Poison Flowers (22 page)

‘And what hurt or insult could ever make an intelligent person kill?' she asked herself, and then realised the naivety of the question. From her reading of the one psychology textbook she had found that mentioned serial killers, Willow knew that for those who had provided the case studies for the book the smallest rejection had been enough to make them want to kill. On the other hand the person she was tracking was not precisely like them; of that she was absolutely sure. They had selected their victims according to physical types. Her poisoner had chosen the victims for some other reason, and she was determined to work it out.

Delving into her own psyche in search of some feeling that might have propelled her into homicide, Willow decided that of all the emotions she had ever felt, only frustration would be strong enough. The impotent rage she felt in her Civil Service life when colleagues would not listen to her rational demolition of their arguments and accept it made her feel more nearly murderous than anything else except the filth, inefficiency and overcrowding of transport in London. But she knew that she was eccentric where strong feelings were concerned.

If there were a spectrum of emotion akin to the rainbow, she thought, and she represented violet, the poisoner would be red, although probably giving other people the impression of violet coolness. Willow put both hands behind her head, tilting her face towards the opposite wall instead of the ceiling. There was an anonymous eighteenth-century French painting hanging there in lieu of the Watteau she would have liked if only she could have afforded it, showing a picnic in a grassy glade, with two pairs of silk-dressed lovers flirting with each other amid all the romantic impedimenta of swing, ribboned mandolin and flowers.

‘Love,' said Willow aloud, remembering that love, money and revenge were always said to be the classic motives for murder. She tried to fit them to what she knew of the poisonings. Money could be dismissed straight away, because Edith Fernside had had nothing to leave but a few knick-knacks and some pathetic savings in the Post Office Savings Bank. She had had an adequate pension, which paid the high service charge on her bungalow, but that had died with her. Even Simon Titchmell's fortune had been limited to the price of his house. Tom had provided no information on Claire Ullathorne's will, but Willow could remember that she was said to have had a good divorce settlement. That did not sound like untold riches, even if Ullathorne had had enough money to keep herself when she could not find work.

The telephone rang before Willow could get any further.

‘Willow? You wanted me,' said Tom. ‘I hope it's important because I'm in the middle of a hell of a case.'

‘It is,' she answered, unworried by his brusqueness. ‘I need to know the name and address of Dr Bruterley's mistress and I need to talk to his widow. Can you fix that for me?'

‘The first, probably: I expect I can get her name from the Cheltenham people; the second, no: I can't pass you off as a police officer and even if I could the Cheltenham boys would never put up with my sending someone to interfere in their case,' said Tom, sounding irritable for once.

‘Then I'll just have to take a risk and go and see her as myself,' said Willow.

‘She won't talk to you,' said Tom. ‘And don't you dare suggest that you are there officially. If you must go, you can be a novelist or a pensions investigator or a journalist or anything you like, so long as it has nothing to do with the police. Understood?'

‘Yes, I quite understand,' answered Willow with complete sincerity. ‘Even though it's frustrating. Is your case going to keep you in the office all night or could we have dinner? Mrs Rusham's been cooking something that smells amazing and there's always plenty for two.'

‘That's nice of you, Will,' said Tom, softening his voice, ‘but I don't think I'd better accept, because I've no idea when I'll get out of here.'

‘Don't worry about that,' she said. ‘Come if you can. I … I'd like to see you.' That was as far as she could let herself go, despite her sharp moments of terror and her absurd feeling that Tom would be able to protect her from the poisoner.

‘Would you?' Tom's voice was almost wistful, but it firmed as he added: ‘Then I'll do my best, but I can't promise.'

When his voice had gone, Willow slowly replaced her receiver and tried to imagine her small disappointment magnified to an extent that could make her want to kill Tom Worth. She could not do it, but then, she hastily tried to persuade herself, she did not love him. He was a friend, a dear and trusted and wanted friend, but no more than that.

