Poison Flowers (2 page)

Before Willow could say any more or comment on Worth's weariness, the waiter brought their coffee and a plate of hand-made chocolates. When he had gone, Willow picked up a chocolate-coated cherry, ate it and then looked at Worth. Her eyes seemed to be a deeper green than usual in the flickering candlelight.

‘Was it a weekday?' she asked. ‘Presumably they were on their way to work. No one would take a narcotic before working. Cocaine, perhaps, but not something to make them sleep.'

Worth said nothing, but there was a light in his eyes and a faint smile on his lips that suggested that he appreciated her point.

‘Were the other cases as eccentric as that?' she went on. Worth half shrugged his powerful shoulders under the civilised disguise of his well-cut but slightly shabby dark suit.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘All the deaths were caused by plant poisons taken in food or drink. An elderly spinster died at the end of February after drinking a small quantity of sloe gin every day. Her routine was to have a small glass of the stuff (which she made herself each year when the sloes were ripe) after her evening meal. Unfortunately the bottle she used just before she died had been adulterated with a high concentration of digitalis, from very finely powdered foxglove leaves.'

‘I can see precisely why you think the cases are linked,' said Willow. ‘How bizarre and utterly horrible! Did she have a bad heart?'

Worth took her slim hand in one of his and gripped it for a moment. The anxious look in his dark eyes was transformed for a moment into an expression of relaxation and amused affection. Whether he was amused at her or at himself Willow was not sure. After a moment she withdrew her hand. Tom drained his coffee and then made a face.

‘Too sweet!' he said. ‘My fault for putting so much sugar in it. Willow, you cannot imagine how good it is to find someone who is prepared to believe that these murders may be connected. My colleagues and superiors think I'm making a fuss about nothing.' He laughed shortly and there was no amusement in the sound at all. ‘They've started talking about “female intuition” and asking whether I'm cracking up.'

‘But why?' asked Willow, outraged on his behalf. The amusement crept back into his eyes at her tone.

‘Because apart from the type of poison and the fact that it was introduced into food or drink, there is no other connecting link between the deaths. The victims are as unlike each other as they could possibly be and have no apparent connection with each other. Because they live in opposite parts of the country …'

‘Then how do you know about it? Surely the government hasn't sneaked a national police force into operation without legislation,' said Willow.

Tom laughed again.

‘No. Though there are plenty of people who think a national force is the only way forward,' he said. Willow got the impression that he was covering something up.

‘Then how do you know?' she asked again, determined to find out.

‘There's a system for circulating details of unsolved major crimes among the different forces,' he said a little reluctantly. ‘You don't need to know any more about it: just accept that it exists.' He turned to signal to the waiter, who seemed to understand his peculiar gestures and quickly brought the bill.

‘Tom,' said Willow, deliberately deciding to leave the subject of the inter-force reporting for the time being, ‘may I contribute to this?' She was conscious that she must earn at least ten times his salary from her novels.

‘Certainly not,' he said, grinning at her. ‘I invited you out to dinner to celebrate my promotion and your finishing the latest book. This bill is mine. You can invite me and pay for our dinner whenever you like, but I won't have unseemly squabbling now.' He put a plastic credit card on top of the folded bill.

‘Thank you very much,' said Willow, accepting his rule with ease and considerable pleasure.

He drove her home to Belgravia in his elderly but superbly maintained Saab and parked carefully in a space just a little way from her front door. As Willow King she inhabited a small, dampish flat in Oapham, but Cressida Woodruffe's royalties had bought, decorated and furnished five large and elegant rooms in Chesham Place. Tom did not switch off the engine. Willow looked sideways at him in the mixture of moon- and street-light, liking his eccentric courtesy. She knew quite well that his leaving the engine running was intended to show that he wanted her to be absolutely free to invite him in to her flat or not as she chose.

‘Would you like a drink?' she asked, making her voice noncommittal so that he would be as unconstrained in his decision whether to accept her invitation.

