Poison Flowers Read online

  The third victim was a 40-year-old divorced actress called Claire Ullathorne. She had died on 15 March at home in Islington. There was evidence in the flat that she had been violently sick and suffered from diarrhoea. The post-mortem revealed that the blood was thick, dark and cherry-red in colour; there was also hyperaemia of the brain and evidence of gastritis. Colchicine poisoning was ultimately diagnosed.

  The post-mortem examination also showed that she had borne a child and that at some stage, probably childhood, she had broken her left arm. It provided no evidence of other illness or trauma except for some very slight inflammation of the hip joints and lower spine. On enquiry, her GP reported that Ullathorne had never sought help for the arthritis. Since she regularly visited the surgery to attend the Well-Woman clinic and had been twice for innoculations before going to Egypt and India on holiday, the doctor assumed therefore that the pain was so slight as to be discounted.

  The police view was that Ullathorne had committed suicide having recently failed to get a particularly good part in a television series for which she had been considered. Her friends had refused to believe that she had ever been suicidal and pointed out that with her excellent divorce settlement she had no financial worries and did not actually need to work. She had multifarious interests and had shown no sign of depression.

  Willow turned over that sheet to find a note addressed to herself.

  ‘These cases seem to have too many similarities to ignore, despite the differences in the victims’ backgrounds. Do you think I’m a fantasist, wasting time – mine and yours – Willow? If you do, bung this lot on a fire somewhere, but don’t leave it around for other people to read, please.’

  The note of uncertainty made her smile a little. Tom rarely betrayed his tendency to self-doubt, but when he did, the contrast between it and his competence, physical strength and considerable powers of sexual attraction made her feel dangerously protective of him. For years she had counted it as a blessing that she was dependent on no one for anything and no one depended on her except in her official capacity. She had had no practice in feeling protective and did not know what to do with the emotion. Astringently reminding herself that no one who had served with distinction in the SAS for two years – as Tom had done before he eccentrically left the army for the Metropolitan Police – could have any need of protection from someone like herself, Willow read through all nine pages of his notes again.

  Then she went into her bedroom to pick up the telephone. Dialling his number, she remembered that he said he would have to work for the rest of the evening and almost put the receiver down again before he could answer. When he did she immediately apologised for disturbing his work and then said:

  ‘I don’t think you’re mad, Tom. Like you, I find it hard to believe that four people should all commit suicide or kill themselves by accident with plant poisons in such a short time. Surely that’s too much of a coincidence?’

  ‘Well, I think so. Cases of poison – accidental and homicidal – do pop up all the time – of course they do, but not as many as that,’ said Tom. ‘I’m relieved you agree, Willow. I’ve a certain respect for your brains, you know. Thank you for ringing.’

  ‘Not at all, Tom. Why won’t they let you investigate?’

  ‘Because there’s not enough evidence to prove any kind of link on which to base any kind of sensible investigation. It is unlikely to be cost-effective.’

  ‘I see. Well, good night,’ said Willow, determined to be the first to put down her receiver to give herself the illusion that she was still independent of her feelings for him. Staring down at the telephone, she smiled. Tom’s cavalier attitude to her intellectual gifts pleased her, because he was the first person who really seemed to want her for something else as well as her brains. For too many years she had been so accustomed to thinking of herself and being thought of only in terms of her intellect that it was a new pleasure to be liked – apparently – for herself, even though she was still not altogether certain what that self was.

  Chapter Three

  The clattering of her alarm dock woke Willow out of a heavy sleep the following morning a little before seven. She lay for a few moments, letting her mind pull itself out of the swamp of sleep in its own time. The polyester-and-cotton sheet had become wrinkled in the night and she was lying uncomfortably across the folds. Sitting up, she swung her long legs out from under the duvet and padded to the bathroom. While the chipped chrome taps dribbled water into the yellowed enamel bath, she went to switch on the kettle and the iron. By the time the bath was full, she had ironed that day’s shirt and made a mug of instant coffee, which she took to drink in the bath.

  The usual morning routine was disrupted when she caught sight of Tom Worth’s folder on the table as she was collecting the various papers she had brought home from the office the previous evening. After she had telephoned him, she had had to put the file on one side and concentrate on her work, but it was too tantalising to ignore again and she picked it up to read Tom’s notes once more.

  When she had read the few connecting facts again, she secreted the file under her mattress in case the flat was burgled while she was out and hurried to her office, at least half an hour later than usual.

  Throughout that day she kept finding herself distracted from the work she had to do by thoughts about the murders, about the kind of person who might have gone around the country putting poison into other people’s food and drink, and about Tom’s vague but uncomfortable suspicions of his superior. So preoccupied was she that Barbara had to knock twice before Willow even heard her at the door.

  ‘Come in, Barbara,’ she said as soon as the girl opened it. ‘Have you finished those drafts?’

  ‘Not yet, Willow. I’m just waiting for some statistics from John; but it won’t be long now. I’ve just heard about the board next week. Why are they making you do it? I always thought the Civil Servant on FSBs was a Principal. He was when I came before the board.’

