Poison Flowers

by Natasha Cooper

  With increasing eagerness, Willow pulled the note away and concentrated on the cutting it had hidden.

  ‘Actress discovers long-lost daughter,’ said the headline of the article, which was dated about nine months before Claire Ullathorne’s death. As she read down the column, Willow discovered that Claire had had an illegitimate child, whom she had given for adoption at birth. On her eighteenth birthday the child had exercised her rights and tracked down her natural mother. Claire Ullathorne was quoted as having said: ‘This lightens all the sadness I felt when I had to give Amanda up at birth. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.’

  Wondering why Jane thought that that could have led to Claire’s suicide, Willow turned to the next cutting, where she read of a horrible car crash in which a stolen van, driven by a drunk, had ploughed into a line of stationary traffic on the opposite side of the road, killing the driver and two passengers of the leading car. One of the passengers was named as Claire Ullathorne’s daughter.

  ‘Oh, poor woman,’ said Willow aloud. Looking at the date, she saw that the crash had been reported the previous autumn, at least six months before Claire’s death. Willow asked herself whether the loss of the child she had known for only about three months could have made the actress kill herself, and if so why she should have waited so long to do it and why she should have chosen so unlikely a death as colchicine poisoning.

  It struck Willow that perhaps like aconitine, colchicine might be used as a narcotic, in which case the actress might have brewed it to help her deal with her unhappiness. Willow looked up colchicine in her toxicology textbook but discovered only that it had been used in patent medicines for gout, which was not much help.

  Turning to the account of aconitine, Willow could find nothing to state what its medical use had been and had to fall back on Tom’s theory that it was used as a narcotic. The more she thought about it, the less she could believe that a Fulham architect in his mid-thirties would believe that such a drug would give him and his girlfriend a ‘high’. Even if he had, she told herself, he would not have chosen to take it at breakfast.

  Her ruminations were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone and she absent-mindedly lifted the receiver, saying ‘Yes’into it.

  ‘Willow, is that you?’ came Tom Worth’s voice, sounding alive and warm once more.

  When she agreed that it was, he told her that hers was a ‘damn silly’way of answering a telephone. Willow laughed.

  ‘I developed it in terror that I might one day say “Willow King” as I do at DOAP,’ she said. ‘Now, what about PC Leathwaite? Why can’t I meet him?’

  ‘Because there is no reasonable excuse for my getting hold of a junior officer in another branch of the force and inviting him to meet a famous romantic novelist. Come on, Willow, be sensible,’ said Tom, sounding almost exasperated. ‘But I dropped into the Fulham station and had a word with him in the canteen. He couldn’t tell me anything very interesting, but I’ll bring my notes on Sunday – that is if the invitation still stands?’

  ‘It stands, Tom. I …’ she began, wanting to tell him about her bomb scare so that he could remove the last of her fear and comfort her.

  ‘Good. See you then, Will … And thank you.’

  He put the receiver down without more ado and Willow was left holding hers in her hand, asking herself whether he was trying to tantalise her on purpose or whether he had as little interest in talking to her as he seemed.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she told herself bracingly, ‘he is merely a busy policeman with no inclination for telephonic dalliance. There wasn’t a bomb and I have no reason in the world to be afraid.’

  Impelled by some not-very-obscure impulse, Willow then dialled the number of Richard Crescent’s office and received all the endearments and comfort for which she had the stomach. She also agreed to dine with him the following evening.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, just as she was about to say goodbye, ‘Caroline Titchmell is engaged.’

  ‘To whom?’ asked Willow, interested that there was nothing in his voice but pleasure and interest.

  ‘A teacher of English Literature and creative writing at various adult education establishments, called … She did tell me, because she wants to bring him to dinner. All yes, Ben Jonson.’

  ‘He can’t be, Richard,’ said Willow, thinking of ‘Drink to me only’. ‘Oh perhaps he’s got an h in the middle.’

