Fruiting Bodies Read online

  ‘Won’t you come and sit down, Sir George?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He sat down on the sofa, while Willow took a chair at rightangles to it. ‘I don’t … I can’t … I had to come to find out whether you were all right, to apologise and to ask you … to ask …’

  ‘What did you want to ask?’ Willow tried to make her voice sound gentle.

  ‘I know that you are a friend of Serena Fydgett’s as well as my wife’s. I respect Serena so much that her good opinion of you leads me to think that you might be able to help me,’ he said a little more fluently.

  ‘In what way?’ asked Willow, surprised that he had brought Serena’s name into the conversation.

  ‘My wife appears to think that Alexander Ringstead’s death is my fault.’ Roguely frowned down at the floor. ‘It is important for her as well as for our future life together that we manage to get rid of that fantasy quickly. I mean, I …’

  Willow, who had once been incapable of admitting any kind of doubt or fault, thought she could understand, and she leaned a little nearer him. As though he could feel her increasing sympathy, he looked up. A tiny part of the inside of his lip was caught between his teeth. Eventually he looked away again, saying unhappily: ‘May I ask whether you believe that as well?’

  ‘No,’ said Willow, drawing out the vowel. She tried to work out how much she could express of what she really did feel and eventually decided that the question he had asked was far too important to be answered with anything but the truth. She also reminded herself of Richard Crescent’s description of Roguely’s ruthlessness and her own knowledge of his business successes. He must be tough enough to take anything she had to say.

  ‘I don’t know enough of the way you nurtured Noel Wilmingson’s adoration of you to judge,’ she began.

  ‘I did nothing that any successful businessman does not do,’ he said coldly enough to make Willow feel less gentle.

  ‘Really? Did you never say or do things designed to keep her just on the boil?’

  ‘That’s absurd, if you’ll forgive my saying so.’ Roguely had ceased to sound at all uncertain.

  ‘Is it? It sounded to me as though you gave her just enough in the way of presents, affection, and probably nicely judged confidences about your feelings, to keep her besotted, while taking care to ensure that she knew she could never expect any feeling from you in return.’

  Roguely looked taken aback. After a moment he said with a defensiveness that surprised Willow: ‘I could hardly be expected to know that a few scarves and bottles of perfume were going to make her form the kind of sick passion that would lead her to feel she had to murder people who might have annoyed me.’

  ‘No, I can see that,’ said Willow fairly. ‘But did you really never talk to her about your wife’s relationship with Alex Ringstead?’

  A faint colour seeped into Roguely’s perfectly shaven cheeks.

  ‘I suppose I may have remarked once or twice on how tiresome I found it, but no rational person could have interpreted that as an order to murder the man.’

  ‘“Oh, who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”‘ quoted Willow.

  ‘You really ought not to make such damaging allegations,’ said Roguely, no longer bothering to display any of his undoubted charm. ‘I never said anything of the sort. It is irresponsible in the extreme to suggest that I might have done.’

  ‘But perhaps you let her see just a teeny-weeny bit of bravely hidden distress,’ suggested Willow, who was rarely intimidated by anyone.

  Roguely got to his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry that you have chosen to take this tone,’ he said. ‘I came in good faith to enquire about your health and to express my regret for what happened to you.’

  ‘I’m not trying to insult you, believe me. You asked me what I thought.’

  After a while, Roguely produced a smile, but it looked more like a grimace or perhaps even a baboon-like challenge, displaying the strength of his teeth.

  ‘If you know so much, Mrs Worth, what do you suggest I should do now?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you will be called upon to do anything. For the next ten years or so she will be taken care of in prison – unless the jury go completely mad at her trial and let her off. But I can’t imagine that. Juries do not like violent women.’

  Roguely shook his head.

  ‘I meant about my wife.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no answer to that.’

  ‘She won’t even let me through the front door.’

  ‘Give her time. She’s been through a terrible experience.’

  ‘Haven’t we all? But it’s no excuse. The rest of us can carry on normally. Why can’t she?’

  Willow stood up, wanting to be rid of him. He clearly had no idea what his wife must be feeling, and he seemed to see the whole tragedy only in terms of its tiresome effect on his own life. Willow realised that his manipulation of Noel Wilmingson had been less Machiavellian than she had originally supposed. He genuinely did believe that the world and everyone in it should be ordered for his convenience. Understanding at last why Mary-Jane had turned to Alex Ringstead, Willow hoped that she had found more imaginative sympathy from him during the short time they had had together.

  ‘Perhaps we have,’ she said, trying not to show her dislike. ‘Thank you for coming, Sir George. And thank you for the magnificent flowers.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Worth.’

  Tom came home soon after half-past five that afternoon. Willow recognised the effort he was making not only to put up with her moods and fears but also to control the demands of his job, and she tried to show her gratitude.