  ‘That is usually the case,’ said Willow coolly. She thought that Barbara, who undoubtedly expected early promotion, would probably have enjoyed taking her place on a board as a change from the hard work of the office. ‘But this is a board for Direct-Entry Principals and so they need an Assistant Secretary.’

  ‘But how are you going to manage if it really takes up the whole of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday?’

  Willow shrugged. ‘I shall just have to come in before and after it each day and leave you piles of stuff to distribute. Will you be all right, Barbara?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. If not, I’ll leave large pleas for help all over your desk,’ said Barbara cheerfully.

  ‘Or force the P …’ Willow stopped herself in mid-sentence. Whatever she thought about the Permanent Secretary, it would be grossly unsuitable to complain about him to the junior staff. ‘Never mind. I have great confidence in you, Barbara.’ The black-haired Scottish girl beamed.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’m glad, because my last assessment in this job is just about to crop up, isn’t it?’

  Willow wished that she could raise a single eyebrow as Tom Worth had done to her, so that she could express her disapproval of Barbara’s bouncy comment. Then she reminded herself that the girl had in fact proved to be one of the best trainees Willow had ever had, and that there would soon be a new one to be taught her particular ways and persuaded to leave office politics alone and office gossip too.

  ‘I expect it is,’ she said more kindly. ‘Don’t worry too much about it.’

  Barbara’s expression of pleased surprise made Willow realise how sparing she had been with her compliments, but she reassured herself with the fact that her staff worked harder and more loyally than many of her peers’even without compliments. When she and Barbara had discussed the day’s work, Willow said:

  ‘By the way, Barbara, I have to find out about a woman who died recently in Newcastle. Could you put through a request for a trace? I need to know all her employers. Shouldn’t be too difficult, becau
se she died only about five or six years after retirement. She died two months ago. The file must be reasonably accessible. Her name was Edith Fernside. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Certainly, but why do you need to know?’ asked Barbara, quite reasonably under the circumstances. Nothing in the work she did with Willow implied a need for any detailed information about individuals. They were concerned only with the policy of pension payments. Willow raised both eyebrows and tried – successfully – to make her green eyes look frosty. Barbara blushed and hastily departed.

  Feeling mildly guilty and thinking that her growing friendship with Tom Worth was making her dangerously introspective and absurdly inclined to question the certainties that had always made her life bearable, Willow tried to banish both him and his murders from her mind. She was determined to investigate all the DOAP problems that would need solving before she was rid of the tiresome selection board and able to get back into her normal working routine.

  As soon as she reached her flat that evening, she retrieved Tom’s file from under her mattress, found an A4 pad of plain paper and black and red felt pens. With a glass of the previous day’s bottle of wine to assist her she started to jot down in black ink all the things she wanted to know about the victims.

  When her list was as complete as she could make it she began to annotate it in red with suggestions as to how she might find the answers to her questions. She was still hunched over her lists when the chiming clock in the flat downstairs tinkled out ten strokes. Dropping the felt-tipped pen, Willow put both hands round the back of her neck and stretched against the stiffness in her shoulders and spine.

  The wine glass had been empty for some time and it dawned on her that she was both hungry and thirsty. The cardboard boxes of fish fingers and pizzas and plastic sacks of vegetables in her little freezer looked unappetising when she opened its insulated door, and for once she rebelled against her self-imposed frugality.

  There was a rather good French restaurant only about fifty yards from her front door and although she had no desire to sit alone at one of its white-clothed, flower-decked tables, the thought of its delectable cooking made saliva rush into her dry mouth. She found the restaurant’s telephone number in the book, picked up the receiver and dialled. When someone in the restaurant answered, Willow asked whether they would be prepared to deliver a meal to her flat. Perhaps because it was a slack night, or perhaps because they genuinely wanted to provide an efficient and customer-friendly service, the restaurant undertook to supply three courses from its table d’hôte within twenty minutes.

  Determined not to waste those minutes, Willow started to dial Richard Crescent’s number. Half-way through, she stopped. It seemed a little unfair to badger him for information after she had ended their affair. On the other hand, he was the only person she knew well who moved in the kind of circles about which she wanted information. Richard was a successful merchant banker and, apart from Willow, his friends all seemed to be rich, ex-public school and fairly coventional. Reminding herself that she had always wanted – and told Richard she wanted – them to remain friends, Willow redialled the number.

  ‘Richard Crescent,’ said the voice that came on the line when the ringing stopped.

  ‘Richard,’ she said mellifluously. ‘It’s Willow here. How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. But what on earth’s happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing. Why?’ she said, disconcerted that he should have taken the initiative in the conversation.

  ‘Never, ever – even when we were still, you know – have you telephoned me on a Willow King day. What’s up?’ said Richard with some acerbity in his usually pleasant voice.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ conceded Willow. ‘My routines seem to be slipping a bit. Trouble in the office, I’m afraid. But Richard, I wanted some help.’

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked. Considering their last meeting, Willow wondered whether the question might have been intended to be sarcastic, but she remembered Richard’s basic good nature and took it at its face value.