  ‘Why not? Oh, oh I see. I always forget that you’re literate as well as sparklingly numerate. No, the Jonson’s spelled the same, but he’s Benedict rather than Benjamin, though always known as Ben, apparently.’

  ‘Well no wonder he teaches Eng Lit! But at least he hasn’t called himself Will Shakespeare. I suppose that’s something to be said in his favour,’ said Willow.

  Richard laughed and told her that he was looking forward to the dinner party she had forced him to plan.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, wished him goodbye and then put down her receiver.

  She spent the rest of the day inventing stories that would weave connections between the four dead people, but nothing she could think of seemed at all convincing. Eventually she gave up in despair, ate the supper Mrs Rusham had left for her in the Aga, watched an old Dashiell Hammet film on the television, and then picked up her book about serial murder and tried to remember that she had no reason to be afraid for her own safety.

  Chapter Five

  Having spent most of Saturday trawling through shop after shop looking at curtain and upholstery materials and paint colours for her drawing room. Willow was exhausted by the time Mrs Rusham performed her last duty of the week by bringing a tea tray into the drawing room. As well as the Georgian silver tea pot, the inlaid mahogany tray held a blue-and-white Minton cup and saucer and a matching plate of sandwiches.

  Willow, who had kicked off her elegant but by then tight shoes and was lying at full length on the sofa, looked up to thank her. Mrs Rusham wished her a pleasant Sunday and then departed, leaving Willow in full possession of the flat. She poured herself some tea and meditated on the impossibility of achieving unalloyed pleasure. Every delight had to be paid for in one coin or another. Mrs Rusham’s superb cooking and unobtrusive cleaning, tidying and pressing were benefits to be treasured, but having her in the flat, knowing that there was another person with keys and rights to it, was a fairly high price to pay for them.

  When she had recovered her energies she got up off the sofa and took the tea tray back to the kitchen. She ran a sinkful of hot water to wash up the china and then dried it carefully. Mrs Rusham guarded the kitchen jealously and so it was a rare weekend treat for Willow to be allowed to do anything in it. With the crockery put away and the sink emptied and dried, she fetched her bag from the hall and laid out all the bits and pieces of silk, chintz and wool and the paintcards that she had collected during the day.

  The drawing room decoration had not itself suffered from the burglars, but since she was going to have to have new cushions and covers made for the sofas, she might as well take the opportunity to change the whole room. Its duck-egg walls and old French chintz curtains had always pleased her, but since the break-in she found that they reminded her of that too vividly to be ignored.

  The new chintz pattern that she liked most was French again, but this time the predominant colours were a mixture of gentle yellows, creams and white. As she looked at it and held it up both against and then to the light, she began to visualise the room painted in a careful slightly yellowish ivory, the colour of a particularly rich, thick clotted-cream. Her silk Persian carpet would go as well in such a room as it had in the blue, violet and rose of the previous scheme, and she could have the sofas upholstered in a deeper yellow, perhaps, with the Louis XV elbow chairs (which had survived the thugs’depredations) in some kind of small pattern or stripe that would combine the creams and yellows of the rest.

  Either of the pieces of furniture for which she had left bids at Christie’s would look wonderful against such a backgrou
nd, and if the loss adjuster were to agree to pay for a replacement Chippendale looking glass, its gilt frame would be perfectly set off by the cream colour she visualised. She doubted whether she would ever find another Turner watercolour to replace the one that the thugs had ripped to pieces, but she would find a painting to take its place in the end.

  There would need to be some richer colour in the room to provide accents, she thought, and until she found a picture it would have to be provided by cushions and flowers: a carefully chosen orangey-pink somewhere between salmon and copper, but paler, might work, or perhaps a green of some kind.

  Cheerful, with her feet no longer burning and her legs no longer aching from the afternoon’s standing and walking on the pavements of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, Willow packed the bits and pieces away and went to dress for her dinner with Richard.

  They shared their food in perfect amity until Richard said with an unusually satirical inflexion in his voice:

  ‘You have been very polite, Willow, but you can start asking your questions now.’

