Poison Flowers (12 page)

‘Without being used by the police they can't get the experience,' said Willow, committing one of her besetting sins in finishing his sentence.

‘More or less,' he said. ‘But…'

Before Michael Rodenhurst could tell her what his caveat was, the soup plates were cleared away and some perfectly acceptable lamb and vegetables were handed round. When the waitress had gone, the psychiatrist's attention was claimed by the headmistress, which left Willow to make conversation with the industrialist. There was no pudding, and as soon as they had all drunk their indifferent coffee the chairman began to round up his team and take them back to the interview room. On the way Willow said casually to Michael Rodenhurst:

‘Frustrating to be interrupted like that, isn't it? I've got to go back to my office in due course, but would you like a quick drink when this is finished for the day?'

‘Why not?' he answered. ‘But it will have to be quick.'

At the end of the day's session Willow could feel herself on the point of losing her temper with the headmistress, who seemed to have an unrealistic view of both the Ovil Service and the kind of candidate such boards could expect. Once or twice Willow caught the eye of the psychiatrist and felt a little better for the amusement she read in it. When they were at last released, he came straight over to her.

‘You look as though you need that drink,' he said, ushering her towards the door.

‘Does it show that badly?' asked Willow and then, in case he had misunderstood her need, added: ‘Not that I particularly want alcohol.'

‘Just escape,' suggested the psychiatrist. ‘Yes I could see that. But why was it so bad?'

‘Because, I suppose, I dislike being contradicted by people who know less than I do about the subject under discussion,' she said, half turning towards him. Catching a derisive gleam in his eye, she added: ‘And please don't tell me what that betrays about my subconscious or I'll tell you a story I heard in my youth about a psychiatrist who spent his life under a bed.'

‘Because he was a little potty,' said Michael cheerfully. ‘Yes, I heard it, too. But don't worry, I learned fairly soon in my psychiatric training that I would have no friends left if I gave rein to my impulse to tell them all how well they fitted the various mental disorders about which I was learning. There's a peaceful pub just round here. Come on.'

When they got inside he asked her what she would like to drink. That rather stumped Willow. It was a very long time since she had been in a pub. She hated beer, which in any case reminded her of her undergraduate days at Newcastle; she did not feel like risking the wine or sherry; and the idea of ordering mineral water seemed bizarre in that small, smoke-ridden temple to alcohol.

‘Cider, I think,' she said eventually. ‘Dry cider. Half a pint, please.'

‘I won't be long,' said Michael. ‘Why not grab a table before the rush starts.'

Willow obediently made her way to one of the round tables, pleased to see that it had been mopped recently. She picked up the heavy ash tray and put it on a different table before sitting down.

‘Here,' said Michael a moment later, handing her the drink.

‘Thank you very much.'

‘Now, why do you really want to know about psychological profiling?' he asked, before taking a gulp of his beer.

‘It interests me,' she said, skating neatly over the thin ice of half-truths. ‘I just wonder how effective it would be if, say, you were presented with three or four crimes probably committed by the same person. Would you really be able to give the police a realistic description of the offender?'

‘We'd be able to give them suggestions as to the type of person to look for, and possibly where to look,' he said moderately. ‘But if any of the data they'd given us were wrong – or of course if the crimes had not after all been committed by the same person – then nothing we could offer would be any use. And in any case, we could only give them pointers, not an actual identity. Why?'

‘Can you give me an example of how you'd set about it?' asked Willow, drinking some cider, which she found pleasant and effective at clearing the dust and fury out of her mind and throat.

‘OK,' said Michael, shrugging slightly. ‘You give me descriptions of a few crimes and I'll explain what we'd do.'

‘I?' said Willow, slightly nonplussed to be presented so quickly with the opportunity for which she had been angling. Michael laughed.

‘Yes, you. If I set them out, you'll accuse me of planning them to show what we can do in the best light and mock,' he said. ‘Come on.'

‘All right. What about …? I suppose it's usually murder?'