  He fetched them both drinks, loosened his tie, sat in his familiar chair, stretched out his long legs and smiled at her. He looked almost as relaxed as he had done in the old days, but not quite.

  ‘How was your day?’ he asked.

  ‘All right. What about yours?’

  ‘Interesting. I gather that the great Sir George dropped in today.’

  ‘Yes. He said he came to apologise for what his secretary did to me.’

  ‘And what did he really come for?’ asked Tom, understanding the tone of her voice without trouble and glad to hear the familiar hint of acerbity in it.

  ‘He wanted me to go to Mary-Jane and tell her to stop being horrid to him.’

  ‘Oh, dear. And so you sent him off with a flea in his ear, did you?’

  Willow smiled. ‘I suspect it would have had to be bigger and noisier than a flea. He might have noticed a hornet, but nothing much smaller, I fear.’

  ‘Ah. Sensitive sort of bloke is he? Like the rest of us men?’

  ‘Not you, Tom,’ said Willow, raising her glass to him. ‘I know perfectly well that you would notice the most microscopic little aphid in your ear. And I’m grateful for it, believe me.’

  He laughed then and they talked about other things, but there was still a constraint between them that she did not completely understand. Later in the evening, when they had eaten the dinner Mrs Rusham had left for them and Willow was peeling a peach, a thought occurred to her.

  ‘I say, Tom, did anything ever happen about Ringstead’s suspicions of the ambulance crews?’

  ‘You’re like a terrier, aren’t you, Will?’

  ‘No,’ she said crossly. ‘A gloriously elegant red setter, if it must be anything canine.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps that is better.’ Tom laughed. ‘Don’t worry about the ambulancemen. Surely I told you that I tipped off Inspector Boscombe some time ago? She will have dealt with it. She’s very efficient.’

  ‘Did you? I must have forgotten. My memory’s been up the creek ever since Lucinda was born. Did you tell her how you knew?’

  ‘No. She asked, of course, but I came over mysterious and told her that I’d stumbled on the information in the course of something completely different and couldn’t jeopardise my sources.’

  ‘Good for you!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Looking at Willow and seeing how much better she was, he decided
to take a risk. They could not go on avoiding each other’s scars for ever. ‘I could hardly tell her what you’d been up to and what you’d almost got Rob to do.’

  ‘Tom, I apologised for that weeks ago,’ Willow snapped. ‘What do you want, abasement?’

  ‘An attic would do.’

  For a second, she could not think what he was talking about and then she started to laugh. The peach slipped from her fingers, fell on to the plate, bounced over the edge and slithered on to her lap, probably staining the green linen of her dress for ever. She laughed and laughed.

  ‘I know I’m pretty funny,’ said Tom at last, ‘but it wasn’t that good a joke.’

  ‘No, I know,’ said Willow, wiping first her eyes and then her dress with the napkin. ‘But somehow it shows we’re still on the right track. You and me. We will be all right.’

  ‘I know. You, me and Lucinda.’

  Yes, said Willow to herself as she felt a surprising if short-lived burst of pain, it’s not only me he cares about any more. How ironic! I used to worry so much about what his love might do to me and now I mind sharing it with my own daughter. And yet her well-being matters to me so much that I’ve thought about almost nothing else for a week.

  She told herself that it was not surprising that Tom was as concerned for Lucinda as she was herself. For the next few years at least his primary allegiance and greatest care would have to belong to the child. That was how it should be because it would be Lucinda who had the greatest need of him. It was natural.

  ‘So’s arsenic,’ said Willow aloud, startling Tom, who peered at her in the dim light cast by the single candle between them.

  After a moment a smile of indescribable affection crossed his face.

  ‘It’s different,’ he said and reached out to take her hand.

  ‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Because I’ve thought it too and been just as afraid.’

  ‘Have you?’ she said, beginning to trust him properly again.

  ‘Yes. But what I’ve worked out is that she’s our child; she needs our strength and physical protection. You don’t need mine – as we saw that appalling night at the hospital – or I yours; at least not in the same way. What you have of me – and I believe I of you – is all my adult-to-adult love and all my loyalty. What Lucinda has of me isn’t taken away from you. It’s extra – different.’

  ‘So it’s all going to be all right, after all,’ said Willow after a while.

  ‘Did you really think it wasn’t?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But until now, I didn’t realise why – or quite how much I was afraid.’

  There was a pause until Tom said: ‘Thank God for words, Will. They’re the parachute. Provided we use it, we’ll make it safely, and so will she.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3859-1 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3858-4 POD

  Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1996

  The right of Natasha Cooper to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’).

  The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.

  This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original.

  Bello has no responsibility for the content of the material in this book. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not constitute an endorsement by, or association with, us of the characterization and content.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books

  and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and

  news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters

  so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.