Poison Flowers

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘It must be hard enough for such young children to come to terms with losing their father without that,’ said Willow with genuine sympathy. The woman in front of her turned her head and shrugged.

  ‘They hardly saw him, actually,’ she said. Willow saw that there were new tears welling into her reddened eyes. ‘And he was quite tough with them when he was around … you know, wouldn’t let them make any kind of noise in case it disturbed his rare rest, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Willow inadequately, thinking that he sounded rather a difficult man.

  Miranda opened the door of a large sunny room decorated prettily if conventionally in apricot, white and pale green.

  ‘Come and sit down. Would you like some coffee?’ Willow shook her head, thinking that the fewer things that were put into her scoured stomach the better. She sat on a fat sofa and was surprised to see Miranda open a heavy silver cigarette case and take out and light a long cigarette.

  ‘Have you always smoked?’ Willow asked, with a distinct memory of Tom’s having told her that the widow was not a smoker.

  ‘No,’ said Miranda, taking a deep mouthful of hot smoke. ‘Not since my marriage. But I’ve needed something to help me control things since Jim … Sorry, would you like one?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Willow and waited to be asked why she had come. Miranda Bruterley said nothing, just prowled around the room dragging on her cigarette as fervently as though she were a navvy used to sixty a day. After a while Willow took the initiative.

  ‘Mrs Bruterley,’ she began.

  ‘I do wish you’d call me Miranda,’ said the widow a little plaintively.

  ‘Miranda,’ said Willow, staring again, ‘I’ve come on an errand that is going to sound odd.’

  ‘You said you wanted help,’ she said, interrupting her guest. ‘I’ll do what I can. In fact I really could do with a job just now. Which charity is it for?’

  At last Willow understood the widow’s lack of curiosity and outrage at the invasion of her house by a stranger. As a woman of independent means, without a career and with a nanny and plenty of other help in the house, Miranda Bruterley would have been an obvious target for anyone wanting either voluntary workers or money raised for a good cause.

  ‘It’s not quite like that,’ said Willow. ‘I’ve come to ask you questions about what happened to your husband.’

  ‘Oh God! You’re not another journalist, are you?’ said Miranda, anger taking over from the unhappy weariness in her face.

  ‘No,’ said Willow. ‘I’m a friend of Caroline Titchmell’s.’

  ‘Titch? Good heavens! What’s she got to do with any of it? What ever happened to her?’

  ‘She herself is all right,’ said Willow, ‘but about two months ago, her brother was killed.’

  ‘Poor old Titch,’ said Miranda. ‘I vaguely remember him, I think. But how can I help?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Willow, ready to take the plunge into indiscretion, knowing that Tom Worth would be furious, ‘but the way he was killed is horribly similar to the way that your husband died. The police apparently don’t think that there is a connection, but I can’t help wondering about it, and I do want to help Caroline if I can. Of course I haven’t said anything at all to her about your husband’s death.’

  At last Miranda Bruterley stubbed out her cigarette; flung open a tall window as though to let out the smell of smoke, and came to sit on a low stool in front of Willow.

  ‘I’m concentrating now,’ she said, sounding much less limp and almost intelligent. Even her lacklustre eyes seemed to have sharpened. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘First,’ said Willow scanning her mental notes, ‘whether there was any connection between your husband and Simon Titchmell. Had they ever had any business dealings together? That sort of thing.’

  It had occurred to her that Titchmell must have bought his drugs from someone, who might just conceivably have been Dr Bruterley.

  Miranda stared at her black patent-leather pumps as they rested on the moss-green Wilton carpet and twisted her huge diamond engagement ring round and round her finger.

  ‘I don’t think they’d ever met,’ she said at last. ‘We’ve … we’d been married for six years and Simon Titchmell has certainly never been here in that time. Jim never, mentioned his name as far as I can remember, and I don’t see how they would ever have met.’

  ‘You say that you met him, though,’ said Willow.

