Fruiting Bodies Read online

  The appearance five minutes later of the talkative Nurse Worbarrow provided a welcome distraction. She was carrying an enormous informal bunch of flowers tied with raffia and she handed Willow a small white envelope.

  ‘This came with them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow, opening the envelope to read:

  Congratulations. And Welcome to Lucinda. Don’t worry at all about not finishing the synopsis. There’s plenty of time.

  Much love, Eve.

  Smiling at her literary agent’s reassurance, even as she wondered whether she would ever be able to write anything else again, Willow put the note on her bedside table and took the flowers from Nurse Worbarrow.

  ‘Goodness, aren’t they lovely?’ Willow said, looking more closely and admiring the artless pink-white-and-grey arrangement of wild roses, lamb’s-tongues, single peonies and sweet peas.

  ‘Yes. Much the prettiest of any that have come in all week,’ said the young student nurse. ‘So much more stylish than all those loathsome yellow and purple chrysanths. I’ll get a vase for them, shall I?’

  Willow thanked her and reread Eve’s note, trying to believe that there was absolutely no reason why Lucinda’s presence should make any difference whatsoever to her writing talent.

  ‘Or to my detective skills,’ she muttered.

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ asked Nurse Worbarrow, coming back with a large glass vase of water. ‘I missed it.’

  ‘Nothing. Talking to myself again,’ said Willow. ‘Losing my marbles, probably.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ said Susan Worbarrow with another of her dazzling smiles. ‘Sister Lulworth was saying only today that you’re much too clever for your own good.’

  Chapter Six

  Day Five

  The following day, after much more sleep than she had had during any night since Lucinda’s birth, Willow felt better and more in control. They managed the first feed of the day without any serious difficulty, and Willow chatted to Lucinda, changed and washed her, and put her back in the cot almost without having to think about any of it.

  The hospital’s breakfast tray was its usual depressing self and so, having drunk a cup of strong hospital tea, Willow had a look at what was left in Mrs Rusham’s picnic box. There was plenty and she breakfasted on a florentine, a peach and then a mango, which left her with yellow streaks of juice down her expensive nightdress.

  Amused by the mess and feeling undeservedly fortunate again, she tidied up the picnic remains, shoved the box back under the bed, and, bursting with energy and confidence, collected a clean nightdress and went to have her bath hours earlier than usual.

  Back in bed, clean and cheerful but with nothing to do, she decided to sort out the few facts she had accumulated about Alexander Ringstead and his death. Rob had donated a couple of felt-tipped pens and one of the pads he lugged about with his books in the tattered nylon bag, and so she was well equipped.

  By the end of a pleasantly industrious hour, she had a neatly written account of the information and gossip she had already been given by Rob and the nurses, together with a list of questions that still had no answers. Several of them could be given only by the business manager who had been so effectively mocked by Mr Ringstead, but Willow could not think of a suitably discreet way of approaching him.

  She had to break off her self-imposed work first for Sister Lulworth and then for Doctor Kimmeridge, who appeared with four medical students in tow, looking much more confident than he had the previous day and also very much brisker.

  As Willow listened to his description of her condition and answered his young students’ stammered questions about it as pleasantly as possible, she thought of one way in which she might be able to approach the manager and waited impatiently for Kimmeridge and his entourage to finish with her.

  They had not been gone long when she saw Nurse Worbarrow at the entrance to the ward and waved enthusiastically. After a moment the student nurse saw Willow’s gesture and came over to her bedside.

  ‘So,’ she said, her face alight with pleasure, ‘I hear that you’re doing really well now and will be off home with Lucinda very soon now. That’s great news. Are you pleased?’

  ‘Very,’ said Willow, unable not to respond to such sunniness, but there was work to be done and she did not want to waste any more time. ‘I’m feeling pretty well now, and a lot of it’s thanks to all of you. You know, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to do something to help. I hear on all sides how much money the hospital needs now that dry rot’s been found in the basement, and I want to help. Is there any kind of fundraising campaign?’

