Bitter Herbs Read online

  All her old resistance to him resurfaced for a moment, even though she recognised the fundamental benevolence of his insult and his determination to protect her.

  ‘Don’t bully me, Tom,’ she said, and then she laughed. ‘I’m so stiff I can hardly move. I couldn’t even leave the flat, let alone get into a fight with anyone. Be back here at one o’clock and I’ll have everything you need.’

  ‘I don’t trust you, you know.’

  ‘You should, Tom. After all, I trust you.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he said casually as he looked down at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t take any more risks. It half kills me when you get hurt.’

  He did not wait for her to say anything, which was lucky because she could not think of a suitable comment. Her old instincts told her to make a joke, but her newly peeled emotions would not let her.

  When Tom had gone, Willow pushed herself up from her chair and went to dress in her loosest, most comfortable trousers and sweater. Then, lying back on her neatly made bed, she telephoned the flat shared by Gloria’s secretaries.

  Her call was answered by Susan Robinson.

  ‘It’s Willow King here,’ she said briskly. ‘There are a couple of questions I quite forgot to ask you and Patty when we last met.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what are they?’

  Willow appreciated the automatic defensiveness of her superficially polite question.

  ‘One of you, presumably it was you, Susan, told Marilyn that Gloria had been typing the day before she died. Can that be right? How did you know it was she who had done the actual typing?’

  Susan laughed and the relief sounded clearly in her voice.

  ‘It can’t have been anyone else. Marilyn never took any part in the books. I don’t think she can type even as well as Gloria could. When I came into the office the morning before she died, I saw at once that she’d been down there. Everything on the desk was arranged differently and the chapter in my basket was not the one I had typed, even though it had yet more arrows and handwritten alterations. She must have worked down in our office for at least two hours after Marilyn had left her for the evening.’

  ‘Did she often work on her books after you had left?’

  ‘Oh yes. One would imagine one had seen the last of the idiotic Miss Whatsit’s pursuit of the wicked Earl of Wherever, and then there it would be next morning, all to be done again. Drove you mad sometimes.’

  ‘I’ll bet. So what was her typing like?’

  ‘Not up to professional secretarial standards, but it was always perfectly clear.’

  ‘And that day, are you sure the typing was hers?’

  ‘You mean you think someone else did it, don’t you?’ The defensiveness was back. ‘No. I didn’t talk to her about it, but I am sure it was hers. It was unprofessional. Not the work of a trained secretary.’

  ‘It’s all right, Susan,’ said Willow at once. ‘I’m not accusing you or Patty of anything.’

  There was a short pause, followed by an artificial laugh, and then Susan said:

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Then what is it that you are asking me?’

  ‘Simply whether Gloria and no one else could have done the typing that evening?’

  ‘I suppose I can’t categorically answer “yes”. Work produced on electric typewriters doesn’t have any distinguishing marks to show precisely whose fingers pressed the keys.’

  ‘I see. Thank you. Now I need to talk to her editor about this last chapter she was working on. I know Gloria had Vicky Taffle’s home telephone number. Have you by any chance got it there?’

  Susan dictated it and then said: ‘I’m afraid I must go. There’s someone at the door. Good bye.’

  There was one other piece of information Willow needed. She rang Andrew Salcott and discussed people with headaches that felt as though they had been hit on the head with a hammer. Having got the information she needed, she said good bye to him and lay, staring up at the ceiling, with the buzzing receiver in her hand. She wanted to make certain that she could control her voice before she spoke to Vicky. At last she rang the number Susan had just given her.

  ‘Hello, Vicky,’ she said when the telephone was answered. ‘It’s Willow King here. I was wondering whether I could persuade you to come and have some lunch with me today. I’m at a loose end and I so enjoyed our dinner together.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ said Vicky, sounding half asleep and puzzled.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ Willow looked at her watch and saw that it was nearly eleven o’clock. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I always sleep late on Saturdays and then work on Sunday. It’s easier that way.’

  ‘What a shame that I’ve disturbed you. But how about it? Lunch today?’

