Bloody Roses

by Natasha Cooper

Richard shrugged and shook his head. ‘She had too much guts for that,’ he said, his voice calming as his mind started to work again. ‘Like you, Willow. You’d never do yourself in, would you?’

  Willow thought of the various times in her life when she had hated herself and everything that surrounded her. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think I would. But there’s no reason to think she was like me.’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ said Richard. ‘I’ve often thought so. Oh, not on the surface: her manner was quite different and so was her sense of humour; but there were definite similarities.’ He raised his eyes and there was a faint smile in them. ‘I’ve always thought that’s why I liked her so much.’

  Willow could not say anything.

  ‘But it wasn’t only me. Everyone liked her. Everyone did.’

  ‘Are you sure? Somebody must have been afraid of her, at least.’

  ‘I can’t think who,’ he said, tears welling in his eyes again. ‘I’m sure she never did anyone an injury. It must have been a mistake, but I’ve been racking my brains and I can’t see how they did it or who.’

  ‘Then she must have killed herself, Richard.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have,’ he insisted. ‘She was incredibly strong in herself. She’d never let herself get so desperate, and even if she was, she’d never do it like that and she’d have left a note. She was far too bright and kind – and aware of other people’s feelings – to make such a mess. She was … Oh, God!’

  Willow watched him in useless sympathy while Roylandson knocked on the door. A warder took Richard away. As soon as the other two were outside the prison, the lawyer said in real curiosity:

  ‘Why did he call you Willow?’

  She stopped, both feet in a puddle of old muddy rainwater that she did not even notice. Usually as careful to protect her double identity as her expensive shoes, she had not even considered it in the face of Richard’s distress.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a pet name he used to use,’ she said, clumsily trying to sound lightly amused. ‘Something to do with my being tall, I suppose. I’m so accustomed to it, I never even noticed. You must have been awfully surprised.’

  ‘Slightly,’ he admitted, sounding even more old-maidish than usual. ‘But not quite so surprised as I was by all your questions. How did you suppose they would help?’

  ‘Anything that happened to Sarah Allfarthing in the last week of her life must be relevant to who killed her.’ Willow’s eyes were cold and her voice severe, but they appeared to have no chastening effect on the solicitor.

  ‘The only thing that could possibly help my client is the discovery that there was someone else in the building when Mrs Allfarthing died,’ he said; ‘someone who had access to the Corporate Finance Department and knew the code number of the doors.’

  Willow achieved a smile that she hoped was as patronizing as his voice had been. ‘Knowing that Richard Crescent is innocent,’ she said slowly, ‘I am seeking the reason for the woman’s death that will identify her killer. When I have done that, I can work out how the murder was effected.’

  ‘I think you are oversanguine.’

  ‘Rather like poor old Richard,’ said Willow, clinging to flippancy in an attempt to hide her doubts.

  Roylandson’s pursed lips suggested that he did not share her taste in word games. They parted in mutual dislike that was only slightly tempered by their shared intention to get Richard out of the hands of the police.

  Chapter Three

  As she travelled back to Belgravia in a taxi, Willow tried to think of some acceptable reason she could have given the solicitor for her determination to believe in Richard’s innocence. She could not think of anything convincing. During the previous eight months she had met and spoken to – and even quite liked – two apparently gentle men who had turned out to be killers. If they could have successfully hidden their murderousness, then perhaps anyone could.

  Despite the heaviness of the air, Willow shivered. The taxi was an old one and it smelled of stale cigarette smoke. She decided that it was the smell that was making her feel sick.

  All she could use for comfort was the fact that, unlike either of the two murderers, Richard was successful in his work, had plenty of faithful friends, and had shown no signs of inadequacy in any area of his life. He disliked freely expressed emotion, but since that was something Willow shared with him she found it natural.

  With her mind on ways of proving him innocent, she handed the taxi driver a note and told him to keep the change, hardly aware of what she was doing until he said:

  ‘That was twenty quid you gave me, love.’

