Poison Flowers

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Have you been here long?’ asked Willow.

  ‘Since they reported the hit-and-run, yes. Miss. Now, can you tell me everything you remember?’

  Willow knew that Tom Worth had to have all her information first and so she decided to be sparing with the truth.

  ‘I can hardly remember anything. I heard an engine revving and the tyres, but I thought it was just some stupid driver who had nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘I’d stepped off the pavement and did not realise that I was at risk at all until he had hit me. By then it was too late to look. I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘No registration number, I suppose?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Willow shortly.

  ‘And now, may I ask what you were doing in that part of London, Miss? That might help us because I understand that you live in Abbeville Road, SW12 and work in Clapham High Street.’

  Willow thought for a while, put a hand to the bandages covering her aching forehead and shut her eyes.

  ‘I simply don’t know,’ she said, lying easily. ‘I can’t think straight. Can you persuade them to let me have a telephone? I really must make a call – an urgent call.’

  Watching the young policeman’s face, Willow saw suspicion pouring into it and even more she longed for Tom Worth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the constable. ‘When I’ve cleared my mind a bit, I’ll do my best to tell you some more. Will you be here?’

  ‘If there’s more to come I suspect I’ll be here,’ he said wryly. ‘I must make my report now.’ He left without thanking her or expressing any kind of sympathy for her injuries and she knew that he had put her down as a trouble-maker or worse.

  When she did eventually manage to get a telephone trolley, Willow tried Tom’s office only to be told that he was ‘unavailable’. She left a message, explaining where she was and saying that she needed to speak to him urgently, and then dictated a fuller one on to the answering machine at his flat. Before she had finished doing that, she was presented with a disgusting-looking meal that had obviously been cooked hours before.

  Willow picked up the stainless steel knife and fork that had been laid on her tray and cut a small piece off the dried-up slab of liver on her plate. She had just raised it to her mouth when she felt herself gag and retch as violently as she had after the bad oyster.

  On the tray in front of her was a piece of card with her name and the number of her bed. Anyone could have put anything they wanted into the food that had been allocated to her. Controlling the nausea her ideas had brought her, Willow dropped the cutlery back on the tray. In that moment she became determined not to eat anything provided by the hospital that had been lying around with her name on it.

  When a middle-aged nurse came to collect the tray she remonstrated like a nanny, but eventually accepted Willow’s explanation that she simply could not face eating anything. She was just about to go when Willow grabbed her wrist.

  ‘What is it, lovey?’ she asked, kindly detaching Willow’s grasping hand.

  ‘Can I have some pillows?’ she asked pathetically. ‘I hate lying flat like this.’

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ said the nurse. ‘Your legs are weighted. In a few days they may be able to adjust the pulleys, but not yet. Do you want anything before I go?’ Willow shook her head slightly, wincing. ‘Shall I leave your curtains shut or would you like a bit of company?’

  That was the first time Willow realised that she must be in a ward of other people. The blue-and-green checked curtains that hung from the ceiling about three foot from her bed had given her the illusion of being in a room on her own. She realised that her senses must have been even more disordered by the accident than she had thought.

  ‘Leave them shut, will you?’ she said. ‘I don’t feel up to company yet.’

  Lying back, wishing that someone would come and visit her and bring her some wholesome fruit she could eat. Willow began to hear the other women on her ward chatting happily amongst themselves. They discussed their treatment or their injuries, their children, their husbands, their hysterectomies and the workings of their bowels, about which they spoke in terms of extreme – and graphic – frankness.

  The sound of their inoffensive voices began to grate against the pain in her head and she wished that they did not exist. She reminded herself of Marcus Aurelius’s injunction to accept whatever experiences the fates bring you and settled down to wait for Tom.

  He did not come. A nurse came round with a trolley offering her patients a variety of hot drinks. Willow refused them all, although she was tempted by the Horlicks, which she had not tasted since childhood. Then came the pill trolley and a new batch of painkillers for Willow, which she did accept as she watched the nurses tipping them out of a large bottle. She could not imagine anyone poisoning a whole bottle of painkilling drugs and putting the entire hospital at risk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The first non-medical person Willow saw after her accident apart from the young policeman was the patient in the bed next to her own. Willow had refused her depressing supper of breaded, fried gammon chop and watery vegetables an hour and a half earlier and had been trying not to think how hungry she was. There was only circumstantial evidence to suggest that the driver who had run her over was the poisoner, but she decided that she had taken enough risks with her life.

  Lying with her eyes closed she became aware that someone was standing beside her bed, quite near her head. Willow decided that it was not a nurse: it neither smelled nor sounded like a nurse. She opened her eyes and saw a dumpy woman in a quilted nylon dressing gown standing there looking at her with kindly curiosity.

  ‘Feeling a bit better now, dear?’ she said, obviously hoping for a lovely chat. ‘My name is Marjorie, by the way.’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Willow coldly. ‘I am better, thank you, but still very tired.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you are,’ said Marjorie, ‘and I won’t disturb you. But I did notice you were asleep when the newspaper trolley came round this morning, and I thought you might like to have a lend of mine.’