‘Usually,' said Michael.

‘Right: then murder by … oh, poisoning. Three unlikely victims, say: an elderly woman in the north of England; a younger one, richer, prettier, more in tune with the modern world, in the south; and a man, youngish, professional, successful, in London.'

‘This,' said Michael, ‘reminds me of the beginning of
The Three Hostages
.'

‘John Buchan?' said Willow. ‘I've never read it.'

‘Good heavens!' exclaimed the psychiatrist, putting his large, dimpled glass tankard down on the table and turning round to face her. ‘How extraordinary! You should, you know. Apart from being an exciting thriller, it's an instructive account of how an intelligent man-of-action of that date regarded the fossicking about in people's minds of hypnotists and, by extension I've always thought, psychiatrists.'

‘I'll look it up,' said Willow drily, not intending to do any such thing. ‘But come on, tell me how you'd set about the profile.'

‘I'd need to know a lot more. On the surface it strikes me as unlikely that three such different crimes would be connected. Give me a reason why the police might think they were committed by the same person?'

‘Oh, the
modus operandi
,' said Willow. ‘I suppose they'd have to have had evidence of that.'

‘In that case, I'd look carefully at the social position of all the victims in case there was a pattern. There's been a study of American serial killers that suggests most are from the lower-middle and upper-working class who kill representatives of the class they consider has frustrated their ambitions in life.'

‘All right,' said Willow, fishing in her briefcase for a notebook and pencil. ‘Social class. What about personal connections between the victims?'

‘Presumably the police have already ruled that out or they wouldn't be coming to us. If it's a genuine serial killer, they're unlikely to have any personal connection. Either they would not have known him or they would have been only the slightest of acquaintances. If it's not, then of course they will have been in some way involved with him.'

Willow considered that. Before she could ask another question, the psychiatrist went on:

‘But on the face of it, with such different victims, I'd put my money on his not being the classic serial killer. They tend to wreak their vengeance on unknown people as symbols. In the circumstances I'd advise the police to search diligently for some connecting link, however tenuous or apparently absurd, and then look for a person with a grudge.'

‘What kind of person?' asked Willow, thinking of her still-shadowy picture of the killer's mind. She drained her cider and put the glass down on the table, knowing that she would have to leave soon if she were to get any work done at DOAP that evening.

‘Someone riddled with a mixture of vanity and inadequacy,' he said slowly. ‘I know that a large proportion of the population suffers from that, but I think the police should look for it. Someone determined to exact vengeance, convinced of his – or her – right to it, and without the resources to gain any kind of satisfaction from other means.'

‘Man or woman?' asked Willow. Her instinct, which she was determined not to trust, was that the person she was hunting was male. ‘How could you tell that?'

‘Difficult with something like poison,' he said, ‘particularly with victims of both sexes. I think you've cheated, you know, producing such an unlikely scenario. There's generally a sexual motive of some kind in serial killings, but none that I could imagine with the victims you've dreamed up for me. And with murders that need no physical strength it's hard to say …'

‘I think I remember reading somewhere that poison always used to be considered “the woman's method”,' said Willow.

‘Coward's, you mean,' said Michael. ‘“The coward's weapon, poison.” Phineas Fletcher writing in 1614, when presumably causing someone else's death was only manly if it involved some physical risk to the killer.'

‘There you are, you see,' said Willow with rather depressed satisfaction, ‘“manly” is the opposite of “cowardly”, therefore coward equals woman … I must go.'

‘I don't actually believe that coward equals woman,' he said mildly. ‘Must you really go? I was rather enjoying myself and I'd hate you to disappear on such a sour note.' Willow relented slightly.

‘I was enjoying myself, too,' she said. ‘It's just that I've a deskful of work back at DOAP. Good night. Thank you for the cider. It was good. See you tomorrow.'