  ‘I need to know about a man who died recently, called Simon Titchmell. He was an architect and from the little I know of his clients and his background, he sounds like someone you might have come across,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve always known his sister better,’ said Richard, confirming Willow’s assumption that he would have known someone connected with the man. ‘But why on earth does DOAP want to know about Titchmell? And why can’t they find out for themselves?’

  ‘DOAP?’ repeated Willow sounding almost stupid. ‘What are you talking about, Richard?’

  ‘You said you had trouble in the office. Willow, are you all right. You don’t sound at all like yourself.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well,’ she said hurriedly, hating the thought that something might be destroying the self-sufficiency and rationality that had helped her survive content for 39 years in a world that had always seemed alien and sometimes actually hostile. ‘There is trouble at the office, but this is something different. Can we meet, Richard?’

  ‘So that I can tell you about Titchmell? I thought the reason we stopped seeing each other was because you thought that you were using me and couldn’t bear it.’ There was no doubt about the hostility in his voice as he said that.

  ‘This is different,’ said Willow. ‘This is the kind of request for help that any old friend might make. Besides,’ she added honestly, ‘I’ve missed you. It would be pleasant to have a meal together. What about it?’

  ‘Have you?’ said Richard and there was an echo of his old pleading in the words. ‘Then let’s meet. There’s been a big hole in my life, Willow, and I’m prepared to forego dignity to fill it. Tomorrow’s your first Cressida day of the week: what about dinner at Belgrave’s as in the old days?’

  ‘Why not?’ she said, wondering whether the things she had said could have constituted ‘leading him on’and whether to be fair she ought to tell him that much as she wanted to see him she still did not want to go to bed with him. But that would have been presumptuous, and she did not believe it decent to do or say the things that in other people made her spit with rage, and so she said no more.

  Her dinner arrived soon after she and Richard had said ‘good night’to each other, and, having paid for it and tipped the young waitress who had brought it to the flat, Willow settled down at her sturdy oak table to a meal that was almost as good as the one she expected to share with Richard the following night.

  On Thursday evening, after a tedious and frustrating day at DOAP, she arrived late and harrassed at the hairdresser she had patronised ever since her first book had been published. Struggling to find her way into the pink cotton overall that the receptionist was holding out to her, Willow saw the owner of the salon coming towards her with a most reproachful expression on his sharp-featured, swarthy face.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Willow more sharply than she usually spoke in the scented pink-and-green-and-silver bower over which he presided. ‘I’m very late, Gino. I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away before. Do your best, will you?’

  ‘But of course, Miss Woodruffe,’ he said, shrugging and pouting as he fingered a strand of her dirty red hair. ‘Don’t I always?’

  Willow smiled for the first time in hours.

  ‘Yes, Gino, and I’m grateful. It feels horrible. Is there someone free to wash it?’

  The Italian gestured to one of his apprentices who led Willow away like a prize heifer garlanded with pink towels to the basin, where he proceeded to batter her stiff neck against the white porcelain edge of the basin and pull her hair as he tried to untangle it with his fingers and a powerful jet of over-hot water. Her eyes were watering slightly as she was eventually released from the minor torture and she looked curiously at the apprentice.

  ‘You must be new,’ she said.

  He nodded. Willow left him to go and sit in Gino’s chair awaiting his ministrations. His experienced touch on her head and neck was far more gentle than his young assistant’s an
d by the time he had finished cutting, drying and tweaking Willow’s hair, she felt soothed. Looking round the gleaming room, she saw that there was only one other customer left and that all the hair clippings had been laboriously swept from around her feet.

  ‘Thank you, Gino,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’ve held you up.’

  ‘No problem, Miss Woodruffe,’ he said. ‘For me, that is. But the manicurist has had to go home. Shall I make another appointment for you tomorrow?’

  Willow shook her newly sleek head.

  ‘No. My nails can stay unpainted until next Thursday. It won’t kill me. Thanks, Gino.’

  He escorted her to the front door himself and carefully helped her out of the floating pink garment and into her own jacket. She reflected with amusement on the effect of cossetting and its price. An hour of Gino’s time had wrought the transformation between Willow’s almost constant exasperation and impatience and Cressida’s easier-going attitude to her luxurious life; and all for the cost of an admittedly expensive coiffure.

  Freed for the moment of Willow’s puritanical burdens, she walked slowly home through the warm April evening, noticing the burgeoning leaves on the plane trees of Sloane Square and looking forward to the summer.

  Her Chesham Place flat seemed to welcome her as she arrived and even as she noticed the sentimentality of her pleasure she revelled in it. Part of the ritual of her weekly transformation was to have a bath as soon as she reached the flat and so she went quickly to the yellow-and-white bathroom. It was extravagantly large, having been converted from what would otherwise have been the spare bedroom, and luxuriously appointed.

  The water gushed out of the brass taps and Willow poured in an unnecessarily large quantity of Chanel No. 19 bath oil, breathing voluptuously as the fragrant steam reached her nostrils. Mrs Rusham had laid four clean, thick white towels on the heated rack in front of the old chimney breast and put out new bars of soap in the niche beside the taps and on the basin. A simple bowl of early yellow roses stood on the windowsill, and there were new novels lying on the table by the side of the bath.