Bloody Roses Page 26

  She looked carefully around at the rest of the room, gently pulling aside the plain red curtains and lifting the rush matting. But there was nothing to be found.

  The second bedroom was bare, the bed unmade and covered only with a dustsheet, the cupboard and drawers empty. It seemed very clear that no one had ever shared the house with Sarah. For a moment Willow felt as though she had betrayed something important by invading its solitude, and began to understand why Robert Biggleigh-Clart had kept it secret even after Sarah’s death.

  Only when Willow remembered Thomas Allfarthing’s description of Sarah’s affection for Richard did she think that the dead woman would have thought the invasion justified if it ultimately proved his innocence Willow’s discomfort dwindled and she went back downstairs to the small white kitchen and switched on the light.

  The largest thing in it was a chest freezer. It had a lock, but when Willow tried the lid, it lifted easily. There, too, she found neither shocks nor evidence. Instead there were neat piles of boxes and heaps of bags, each one containing a single helping of meat, fish, vegetables or fruit. There were small loaves of bread and a few rigid containers labelled ‘chicken stock’and ‘mushroom soup’.

  Willow carefully closed the lid, making sure that it clicked into place, and then turned to the sink. It was scoured clean. She opened the double doors underneath and saw various cleaning materials, rubber gloves, a bundle of cloths and a lidded bucket.

  When she undid that, she found a mixture of dry rubbish, which she painstakingly examined. There were carefully washed-out milk cartons, old envelopes, a newspaper and a plastic dry-cleaner’s bag. Willow took it out and carried it to the kitchen table, where she examined it minutely. There was nothing on it at all, except some dried tea leaves. Disappointed, but not very surprised, she bundled it back into the bucket, switched off the light and left the kitchen.

  Although Willow had found nothing useful in the cottage, she was determined to make some record of her visit and took careful flash photographs of each room, opening the cupboards and making visual notes of their contents. Then, impelled by something she did not trouble to understand, she went back to Sarah’s bedroom and lay down on the bed. Not bothering to switch on a light, Willow put her arms behind her head and lay in the gloom, thinking about the woman who had owned the house.

  Gradually, as Willow went through everything she had ever been told about Sarah Allfarthing and the little that the house revealed, she lost her conviction that the murder must have been sparked off by the emotions that Sarah had stirred up in her colleagues.

  Various things she had heard or noticed returned to Willow as she ruminated: Bill Beeking’s saying that Sarah had stayed behind in the office because she wanted to talk to Richard; Thomas Allfarthing’s conviction that Sarah trusted Richard and would have gone to him if she were in any kind of trouble; and the stories her colleagues had told about her sense of humour.

  Sarah had joked about blackmail in her efforts to persuade people to do things for her. Perhaps someone who had a genuinely shameful secret had misunderstood her jokes or perhaps, faced at last with something serious, Sarah had no longer been able to joke and had decided to take some kind of action.

  Willow’s heart started to bang against her ribs and her breath to shorten before her mind even acknowledged the unspeakable thought that hit her then. Could it have been Richard who had once done something reprehensible that Sarah had discovered? Had she, trusting him, confronted him with it and driven him to try to silence her?

  Much as she detested the idea, Willow could not prevent her novelist’s imagination from presenting her with a version of Sarah’s death in Technicolor brutality. Richard’s hands, which Willow knew so well – the hands that had so often stroked her, comforted and excited her – twisting in Sarah’s hair, seizing the knife and slicing through the clear, pale skin of Sarah’s neck, through the thin layer of yellow fat that lay below it, through the veins and arteries that spouted blood.

  With an effort that made her clench her muscles and drive her tongue forwards between her painful teeth, Willow forced herself to remember the pictures that that same, treacherous imagination had given her of William Beeking’s soft white hands only a few hours earlier.