‘That would be nice,' he said, putting the car in neutral and switching off the engine. ‘Thank you.'

When he had locked the car they walked up the broad staircase to her flat side by side. As she unlocked the door and hurried to switch off the beeping burglar alarm, she thought how much she liked him and trusted him.

‘Come into the drawing room,' she said, returning to the small hall. ‘It's still a bit bleak, but quite habitable.'

The last time he had been in the Belgravia flat had been after the investigation they had shared into the murder of the Minister of DOAP, when the flat had been broken into, ransacked and vandalised by a man whose successful corruption was threatened by Willow's questions. On that occasion she had been reduced to uncharacteristic tears of rage and fear by the sight of her furniture scored and slashed by a sharp knife, her pictures reduced to heaps of crumpled paper and tom canvas and the whole room covered in feathers from the ruined sofa cushions.

Worth looked around the room, noticing the gaps where pictures had once hung and pieces of furniture had stood.

‘Have you heard from the insurance company yet?' he asked as she switched on the lights and removed a guard from in front of the fire that her housekeeper must have lit earlier in the evening.

‘Yes. They sent a loss adjustor – a charming man – and if his estimate of the time proves correct, I ought to be getting a cheque from them soon. But now that the book is finished I'll start replacing the stuff in any case. I just hadn't the time to do anything until I'd got it off to my agent. Mrs Rusham tidied everything up and found these temporary sofa cushions and covers. They're fairly ghastly, but I can bear them for a bit. Whisky?'

‘Better not,' he said. ‘I've drunk enough tonight. Have you any mineral water?'

‘Of course,' said Willow. ‘Mrs Rusham keeps me well supplied.'

‘I must say that whatever I may think of a woman like you bothering to write romantic novels for your living, I envy you your housekeeper.'

Willow handed him a heavy tumbler filled with Vichy water and laughed.

‘She's my most indefensible luxury, and yet the one I would be most reluctant to lose,' she said. ‘Come and sit down. The sofas aren't as comfortable as they were before that thug dug his knife into them, but it's better than standing up.'

Tom went to sit beside her, carefully leaving two feet between them, and took a mouthful of water. The room might lack ornament, but there were flowers in vases on the mantelpiece and on a small table near the windows. New books lay on a wide stool in front of one of the sofas with the day's newspapers. The small fire burning in the white Adam fireplace warmed the room and its fickle light combined with that of the silk-shaded lamps to create an atmosphere of luxurious peace.

Willow felt completely relaxed as she lay back against the replacement foam-filled sofa cushions, but after a while it occurred to her that Tom did not share her ease.

‘What is it, Tom?' she asked. ‘Those murders?' He shook his head and the firelight accentuated the shape of his broken nose and the smooth planes of his cheeks and forehead.

‘No,' he said, and his voice sounded even deeper than usual. ‘I was wondering about that chap, the one you introduced me to the night I came here before Christmas.'

‘Richard, you mean,' said Willow, easily identifying her old friend and sometime lover. ‘What about him?'

Worth turned away from her to put his glass down on a small table. Then, unencumbered, he turned back to face her. He took her free hand and held it in both of his. This time he did not grip, but she could feel the strength of his fingers and she was at once afraid of the implications of his strength and of the sensations he produced in her. She was afraid that she might be falling in love with him and knew that if she did, she would have no protection left against the hurt her peculiar upbringing had forced her to dread. Richard had never seemed so positive – or so threatening to her self-sufficiency – as Tom Worth.

‘Willow,' said Tom with difficulty, ‘I know that I have no right to ask this – and I don't know that I even expect you to answer – but is he … are you and he … well, lovers?'

Willow pulled away instinctively, but Tom kept his hold on her hand. Honesty fought with her fear of intimacy and won.

‘We were,' she answered truthfully. Even in her own ears, her voice sounded strained. ‘But since … We have not been lovers – technically – since that night when you and I … that night in the middle of the Endelsham case when you stayed with me in Clapham.'