  Willow half-expected her to decline, and was trying to invent another way of engineering a meeting.

  ‘But how kind,’ said Vicky after a moment. ‘I was just thinking how bleak the house is on this awful day. What time should I come and where?’

  ‘Come here to the flat.’ Willow gave both address and directions. ‘And come at about half-past twelve if you can manage it. Then we’ll have plenty of time to drink before my housekeeper gets lunch. Is there any sort of food you’re allergic to?’

  ‘Only brains.’ There was a laugh that was half a snuffle.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Willow briskly. ‘I don’t take risks with things like Mad Cow Disease. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘You’re kinder to me than anyone else has been in years,’ said Vicky, making Willow cringe. ‘I’ll see you as near to half-past twelve as I can then.’

  In fact it was nearly ten to one by the time she arrived. Willow had gone into the kitchen five minutes earlier to ask Mrs Rusham to keep the quails hot in their madeira sauce for a late start.

  Mrs Rusham brought the guest into Willow’s drawing room and said she would fetch the champagne.

  ‘How luxurious!’ said Vicky. Willow was not sure whether it was her creamy-yellow room or the prospect of champagne that excited the comment.

  ‘Good,’ she said meaninglessly, detesting the other woman. ‘A friend of mine is going to join us a bit later. I hope you don’t mind.’

  Vicky looked taken aback and Willow wondered whether she could have been planning another assault with her hatpin. Willow almost hoped that she might be faced with it. She felt an unprecedented urge to hit, scratch and throttle.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Vicky. ‘But are you sure I won’t be in the way?’

  ‘Quite sure. Ah, thank you, Mrs Rusham. Champagne, Vicky?’

  ‘Lovely. Are we celebrating something?’ Vicky asked so sweetly that Willow had a moment’s sickening doubt.

  ‘In a way. I had a brush with death yesterday when my brakes failed on the motorway. Having survived makes me feel pretty wonderful in spite of my aches and pains.’

  Vicky looked quite pale and sat, silent, for a full minute. ‘How dreadful!’ she said at last. ‘Do they know why?’

  ‘Why I survived or why the brakes failed?’

  ‘The latter.’ Vicky’s voice sounded almost normal, but there was enough obvious wariness in her face to calm Willow’s doubts.

  Watching Vicky, she began to understand that the pleasure she had always imagined her heroines taking in their revenge was nothing like the real thing. She had assumed that there would be satisfaction, but she felt none. Instead she felt a certain tingling excitement, but there was also real tooth-grinding anger, and a kind of disgust. Suppressing as much of it all as she could, Willow made herself smile.

  ‘No. The car’s with a mechanic at the moment. While you’re here, can I ask you one or two more questions about Gloria?’

  ‘All right,’ said Vicky, looking surprised, ‘although I do rather long for the day when I never have to think of her again.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ said Willow, hoping she did not sound as tart as she felt. ‘It was actually your last editorial me
eting with her that I wanted to discuss.’

  ‘But we haven’t had one for months.’

  ‘Perhaps it didn’t count as a meeting,’ answered Willow casually. ‘I meant when you went out to Kew the evening before she died.’

  ‘It wasn’t that day,’ said Vicky quickly. ‘I didn’t see her that day at all. It was the one before.’

  ‘So it was,’ said Willow casually. ‘Silly me. Was she very difficult?’

  ‘Not especially.’ Vicky moved her feet closer to the bag she had left on the floor. Thinking of the hatpin, Willow was determined to remove the bag out of Vicky’s reach as soon as she could. ‘She was always tiresome. I told you that before.’

  ‘She made you retype a whole chapter for her, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vicky seemed happy enough to answer. ‘But how on earth do you know? There was no one else there with us. Marilyn had gone to the cottage as soon as she’d served Gloria’s dinner. I didn’t see her at all that evening.’

  ‘Susan – the temp – told me.’

  ‘How very odd. Gloria must have told her the next day.’

  ‘Why … ?’ Willow was beginning when she heard the front door bell.