‘Love, money or revenge,' she was saying to herself as she fell asleep.

When she woke three hours later, surrounded by the slanting golden light of a late spring evening, she could not understand what had happened to her. She didn't approve of afternoon rests, and she had always despised people who lay about when they ought to have been working.

She got off the bed, feeling groggy, and saw to her surprise that it was after eight o'clock. Mrs Rusham must have left the flat with deliberate quietness so as not to disturb her employer. Willow rubbed her eyes, forgetting that as Cressida she was wearing black mascara on her pale-red lashes. The doorbell rang and she wandered out to listen to the intercom.

‘Will? It's me, Tom.'

‘Come on up,' she said, still sounding half-asleep, and pressed the buzzer.

Two minutes later he was knocking at the door of her flat. Willow opened it. He looked at her face and took her into his arms.

‘It's all right. Please don't let yourself get so upset. What's happened?' he said into her hair as he stroked her back. ‘I should never have involved you.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' asked Willow, waking up fast and pulling herself out of his embrace.

‘Whatever it is that's made you cry,' said Tom, ‘I've never known you do that before, except the night they wrecked your flat. I knew you were upset from the things you said on the telephone yesterday, but I hadn't realised that it was so bad. I'm sorry I was so brisk when we spoke this afternoon.'

‘What makes you think I've been crying?' asked Willow, all at sea. For answer he put both hands on her shoulders and turned her round so that she was facing the pretty, gilt-framed mirror that hung on the hall wall. Willow saw the smudges of mascara below her eyes and laughed.

‘You're a kind man, Tom, and all-too experienced,' she said. ‘But you ought to learn the difference between smudged mascara and the wept-over sort. I was asleep until a few minutes ago and knuckled my eyes like a child, forgetting the makeup. I do not cry.'

‘I see,' he said, blinking at the finality of her pronouncement. ‘I do occasionally – generally with rage. Can I have some whisky?'

‘Yes of course. Go and help yourself while I clean up my face,' said Willow, surprised by his admission.

‘All right, but don't bother to make it up again. I like you as Willow sometimes.'

She left him, toying with the idea of telling him that she made up her face for her own pleasure and not for anyone else's; but when she had washed off the black smudges and the rest of the half-dissolved make up, she did not replace it. When she went back to him, Tom was standing by the window, a heavy glass tumbler in his hand.

‘May I pour something for you?' he asked, starting towards her.

‘Don't worry,' Willow answered, pouring herself a glass of amontillado sherry. ‘I think I can manage.' Tom's quick smile answered all the implications of her five words, but he did not comment, instead asking:

‘Despite the lack of tears, you have been upset, haven't you, Willow?'

Looking carefully at him, Willow could see nothing but concern for herself and so she told him many of the things she had thought, said and been disabused of by Caroline Titchmell. Her irrational fears of being poisoned Willow kept to herself.

‘And you were miserable because you liked her so much?' suggested Tom.

‘Partly,' she said. ‘But more because if someone like that – with all those talents and attractions – could kill people because they had once been unkind to her, my few optimistic assumptions about humankind would have been disproved. But most of all it was because of the vileness of the thought that someone who could poison people like that could project such niceness. You see I really did like her. Funny,' she added, ‘until I started this detecting business I had no idea how many people I'd find in the world whom I could like. It's rather unsettling …'

Tom looked as though he were about to speak, but then he drank some more whisky instead and waited for whatever Willow might say next.

‘Never mind that, though,' was what came, in a far crisper voice than the one she had used before. ‘What we need now is more information about Bruterley's mistress. Did you get anything from your Cheltenham “boys”?'

‘Not a lot,' he answered, ‘except that she's disappeared.'

‘Aha,' said Willow. ‘So my informant was right. Well, that must be a hopeful sign. What clots the police there must be …'

‘Be fair, Will,' said Tom. ‘By the time they had discovered the existence of the woman she had gone, and it was a bit late then to put a watch on all routes out of Cheltenham. Besides …'

‘They presumably suspected the widow at first,' suggested Willow. Tom's face gave her the answer even before he put it into words.