  Willow struggled to find the patience and civility that she owed the inoffensive woman.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘That’s very kind.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll just pop to my locker and fetch it.’

  A moment later the Daily Mercury was lying on Willow’s chest. Still trying to show a modicum of appreciation, she picked it up and held it above her eyes. The first thing she saw, in huge black lettering on page one, was:

  ‘Private catering company director found poisoned in Wimbledon.’

  Willow looked up to see her fellow-patient staring at her face intently. She smiled.

  ‘Isn’t it awful, dear? That poor woman was just eating her sandwiches and she died.’

  ‘Awful,’ agreed Willow, turning back to the paper. She realised why Tom Worth had been unavailable for so long and read on to discover that it was Sarah Tothill who had died after eating water hemlock. Willow stared up at the paper appalled. The muscles in her arms felt suddenly weak and she let them relax, dropping the paper on to her chest.

  For the first time she had met and talked to one of the victims and she felt stricken with guilt. She found it unbearable to think that if she had worked a bit harder, she might have been able to prevent Sarah’s death. Her hunger disappeared and in its place was a sickness and a distress that seemed to absorb all her energies.

  To control the immediate instinctive horror, Willow forced her mind to work. Either the effort or the shock she had suffered was effective and at last she remembered the one vital piece of information. She tried to imagine what Sarah might have done to deserve such revenge and wondered whether she had eaten something intended for her unspeakable husband.

  ‘I must make a telephone call,’ she said abruptly, pushing the sheets of newspaper off her bed and reaching for the bell.

  ‘Must you, dear?’ said Marjorie, who had been watching her with bright-eyed
interest. ‘Shall I see if I can fetch you a trolley then? I expect you want to ring your boyfriend?’

  Her hopes of confidences were quickly dashed by Willow’s blank stare of incomprehension, but even so; she went away to find a nurse and a telephone. When she came back with both she was wearing a peculiarly arch smile, which became her far less than the curiosity she had shown so obviously.

  ‘I’ll draw your curtains, dear,’ she said coyly, ‘so that you can be private.’

  ‘How kind!’ said Willow and waited until she was lying in relative privacy to dial the number of Richard Crescent’s flat. She was lucky to find him in, he told her, since he had innumerable multi-million-pound deals just coming to the boil and was about to go to the office again.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ she said, her voice all synthetic honey. He laughed and she remembered why she had always liked him.

  ‘OK, you win,’ he said, sounding like the man he was and not the banker he usually pretended to be. ‘What you do you want?’

  ‘I just thought,’ she said, half-way between Cressida and Willow, ‘that you might prefer to hear this from me and not Mrs R: I’ve broken both my legs and am in Dowting’s Hospital.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t joke about things that really matter,’ said Richard, sounding peevish.

  ‘I’m not. I have two broken legs, hung up in front of me like bandaged poultry carcases,’ said Willow. ‘And, tied by the heels as I most genuinely am, I need your help again.’

  ‘May I come and see you?’

  ‘Yes, if you like, and if you promise to be discreet, if you see what I mean, but …’

  ‘Ah, Willow or Cressida?’ he asked intelligently.

  ‘The first,’ she said. ‘But before you come, I need a piece of information.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘You know the woman we met at Caroline’s dinner last week?’ she began.

  ‘Sarah Tothill,’ said Richard in such a cheerful voice that Willow knew that the murder could not have been reported in The Times.

  ‘That’s right. How long have she and Caroline known each other and have they ever quarrelled?’ said Willow.

  ‘That’s two bits of information,’ said Richard. ‘And I’m afraid I can’t be much help. I think they were at school together, but I’d only met the Tothills once before that embarrassing dinner and didn’t really take to them. D’you want me to go and pump Caroline?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ said Willow so quickly that Richard was alerted.

  ‘I’ll look in to see you later,’ he said in a voice that sounded almost dangerous.

  ‘All right,’ Willow was saying as the green-and-blue curtains were dragged aside and she saw Chief Inspector Worth standing there with a blaze of light behind him. His face was taut and his eyes were bloodshot with tiredness and very anxious.

  ‘I’ll see you later then. Thank you.’ Willow put down the telephone and was gratified by the speed with which Tom reached her bedside.

  ‘Will,’ he said, grabbing both her hands. ‘Oh Will.’

  ‘Thank you for coming, Tom,’ she said in a low voice that held a warning. She gestured to the other beds beyond her curtains. All chatter in the ward had stopped.

  ‘Even if the curtains don’t keep the sound of our voices down,’ he said loudly, ‘at least they give a measure of privacy.’

  Almost at once several self-conscious conversations were started between the occupants of the other beds in the ward.

  ‘Tom,’ said Willow urgently and quietly, ‘I must tell you …’

  ‘No. Wait, Willow. Your doctors have said that you’re going to be all right, which is the most important thing, and I need … I need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but …’

  ‘My superiors have at last decided that there is a serial poisoner at work,’ said Tom, ignoring her protest, ‘and I’m in charge of the investigation. I’m about to apply for a warrant and I need to clarify what you’ve told me about Caroline.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Willow, her eyes and her voice hardening. ‘I had wondered if Sarah Tothill died by mistake – instead of her frightful husband – but obviously not. What had she done to Caroline?’