  She told herself that her ability to see in her mind Richard killing Sarah did not make it true. With a groan like a bull sealion in the grip of sexual passion, Willow turned over on to her front. The patchwork bedcover was rumpled beneath her and her face lay on Sarah’s pillow. The scent, sharp and clean, that rose from it must have been of her shampoo. Sick, ashamed of herself, and unhappier than she had been for a long time, Willow got up off the bed, plumped up the pillows, straightened the duvet and pulled the patchwork cover taut again. Suddenly she smiled. If Richard had killed Sarah, he would never have been so muddled about the vase of roses. He had immediately understood the significance of her question about them and yet had still let her see that he did not know whether they were on the desk or the floor when he first saw the body.

  The sound of a car’s engine made her stop tidying the bed, with both hands flat on the pillow. She half turned her head and saw that the last of the day’s light was going. The car came nearer and stopped. Not wanting to risk showing herself at the window, Willow flattened herself against the wall and listened. She could hear the unmistakable sound of someone trying the chain at the gate, dropping it against the wood and climbing over. Footsteps crunched on the bits of gravel between the rough grass of the orchard-garden. A key was driven confidently into the lock on the front door.

  Willow pushed her fingers into the back pocket of her jeans to touch the key she had found in the mill. Her fingers felt the cold metal of the heavy spanner and she drew it out to grip it uncomfortably in her clammy hand.

  Filled with a mixture of terror and social embarrassment, she looked around the small room for a hiding place. She thought of the wardrobe and rejected it. Steps began to sound below her as the intruder walked about the house. As soon as she heard them on the uncarpeted wooden stairs, Willow lowered herself quietly to the floor and slid under the bed. The huge patchwork hung down on either side and she blessed the fact that there was matting on the floor. If it had been simply wood, there would have been tell-tale marks in the dust where she had dragged her body across the floor.

  Lying still among the curls of mattress dust and unswept long hair, terrified of the prospect of sneezing, Willow heard the bedroom door open.

  The steps were slightly squeaky as their maker walked from the door to the bed. As Willow lay, rigid and breathing silently, shallowly, through her nose, she heard the noise of metal clinking on to wood. A duller sound followed, perhaps of a book. Just by her head the patchwork counterpane moved.

  Willow’s head turned towards the half-seen movement instinctively. Her hair seemed to make an astonishingly loud swishing noise as it dragged against the matting. Hot and cold pulses followed each other down her arms and legs, leaving her sweating and aching. Her hand clenched on the hard metal of the spanner as her eyes focused on the blunt ends of a pair of sports shoes. They were so close that despite the lack of light she could see a layer of distressed pale-grey rubber, a band of dirty cream, and then slightly grimy white leather, stitched and punched to let out sweat and smells.

  She tried to make her mind concentrate on what she could smell so that she might identify the intruder, but there was only acrid sweat that could have belonged to anyone, petrol and a warmer, pleasanter scent that might have been coffee or chocolate. She could not decide.

  The shoes were of a kind that could have been worn by either a man or a woman. Foreshortened as they looked to Willow, they gave no clue to the size of their wearer’s feet. Into the sickness of her disappointment and her fear came one consoling piece of knowledge.

  They were not Richard’s feet. Richard was in the custody of a famous, uncomfortable, overcrowded prison. Richard was guarded and protected. If they were the murderer’s feet, then the past was safe again
and Richard innocent.

  If Richard were truly innocent, then the worst of Willow’s fears could be ignored and she could once more believe wholeheartedly in Tom Worth. In her relief, she understood properly how much her doubts about Richard had affected her feelings for Tom, shrivelling them as a sharp frost burns the new shoots of early spring.

  One of the shoes moved out of Willow’s sight, breaking her train of thought and making her hands clench as they lay on the matting parallel with her thighs. She could feel the heavy key pressing painfully against her buttock, but she could not move it. The fine canvas that covered the bottom of the bed hung three inches above her until it was suddenly pressed down.

  It was almost impossible not to put up a hand to protect her face, but the other fear was greater and she lay waiting. The second shoe disappeared and the bedsprings crunched. The canvas brushed Willow’s nose and her teeth clenched over the tip of her tongue.