  ‘Oh, yes. There’s a committee of ladies.’ Susan Worbarrow’s eyes gleamed with mockery: ‘You know the sort: rich and with too much time on their hands. But I shouldn’t be rude about them; they’re raising lots of money and it’s in a very good cause.’

  ‘How are they doing it?’

  ‘They have sales and balls, concerts, lunches and stuff like that. Other people who don’t have enough to do pay to go to them all.’

  Willow raised an eyebrow.

  ‘They call themselves the Friends of Dowting’s Hospital. There are usually leaflets around with lists of what they’re doing. I’ll find you one. You could always go along to some of their parties when you’re up and about again.’

  ‘I might be able to do that.’ Willow managed not to say that she would have more than enough to do when she left hospital, not least in concocting a synopsis for her next novel that would satisfy her agent and both her British and American publishers and then write the whole book, while caring for Lucinda at the same time.

  ‘But I’d rather give some more direct help specifically for this department. I suppose I ought to have a word with one of the managers about the best way of making a donation for the obstetrics unit. Do you think any of them would be prepared to talk to me?’

  ‘I can’t exactly see them turning you down if you’re wanting to give them a cheque,’ said Susan Worbarrow, laughing at her. ‘Would you like me to ask Mark Durdle to come and see you?’

  ‘I’d much rather go to him.’ Willow looked down at her lace-covered bosom. ‘Although I suppose I can’t really wander round the hospital dressed like this. D’you know where my clothes are?’

  Nurse Worbarrow waved casually towards a row of locked cupboards at the end of the bay.

  ‘Well that’s okay then. Is his office a long way from here?’

  ‘No. Just beyond the nurse manager’s on the far side of the lifts.’ Nurse Worbarrow began to look faintly alarmed. ‘But I’m not sure that Sister Lulworth would approve of you going walkabout.’

  ‘I don’t see how she can stop me, short of a rugby tackle, and that doesn’t seem very likely,’ said Willow drily, raising an appreciative smile from Nurse Worbarrow. ‘Look, if I do go and see him today, would you keep an eye on Lucinda for me? I’d hate to think of her crying and not getting any answer.’

  ‘Of course I will. I’d be glad to,’

  Thinking she could see a hint of surprise behind the smile of approval, Willow realised that the nurses – even those as junior and rebellious as Susan Worbarrow – must be watching her for evidence of the way she was or was not bonding with Lucinda. The prospect of interrogating one of the administrators began to seem thoroughly attractive. It might, Willow thought, reinforce her shaky sense of herself, particularly if she could do it dressed and made up to look like a normal inhabitant of the world outside the hospital.

  ‘By the way,’ she said more briskly, ‘someone said to me the other day that Doctor Kimmeridge would never get promotion in this hospital. He seems thoroughly in charge at the moment. D’you know why people think he’s never going to be a consultant?’

  ‘People shouldn’t gossip so much,’ said Nurse Worbarrow piously. Willow just laughed.

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t.’

  ‘No, but, as you and I know very well, it’s one of the greatest pleasures. Come on, tell me. You know you want
to.’

  As Susan frowned, Willow wondered whether her teasing had gone too far, but in the end Susan’s natural inclination to tell anything and everything she knew pushed past some of her inhibitions.

  ‘There’s a lot of competition for consultants’jobs,’ she began, ‘and people who get them have to fit in with the hierarchy. I’m not sure that Doctor Kimmeridge has shown that he’d be able to do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he’s always stood up for his ideas very firmly even when they were quite different from Mr Ringstead’s.’

  ‘Would that have mattered? I should have thought it would make Ringstead respect him.’

  ‘Maybe. But their arguments did sometimes get quite heated, and it’s not altogether wise to shout at your consultant when you want him to support your next application for promotion,’ said Susan before hurriedly adding: ‘Although I have a feeling that Doctor Kimmeridge’s religion might have had as much to do with it as anything else.’

