Bitter Herbs Read online

  ‘I don’t know that I do,’ she said, aware that she was lying, but not wanting to admit to anything that he might construe as a weakness.

  Tom’s face grew tight in front of her eyes. He dropped her hand.

  He looked suddenly very tired and much older. After a heavy silence, he said slowly:

  ‘I do wish that after all this time together you could – just occasionally – admit that you feel things.’

  Troubled, because she had several times admitted to feelings that left her horribly exposed, Willow frowned. All their attempts at light-hearted teasing had failed, and she was not ready to confront the darker things that she was beginning to glimpse within herself. For all her sophistication and confidence, she felt terrified. She knew at last that it was not Tom who was frightening her but something of her own. Unfortunately that knowledge did not help her.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Tom, rubbing his hands over his face when she did not speak. ‘It’s not my place to say such things. I merely love you and, irritatingly no doubt, wish you could be happy. I know that you have not the slightest desire to be either happy or loved, but it is frustrating sometimes to realise how little valued one’s strongest feelings can be.’ Tom’s voice, which had begun in his usual measured, quiet way speeded up towards the end of his statement and began to sound extremely angry.

  Willow moved back in her chair, her always pale face whiter than usual. The cheerful casualness of her evening with Richard Crescent seemed even more attractive in memory than it had been in fact. She looked away from Tom’s hard face, wondering whether anger might not be easier to accept than love. A sudden thought deflected her, but Tom interrupted it before she could say anything.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding defeated.

  Reluctantly Willow looked back at him. He had put both elbows on the table and hidden his face in his hands. All she could see was the slightly greying, thick dark hair and the blunt ends of his strong, short-nailed fingers pushing through it.

  ‘I do actually quite want to be happy,’ she said with difficulty. Tom raised his head. There was a faint hope in his dark eyes.

  ‘And I thought we were quite happy just now before we started quarrelling.’

  ‘We were. I …’ When it was clear that he was not going to say anything else, Willow tried to go on being as honest with him as her old and new fears would allow.

  ‘Happiness does just occasionally seem dangerous. It’s not …’ She stopped, unable to formulate the idea. She felt unsafe again. The memory of the spiral stairs racing towards her made her shake. All the sharpness and brains on which she depended seemed to have deserted her.

  ‘What isn’t it?’ Tom’s voice had become quite gentle again, but she thought she heard an undercurrent of impatience that made it impossible to believe in the gentleness. Willow shook her red head in frustration.

  ‘Is it me that’s the trouble?’ Tom asked doggedly.

  She shook her head again, hating the sensation of complete loss of control she could feel threatening her. Trying to think of her work as an antidote to all the feelings she so disliked, she frowned. Tom pushed his plate out of the way and reached for her hand again.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, looking helpless.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I know that you need more detachment than I want. I know that I need more physical closeness than you can bear. Do you think that there will ever be any kind of compromise for us?’

  Willow stared at him, wondering if he was asking her whether they should carry on trying to achieve some kind of shared life. Memories of all the good things about him, and she had always known they were many, returned to the front of her mind. So did his months of moodiness and silence. Forcing herself to be rational, she recognised that he was trying at last to use words to deal with whatever was wrong. She had wanted him to do that for weeks and so she had to meet him half-way.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, feeling as though her throat was constricted and her tongue swollen by something that wanted to prevent her committing herself to anything, even an attempt at compromise. ‘But I don’t know whether I can change as much as you want.’

  As she said that, she thought that it dangerously undermined her position and so she quickly added:

  ‘And I don’t suppose you can either.’

  He smiled. ‘Provided you’re still on for the attempt at compromise, I don’t see that either of us need actually change too much.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Trust me,’ he said, pleading with her.

  The memory of Marilyn’s discovery of Peter’s duplicity and fraud flashed through Willow’s mind. Gritting her teeth and knowing that she would not be able to say anything convincing, she nodded slightly. It seemed to be enough.