  A moment later Tom appeared in the drawing room, saying: ‘You were right. Will. They didn’t match. Now you must …’

  ‘Hello, Tom,’ said Willow, with a distinct warning tone in her voice. ‘This is Victoria Taffle, who visited Gloria before she died. We were just talking about their last meeting.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, his eyebrows snapping together. ‘Any champagne left for me, by any chance?’

  ‘Plenty, and Mrs Rusham has cooked enough quails for us all. We’ll eat in a minute or two. Vicky’s just telling me what Gloria said that night.’

  ‘There was nothing very unusual,’ she said, half turning to examine Tom. ‘She did her best to humiliate me and make me lose my temper, but she always did that.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a quick temper.’ Willow smiled encouragingly. ‘You seem enviably placid to me.’

  Vicky laughed with a high, disagreeable sound. ‘She could always find ways of pressing my buttons.’

  ‘From all I’ve heard, she sounds a thoroughly unpleasant old woman,’ said Tom, walking round the back of the sofa and sitting at the other end of it from Vicky. He looked at Willow and then back at Vicky. ‘You must have had a dreadful time of it.’

  Victoria simply nodded and then, dismissing him, smiled at Willow again and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘So, you retyped the chapter for her,’ said Willow, picking up the thread of her interrogation. ‘Did she sit and watch while you did it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In her bedroom?’ asked Tom, puzzled.

  ‘No, of course not. Why should it be? I’ve never been in her bedroom. We were in the secretary’s room in the basement where the typewriter is.’

  ‘What time are we talking about here?’ asked Willow, frowning at Tom to stop him asking stupid questions.

  ‘After dinner. About ten I should think. She’d rung me at the office and told me to come straight round. I … I was pissed off with her and very busy and so I told her I couldn’t come until at least half-past nine and that she’d have to pay for a taxi to take me home.’

  ‘And did she?’ asked Tom.

  Willow glared at him again.

  ‘Oh yes. She gave me thirty pounds out of her handbag. I got back home at about midnight.’

  ‘It was quite a long session then?’ said Willow.

  ‘Yes. I’ve never been a typist and it took me ages and then she started scribbling all over what I’d just typed.’

  ‘Goodness how irritating! Didn’t you protest?’ Willow tried to make herself sound sympathetic.

  ‘Certainly. It was the most ludicrous waste of my time. I told her so.’

  ‘Did that get you any kind of apology?’ asked Tom.

  Vicky laughed again, for once sounding thoroughly amused.

  ‘You must be joking. She told me, in that revoltingly syrupy voice she could put on, that she really sympathised with me for being so unattractive in character as well as appearance. She said she did hope I was behaving better with my other authors because, if not, Ann would have to sack me and no one else would be charitable enough to give me a job.’

  Tom laughed and the two women both looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘people just don’t talk to each other like that.’

  ‘Oh yes they do. That wasn’t the worst by any means. You should have heard her sometimes.’

  Willow was silent as she tried to think how best to force Vicky into a confession. Slowly Willow became aware that both the others were staring at her. Abandoning all idea of finesse, she said abruptly:

  ‘And was it then that Gloria had her stroke?’

  Tom’s head jerked upwards and Willow could see him controlling himself with difficulty.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Vicky shrilly. ‘She didn’t have a stroke. She died of a heart attack at least twenty-four hours later.’

  ‘Oh come on, Victoria. Of course she had a stroke. Just a small one. Stertorous breathing, blankness, loss of speech and consciousness. That was when you stuck the hatpin in her.’

  Willow saw Tom standing up and moving behind Victoria, who said nothing.

  ‘You nursed your own parents, didn’t you? And one of them had had a series of strokes,’ said Willow, leaning forwards to scoop up the handbag Vicky had left at her feet. ‘That was how you knew what was happening to Gloria. When she lost consciousness you saw your chance to stop her tormenting you for ever and stabbed her.’

