‘But what could she have done to him even if she had been blackmailing him?’ said Tom at last.
‘Told the Law Society and stirred up enough dust to have him struck off the roll, I suspect. Even if she had never managed to persuade the police that he had had a part in his uncle’s hanging, that would have been enough to ruin him. As a partner at Blenkort & Wilson, he must have been earning about £150,000 a year, I suppose – and far more in the good years. To a man as vain and self-obsessed as he that could have been an adequate reason to kill her.’
Tom looked at her, understanding her bitterness because it was what he felt whenever he was confronted with someone who believed that his or her own comfort and security were more important than the life of another human being.
‘Will you sleep tonight?’ he asked at last.
Willow’s eyebrows joined over her nose as she frowned.
‘If I take a pill,’ she said. ‘Will you stay?’
‘Sure,’ Tom answered comfortably as he got up to take away her tray.
Chapter Twenty
A week later, once her mouth had healed and she had finished the synopsis for her agent Willow hosted a lunch to celebrate Richard’s release from prison. His longstanding affection for Sarah Allfarthing meant that for him at least the celebration was muted, but Willow, Emma and Mrs Rusham were united in triumphant pleasure. Even Tom Worth was pretty cheerful.
Willow had suggested to Mrs Rusham that they should all go out to a restaurant, but the housekeeper had begged, in breathless desperation, to be allowed to cook for Mr Lawrence-Crescent. Just as desperately, she had refused to eat with them.
She had not, of course, stopped at cooking. The silvery-pink dining room was filled with flowers. All the silver had been polished until it gleamed and so had the furniture. The surface of the mahogany table was so shiny that it reflected the sprays of ivy and pale roses that trailed over the edge of the silver quaich in the centre. There were tiny dishes of newly roasted and salted almonds on the table, and handmade chocolate truffles filled the matching Georgian bonbonnieres on the sideboard, while more champagne than the five of them could possibly have drunk in three days lay on its side in the enormous fridge in the kitchen.
While Mrs Rusham brought in course after course of ambrosial and spectacularly presented food, the four of them ate without saying very much. The bisque of langoustines was followed by a boned and stuffed chicken flavoured with white truffles, which in turn was succeeded by an immense platter of eight different vegetables, each one separately sauced.
Tom and Willow spoke to each other occasionally and watched Emma Gnatche adoring Richard. He visibly relaxed under her care, smiling more easily and eventually even making a few jokes about his time in prison. Emma, looking both older and happier than Willow had ever seen her, topped his stories with an account of her experiments with Mrs Rusham, the plastic mackintosh and the tomato ketchup.
Richard leaned back in his chair laughing as Mrs Rusham brought in the pudding and he thanked her even more warmly than when he had first arrived at the flat. She flushed unbecomingly as she put a tower of spun sugar, raspberries, cream and meringue down in front of Willow and then turned to Richard.
‘It was a pleasure,’ she said formally, ‘to do anything we could.’
Richard stood up and put both his hands on her shoulders. ‘You’ve been wonderful,’ he said and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
Mrs Rusham’s heavy face quivered; she tried to speak, shook her head and moved back.
‘This looks superb,’ said Willow, understanding how difficult it was for Mrs Rusham to answer Richard’s declaration.
She looked at her employer with rare gratitude and turned in silence to the sideboard to pick up the plates, which she distributed before fleeing back to the safety of her kitchen. The other four looked after her with sympathy and no little embarrassment, which Willow eventually tried to dispel by handing round the elaborate pudding. Emma refilled Richard’s glass and they began slowly to talk again.
‘Tell me one thing,’ said Richard, clearing the sweetness of the meringue out of his palate with a draught of champagne.
‘What haven’t you worked out?’ asked Willow, amused.
‘Do you think Certes actually meant to kill her?’ said Richard, the happiness shrinking out of his face as he remembered what he had found that night.
‘I don’t think he can have planned it, or it wouldn’t have been so messy. He couldn’t have known that the plastic cleaner’s bag would be there, even if Hopecastle had told him about the knife. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I cannot imagine that he’d have left a print on her sellotape if he had had time to plan properly. He’s far too sharp.’
Tom leaned across the table to refill Willow’s glass.
‘Perhaps he thought that he was so damned clever it would not matter.’
‘I doubt it. I think he was probably very shaken by the killing.’
Emma, looking shaken herself, said: ‘But why did he think he could get away with it? He couldn’t have known that Richard would be coming back from Tokyo to be the perfect suspect.’
‘I don’t imagine he thought at all,’ said Willow. ‘I think he was in the most frightful panic and simply assumed that with no blood on him he would never be suspected.’
‘Or,’ Tom added drily, ‘perhaps he assumed that no one would believe Tracy could ever have been stupid enough to tell him the number of the doors.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Richard with a rueful grimace, ‘but anyone who’s ever worked with her could believe it. What I don’t understand is how he knew about Sarah’s cottage and got hold of a key.’
‘Oh that’s easy,’ said Willow at once. ‘She was so determined to keep the place secret from her husband in case its existence hurt him that she would have made all her arrangements through Certes. We know that he did all kinds of chores for her and as a solicitor would be the perfect person to negotiate the rent and perhaps even sign the lease on her behalf. I only hope that there will be some documents in his office to prove it.’