  ‘Yes. Years ago – while we were still at school – Titch’s parents brought him to one Speech Day, I think. He wasn’t at any of the boys’schools we used to do things with so he was quite a curiosity. But it was as casual as that,’ said Miranda, smiling at Willow and blinking a little as though to demonstrate her innocence of any malice or subterfuge.

  ‘You mean that you never knew him properly, never went to stay in the school holidays or anything like that?’ asked Willow, trying not to stare into Miranda’s tear-stained face.

  ‘Oh God no,’ said Miranda, actually laughing at the absurdity. ‘Titch was one of the clever ones and I was a thicko. The only thing I was ever any good at was biology and that wasn’t very useful.’ She stopped laughing but there was an odd, reminiscent smile on her face. For a moment Willow could see past the pastiness of her complexion and the red swellings around her eyes to the beautiful woman she must be in normal circumstances, and indeed had appeared to be at the memorial service.

  ‘You look as though that pleases you,’ Willow said, letting herself sound puzzled. Miranda’s pale skin flushed slightly.

  ‘No; I was just remembering unkindly how superior we used to feel to the clever ones,’ she said. It took Willow a moment to understand what she meant.

  ‘You mean because you were prettier?’ she suggested. The blush deepened, but Miranda raised her reddened eyes. Looking at Willow directly, she said:

  ‘It is a bit shaming now, but at the time it seemed normal. There was a group of us – five or six I suppose – who all had quite a lot of money of our own – trusts and things – and were really quite good-looking and had nicer clothes than the rest and knew lots of people.… Not that it’s done me much good,’ she finished with a small shrug.

  ‘You must have known Dr Braterley then,’ said Willow, not feeling quite up to commenting on the assumptions Miranda had betrayed in her unpleasant little confession. ‘Wasn’t he at one of the schools close by?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s really what I meant. He was always terrifically sought after – at those grisly school dances and at home, of course – and he was always very sweet to me.… And look what happened in the end.’ She forgot her amusement and burst into tears, burying her face in her smoothly manicured hands. Willow waited until Miranda had regained some kind of control and then suggested that they had some coffee after all.

  When it had been made and poured into Royal Worcester cups, Miranda looked recovered enough for Willow to mention the old school scandal. The huge grey eyes filled with surprise.

  ‘You mean when one of the seniors got pregnant? Wasn’t it ghastly? But what’s it got to do with any of this?’ she asked.

  Willow was staggered by the idea that Miranda might not have known that her husband had been the culprit, but she could not quite bring herself to make the announcement.

  ‘I just wondered,’ she said instead, ‘whether you knew who the father had been.’

  Miranda shook her blond head.

  ‘Goodness, no! It was kept the most deathly secret. We thought it must be one of the boys from Michaelson’s, but I don’t know which. You don’t mean that in fact it was Simon Titchmell, do you?’

  Willow merely shook her head and shrugged.

  ‘Did you see much of your husband while he was training at Dowting’s?’ she asked, trying to approach the subject from an easier angle.

  ‘No, not really at all. I was still at school, of course, when he started there and then I went to Paris for a bit and did various things and we
didn’t meet up again properly until he qualified.’

  ‘But you didn’t marry quite then, did you?’

  ‘Not for ages,’ said Miranda with a smile hovering around her pink lips again. ‘He was a bit of Don Juan, you see, and I was pretty certain that if I’d let him know how much I wanted him then I’d be on the scrapheap with all the others in no time at all.’

  She turned away and stared out at her immaculate garden through the rapidly dissipating haze of cigarette smoke.

  ‘He was awfully sweet when he finally came round to the idea of wanting to marry me,’ she said. ‘He told me that he’d seen how silly and unhappy that sort of a life was and that …’ Her voice trembled and she turned away again. After a few moments she tried again: ‘That falling in love with me had made him change completely. And I believed him – until this.’

  The name of Sarah Rowfant had not been spoken, but Willow knew quite well that it was sounding as loudly in Miranda’s mind as in her own. Willow wished that she could offer the woman some kind of comfort, but there was none.