As she spoke Willow thought of Richard's astonished resentment when she had tried to explain to him that the simple, happy arrangement they had shared for the previous three years had ceased to seem simple to her and that she no longer wanted to be his lover, however much she still valued his friendship. She had been nervous about broaching the subject, feeling absurdly that it was considerably more intimate than any of the lovemaking they had shared. Perhaps her nervousness had made her voice and manner colder than she had meant.

‘Damn it, Willow! Why didn't you tell me?' Richard had burst out when she had said her piece after they had had dinner together one night.

‘I am telling you now, Richard,' she had answered, trying to keep her voice unemotional, knowing that he hated scenes as much as she did.

‘I had a right to know. You should have told me when I got here this evening …' Willow had begun to feel angry as Richard sounded more and more resentful.

‘Do you mean that you'd have made me pay for dinner if you'd known that I wasn't going to sleep with you? I'll be happy to give you a cheque,' she had said very coldly.

‘Don't be a fool,' he had retorted, more coldly still. Willow had waited for him to go on, but he had just stood on the pavement outside her flat, looking as though she had done something unspeakable.

‘Richard,' she had said then, trying to explain to him (and perhaps also to herself) why she was breaking up their satisfactory arrangement. ‘I …'

‘Can't we talk about it inside? It's not a subject to be broadcast about Belgravia.'

She had let him into her flat and tried again.

‘You see,' she had said at one moment, ‘I realise that I've been using you. I like you enormously; I hope that we can be friends; but I have come to understand that I do not love you,' she had finished with difficulty.

‘I never supposed that you did,' he had said, looking puzzled. ‘I don't know that I love you, but why must that destroy everything? What if I want to go on being used?' Willow had shivered at that question.

‘I know that it was convenient for us both …'

‘Surely more than that?' Richard had said, making Willow feel so unsafe that she longed to take refuge in cold severity. Since she cared about him, she had not been able to do that.

‘One of the things that made it all so easy was that unlike other women you never seemed to want to complicate it all with messy feelings,' Richard had said at last.

‘I'm sorry, Willow.' Tom's deep voice brought her back to the present.

Willow shuddered as she thought of the full messiness of the feelings she was just beginning to recognise. They seemed much more real than the easy, uncommitted, unthreatening affair with Richard that had been her first essay in the world of passion.

‘Was I looking very stern?' she asked, wondering what it was about Tom that had made her take such destructive action against Richard, who had never done her any harm and who had indeed given her much simple pleasure and a great deal of friendship in the years they had been semi-detached lovers.

‘A little formidable,' he answered. ‘But then you often do.' Willow knew that, of course, but however valuable the look was in the Civil Service it was not appropriate to Cressida Woodruffe.

‘It wasn't you making me annoyed,' she said with deliberate gentleness. ‘Why did you ask about Richard?' Tom smiled at her question, but he looked nervous, too.

‘Because I should like very much to …' He shook his dark head and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘This is exceptionally difficult, and I cannot think of a way of saying it that is unthreatening enough not to frighten you off but not so coy as to irritate the pair of us. To hell with it!'

At that Willow smiled too, and Tom seemed to take some comfort from her amusement.

‘I asked because I want to make love to you – not necessarily tonight and so you needn't look like that and prepare your speech of refusal – and I would not want to embarrass you by asking you to make love with me if you were involved with someone else. What happened between us on that one night was … No, never mind.' He took his hands away and picked up his glass again.

Trying to be as honest and sensible as he had been, Willow took a pull at her own drink while she decided what to say.

‘Thank you, Tom,' she began.

‘For nothing, Will,' he answered, smiling at her properly again.

‘I can't deny that I have sometimes thought about that night too – or that it was because of you that I asked Richard … told Richard that I couldn't go on as we were. But I don't know …'

‘It's all right,' he said quickly. ‘I wasn't trying to demand anything now. I'll finish this and then be off.'