‘But none of it really matters any more,’ Emma said with a delighted – if proprietory – smile at Richard. ‘Not now that you’re out of prison.’
As Willow watched Richard smiling back at Emma, she remembered the mystery of his parentage and for one wild moment asked herself whether Mrs Rusham could possibly have been his mother. There was nothing in his long, good-looking face or his very English colouring to suggest it. Her once inky dark hair and her sternness of feature would surely have stamped themselves on the genetic inheritance of any child she bore; and the coincidence would have been ludicrous; but it might have explained her painful devotion.
‘… don’t you think, Willow?’
‘Sorry, Richard, my mind was miles away. What did you say?’
He smiled and she could see from the angle of his right arm that his hand must be lying on Emma’s knee.
‘Emma has just told me how young she felt and I was merely observing that she seemed to have grown up enormously.’
‘Enormously,’ Willow agreed, watching them with delight. She noticed that Tom was looking quizzically at her and she nodded slightly to show him that she understood what he meant and that she enjoyed the sight of Emma’s bond with Richard.
‘Then perhaps I’m old enough for one of you to tell me something,’ said Emma, raising the hand that must have been covering Richard’s to scoop her hair behind her ear. ‘Will you?’
‘Probably,’ answered Tom cheerfully just as Willow was doing sums in her head and deciding that Mrs Rusham could only have been about fourteen and a half when Richard was born. ‘What is it?’
Emma looked from Richard’s familiar, beloved features to Tom’s craggy, amused face, which she had once found dauntingly masculine and rather dangerous.
‘Why do you two keep calling Cressida Will or Willow? It’s been puzzling me for some time.’
Her sweet pink-and-white face was framed by its customary pearls and
black velvet hairband, but her big blue eyes were shrewd. The two men turned from her to Willow.
‘It’s your story, Will,’ said Tom.
‘Well,’ said Willow, taking a gulp of champagne for Dutch courage, ‘it’s a simple story, really, Emma.’ Her voice sank to the quiet sing-song of an old-fashioned nanny trying to send her charge to sleep at night and she told Emma a fairy tale version of her past.
‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she added when she had come to the end, ‘it’s only a late twentieth-century variant on “The Ugly Duckling” or “Cinderella”.’
‘With a few differences,’ said Tom. ‘I’d have said it must have been more Arthurian than either of those.’
‘A quest?’ Willow said interested. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I never thought I’d live to hear you announce it,’ said Richard, raising his glass to her. She could not tell whether he was mocking and found herself stiffening at the possibility. ‘Are you going public?’
‘I doubt it.’ She suddenly smiled again. Mocking or not, she liked them all. ‘I’m beginning to think that perhaps I’ve overrated secrecy, but I still haven’t got to the stage of wanting to lay my inadequate and dreary past before the shocked eyes of the fans.’
Into the silence that followed came Mrs Rusham with a tray of coffee. Willow insisted that her housekeeper should sit down and share that with them at least and later, when they had finished the coffee and the truffles, they all went into the kitchen with her to load the washing-up machine.
When Mrs Rusham had eventually got them all out of her kitchen, no one quite knew how to end the celebration until Willow, understanding what both Richard and Emma wanted most, urged her to give him a lift back to his flat.
At the front door Richard turned back to thank Willow yet again, adding:
‘If only I’d been clearer about the bloody roses it would have been much easier for you. I’m sorry, Will; I just couldn’t remember spilling them when you first asked me.’
‘Don’t worry, Richard,’ Willow answered. ‘As Emma said: none of it matters any more. Off you go.’
‘Do you mind that?’ asked Tom as Willow shut the door behind them. She shook her head.
‘What, Richard and Emma wandering off into the sunset hand in hand? No. I think it’s excellent. How permanent it’ll be, I’ve no idea, but they’ll both enjoy themselves and that’s the main thing. Besides, I’ve been wanting to get rid of them for some time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really.’ She put her arm around his waist and added: ‘I owe you a holiday, Tom. I know you’ve used up all your leave for the moment, so what about a weekend in Paris?’
‘Only,’ he said with a consciously wicked smile as he opened the door to her bedroom, ‘if you can afford to whisk me off to the Crillon.’
‘Done,’ she said. ‘What a splendid idea! And I can buy you some cufflinks at Cartier while we’re there. You need a present and what with all of Richard’s drama I haven’t been shopping for weeks.’
Tom shut the door behind him and stood looking at her with a derisive glint in his eye. For once she enjoyed it.
‘Withdrawal symptoms, eh?’ he said before he kissed her. ‘I think you ought to try a little cold turkey. Why don’t we go to a tiny hotel I know in Saint Germain and forget presents? You surely don’t need Cressida’s extravagance any more.’
Willow laughed. She felt an extraordinary ease with him, as though she had known him for a lifetime that had been quite different from her own.
‘You may have just heard me burning boats, my dear friend,’ she said with mockery to match his own, ‘but I’m damn well keeping all my life rafts.’
Copyright
First published in 1992 by Simon & Schuster
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1992
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