  The bleakness of Tom’s face made her shiver. When he spoke his voice had lost all colour and character.

  ‘One of Sarah Tothill’s first large catering commissions was to supply the food for Simon Titchmell’s twenty-first-birthday dance,’ he said. ‘Something went badly wrong and almost forty per cent of the guests suffered food poisoning. One of the worst affected was Caroline, and because of it she was so ill that she couldn’t take that year’s exams at university and had to retake the whole year’s course …’

  ‘How odd that she should have even considered using Sarah to do her wedding food, then,’ said Willow before she could stop herself. Tom’s face hardened even more.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said bitterly. ‘She obviously needed an excuse to keep track of Sarah’s movements and to get into her house in order to poison the horseradish sauce.… That’s how it was done, you see,’ he added, seeing that Willow’s expression was puzzled. ‘There was an enormous amount of grated water hemlock root in the horseradish sauce she put in her cold-beef sandwiches. Her husband never ate it. Luckily – for us – the jar was a relatively new one and so there was plenty of sauce left for us to test.’

  ‘But no finger prints, of course,’ Willow said slowly and very quietly.

  ‘She knows far too much to leave prints,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’ve already checked that none of the ones on Bruterley’s malt whisky bottle were hers.’ Willow stared up at him as though she could not believe what she saw.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked irritably. ‘I know you liked her, but …’

  ‘Tom, you don’t mean that you think Caroline killed them all?’ said Willow. He made an odd gesture with both hands, as though he were brushing aside her protest.

  ‘Look, I know that we both believed no one could be mad enough to do what she’s done, but the evidence has mounted up horribly … besides, there was a witness to your so-called accident, Will. The description of the car fits hers – and so does the registration number. I’m afraid that she must have done it.’

  ‘But she hardly ever drives,’ said Willow, unable to believe that Tom had so badly misunderstood what had been going on. ‘And surely you know by now that she’s not mad at all, that she’s had nothing to do with any of the deaths except for providing unwitting incitement?’

  ‘What?’ said Tom, screwing up his eyes and peering at Willow.

  He sounded exhausted and at the same time absolutely furious. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  They were interrupted just then as a firm hand swished back the checked curtains and a posse of white-coated doctors appeared.

  ‘These are some of my students, Miss King,’ said Doctor Wakehurst. ‘Do you mind if they ask you some questions?’

  ‘Doctors must be trained,’ said Willow conscientiously, ‘but would it be possible to do it later? Chief Inspector Worth is asking me some questions of his own just now.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Will,’ said Tom quickly. ‘I’ll have another word with the chap outside and come back when you’re finished.’ He got up.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said, wishing that she were not imprisoned by her weights and pulleys. ‘We must talk.’

  ‘Yes we must. I’ll be outside. You won’t be long, will you doctor?’

  ‘Quick as we can,’ answered Dr Wakehurst crisply.

  The young students were too embarrassed to look Willow in the eye and confined most of their remarks to their teacher. After a while Willow got tired of lying like a piece of meat for their inspection and started to give them a few explanations and instructions herself. Quite soon after that the doctor led her charges away. Before Tom could reappear, Marjorie put her head through the curtains.

  ‘A film is just starting on television. Shall we get
the nurses to wheel you into the day room?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Willow. She managed to put more gratitude into her voice than she had earlier as she realised that she and Tom would probably have the ward to themselves for the next half hour. As soon as the woman withdrew, Tom took her place. Before Willow could say anything he said:

  ‘Now you must tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ she answered. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you ever since they brought me in. Come and sit down.’

  Before Tom could settle himself in the visitor’s plastic-coated chair again another hot-drink trolley was pushed through the ward.

  Willow declined again and the nurse told her that she really would have to start taking food and drink soon.

  When the heavy, clattering trolley had been pushed away, Tom said curtly:

  ‘Why aren’t you eating or drinking?’

  ‘Because I daren’t until Ben Jonson is in custody,’ she said.

  ‘Ben Jonson? You must be mad,’ said Tom. Then he came back to her bedside and put one of his hands on her scarred one again. He looked down at her battered face, with the bruises yellowing at the edges and the cuts and scratches dark red.

  ‘You’re still frightened, aren’t you?’ he said much more gently. ‘But you mustn’t let it distort your judgment. Will.’

  ‘Will you just shut up for one moment, Thomas?’ said Willow coldly. ‘There is nothing the matter with my brains any longer, even though my head aches foully and my legs are so painful that there are times when I would like to cut them off. I can cope with that, but I cannot cope with your brushing aside what I say as though I were an idiot. Wait, ask questions, and listen to the answers, if your ego will let you.’

  ‘My ego is at your disposal,’ said Tom with resignation. ‘Tell me why you think Jonson should have done it – and how he could have.’

  ‘He loves her,’ said Willow, ‘really desperately. He looks up to her. He wants to make up to her for everything she has suffered before she met him. He is kind to her, she once told me, terribly kind.’