  The two of them lay there, one above the other, for a few minutes as though they were both waiting for something. There was a scrabbling sound just above and behind Willow’s head and she instantly thought of the rats in the mill. Something hard and cool hit her forehead. One hand flew up from her side and a finger stuffed itself between her teeth. Looking up she could see the outline of a gloved hand withdrawing from the gap between the bedspread and the wall.

  The bedsprings creaked again as the hand disappeared; once more the canvas descended. Willow’s wrist felt something hard above the canvas. The shoes reappeared as the canvas lifted away from her face, this time with their heels towards Willow. They squeaked across the room. There was the sound of a door opening and then more complicated noises of metal rubbing metal and something softer. The door closed and the squeaking feet moved on, out of the bedroom, paused and then unmistakably went into the other rooms before going down the stairs.

  Willow took her finger out of her mouth and in the dusty gloom of her hiding place saw her teethmarks, dark red and deeply embedded on either side of a hard white ridge of her flesh. She waited.

  The sound of an engine hit her ears as comfortingly as the siren of a police car would have done. She rolled out from under the bed and ran to the window, determined to see the number of the car. Trying to keep herself from showing at the window, she peered out, saw a cloud of exhaust and the shape of the pale numberplate in the dusk, but she could not even identify the make of car, let alone distinguish the figures on the numberplate. Frustration seized her and she slammed her fists against the whitewashed wall.

  It felt like half an hour, but was probably no more than a few minutes, before she had controlled herself enough to return to the bed and find out what had been dropped on her face. It turned out to be a single cufflink. Holding it in her left hand, she switched on the bedside light. The link was of gold enamelled in dark blue and she knew it at once. She had bought it herself, one of a pair that she had given Richard for Christmas about two years earlier.

  Picking the curls of mattress dust out of her hair, Willow began to search the room for a second time. She found several of Richard’s possessions that had not been there when she had arrived. There were clothes of his in the wardrobe, old and easily identifiable by anyone who knew him. There was a wallet with his initials on the bedside table, together with a crossword torn from a newspaper and half-completed in his writing. Inside the wallet were some innocuous and uninteresting letters addressed in various hands to ‘Dear Richard’, some money and, perhaps most damning of all, a plastic card, like a credit card, proclaiming his membership of a tennis club. There were also several wrapped condoms.

  Remembering that there had been no sign of used contraceptives in the only rubbish container in the cottage, Willow was grimly amused to think of the lengths to which the intruder might have gone in his efforts to establish Richard’s presence in the mill. She checked the date of the crossword. It had been printed the weekend before Sarah’s death.

  Underneath the wallet lay a copy of one of Cressida Woodruffe’s novels. Outraged, Willow opened it and read the mocking dedication she had written in it two years earlier:

  ‘Richard, this frivolous (but profitable) trifle is for you: not to read, because I know you won’t, but to keep certain in the knowledge that you are the only one who knows its origin. W.’

  The knowledge of her incompetence suddenly hit her. If she had been properly qualified for the job she had taken on, she would not have cowered in the dust under the bed but grabbed the ankles of the intruder who had stood beside the bed, kicked her way out of her hiding place, disabled him – or her – and solved the mystery. At least she should have got up more quickly so that she could have been in time to read the numberplate of the car. And she would never have deposited her fingerprints on the false evidence that had been planted all around her.

  All she was equipped to do was look and think and write notes and take photographs. As she thought of that, Willow despaired. What police officer was ever going to believe that the photographs she had taken were genuine? No one, least of all Jane Moreby, would credit that the evidence had not been tidied away for the shoot and then replaced.

  Willow found that smiling at herself helped to bring her back to earth and decide what to do. She searched the rest of the cottage, this time without touching anything, and found shaving equipment and more wrapped condoms in the small bathroom, and another book with Richard’s name on it downstairs.

  She decided that the most urgent thing was to get to a telephone and speak to Martin Roylandson, Jane Moreby and Tom Worth. Of them all it was Tom she wanted most, but he who had least reason to be informed of what she had, at last, discovered.