  ‘His religion? Why on earth?’

  Susan shrugged. ‘Doctor Kimmeridge is a Catholic and most of the consultants here are said to be Freemasons. That may just be gossip, too, but if it’s true it would explain everything.’

  ‘But I thought there were Catholic masons nowadays.’

  ‘Are there? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes. It must be something else. Poor Doctor Kimmeridge. Does he have any family? A wife and so on?’ asked Willow, making the most of her opportunity for eliciting gossip before Sister Lulworth appeared and sent Nurse Worbarrow away.

  ‘I don’t know. He never talks about his private life. But that wouldn’t have any bearing on his chances either way, would it?’

  ‘Probably not. But I’m interested in everything about them all,’ said Willow. ‘Sister Lulworth was telling me that Mr Ringstead’s marriage broke up because of the hours he had to work here and I just wondered whether any obstetrician could manage family life as well as working here.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Lots of them do. But not Doctor Kimmeridge. Between you and me, I think he takes life too tragically to be married to anyone except a saint, and there aren’t many of them around, certainly not in this place.’

  Before Willow could ask what she meant, Susan Worbarrow had to answer an urgent-sounding call from the far end of the ward. Willow added a few more questions to her lengthening list and began the still painful business of getting out of bed, put her feet into her slippers and shuffled out towards the nursing station to find out how to get in touch with Mr Durdle.

  There she found Sister Lulworth talking to two women, one dressed in a simple navy-blue suit, the other in police uniform. Willow noticed even without thinking about it that the uniformed woman was a constable.

  ‘Mrs Worth,’ said Sister Lulworth with a smile. ‘What are you doing up and about out here? Is there a problem?’

  With a sideways glance at the two police officers, Willow condensed her explanation of the urge to make a substantial donation to the dry-rot fund.

  ‘And Nurse Worbarrow suggested that I speak to a Mr Durdle about the best way to go about it. I wondered if I might I telephone him from here to make an appointment?’

  An expression of faint distaste crossed Sister Lulworth’s usually pleasant face as she contemplated the thought of Mr Durdle.

  ‘Yes, if you wish. There’s the phone, and there’s an alphabetical list of internal extensions on the wall.’ Sister Lulworth looked at the two police officers. ‘Shall we go into my office?’

  They followed her, the CID officer looking back in some curiosity. Willow was not sure whether that was because she herself had already been identified as a Scotland Yard wife, because of her urge to spend money on the hospital, or because of the way she looked, still huge and saggy under her fine nightgown. She met the stare with a challenging expression of her own and was glad to see the other woman’s gaze slide away first.

  Willow dialled the number given for Mr Durdle on the list beside the telephone and when he answered she went through her introduction once again. It was beginning to sound quite convincing.

  Even so, Durdle seemed surprised by her suggestion, but he agreed to see her at four that afternoon.

  ‘If that would suit you,’ he added politely. ‘But there’s really no need for you to come to my office. I could so easily pop along to your ward.’

  ‘Four is fine,’ said Willow, calculating that both she and Lucinda would have had their post-lunch snooze and had time to get in one feed before she would have to dress for the meeting. ‘And I’d rather like to get away from the ward for a few minutes and remember what it’s like not to be surrounded by babies.’

  Mr Durdle laughed politely and said that he looked forward to meeting her.

  Willow put down the telephone receiver, remembering that four o’clock was prime visiting time for friends who did not work in offices, and for Mrs Rusham. She decided that if any of them were to come they would just have to entertain each other until she got back.

  As it turned out, by four o’clock no one had turned up to see her. Even Tom had missed his usual flying visit around lunchtime and there had been no sign of Rob. Willow asked the woman in the next bed to keep an eye out for him in case he did appear, and then went to fetch her clothes from the cupboard.