  Her thin face had tensed as he began to speak but she deliberately relaxed into a smile. She took a sip of wine.

  ‘Ah, Richard,’ she said, watching him over the rim of the glass, ‘you can’t really think I want to see you only when I need information. I like you. I enjoy your company.’

  Richard’s taut shoulders slackened slightly and the derisive smile on his narrow lips relaxed into a warmer version.

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘Really,’ she answered with some emphasis. After that they finished the evening in such good spirits that she asked him into the flat for a drink when he had driven her back there.

  He chose whisky as he had always done and poured himself a modest tot while she lit the fire.

  ‘Willow, what’s changed, really changed?’ he asked as he came to sit beside her on the sofa, carrying his whisky and her mineral water. She looked at him and wished that he could have left their new friendship unthreatened for a little longer. To lose him completely would be a pity, she thought, and believed without vanity that it would be a pity for him too. They had many of the same tastes and enjoyed each other’s company. Surely the fact that she no longer shared his desire did not necessarily mean that they had to waste everything else?

  ‘I know you’ve found someone else,’ said Richard, without showing any particular resentment. ‘But you’re still quite happy to dine with me and you say you’ve only slept with him once. Why can’t we carry on as we were? Surely he’s not that possessive?’

  ‘He’s not possessive at all, Richard,’ said Willow, amused to think of Tom Worth’s quite different qualities. ‘But I find that I owe more to my non-conformist upbringing than I ever knew. I can’t bring myself to accept the proposition that it is possible to … well, to have those kind of dealings with two men at once.’

  ‘And you want them more with him?’ said Richard, not looking at her. To her distress he sounded unhappy and she did not know what to do about it. The mixture of feelings it aroused in her was upsetting and made her feel both inadequate and unkind.

  ‘I know you hate my pleading. Willow,’ Richard went on after a moment, ‘but what difference would it make to him if you and I occasionally did what we’ve spent the past three and a half years doing so happily?’

  ‘God knows, Richard. But it would make a difference to me. And surely it would to you too?’ she said, thinking that if he were in love with her he could never propose such an arrangement, and that if he were not her refusal to sleep with him could not hurt him even if it annoyed him or damaged his pride. She was disconcerted to find how much she minded that he should not be hurt, despite her carefully inculcated detachment.

  ‘And yet you seem to have enjoyed seeing me again this week,’ he said. The tone of injured innocence in his voice stiffened Willow’s determination.

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said in a voice her Civil Service staff would have recognised. ‘And you enjoyed it too. It seems perfectly clear, therefore, that we can continue to give each other pleasure provided that we stay within the limits of friendship.’

  ‘Your limits, you mean,’ he said crossly. Willow smiled at his petulance.

  ‘Yes. Come off it, Richard. Our arrangement was peculiar but it suited us both. You must admit that you liked the semi-detachedness as much as I.’

  His long, handsome face broke into a rueful smile then and he shook his head.

  ‘I suppose I did,’ he said. ‘And I suppose there is no particular reason why my wants should take precedence over yours.’

  Liking his ability to say that, Willow took his whisky glass away and bent down to plant a sisterly kiss on his high forehead.

  ‘You’re an honest man, Richard, and I’ve always liked that,’ she said. ‘Now you’d better go before nostalgia and affection get the better of me. Thank you for dinner tonight.’

  He got up obediently and kissed her hand flamboyantly.

  ‘Your wish is my command, my dear,’ he said, ‘and I’ll try this friendship lark, but I don’t know how good I’ll be at it.’

  ‘See you on Thursday,’ said Willow. ‘Let me know in Clapham if Mrs Rusham isn’t coming up to scratch.’

  ‘Oh she will,’ he said with a return of the arrogance which Willow often managed to find amusing. ‘See you on Thursday. I hope you get what you want out of Caroline Titchmell.’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ said Willow to the closed door after he had gone. It had occurred to her that it was going to be quite difficult to raise the subject of the girl’s dead brother in the middle of a social occasion.