  Willow opened the shabby black-leather handbag. Pushing aside the muddle of cheque book, receipts and paper handkerchiefs, she found the ‘shrieky alarm’with its red-plastic cap and right at the bottom of the bag a ten-inch carbon steel hatpin with a large elaborately jewelled knob at one end.

  ‘With this.’

  Victoria sat unmoving, her face grey and her eyes staring at nothing. Tom looked over her head at Willow and held out a hand. She took the hatpin to him and returned to her chair.

  ‘Wasn’t that what happened, Vicky?’ said Willow sharply.

  Victoria flinched, looked at her interrogator, and then shook her head.

  ‘There’s no point pretending any more, Vicky. It won’t be difficult to prove it all now that we’ve got this far. Even if you’ve washed the hatpin in surgical spirit, they’ll probably be able to find traces of blood on it somewhere; or on the lining of your bag. I am right, aren’t I?’

  There was a long silence. Vicky rubbed both hands across her face and through her hair.

  ‘She stopped talking,’ she said at last in a calm, vague voice as though she were remembering something from long ago. ‘And fell forward on to the desk as I was typing her rubbish. I knew at once what was happening because my father had had a series of those little strokes before the big one that killed him. Some made him lose consciousness, some didn’t. Hers did. And I thought how wonderful it would be if she would only die. Then, you see, I had to make sure that she would. Not all strokes kill. I knew I’d have to help it along a bit.’

  She looked up. Neither Willow nor Tom spoke.

  ‘Anyway, I knew how the Empress of Austria had been killed and I thought that a hatpin might do as well as a stiletto. I got mine out of my bag, lifted her up and stuck it in between her ribs up into the heart.’

  She stopped talking and Willow risked a prompt.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well then I thought it was such a thin little spike that it might not do enough damage, so I kind of waggled it about until I heard something outside and thought Marilyn must be on the prowl.’ Once again Victoria smiled. There was no lunacy in her expression just a kind of satisfaction that made Willow feel cold.

  ‘So I pulled it out and put it back in my bag. There was a little blood on it, but hardly any on her. I shoved a hanky up under her clothes to wipe up what there was.
Then I tidied I up the desk and let myself out of the house. I couldn’t believe it the next day when I rang up and discovered that she wasn’t dead at all. Apparently she’d even slept in her own bed. She must have come round after the stroke and remembered nothing. I couldn’t believe it. It was as though I’d dreamed the whole thing. I didn’t sleep at all that night, thinking that I was going to have to face her again.’

  ‘Have you been able to sleep since?’ Once more it was Tom who asked the question.

  ‘Oh yes. It’s been heaven really. Do you know that bit at the end of “Porphyria’s Lover”?’

  ‘I can’t say I do,’ said Tom, trying hard not to look as astonished as he felt.

  ‘It’s when he’s strangled her with her own hair,’ said Victoria dreamily, ‘and he says something about how they’ve sat there all night and God hasn’t said a word. It’s been like that, you see. There hasn’t been a thunderbolt or the horrors or a nightmare or anything, just peace.’

  She laughed and added: ‘The only difficulty has been pretending to be as miserable as I always used to be. I managed it for a day or two, but I couldn’t go on. People were beginning to notice. Even you, Willow. And then you started asking all those questions. And saying things to Ann Slinter.’

  ‘Was that why you tried to dispose of me?’

  ‘What?’ The happy smile was gone from Victoria’s face and the fading, peaceful voice had sharpened considerably.

  ‘We know that my brakes were sabotaged. Tom’s people have found fingerprints on the engine. Yours I presume.’

  Victoria folded her fingers into the palms of her hands.

  ‘It won’t be hard to match them.’ Tom’s voice was quiet, but it was implacable too. ‘Come along, Ms Taffle, we’d better get you down to the station so that things can be properly sorted out. Will, would you ring this number and tell them I’ve asked for a squad car?’ He scribbled a telephone number on an old envelope from his pocket and moved a little closer to the other end of the sofa.

  As she punched in the number, Willow heard him reading Victoria her rights. A few moments later Willow asked for the car and heard Victoria laugh, before she said: