Poison Flowers (35 page)

‘Ben's mother wanted him to be like her brothers, who died in the war. He announced at dinner that she did everything she could to make him like them, but he turned out quite different, meaning us to think that he was the gentle, shambling creature he pretends to be. Think how inadequate he must have felt all his childhood as he failed to live up to the toughness she wanted of him.'

‘All this is very interesting,' said Tom, ‘but it's hardly evidence. He …'

‘He was in Newcastle in the Christmas vacation,' she said, stopping his protests effectively. ‘He was teaching a course of creative writing there. I had thought that January was too early for anyone to have poisoned the sloe gin until I remembered your original notes: you wrote then; that she made her stock of sloe gin once a year when the sloes were ripe.'

Tom's eyes had lost their disbelief and looked alert again.

‘And Miss Fernside's next-door neighbour recognised the photograph of him from the back of this book,' said Willow.

‘How do you know?' he asked sharply.

‘Because I went up to Newcastle myself on Thursday night and talked to her on Friday. I also telephoned the university and talked to the man who organised Ben Jonson's teaching there. I think that if you interview him you'll discover that he found it so funny that Cressida Woodruffe had been asking questions about Ben Jonson's courses that he rang Ben to tell him about my questions. He must have put two and two together and decided to run me over. Unfortunately he recognised me.'

‘Willow, it's so unlikely. You must see that,' said Tom.

‘As clearly as I saw him at the wheel of that car,' she said slowly.

‘You saw him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then why in God's name didn't you tell me at once?' Tom demanded, justifiably furious with her.

‘I tried,' she said, ‘as soon as my mind started to work again, to get hold of you.'

Tom sat silently at her bedside, looking down at her scarred hands lying on the white cellular blanket. His mind was full of the danger she had been in, the terror she must have been feeling, and his own struggle to believe in her reasoning.

‘I still don't understand why he should have wanted to kill them all,' he said. ‘Even if everything else is as you say. It's very thin, Willow. I can't see the Crown Prosecution Service being convinced.'

‘Tom,' said Willow and her voice was so gentle that he was almost shocked. ‘Last time we worked together you managed to get the killer to make a confession. I know you hated doing it, but you did without much more direct evidence than you have here. Couldn't you do it again?'

‘I don't know. What else is there that makes you think he did it?'

‘To recap,' she said, reverting to her formal voice: ‘We know that Caroline suffered under Miss Fernside over the meningitis business; she was forced to take drugs at her brother's party; she was in love with Bruterley and he shook her off with extreme verbal cruelty; the latest victim once made her so ill with food poisoning that she failed some important exams. You agree that each of those people has injured her in one way or another?'

‘Yes,' said Tom, his face filled with a perplexed expression that sat oddly with the broken nose that gave it such a distinctive attraction or with the firmness of his mouth. ‘But what about Simon's girlfriend?'

‘I'm sure that was an accident,' said Willow. ‘I read but didn't pay proper attention to your first notes when you told me that Simon and the girl were not living together. When Ben poisoned the cereal he must have thought that only Titchmell would be there at breakfast time. She should never have eaten the muesli.'

‘All right,' said Tom. ‘I'll accept that for the moment.'

‘Caroline was in love with Ben; she would have told him everything they did to her. He must have decided to kill them for her. It was something he could give her that she could never get for herself, and it was also a way of making himself superior to her, whatever her success, her money and the possessions she bestowed on him. He could still feel good about himself, too, because he made himself believe that he was doing it because he loved her, to make up for the cruel things people had done to her.'

‘It still sounds far fetched to me,' said Tom, noticing that the dark-red scars on her face were almost the same colour as her eyebrows.

‘Well it isn't,' said Willow. ‘He fulfils all the criteria we listed that day in your flat, even down to being a model-maker.'

Tom's head snapped upwards and he looked at her.

‘How do you know?'

‘Another of those things I hardly noticed at the time. When I first met him, he was discussing with the girl on his other side how he was working on the accurate staging of one of his namesake's masques.'

‘And?' said Tom, when Willow stopped speaking and closed her eyes.

‘I was trying to remember his exact words, but I can't. The effect of what he said was that the original design was by Inigo Jones and there are records of it and that he was – yes: he was “reproducing it in miniature”.'

‘Do you know the name of the person he was talking to?' Tom took a notebook out of his breast pocket.

‘Emma Gnatche,' said Willow. ‘I know her and I can give you her address if you need it. There is more,' she added as Tom nodded. ‘When I went to Caroline's house for dinner she told me that most of the rooms were sparse and under-furnished because a lot of their belongings were still in store. The decorators had not finished and until they were well clear of the house she had not wanted to risk Ben's “masque sets”. I didn't register at the time, but that's what she must have meant. She said something proudly about their being “exquisite”. Haven't you got enough at least to pull him in and talk to him?'

‘Perhaps. Have you said anything about this to anyone? That psychiatrist fellow you talked about?'

‘Certainly not,' said Willow. ‘But, Tom, be quick, He's obviously mad, clearly dangerous. You must stop him.'

‘I'll try, but it's all circumstantial …'

‘Take this,' said Willow, handing him
Fair Cecilia.
‘Ben gave it to me and signed it for me. You ought to be able to get clear prints from the laminated jacket. Perhaps they'll match one on the malt whisky bottle.'

The film must have come to an end, for Willow's ward-mates came trooping back to their beds, each woman dressed in a similar quilted dressing gown and fluffy nylon slippers. Tom cast them a look of horrified surprise that irritated Willow, even though she shared his distaste for their uniform.

‘I must go.'

‘You will tell me what happens, won't you?' said Willow.

Tom nodded. ‘And don't be afraid. There'll be a man of ours outside all the time. Would you like me to have food sent in for you?'

The relief of being able to be certain that what she ate was not contaminated would be wonderful. Willow thought, and so she thanked him and accepted his offer. It also occurred to her that anything Tom provided would be healthier and taste better than the hospital meals she had seen so far.

He was already walking towards the swing doors out of the ward when Willow called him back.

‘Perhaps he thinks he's killed me,' she said softly to comfort them both. ‘After all, he ran over Cressida Woodruffe … If he's asked for her in any of the hospitals he'll have been unlucky.'

‘That's a thought,' said Tom. ‘Keep your pecker up, Will.' He bent down and kissed her scarred cheek and left her alone.

Willow watched him go and began to turn ideas over and over in her mind. There were one or two nasty ones that stuck like emotional burrs in her brain. Try as she might, she could not get them out.

Willow lay on her back waiting for her bones to knit and Tom to appear with the proof he needed. Her only distractions were visits from Richard, from Barbara, who came with minutes for approval and problems for sorting, and from Michael Rodenhurst, who came with flowers and fruit and dangerous questions about her detective story.

It was Thursday before Tom came again to tell her that Ben Jonson was being investigated. He arrived before the official visiting time, during the showing of
Neighbours
, when he knew that the ward would be empty except for Willow. His face looked bruised with tiredness and his eyes held a curious mixture of superiority and distress. He stood by Willow's bed waiting until she woke and looking down at her healing face. The bandages round her head were lighter than the ones he had seen when he had first come to the hospital, her black eyes were fading to an ugly yellow, but she looked very much better than she had when he had last seen her. Her red eyelashes fluttered upwards.

‘Tom?' she said slowly and smiled up at him as she battled with the remnants of sleep that were clouding her brain.

‘Yes, it's me, Will,' he said gently. He had never seen her so relaxed and so obviously pleased to see him. ‘You look much … much more human.'

‘You've a great skill with a compliment,' she said, rapidly returning to her usual form. ‘But you don't look particularly well yourself: are you all right? Sit down.'

He shrugged his broad shoulders and then went to fetch a chair.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘that I'm rather tired.'

‘I can imagine,' said Willow, her voice and face softening again. ‘Are you …? Is he …? What stage have you reached?'