‘Most murders are domestic, Willow,' he said. ‘But it seems not in this case. At first sight, it looked as though Mrs Bruterley had had the opportunity of poisoning that bottle of whisky at any time she wanted to. She could easily have extracted the necessary nicotine with the most basic kitchen equipment …'

‘Does she smoke?' asked Willow, sitting on the sofa and twirling her sherry glass between her fingers.

‘No, but that would not have stopped her from buying boxes of cigars, would it?' said Tom, looking amused.

‘And so what has given them the idea that she didn't do it? I imagine they'd have arrested her by now if they thought they could prove anything.'

‘Apart from the fact that she had no apparent motive she was away staying with her mother in Northumberland for about ten days before her husband died, and …'

‘Have they any proof that he drank from that particular whisky bottle in those ten days?' asked Willow sharply. She disliked hearing the shrill urgency in her voice, and so she made herself calm down, breathed deeply and drank a little more sherry.

‘Yes, the senior partner of the practice was one of the people who was allowed to share Bruterley's single malt, and he has told the police that he and Bruterley had a couple of drinks from it three days after Mrs Bruterley left with her children. That is seen as pretty conclusive,' said Tom. ‘That and the lack of motive.'

‘Unless she knew about the mistress. Jealousy is a bloody strong motive.'

‘Apparently she knew nothing about his infidelities,' said Tom. Willow was not certain whether he believed his own statement or indeed whether it was believable. She made a mental note to ask Andrew Salcott about Miranda's attitudes to her husband and her marriage.

‘Then what about money?' she asked, putting her doubts to one side for the moment. ‘Didn't she stand to inherit anything after his death? Most widows get something.'

‘He had no life assurance …' Tom was beginning when Willow interrupted him again.

‘But what about the mortgage? The building society must have insisted on life assurance.'

‘No mortgage,' said Tom. ‘The house was bought out-right by Miranda Bruterley herself. She owns it. She has plenty of money of her own. Bruterley had put all he had into buying his share of the practice and building up his collection of pictures.'

‘Who did know about the mistress?' asked Willow, leaving the question of money.

‘Apparently very few people knew. There was the girl herself, Bruterley, and the malt-whisky-drinking senior doctor, to whom Bruterley had talked when he discovered that the girl was a patient. They'd managed to keep it pretty quiet, you see,' said Tom. He got out of his chair and came to sit beside Willow on the sofa. She smiled at him. He laid a hand on her knee for a moment, but she had too many questions to let the pleasant sensations aroused by his hand distract her.

‘Really? How long had it been going on?' Willow asked.

‘About three months apparently,' said Tom, accepting her questions and removing his hand. Watching Willow's doubtful expression, he went on, ‘but there's nothing whatever to suggest that the widow might have done it even if she had known about the affair. There's no evidence she knew how to extract nicotine from cigars or that she ever bought any tobacco at all. She has a nanny living in the house all the time and the girl has made a statement saying that she never smelled anything that she never smelled anything untoward there and saw no evidence of experiments in the kitchen.'

‘And had there ever been a burglary in their house?' asked Willow. Tom smiled ruefully and drank some more whisky.

‘Yes. That was one of the things I asked the boys to check. The Bruterleys were burgled the day before Mrs Bruterley went away. The police there don't think that was particularly significant because there has been a spate of breaking and entering in Cheltenham and it was the classic sort: video and television, jewellery and loose money,' said Tom.

‘And perhaps a fatal dose of nicotine added to the malt whisky,' said Willow, sounding thoughtful. She sipped her sherry. ‘Oh damn no. If the burglary was before Mrs Bruterley went away and someone else drank some from the relevant bottle after she had gone, it can't have been done during the burglary. Are your boys certain that there wasn't another burglary?'

‘Positive – unfortunately for our investigation.'