  ‘That was why it was so particularly awful to discover that he was having an affair, you see,’ said Miranda after a while, still staring away from Willow. ‘It made me wonder how many others there had been, whether Jim had ever in fact had any of the thoughts about me he’d talked about, whether he had ever loved me, whether it was just my money he wanted, whether the things I thought were important about myself meant nothing at all, whether I’d have been better to have been quite different.’

  She swung back to face Willow again and shrugged.

  ‘Whether, for instance, I’d have been better and happier if I’d been more like poor Titch.’

  ‘Why do you despise her so much?’ asked Willow, so curious that she ignored her interrogation for the moment.

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ said Miranda, sounding much more social and self-conscious than she had before.

  ‘Oh yes you do,’ said Willow with a false gaiety. ‘Why? Because she wasn’t pretty at school?’

  ‘No!’ protested Miranda. ‘Well, no … I suppose it was the fashion to be a bit dismissive of people who worked that hard and looked like that. I’m sure she’s not at all like it now, but in those days she was awfully fat as well as embarrassingly short and she had revolting spots – absolutely revolting.’

  At that moment Willow gave up any attempt to like Miranda Bruterley.

  ‘Well, never mind; it was a long time ago. Presumably your husband shared your views?’ said Willow.

  ‘Jim? Oh yes, poor old Titch had rather a passion for him, you see, just like everyone else in our year, and she did tend to follow him about a bit and insisted on inviting him to things in the holidays. In the end,’ her voice sank to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘he had to write her a letter. Our group heard about it, and we did feel a bit sorry for her then.’

  ‘Really?’ Willow hoped that her one word did not sound quite as antagonistic as she felt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miranda. ‘It was a very cruel one, but it did the trick. She never spoke to him again. I say, what did happen to Titch in the end?’

  ‘She has become a very successful patent agent – earning a great deal of money,’ said Willow with enormous pleasure, ‘and is about to get married to a kind and very intelligent man.’

  ‘Golly! How unlikely. Still I am glad, especially about the money,’ said Miranda. ‘It just goes to show, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And,’ said Willow, yielding to temptation, ‘she’s not in the least fat now, has a markedly good complexion and dresses very well.’

  ‘Perhaps it would have been better for us all if she had managed to get Jim,’ said Miranda. Willow remembered that the woman had just lost her husband and deserved sympathy for that, whatever her values and views on other women.

  ‘I do feel for you,’ said Willow. ‘I hope that his partners are helpful.’

  ‘Oh yes. John Swaffield is being absolutely sweet.’ Onto Miranda’s pretty tear-stained face there slid a secret smile. ‘You could stay and meet him if you like. He always drops in around four – before evening surgery – to see how I am.’

  ‘I’d better not,’ said Willow. ‘I’ve taken up far too much of your time. But can I ask you something else before I go?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Not to tell anyone about my idea that your husband’s death might be connected with Simon Titchmell’s? I really don’t want to cause any fuss or persuade the police into asking any more questions. You’ve been bothered enough – and so has Caroline.’

  ‘All right. But can I tell John? I tell him everything; I really do. He keeps me going,’ said Miranda with a wistful little smile on her swollen lips.

  ‘I expect he’ll understand the need for discretion to stop you being bothered any more,’ said Willow. Miranda nodded.

  ‘Well I must go. Thank you for being so frank. If you do think of anything that might have connected the two of them, will you give me a ring or drop me a note? Here’s my address.’ Willow scribbled it on a page from her notebook and gave it to the reluctant Miranda. She accepted it with another shrug and escorted Willow out of the room.

  As they walked through the hall, Willow stopped in front of a painting that looked like a Stubbs.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she said, turning to smile at Miranda.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? It was one of Jim’s better buys. Luckily the beastly burglars weren’t interested in that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, have you been burgled?’ asked Willow, delighted that the subject had introduced itself. ‘I was quite recently. It’s vile, isn’t it?’

  ‘Horrid!’ said Miranda. ‘And this was worse than usual.’

  ‘Really?’ said Willow picking her coat up off the chair where she had left it. ‘What happened? You weren’t here when they broke in, were you?’