  ‘What? Oh, thank you. Well, just give me ten back.’ She took the money from his callused hands and turned away, not seeing his puzzled expression. Nothing in her appearance or voice had led him to expect such a cavalier attitude to money, and in normal circumstances it would have been quite foreign to her. She could be both generous and extravagant, but she had been afraid of poverty for too long ever to take money for granted. She knew the exact price and value of the things she bought, just as she knew to the last percentage point how much her carefully invested royalties were earning for her.

  The taxi drove off as she was fumbling in her handbag for her front-door key. Once she was inside the door, she remembered Mrs Rusham’s shock at the sight of her clerkly disguise and took off her spectacles. In the middle of all the drama of Richard’s imprisonment it seemed important to keep her own life well within its accustomed routines. Mrs Rusham had never seen her employer wearing glasses and Willow did not want her to do so then. She folded them into their case and took out the small plastic contraption that held her contact lenses. One of them refused to settle on her eyeball and she had to fish out a hand-mirror so that she could find out where it was and push it into place.

  Blinking, and a little red-eyed, but looking more like Cressida than Willow King, she climbed the stairs and opened her own front door. She was surprised to hear voices coming from the kitchen. Never in the years since she had first employed Mrs Rusham had the housekeeper entertained her own friends in the flat.

  Curious and a little affronted, Willow walked into the kitchen to be faced with the familiar small figure of Emma Gnatche sitting on the edge of the table, swinging her legs. Willow relaxed.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Emma slid off the table at once and came to stand in front of Willow, looking even younger than usual in a pair of skin-tight yellow leggings and a loosely knitted yellow-and-white cotton sweater. The clothes would have looked no more than trendy if she had not also been wearing her usual black velvet hairband and pearls. The combination was really extremely odd, thought Willow, as odd as the blush that was rising in Emma’s face.

  ‘What’s the matter? You look as though you thought I was about to hit you,’ said Willow. ‘I’m really glad to see you and extremely grateful that you were there to help Richard when I rang you from Italy.’

  ‘No, but it’s a bit thick to invade your flat like this. ‘Specially after being rather rude to you on the telephone on Sunday. It’s just that Mrs Rusham told me you were back when I rang her this morning, and she and I both wanted to know how things were going and I hoped you wouldn’t mind too much if I came to talk to her while we were waiting for you. Is that all right?’

  ‘I don’t mind at all.’ Willow smiled slightly at Emma’s breathless explanation. ‘Mrs Rusham, what about a pot of tea? I think we could do with some.’

  ‘Certainly, Miss Woodruffe,’ she said, smoothing her voluminous white overall down over her thighs and sounding controlled and distant. ‘The sandwiches are ready. I shall bring a tray to the drawing room in a moment.’

  ‘Would you? That’s splendid. Come along, Emma.’

  ‘She’s awfully worried, you know,’ Emma whispered. ‘Couldn’t we all have tea together in the kitchen so that she can hear everything too?’

  Willow smiled slightly at the reproach as the two of them walked into the drawing room, which she had
had decorated in yellow and white as though to match Emma’s eccentric clothes.

  ‘The only way to comfort Mrs Rusham,’ said Willow drily as she took off her severe jacket and sank into the thick down cushions of one of the matching sofas, ‘is to allow her to keep up her terrific standards – and her dignity. She’d hate us to have tea in the kitchen. Wait until you see the tea tray.’ She pulled the pins out of her hair and ran her fingers through it until it looked much more like Cressida’s usual style.

  Only a few minutes later the drawing-room door opened and Mrs Rusham appeared with a heavy-looking antique mahogany tray. She placed it carefully on a low table in front of Willow’s sofa and departed.

  ‘You see,’ said Willow, gesturing to the plates of delicate sandwiches and little cakes and the highly polished silver teapot. Sharing the tray with them were a silver milk jug, a plate of thinly cut slices of lemon and some dark-blue-and-gold Minton china. It all looked perfectly suitable in that room with its French chintz curtains, the golden eighteenth-century secretaire and card tables, and the group of delicate, sunny watercolours; but it seemed absurdly luxurious in comparison with the unpleasant idea of Richard’s cell.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘I do. I could never match her standards. Will you tell me how he is?’