As she walked back to the bus stop, she decided that she had learned very little except that her determination to find a connection between the victims was correct. She did not blame the young psychiatrist for being so vague in his suggestions, because she had not been able to give him the full story. He might be genuinely useful to her if she could get Tom's permission to enroll him in their conspiracy to discover the murderer, she thought.

When she had eventually battled her way back to DOAP and riffled through all the work on her desk, she went quickly back to the flat, picked up her telephone and dialled Tom's number. All she got was his answering machine.

‘Willow here,' she said, trying to hide the disappointment she felt. ‘I've discovered someone who might help us and would like to tell him the background. May I? Ring me when you've time.'

Then, thinking of the only connection she had yet discovered, she rang Richard Crescent. He, to her surprise, answered.

‘Richard,' she said, sounding pleased, ‘I'm glad I've caught you between work and social life.'

‘Willow, my dear,' he said, ‘what a surprise! All these calls during your Clapham days!'

‘It's just that I wanted to ask you a question before your dinner party,' she said, relieved to hear him sounding cheerful.

‘I might have known it,' he said. ‘All right, let's have it.'

‘Where was Simon Titchmell at school, do you know?' she asked.

‘Blockhurst,' he said. ‘Why?'

‘Where is that? I don't think I've ever heard of it.'

‘Scotland. His mother is Scottish and wanted him to have a taste of life up there. Good school, if not absolutely in the front rank.'

‘So it has nothing to do with Hampshire Place?' said Willow, disappointed again.

‘Nothing at all,' he said, laughing at her. ‘But Caroline was there. You can talk to her about it on Thursday if you want. If that's all, Willow, I must go.'

‘Nearly,' she said quickly. ‘You won't forget that I'm Cressida Woodruffe on Thursday, will you, Richard?'

‘Have I ever forgotten?' he said and put down his receiver.

Admitting to herself that although he had once or twice worried her, he had in fact always called her Cressida when there was anyone else there to hear, Willow dialled the number of her Chesham Place flat. When the machine answered she played her remote-control bleeper down the line and listened to her messages. There were two: one from her agent asking why ‘Cressida'had not answered the earlier message and one from Christie's announcing that neither of the bids she had left for the auction that day had been successful.

Sadly Willow put down her receiver and went to see whether there was anything in her freezer that she could bring herself to eat.

On the day of Richard's dinner party, Willow did not think that she would be able to get all the way back to Clapham, look in at her office and be back in the West End in time to have her hair done, dress and be at Richard's by eight o'clock. Against her principles she rang her Administration Trainee to ask whether there were any urgent matters that would need to be dealt with before the following Tuesday.

‘Nothing tairrrminally urgent,' said Barbara, sounding very much more Scottish than usual. ‘The Permanent Secretary has been agitating for the figures on pensions for widows below retiring age.'

‘Has he?' said Willow, wondering what he was up to. Elsie Trouville, the Minister, was as anxious as Willow to reorganise the payments of pensions to widows of working age and she knew that the Permanent Secretary disagreed with their ideas.

‘Yes. John's been preparing them for him,' said Barbara.

‘Good,' said Willow, wishing that she could suggest her staff sit on the figures until she could get back to the office. ‘Anything else?'

‘Nothing we can't manage. Willow.'

Relieved to know that there was nothing vital she had to do at DOAP, Willow extricated herself from the telephone box and set out on her weekly transformation into Cressida Woodruffe.

Two and a half hours later, sleekly coiffured, discreetly made up and clothed in an understated but very expensive black dress, she rang the bell of Richard's huge, Holland Park flat.

‘Good evening. Miss Woodruffe,' said Mrs Rusham, obviously delighted to be welcoming her employer into Richard Crescent's house. ‘Mr Lawrence-Crescent is in the drawing room. Shall I take your coat?'

‘Thank you, Mrs Rusham, I'll go and find him. Everything going all right?'

‘Perfectly, thank you,' said Mrs Rusham, carrying Willow's jacket upstairs. Willow walked into the immense, pale, bay-windowed drawing room, where she found Richard pouring two glasses of very superior New World Chardonnay.