  ‘Okay. Well done, my … Will.’ He was breathing deeply, but his eyes looked steadily at her and his mouth seemed relaxed. ‘Okay. Let’s get back to your case. Where were we? Who’s your next suspect?’

  ‘Posy, the journalist,’ said Willow reluctantly. She recognised that they had just achieved something important and she was grateful for his leaving so much unsaid. The investigation seemed a much easier topic for discussion than the other, but after what she had just done she did not think she could bear him to treat her ideas with contempt.

  ‘However much I’d hate it to be her, it seems quite possible,’ she went on warily. ‘In some ways, more so than Marilyn and the doctor. Although I’m sure Marilyn’s been up to something.’

  ‘Never mind Marilyn now. You’re going to tell me about this Posy.’

  Tom sounded tired, or perhaps bored, but at least he was listening.

  ‘Right. Now listen. Posy must already have spent several thousand on legal fees. I say, do you want some cheese or fruit?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Tom, pushing his smeared plate even further away from him. ‘But I’ll have some more champagne to fortify me. Thanks. Now, go on.’

  ‘If the libel case went to court Posy stood to lose a fortune in costs and a mega-fortune in damages. She’d have had to go bankrupt.’

  ‘That’s not such an enormous deal these days.’ Tom drank some of his champagne and made a face.

  ‘I think it is quite a big deal, as well as being humiliating and frightening. Okay, she’d be discharged within three years, but imagine what those years would be like.’

  ‘She might have won the case and had her costs paid.’

  ‘She might. But look at it realistically and you’ll see she’d have been almost bound to lose.’ Willow took a bunch of grapes from the dish in the middle of the table and pulled one off.

  ‘Eve thinks that Posy earns thirty-thousand a year at most and that’s before tax. That wouldn’t go far on lawyer’s bills after she’s paid her mortgage and all the rest. In spite of what she told me about never apologising, she must have been desperately worried when it became clear that Gloria wouldn’t settle for anything she could afford. Posy would have been ruined and from the little she’s told me she’s had more than her fair share of disasters already. Perhaps she simply wasn’t prepared to take any more.’

  Tom stared at Willow and shook his head, his lips clamped together as though to keep in something he badly wanted to say. Eventually he relaxed enough to open his mouth again.

  ‘It’s the same thing again; you’ve based your suspicion on no more than speculation about a possible motive. Surely by now you know enough of the law to know what evidence is necessary even to charge someone let alone get a conviction? Motive is irrelevant until you’ve proof of the killing and can put your suspect with the body at the time of death and with the means to have caused it.’

  ‘Don’t be so patronising! Of course I know.’

  Tom looked at her and sighed again.

  ‘I must be tired,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to patronise you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he said impatiently and then added in explanation: ‘But I deal with this sort of thing all the
time. If you knew how the Crown Prosecution Service makes us go through hoops to get adequate evidence you’d see how hard it is to give any weight to such, well, such imaginative theorising.’

  ‘This celebration has degenerated a bit,’ said Willow, blinking. She decided not even to try to talk any more about the case. ‘I’m as tired as you, and my bruises are aching. Are you staying the night?’

  ‘No, I think perhaps you need your space to yourself tonight, don’t you?’

  Willow let him go, and went to bed alone to sleep better than she had expected.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Waking the next morning, Willow remembered that it was the last day of Gloria’s absurdly extended lying in state. Despite Eve’s apparently desperate need of the synopsis, Willow decided to take a little more time away from it in order to go to the funeral parlour.

  When she tried to get out of bed, she found that she was so stiff and aching she could hardly move. Determined not to give in to physical weakness at least, she forced herself to ignore her bruises and her still-aching head and dressed appropriately, she hoped, in a black suit and pearl-grey round-necked shirt. The combination would do perfectly well for the funeral parlour and for her subsequent meeting with Ann Slinter. Satisfied with her reflection, Willow went to have breakfast.