  ‘Not well.’ Willow poured out the tea, handed Emma one cup and added a slice of lemon to her own. ‘I hadn’t realized he was so fond of the dead woman. It complicates things.’

  ‘Why?’ Emma’s pretty pink-and-white face was creased into a study in perplexity.

  When they had first met, Willow had found Emma’s appearance and occasionally idiotic manner almost as irritating as the family background, connections and money that had given her a confidence she had not earned. Unfairly Willow had assumed that it was also undeserved, but as she came to know Emma, she discovered that the girl was both intelligent and sensible. She was also much more genuinely warm than Willow had suspected and slowly her irritation and unacknowledged jealousy had given way to a kind of amused affection.

  ‘Because it means that Richard is much less aware of what Sarah Allfarthing might have done to annoy someone into killing her. He apparently thinks she was perfect (apart from once annoying him in a meeting) and so he can’t give us any clues about who might have slit her throat.’

  Emma shivered. Then she shook herself like a young horse blowing and dancing under summer trees and took a deep breath.

  ‘Will you let me help?’

  ‘Help? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I know that you’re going to try to find the murderer and I want to help. I’m sure I could. I’ve told Mrs Tothill that I won’t be able to go on working at her catering business and so I’m free until term starts. Please let me help. I can type and do shorthand and run errands – and I’m quite bright. Really I am.’

  Willow grinned, looking much more human than usual.

  ‘I know you are, Emma. And I’m sure you would be an enormous help, but you ought to be concentrating on getting yourself to university.’

  ‘That’s not as important as Richard’s safety,’ she said, displaying the unlikely stubbornness that Willow had noticed once or twice before. Willow was torn between wanting the help that Emma could undoubtedly give her and fearing the proximity involved. It was one thing to share the secrets of her past and her double life with Tom Worth; quite another to let Emma know of the reality that lay behind the facade of wealth and certainty that Cressida Woodruffe provided.

  ‘Nothing is as important as Richard’s safety.’ Emma’s voice held not only confidence but also authority. Willow reluctantly bowed before it.

  ‘Very well. After all, I did once tell you that I’d willingly employ you as a research assistant. I can hardly refuse you now. How much was Mrs Tothill paying you?’

  Emma put down her expensive cup with an audible snap, which made Willow wince. From where she was sitting it did not look as though the cup was damaged and she relaxed.

  ‘How can you think I would take money from you for helping save Richard?’ Emma said. ‘You must think I’m the most selfish pig in the world.’

  Willow shook her head, her red hair flying about her face.

  ‘Good. That’s settled. Now, what do you want me to do first?’

  Willow had hardly thought about her own next moves, let alone what she could ask someone else to do, but she was too experienced an administrator to fumble.

  ‘The most important thing is to find out all we can about the dead woman, what she did at the bank, how she behaved, and what the others thought about her,’ she said, adding as she sat up: ‘Just a second!’

  Emma was fiddling in the round pink-and-blue basket that did duty as a handbag, and she looked up at the sharpness of Willow’s tone.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Willow left her and went into the small writing room, where she picked up the telephone, punched in the number of Richard’s bank and asked to speak to Jeremy Stedington. Willow had never met him, but she could well remember Richard telling her that Stedington was the director for whom he did most of his deals and for whom he had the most respect.

  ‘Who’s calling, please?’ said the receptionist.

  ‘Cressida Woodruffe.’

  ‘Oh!’ came an involuntary gasp. ‘Sorry. I’ll put you through.’

  A moment later a richly confident voice said: ‘Jeremy Stedington.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Stedington, we haven’t met, but –’

  ‘You’re a friend of poor old Richard Crescent. I know. He’s often boasted about knowing you.’