  Taking one more look around the cradle of Sarah’s solitude, Willow left the mill house and, carefully keeping out of the moonlight in case the intruder had silently returned, she retreated to her car. She tripped often and once buried her left foot in some unspeakable country substance that clung and stank. When she reached the car she found some large leaves and cleaned as much as she could away from her shoe and ankle, wiped her hands on the thin, prickly grass, gasping as they ran into a bramble branch, and drove back towards the potential comfort of the Goat and Compasses.

  When she reached it, she parked the car among all the others on the asphalted space at the back of the building, checked the state of her left foot in the light of its open windows and walked in to order herself half a pint of dry cider. As she carried the overflowing glass to a vacant seat by the telephone, she looked carefully at her fellow drinkers. There was no one whom she recognized, although several people stared with unembarrassed interest at her. Taking a book out of her shoulder bag she settled down and before she had finished half her cider the other drinkers had resumed their own arguments, courtships and discussions.

  Disguising her hurry, Willow put down both drink and book, found some coins in her bag and took out her address book. The only answer she got from Martin Roylandson’s office was a machine and when she dialled the number of his home she did not get even that.

  Reluctant to talk to Jane Moreby without any kind of legal advice or protection, Willow pressed the follow-on button and dialled the number of Tom Worth’s flat. Once again she was answered only by the machine.

  ‘Damn,’ she said on to the inviting tape, pressed the follow-on button and dialled the number of Jane Moreby’s office. She was answered by a member of the chief inspector’s staff, who could not say when she would return and declined to give Willow any other numbers that might be more successful. Leaving a message to say only that she had rung, Willow cut the connection, put the rest of her change into the telephone and rang the number of her own flat, hoping that Emma Gnatche would not be too carefully mannered and discreet to answer it.

  ‘Hello, this is Cressida Woodruffe’s telephone.’ Emma’s gentle voice shook slightly.

  ‘Emma, it’s me,’ said Willow. ‘Is …?’

  ‘Thank God! We’ve both been most desperately worried. You said you’d be back by eight.’ />
  Willow watched the liquid-crystal display that told her how much of her money was being used up and quickly said: ‘My money’s about to run out. Will you ring me back? Have you got a pen?’

  ‘Yes, here,’ said Emma.

  Willow dictated the number of the pub’s telephone, and put down the receiver just as the last number of the display started to flash.

  While she waited for the telephone to ring, Willow looked down at her watch and saw in surprise that it was only nine o’clock. She felt as though she had lived through about twelve hours since she had left Belgravia.

  ‘Emma,’ she said as soon as they were reconnected, ‘you said “both”. Is Mrs Rusham still there?’

  There was a pause and then Tom Worth’s voice, solid, deep and controlled, said: ‘It’s me. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. I rang your flat. Tom, I need your advice.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Something rather alarming that absolutely exonerates Richard,’ she said, trying to keep her voice low and dull enough not to interest anyone else in the pub. ‘But I can’t see its convincing Jane Moreby, even if I had managed to get hold of her.’

  ‘Why are you talking so quietly? Is there someone there?’

  For answer, Willow held the receiver away from her face for a few moments.

  ‘Oh, I see. It’s a pub or something?’

  ‘That’s right. The Goat and Compasses in Blewton. I suppose you couldn’t get here?’ said Willow casually. ‘I don’t quite see how to explain it all on the telephone and I need a witness.’

  ‘Will, of course I’ll come. Is it conclusive evidence?’ There was enough urgency in his voice to make Willow say:

  ‘I think so. I can’t get hold of Martin Roylandson and I don’t know how best to put it to Moreby so that she’ll believe it.’

  ‘I see. You know, Will, I won’t be able to disguise anything or bend it. I shall have to pass everything on to Jane.’

  ‘I know you will,’ said Willow and went on in as quiet a voice as possible: ‘I’ve discovered that our late friend had a bolthole here and while I was searching it someone else appeared and, not realizing I was there, added some bits and pieces of Richard’s. D’you see what I mean?’