  She had eaten a pair of baked eggs and a tangerine and was on her way out of the front door when she heard the telephone bell. It stopped after three rings, which meant, she knew, that Mrs Rusham had picked up the kitchen extension. In case it might be something urgent, Willow retraced her steps down the hall and pushed open the kitchen door with the wrong arm. The extra strain on her wrenched shoulder brought tears of pain to her eyes. They did not fall.

  Mrs Rusham, impeccable as always in her long, white cotton overall, stood with her back to the warm Aga, saying into the telephone:

  ‘I think she may already have left, Doctor Salcott, but I’ll find out. Hold on a moment.’

  Willow, beckoning madly, said: ‘I’m here.’

  ‘She is still here, Doctor Salcott, I’ll put you on to her.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs R. I’ll take it in my writing room.’

  Willow picked up the receiver there, saying again:

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Rusham.’ When she had heard the click of the kitchen extension, she went on: ‘Morning, Andrew. Thanks for ringing back. I hope your bleeper last night didn’t signal a ghastly emergency.’

  ‘An emergency, but happily not ghastly for once. You wanted to know about heart attacks. Why?’

  ‘Oh, the new book,’ she said with her usual airy excuse.

  ‘All right: they can be caused by all sorts of things: high blood pressure, disease such as thyrotoxicosis (particularly in women), or congenital weakness in a young person; they can be triggered by stress, either physical, for example from too much violent exertion, or mental from too much anxiety.’

  ‘Really? That’s not an old-wives’tale?’

  ‘Nope. Stress can definitely play a part in the causes of heart failure. So can an excess of alcohol, or too heavy an afternoon sleep or the effects of an anaesthetic, or all sorts of things. I’d need more data to give you a usefully specific answer.’

  ‘Fine, listen: a seventy-year-old with a history of angina. Is there any way they – he – could be deliberately killed that would not be obvious to his doctor or to his undertaker?’

  ‘Oh, lots. Smothered, for example. If a patient with angina dies suddenly a doctor who had been attending him for some time would be unlikely to suspect anything untoward or do an autopsy unless there were unmistakable signs of violence on the body.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Willow, taken aback.

  Her imaginary pictures no longer seemed so unconvincing. It sounded as though Marilyn could easily have killed her aunt; on the other hand so could any of the other suspects, if they had managed to get Marilyn out of the way. Willow thought of Susan’s account of Gloria’s last, empty day.

  ‘What else?’ she asked.

  ‘Inducing terrific rage or physical exertion, poisoning with barbiturates perhaps, although that’s easier to detect. Pity your subject’s male,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a man stabbed through the heart is more obvious than a woman, particularly an elderly woman.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a breast,’ said Salcott drily, ‘probably a sagging breast, to hide the mark.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. Surely a stabbing produces quantities of blood that anyone could see?’

  ‘Not always. Think of the Empress of Austria,’ said the doctor cheerfully. ‘She was stabbed with a stiletto through her clothes and died hours later when the blood that had been leaking into the pericardium forced the heart to stop pumping. No one knew what had happened until they opened her up after death.’

  ‘But she must have known she’d been stabbed,’ said Willow.

  ‘You’d have thought so,’ agreed the doctor. ‘I can’t remember exactly what she’s reported to have said. I think it was that she’d simply been punched. But I do know it was a while before she died. If an immensely thin stiletto or the needle of a syringe were used, it could be up to twenty-four hours before the heart stopped beating.’

  ‘A stiletto or a needle, or even a hatpin,’ said Willow suddenly, thinking of the collection of Edwardian hats in Posy Hacket’s flat. Surely each one of them had been secured to its polystyrene stand with a spectacular pin, topped with amber, jade or jet? She also realised that if Andrew were right her questioning of the secretaries about who had visited Gloria’s house on the day she died might have been useless. It could have been the previous day that mattered.

