anything now. I’ll finish this and then be off.’

  ‘There’s no hurry, Tom,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about your murders. Much easier than the other thing.’

  ‘Much,’ he said, laughing openly. ‘I wish I knew why I find you so irresistible. What more do you want to know about the murders?’ Trying to disguise the emotions and sensations Tom aroused in her, Willow said:

  ‘I was just wondering whether I couldn’t perhaps help you.’

  Worth raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You told me in that restaurant that you’re too busy with your new cases to trawl through these filed ones for enough similarities to persuade your superiors that they are connected – so why don’t I do it? The book’s finished and if I start the next one straight away I’ll only make a mess of it,’ she went on.

  ‘But what about your interior decoration?’ he asked, gesturing around the graceful, half-empty room.

  ‘That won’t take long,’ said Willow. ‘After all, Mrs Rusham will do all the actual organising and dealing with the workmen; I just have to ch
oose the stuff. Do let me help, Tom. I’d really like to.’ In her eagerness to do something for him, perhaps to make up for her inability to let him come as close to her as he clearly wanted, she put her right hand on his shoulder. ‘Please, Tom. Grisly though the end of that last case was, I thoroughly enjoyed the detecting part.’

  ‘Even though it led to the desecration of your home?’ he asked. ‘And presumably blew your cover at the department?’

  ‘I’m not certain that it did blow my cover,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘It’s hard to believe that the oaf who followed me here and wrecked the place said nothing to anyone about who I am, but no one has mentioned it to me.’ She laughed. ‘Perhaps their ideas about my pathetic spinsterhood are so firmly rooted that they can’t stretch their stunted imaginations to believe I could be Cressida Woodruffe too.’

  Worth looked at her seriously, almost as though he were trying to see past the elegant clothes, the cosmetics and the artfully tumbled hairstyle to the woman she pretended to be as Willow King.

  ‘I’d never have thought make-up could make such a difference,’ he said at last. Willow laughed.

  ‘It does of course,’ she said. ‘And so do the clothes. But I actually think it’s mainly the spectacles and the hair. Dragged back in those savage pins it makes my face look completely different. I once passed one of the typists reading a copy of one of my books which had a huge photograph of me on the back, and even stopped to talk to her to test it out. She hadn’t a clue. People do tend to see what they expect.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Tom. ‘And the desecration of all this? Are you prepared to risk that again?’

  Willow was silent for a long time. At last she said:

  ‘Yes. There’s no reason to suppose it could happen again, but even if I am risking it I’d like to help. Couldn’t you get me the files on your murders, so that I could do the trawling? I’m sure it wouldn’t take long.’

  ‘But what about the rest of your life – the Willow King half?’ Tom said. Willow shrugged. He seemed to be determined that she should not have anything to do with his investigation but she was interested enough to protest.

  ‘Obviously I’ll still have to go to the department for the middle of each week, but isn’t any help better than none?’ she said, dropping the cajoling tone and sounding much more like her usual crisp self. ‘After all, you needed my help last time. You weren’t getting anywhere on your own.’

  ‘You can be a bit of a monster, you know,’ he said. ‘And you know perfectly well that I can’t possibly take police files and hand them out to stray civilians.’ He stood up. ‘Come on, Willow, be sensible. I must go now and leave you in peace.’ He held out a square hand. Willow took it and allowed him to help her up off the sofa.

  ‘It is nice that your palms are so reliably dry,’ she said without thinking. Tom Worth roared with laughter, put an arm around her shoulders and planted a friendly kiss on her cheek. Willow hated being the butt of other people’s laughter.

  ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Just that the only compliment you have ever paid me should be so clinical – and so – so unromantic. I find it hard to accept the fact that a woman like you spends half her time writing love stories. I’ve never met anyone less romantic. I can see that I’m going to have to read some of these books of yours. Good night, Willow. Thank you for this evening.’

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ she said, relaxing again. ‘You are exceedingly …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, quickly kissing her lips, ‘I didn’t mean that I wanted you to make me compliments. I’ll be in touch. But if you want me for anything, you know where to ring me.’

  He walked out of the room. At the front door, Willow caught him up.

  ‘All I was going to say is that you are an extraordinarily good friend, and I am grateful – really very grateful – for your kindness. Do reconsider about the murders.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said and was gone.

  Willow shut the heavy front door behind him and slid the bolts and turned the various keys that she had had installed to satisfy her insurance company and her own fears. She could not help thinking about the differences between Tom Worth and Richard as she went to run herself a hot, deep bath.

  Richard had always tended to sulk if she expressed any reluctance to go to bed with him or even to dine with him when he wanted to see her, and yet she knew that he had never posed as serious a threat to her detached and satisfactory life. She had succumbed to Tom only once and yet her feelings for him, however much she might sometimes try to deny them, were far stronger than all the affection she felt for Richard.