‘Not very far,' said Tom. ‘There were no finger prints on the whisky bottle that matched those on your book.'

‘Damn!' said Willow. ‘And so?' Tom shrugged.

‘Everything else you told me has been confirmed and I've tried to get a warrant to search his house and the rooms he uses in his various adult-education colleges … but they say there isn't enough evidence.'

Willow looked carefully at Tom, trying to decide what he was thinking. At last she said:

‘You look as though you do think it's him, though.'

‘Yes,' he said reluctantly. ‘The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to accept your analysis. That's why I've done nothing to pursue Titchmell. But we've nothing to go on. We'll just have to wait until he does it again, and …'

‘Tom! You can't,' said Willow. The anger in her voice sounded like a call to action. ‘You simply cannot sacrifice another innocent person to his obsessions.'

‘There isn't anything else I can do. We need actual, physical evidence, and there is none. No fingerprints; no fibres to identify because in each case he was there days or even weeks before the deaths and so the rooms had been cleaned; no possibility of any victim's blood on his own clothes or in his house. Nothing,' said Tom. He got up from the orange plastic chair by her bed and paced up and down. At last he wheeled round.

‘I must go, Will. I'm not doing any good here, and I'll only stop your bones knitting with my bad temper. I'll see you soon,' he said.

‘When?' she asked, beginning to see a way through the impasse they had reached. Tom smiled to think that she might be so impatient to see him that she actually asked for a date.

‘What about tomorrow? Same time? During
Neighbours
,' he said with a laugh. ‘Then we can at least be private.'

‘Wonderful, Tom,' she said with a sweet smile. ‘I'll be waiting.' She kissed her hand to him as he parted the checked curtains and disappeared.

As soon as she was sure he was out of the ward, she rang her bell and demanded a telephone. When it came she dialled the number of Caroline Titchmell's house. As she had hoped, Ben Jonson answered it.

‘Could I speak to Mr Jonson?' Willow said in a voice that held more than a trace of a Newcastle accent.

‘This is he. To whom am I speaking?' he asked.

‘Dr King,' said Willow, still with a northern roundness in her voice. ‘At Dowting's Hospital. I'm calling for a patient, a Miss Woodruffe.'

‘Oh yes?' said Ben sharply into the telephone. ‘Is she all right?'

‘She's fine, Mr Jonson, but very anxious to see you.'

‘As I am, doctor,' he said. ‘Where exactly is she?'

‘She's in theatre at the moment,' said Willow, who had worked out which the most inaccessible parts of the hospital would be, ‘and will be spending tonight and most of tomorrow in Recovery. But she should be up in Phyllis Ward by about half-past five tomorrow. She'd very much like to see you then.'

‘I'll there,' he said. Willow could not help hearing menace in his light, pleasant voice then. She put down the telephone and spent the rest of the evening watching the ward doors and planning precisely what she was going to say when he appeared. Only when the outer doors of the ward were locked, after the night staff had come on duty, did she relax and accept her usual quota of sleeping pills.

The following morning she woke apprehensive but determined and found that the day dragged by even more slowly than usual. Her only real distraction was a visit from Barbara soon after four o'clock with a memo from the Permanent Secretary that was so infuriating that it wiped everything else from Willow's mind. By the time Barbara had gone, there was only another fifteen minutes to wait.

Willow acknowledged that she was afraid. She had turned herself into a tethered goat to trap a tiger and she had no guarantee that Tom would arrive in time to save her. But it was the only way.

The police were not allowed to trap a suspect, and if Tom knew what she was doing he would have stopped her.

Trying to make her breathing deep and slow, she could feel sweat gathering all down her spine and within the plaster that encased her legs. She felt light-headed, too, and hoped passionately that she would be able to control her mind enough to do what she had to do.

All around her was the sound of her fellow-patients getting themselves out of their beds and into their dressing gowns and slippers for their daily dose of
Neighbours
, and she knew that she would be alone with her tiger. She pulled the bell closer and tucked it under her bedclothes, keeping her forefinger beside the button so that she could press it in need.