  Wearing the dark-blue maternity dress in which she had arrived at the hospital, with her hair brushed and a little makeup on her face, she had a look at herself in the mirror over one of the basins. With her pale-red lashes coloured with mascara and some bright lipstick giving her mouth almost equal prominence with her big nose, she thought grimly that she would just about do.

  Even so, she felt most peculiar as she went down the long passage to the swing doors that led out of the obstetrics unit, and her shoes seemed horribly hard after the flapping bedroom slippers. She forgot it all, though, when she met Mark Durdle.

  He proved to be a surprisingly young man, perhaps thirty, and there was something about him that seemed familiar. Willow was sure that she had seen him somewhere before, but try as she would she could not remember where.

  He had a suavity that she had not expected after the story Nurse Worbarrow had told about his humiliation at Mr Ringstead’s hands. His suit was well cut and made of good grey flannel, and his black-leather shoes were well polished and not at all down at heel. His grey-and-white shirt was unaggressively striped and his dull-purple tie looked carefully chosen to express authority without clashing with his pinkish complexion.

  It gave Willow a moment of amusement to realise that even though the nurses did not look as though they had been to colour counsellors, their business manager certainly did.

  Having smiled at her like a film star with his brilliantly white teeth wide apart, he invited Willow into his office, offered her a cup of Earl Grey tea, and asked how he could help her.

  Willow sat down with care, accepted the tea, repeated her wish to do something for the hospital and asked what he would suggest.

  Durdle stood up and, with his back to her, reached up to a shelf above his desk on which were ranged several boxes with the name of a printer emblazoned on their sides. His jacket rode up a little as he stretched upwards, but not enough to reach the waistband of his trousers or reveal any bunched shirt. He took the lid off one of the boxes, from which Willow got a flash of yellow just before he replaced it, and moved on to the next box.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, removing a grey folder elegantly printed in black and gold, which he offered her. Willow swallowed a mouthful of the fragrant, wonderfully unstewed tea, and took the folder.

  ‘That’s got all the details of the appeal. You’ll see there the names of the committee members who are running it, and some of the sorts of activity that are available. Now this,’ he reached into one of the other boxes and took out a less glamorous piece of paper that looked like a muddy photocopy made on a cheap machine without enough toner, ‘is a list of the next three months’fundraising occasions. Do keep it. If you do decide
to make a donation – and may I say how grateful we are for any help at all – you could simply send a cheque to me. If you were considering a longer-term commitment, you could complete the form of covenant at the end.’

  He proceeded to explain to Willow exactly how much the hospital would benefit from a four-year undertaking to pay a set amount each year, paused and then asked her kindly if she had any questions.

  ‘Yes, actually, I have got one or two,’ she said with what she hoped was appealing hesitancy. ‘During one of my visits to the clinic, Mr Ringstead said something to me about the fundraising. In fact, it was really his interest in it that set me off thinking about it, and after he died … oh, wasn’t it awful?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Durdle unemotionally. ‘Dreadful.’ He smiled again, but that time he kept his teeth clamped together.

  Willow watched him, trying to see past his well-managed presentation of himself to the man he might actually be.

  ‘Well, you see,’ she said as she let her mind play about with suspicions and possibilities, ‘when I heard what had happened to him, I really felt that I absolutely had to do something, as a kind of memorial perhaps. I don’t quite know why, but in a funny sort of way I felt almost guilty that he’d died.’

  As she watched Durdle’s well-combed eyebrows lift, Willow wondered if she was overdoing the silliness of her chatter. She gave a nervous-sounding giggle. ‘Stupid, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, Mrs Worth, it sounds to me like a most normal reaction, especially from someone who was his patient and clearly, if I may say so, cared for him. It seems admirable to me.’

  ‘I think all his patients must have cared for him. He was the kindest man.’

  ‘Yes.’ The cool monosyllable told Willow nothing at all about Durdle’s real views of Ringstead. She tried to think how she might arouse some more useful reaction.