  ‘Oh, no, thank God! But after the last one the insurance company had insisted that we have an alarm installed,’ said Miranda and then put her index finger in her mouth and worried at the edge of the nail with her teeth. ‘Jim was absolutely livid with me, but I had to tell him …’ Her voice broke off. Willow thought that she could hear both resentment and exculpation in it.

  ‘After all,’ said Miranda, ‘I’d only just popped out to collect the children from school. I’d sort of forgotten that it was Maria’s day off.’

  ‘And you didn’t set the alarm?’ suggested Willow.

  Miranda nodded.

  ‘It was foul of Jim to be so unkind. And so bloody unfair! After all, I told him that I’d pay for the broken window and replace everything that had been stolen. It wasn’t going to cost him anything.’ Her eyes filled with tears again and Willow felt some sympathy for her once more. Bruterley really did sound as though he had enjoyed tyrannising his wife. Perhaps, Willow thought, he had minded the fact that she was so much richer than he and was trying to get his own back. She also began to wonder whether perhaps Miranda’s fury at the memorial service was directed more towards her dead husband than his killer.

  ‘And they didn’t come back again, the burglars?’ Willow asked, hoping to discover an unreported break-in when the whisky might have been poisoned. ‘When you were away?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ she said drearily. Willow thought that she ought to go, but before she said goodbye finally, she had one more question to ask.

  ‘At the funeral I talked quite a lot to Andrew Salcott. He …’ Miranda made a face. ‘Don’t you like him?’

  ‘Not really. He was one of those coarse, rugger-playing medical students and he’s never grown out of it. Although in fact it was always mountaineering rather than rugger. But he’s so … huge and obtrusive. No, I’ve never liked him,’ said Miranda, actually shuddering.

  ‘He spoke very well of you,’ said Willow rather mischievously. Once again Miranda smiled her secret, self-admiring smile.

  ‘Well he would. He kept saying he wanted to marry me, for years really. When I wouldn’t he took up with Agnes to spit
e me. Only he was spiting himself, wasn’t he? Because it hasn’t worked out.’

  Willow left the house. As she was pulling out from the kerb, her car was almost hit by the wing of an enormous dark blue Volvo swinging across the road as though its driver owned the whole town. Swerving and braking sharply, Willow avoided a collision and looked curiously at the driver. He was a large, dark man, perhaps about forty, looking furiously angry.

  Willow reversed to the gateway and watched in her rear mirror as the Volvo took its place in the drive. By reversing further, she could see right up the drive to the front door, and she watched the Volvo driver get out of his car and enfold the grieving Miranda in his arms.

  Willow drove back to London with a lot on her mind.

  As soon as she reached the flat she rang Tom Worth. As usual he was out and she was forced to leave another urgent message on his answering machine. That done, she listened to her own messages. There was an almost hysterical one from Richard Crescent, who had heard of her illness from Mrs Rusham and was desperate to know if she was all right and where she was and who was looking after her.

  Willow dialled his number, touched that he should mind so much but irritated too by his apparent assumption that she was incapable of looking after herself and that there was no one else in her life who might be concerned enough to care for her.

  Unlike Tom Worth, Richard answered the telephone himself and Willow did her best to allay his anxieties.

  ‘It was only a bad oyster, Richard,’ she said. ‘Terrifying at the time, but ifs all over now. Thank you for ringing. How did you know?’

  ‘Mrs Rusham told me.’

  ‘I see,’ said Willow, the annoyance taking precedence over the gratitude again. ‘But why did you telephone her?’

  ‘Oh I didn’t. She rang me in a terrible fluster because you’d disappeared and it was obvious that you had been … er …’

  ‘Sick,’ said Willow too crudely for Richard. They talked for a few more minutes, before Richard invited her to dinner.

  ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ she said without much real regret, ‘but I’m dining with a doctor tonight.’ She agreed to telephone him on Thursday evening when she got back from the hairdresser and then rang off. She was beginning to suspect that Mrs Rusham might not be the wholly incurious, wholly discreet paragon she had always seemed.