  Determined to banish both the men from her mind, she poured fragrant oils into the hot water and carefully removed her clothes. The shoes she left where they fell for Mrs Rusham to clean, the dress she laid over a chair for Mrs Rusham to press or take to the cleaners as she considered necessary and the rest was flung into the laundry basket. Willow knew that the next time she saw the clothes they would be pristine and carefully hung or folded in the cupboards in her dressing room.

  Lying back in the hot, scented water, she tried to remember the little Tom had told her about the murderer, at last allowing herself to laugh at her idiotic misunderstanding of his description of the man as a ‘cereal killer’.

  Chapter Two

  The following morning, Willow left her alternative identity and her Belgravia flat long before the arrival of Mrs Rusham and set off for Clapham, where she spent the other part of her life. She was anonymously dressed in jeans and a simple black jacket; there was no makeup on her pale, bony face, and her red hair was dragged back into a rubber band. The plain leather shoulder bag she carried contained all the identification necessary for her Civil Service identity and there was nothing in it with the name of Cressida Woodruffe. All Cressida’s credit cards were lying in the safe she had had installed at the back of one of her capacious wardrobes. Cressida’s watch, too, had been carefully hidden. It would never do for Ms Willow King to be seen sporting a gold Cartier watch in the dusty offices of DOAP.

  The expensive, cream-coloured streets of Belgravia were empty at that hour of the morning, and there was no one to witness the metamorphosis of rich Cressida Woodruffe into plain, hardworking Willow King, but she did not want to be surprised by any early colleagues when she eventually got to Clapham. Everyone at the Department of Old Age Pensions believed that she spent every Thursday evening to Tuesday morning caring for an invalid elderly aunt.

  Carrying a red nylon overnight bag, Willow took a bus across the river to Clapham and walked from the stop to her other flat. She let herself in at the street door and walked up the gritty stairs, wondering when she would ever be able to persuade the owners of the other flat to do their share of the hoovering of the common parts. Reaching her own front door, she undid the simple locks, dropped her bag on the scarred but sturdy oak table in the living room, and went to make herself a cup of instant coffee.

  The cardboard packet of skimmed milk she had left in the small refrigerator the previous Thursday still smelled of milk rather than sour cheese and so she poured some into the pottery mug on top of the coffee granules and hot water. As she drank the resulting brew, she wrinkled her nose a little, disliking the taste and remembering with regret the wonderfully scented cappuccino that Mrs Rusham made for Cressida’s breakfast in Chesham Place every morning. It always took Willow a little while to acclimatise herself when she got back to South London.

  Wandering into the slightly damp bedroom to change out of her jeans into one of the inexpensive ready-made suits appropriate for Willow King, she suggested to herself that it might be the contrast between that weekly shock and the subsequent pleasure of returning to Cressida’s self-indulgent luxury on Thursday evenings that kept her attached to her double life. Apart from that slightly masochistic reason she could not for the moment think of any other to subject herself to the rigours of her Clapham life.

  Remembering the
unseasonable heat of the previous day, she chose a beige linen-and-polyester suit from her wardrobe and found tights and shoes to match and a sharply ironed, white, cotton shirt. When she was dressed, she dragged the rubber band off her hair, wincing as it pulled several hairs out of the back of her neck, and brushed out the last of Cressida’s curls. With the skill of long practice, she twisted the mass of hair into a neat, vertical roll and pinned it securely against the back of her head.

  Even though she had been wreaking similar transformations ever since she had invented her alter ego, Willow was often surprised by the efficacy of her disguises. Stripped of cosmetics and revealed in all its angles by the severity of her chosen hairstyle, her face looked years older than it did when it wore Cressida’s mascara and blusher and lipstick. Her eyelashes were naturally red, but paler than her hair, and without the definition of liner or mascara the eyes themselves looked washed out and rather small. Her nose seemed sharp and her lips dry. But when she smiled at herself in the glass, she could see the ghost of Cressida looking back at her.

  Amused by her mixture of vanity and detachment, Willow stuffed her feet into her beige shoes with their ‘man-made, composite’ soles, collected her black plastic briefcase and set off for the glass tower that housed the headquarters of the Department of Old Age Pensions. There were a few other early starters waiting for a lift in the hall when she reached the building, but no one she knew particularly well and so she was spared the familiar kind questions about the health of her Aunt Agatha.

  When she had first invented the mythical woman, she had revelled in inventing details of Aunt Agatha’s life and her struggles with the local hospital, the social services, and the difficulties of life in a small Suffolk village, but over the last few months Willow had found herself less amused by her own joke and was even beginning to wonder whether it might not be time for Aunt Agatha to suffer a terminal illness.

  As usual there were piles of paper in several wire baskets on the big desk in Willow’s office, and she settled down at once to reading her way through the heaps, throwing some things away, marking others for one or other of her staff to deal with or send for filing. A few she put to one side for more careful consideration. When she had reached the bottom of the pile, she began to draft replies to some of the letters and minutes in answer to questions from the Permanent Secretary and the Minister’s office.