  Finding herself disinclined for fiction but not yet ready to sleep, she found her collected copy of the original Ben Jonson’s works and took it to bed with her. But she put it aside almost pettishly when she read:

  ‘Follow a shadow, it still flies you,

  Seem to fly it, it will pursue:

  So court a mistress, she denies you;

  Let her alone, she will court you.

  Say are not women truly, then,

  Styl’d but the shadows of us men?’

  ‘Talk about arrogance!’ she said aloud as she turned over with her face in the linen-covered, goose-down pillows. ‘As if men aren’t exactly the same! It’s enough to make a feminist of anyone.’

  She turned over on her back to laugh at herself as she discovered in her mind a barrier against Benedict Jonson, whom she had never met, and a wholly prejudiced sympathy for Caroline Titchmell.

  The amusement must have worked some beneficial relaxation in Willow, for she fell asleep almost at once and woke later than usual, almost happy. She spent the morning pottering about the kitchen, reading the Sunday newspapers and planning what to have for lunch with Tom Worth.

  He arrived soon after twelve bringing her a written account of his casual conversation with PC Leathwaite, a bottle of undistinguished claret and a huge bunch of scented, seasonal narcissi.

  ‘How lovely, Tom!’ said Willow, inhaling the almost unbearably sweet scent of the flowers as they walked back into the kitchen. ‘Could you bear to find a vase for them, while I get back to my pots and pans? I think Mrs Rusham keeps them in that cupboard over there.’

  Worth obediently opened the immaculately clean doors until he found a cupboard full of vases, selected a plain glass jar, filled it with water from the tap and stuffed the flowers into it. Unfettered, they fell naturally into a free shape that appealed to Willow. Without bothering to dry the bottom of the jar, Tom dumped it in the middle of the pale beech table in the centre of the room.

  Willow immediately left her work and mopped the resulting damp ring. When she saw Tom watching her in considerable surprise and curiosity she made her shamefaced admission:

  ‘Mrs Rusham would be furious with me if I left a damp ring. And don’t bother to tell me that it’s my table and she’s my employee – it doesn’t help.’

  ‘All right, I won’t. Shall I open the bottle?’

  Thinking of t
he distinguished Montrachet chilling in her fridge, Willow had a small struggle with herself.

  ‘Lovely,’ she said, not wanting to force him to accept the fact that she was so much richer than he. ‘Or if you prefer, there is some white in the fridge. We’re going to be eating fish.’ She tried to keep her voice absolutely neutral, but out of the corner of her eye she saw a gleam of amusement in his. He went straight to the fridge, found her bottle and uncorked it.

  Later, when they had eaten the fish and the apricot flan that Mrs Rusham had made and were drinking coffee, Worth broached the subject that he had come to discuss.

  ‘And are you still of the opinion that the murders are part of a series?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Willow, twirling her coffee cup round and round as she watched the viscous debris at the bottom cling to the fine bone china and then release itself to sink slug-like to the other side. ‘I can see why your colleagues disagree, but I do wonder about their determination to shelve the Titchmell enquiry.’ She had decided to tell him nothing about her misplaced terror of being bombed, but she did add:

  ‘By the way, why did you send that message about my being so careful and discreet?’

  Tom’s dark eyes held hers for a moment and then looked away.

  ‘I was afraid,’ he said, ‘that your zeal might be overtaking your discretion. When you left that message about talking to PC Leathwaite …’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Tom!’ said Willow, surprised by his assumption that she would be silly enough to ignore the need for secrecy. ‘I thought you must be afraid of reprisals or violent warnings-off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Will,’ he said, touching her hand lightly. ‘Things are very sticky at the moment with cuts and wildly different ideas about the purpose and style of policing London, and I’m anxious not to rock the boat unnecessarily.’

  ‘But not so anxious that you could let the investigation go by default?’ she said, finding herself more interested in him and his ideas than in almost anyone else she had ever met.