  ‘I’m not sure a needle or a hatpin would do enough damage if it were a simple stabbing,’ said Salcott. ‘The heart is made of tough muscle, you know, and it contracts against pressure, precisely in order to prevent serious damage from small wounds. But,’ he went on, ‘if the needle were held against the beat of the heart a small puncture would soon turn into a tear big enough to cause a dangerous leak.’

  Willow let her mind play with what he had told her.

  ‘You mean that as the heart beats an immovable pin would pull down against the muscle of the heart wall.’

  ‘Precisely. All medical students have it forcibly impressed on them that they must never, ever, hold on to a needle that has been inserted into the heart.’

  ‘I wonder if clothes would be enough to keep it still,’ said Willow.

  ‘Depends on the clothes. I suppose a stiff corset might be enough. A hand would be better. I’m getting very curious, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, Andrew, and you’ve given me a lot to think about,’ said Willow, wishing that his bleeper would sound before he could ask any more tiresome questions. ‘Are you sure it could be as much as twenty-four hours before death?’

  ‘Absolutely, but not necessarily. It all depends on the size of the tear and the condition of the heart.’

  ‘Thank you. I must dash now. No: one more thing. What sort of mark would be left on the skin?’

  ‘A small bruise and a pinprick. The size would obviously depend on the size of the weapon.’

  ‘The kind of mark one has in the crook of one’s elbow after giving blood?’

  ‘Exactly. The greater wound would be in the heart itself. Holding the needle would not affect the size of the puncture in the skin.’

  ‘Thanks Andrew. You’re a brick. Good bye now.’

  Willow put down the telephone receiver without letting him say anything more, filled with the unpleasant knowledge that she was somehow going to have to examine Gloria’s body, if only to banish the possibility of such a sneaky and effective stabbing from her mind.

  She reached up to the shelf where she kept odds and ends of all sorts, and took down the camera she always used when she was researching places for scenes in her books. It was a small but sophisticated Nikon F601 35mm camera, with a pop-up flash and a
zoom lens.

  Knowing that even if she had the opportunity to photograph the body the light would be poor, Willow loaded the camera with a Kodak Ektacrome 100X film that would give her both fine definition and good detail even in a dim light. She slipped the camera into her capacious, quilted-leather shoulder bag and set off for South London.

  She almost passed the door of her unsaleably damp flat, where the builders ought to be at work and thought of stopping to check that they were actually doing what they had promised. But then she decided that she had too many other problems to solve to waste time on that one.

  Ignoring the flat, she drove on to the funeral directors’, parked in the forecourt of their elegant building and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and so she gingerly pushed at the door and it yielded. Walking inside, Willow found herself in a long, narrow hall, silent and empty but for a pair of chairs and a tasteful arrangement of lilies on a small table between them.

  All but one of the dark-grey doors leading off the narrow hall were shut and so when no one appeared, she pushed the one that was ajar and put her head round it. The room was empty except for a desk and three chairs. An elderly female voice sounded from somewhere behind her.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  It was almost as though a ghost had spoken. Willow returned to the hall and saw a tidy, white-haired woman standing at the bottom of the stairs dressed in dark grey.

  ‘Yes, you could,’ said Willow with what she considered was admirable self-possession in the circumstances. ‘I have come to pay my last respects to Gloria Grainger.’

  At that the woman’s whole demeanour changed. She appeared to soften before Willow’s eyes and she stretched out a hand, saying sweetly:

  ‘Yes, of course. She’s in our chapel here, all ready for you. You’re the first to come for her, you know. Would you care to follow me?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow, who had been suddenly thrust back into her original sympathy for Gloria Grainger. The thought of her planning the absurdly elaborate lying in state in the hope that people would troop past her coffin seemed unbearably sad in the light of what the woman had just said. Marilyn’s absence was perhaps understandable, given that she had made no secret of her dislike of Gloria, but there were other people who had professed affection for her.