  Willow, mentally brushing aside that comment as she had done with the receptionist’s excitement, did not notice Mr Stedington’s amusement.

  ‘I’m trying to help him and I wondered whether we could meet,’ she said. ‘There are some things I badly need to ask you.’

  ‘He certainly needs help, poor bugger, though whether a romantic novelist … Sorry. When would you like to meet?’

  ‘Are you busy later this afternoon? Have you got a deal on?’

  There was a short laugh. ‘I can see Richard’s trained you well,’ he said, making Willow frown involuntarily. ‘No. No deals at the moment. Let’s meet at half past five. There’s a champagne bar just round the corner from here. Not many of us drink champagne since the recession started …’

  ‘I know it. I’ll be there,’ she said. ‘How will I recognize you?’

  ‘Tall, dark, pinstriped, Financial Times.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Willow with ill-timed frivolity. ‘That’ll be perfectly easy then. There can’t be anyone else in the City who looks like that.’

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ Despite the short laugh, the voice was grim. ‘I’ll know who you are. See you later.’

  ‘Sorry about that, Emma,’ said Willow a few moments later. ‘I just thought of someone I had to talk to.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’d better not take up any more of your time. I’ll report as soon as I’ve found anything. That was a delicious tea. Thank you very much. May I go and thank Mrs Rusham?’

  ‘But you haven’t had any of her cakes,’ said Willow.

  ‘Mustn’t. Far too fattening. The sandwiches were brill. Promise to ring me as soon as you need me for anything?’

  ‘I promise. Thank you, Emma. Between us we’ll sort it all out.’

  Emma suddenly gave her a brilliant smile. ‘Now you’re back, I think we might.’

  ‘Off with you,’ said Willow with a laugh, ‘before you make me overconfident.’

  When Emma had gone, Willow pushed off her shoes and swung her long legs up on to the sofa. With her back propped against the cushioned arm, she reached out for her plate and took a small nut-meringue confection. She ate it, noticing the sweetness and the crunch with part of her mind while the rest was listing the things she could usefully do to establish Richard’s innocence.

  The appointment with his director required yet another change of clothes and as she was searching through h
er wardrobe for the perfect thing to wear a little later, Willow could not help thinking that she had made her life ludicrously complicated with its secrets. It was a relief to be done with the civil service for six months at least.

  Eventually she chose a plain dark-blue silk dress, which she lightened with a long string of pearls she had bought herself just before she went to Tuscany. The combination looked sober enough for a City bar, but expensive enough for a successful romantic novelist. She had not had time to have her hair or nails done since she got back from Italy but she thought that they would just pass muster. When she made up her face, she added enough mascara to give her eyes drama and disguise their paleness.

  Stedington leaped to his feet when she walked into the dark bar, and waved with considerable enthusiasm. Willow walked slowly towards his table, thinking how odd it was that two pinstriped suits could look so different. Where Martin Roylandson’s had expressed fussiness and an extraordinary attachment to tradition, Jeremy Stedington’s was assertive and almost flamboyant. The contrast could have been created only by the width of the stripes and the cut of the jackets, and yet it was immense.

  Reaching the banker’s table, Willow shook hands with him. There was an ice bucket beside his chair with a bottle of Pol Roger in it waiting to be opened. Willow, who had planned to whisk him discreetly away for their talk, looked quickly round the dark room and saw that very few of the tables were occupied.

  ‘That’s why I suggested half past five,’ said Stedington. ‘The boys don’t usually get here for at least another hour. That’ll give us time to polish off the bottle and sort out what you need from me.’

  ‘It’s handy to know that you’ll understand me even without words,’ said Willow cheerfully. ‘But I thought you said that none of you drank champagne any more.’

  Stedington laughed. Although there was some amusement in his face, there was bitterness too, but he ignored her gibe.

  ‘Just as handy as knowing that you’re a lot brighter than your books would suggest,’ he said, competently opening the bottle and pouring the foaming wine into the waiting glasses. ‘Here’s to a successful liberation of poor old Richard.’