Bitter Herbs

by Natasha Cooper

‘Not if I’m intruding,’ Tom said at once, trailing his coat in a way that made her want to hit him.

  Not wanting to dignify his attempt to force reassurance out of her, Willow took her icy right hand out of her coat pocket in order to find her key and open the front door.

  ‘Come on both of you or we’ll all freeze to death,’ she said.

  Frowning, she led the way into her flat and to the warm, firelit, flower-scented drawing room.

  ‘Richard, will you pour Tom a huge Leapfrog and yourself whatever you want while I go and soak my numb hands in hot water?’

  She disappeared into her bathroom and locked the door behind her so that she could be alone to deal with the mixture of feelings that was making her seethe. It was true that in her growing interest in how Gloria Grainger had really died, she had quite forgotten her date with Tom, but his sitting in the car outside her flat like an irate father or a private detective made her furious.

  Whatever they had shared, he had no right to spy on her. Worse, his masochistic waste of time and suffering was too obviously designed to make her feel guilty. He had no right to that either.

  When she had eventually recovered her temper she went back into the drawing room to find the two men as cosy together as though they were in some all-male club. They both stood up as she shut the door behind her with something of a snap and Richard carefully waited for Tom to ask her what she wanted to drink. Well aware of her determined independence, he did nothing of the kind.

  Willow went to the drinks’tray and poured herself a tiny glass of green chartreuse, thinking that the taste of wormwood was highly suitable to her mood.

  ‘Women, eh, chaps?’ she said at last.

  Richard stiffened but Tom laughed and she remembered all over again why she liked him so much.

  ‘Absolutely, Will,’ he said, apparently back to normal. ‘And fair’s fair: you talk about “men” with that particular artifically thin, mean, mocking voice women use when they’re objecting to something supposedly characteristic of our sex, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, all the time,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘Good to have you back.’

  Richard sighed silently and drained his drink.

  ‘I’d better be off. It was a good evening, Willow. I’m only sorry it was at Tom’s expense.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Tom with enough warmth to make Willow confused all over again. ‘I can take it in a good cause like yours.’

  She got up and escorted Richard to her front door.

  ‘You did a lot for me this evening,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Getting you the legal research so easily and for nothing, you mean?’

  ‘No. You’ve every right to feel cheated, but I didn’t do it deliberately. I hadn’t understood quite how sore I’ve been feeling and being with you was …’

  ‘Like zinc-and-castor oil on a baby’s bottom? I know.’

  ‘Actually I was going to say “comforting”, but a nappy-rash ointment would do just as well. You’re funnier than I remember, Richard. Don’t lose heart – or touch – hm?’

  ‘All right. Thanks for having dinner with me. I liked it.’

  ‘Good. And if your friend Borden says anything about how awful I was, you can always say I’m only a distant acquaintance.’

  He patted her face.

  ‘Never that. However cross you made and make me, I’d never do that. I’m dead fond of you, old girl.’

  ‘What a tribute! Good night, Richard.’

  ‘Tom really cares for you, too,’ he said abruptly. ‘Don’t let him get your goat too much. He … he doesn’t look happy.’

  Willow could not say anything. She felt as though she were on some wild emotional sea-saw. Having no experience of the effects it was producing in her, she was alarmed. When Richard had gone she went slowly back to Tom.

  ‘How’s the case?’ she asked in order to keep her mind off the sea-saw.

  ‘We got the confession today, thank God,’ he said.

  As she heard that, Willow had second thoughts about Tom’s motives for waiting so long in the street and remembered that she had been trying to mend whatever had been broken between them. She stopped half-way to the sofa and smiled helplessly at him.

  ‘I am really glad, you know. I do understand that it was getting you down.’

  ‘And I suppose I have been behaving like a louse. I snapped at you badly, didn’t I, Will? Was that why you stood me up tonight?’

  ‘No. That was a mistake. I’ve got so involved in this Gloria Grainger business that I’ve been rushing from one meeting to another. Richard and a legal chum of his were the last.’

  Tom laughed, sounding slightly strained, and came to put an arm tentatively around her waist. When she did not move away, he kissed her.

  ‘Sorry. I’d been assuming that you’ve been using me as a teaser for him; now I think that it could be the other way round. It’s doing wonders for my faltering self-esteem.’

  ‘Teaser?’ Willow said distantly.

  ‘Ah, you don’t know anything about the breeding of race horses then?’

  ‘No,’ she said with some of the old crispness. ‘And I suspect it’s just as well.’

  Chapter Eleven

  As soon as she had finished her wonderfully solitary breakfast, Willow telephoned Posy Hacket.

  ‘Hello, this is Posy Hacket’s telephone,’ sang the machine that answered. ‘I’m sorry I’m working just now, but if you leave a message I’ll ring you back as soon as I knock off.’

  As soon as the beep had sounded, Willow said:

  ‘Hello, this is Willow King. I’m sure your lawyer has already told you that a libel case can’t be inherited. I happened to be sitting next to a barrister yester—’

  ‘Hello? It’s Posy here. Sorry, I’ve got into the habit of letting the machine answer in case it’s something I don’t want to deal with. You are kind to ring. Yes, my solicitor has told me. It’s been a terrific relief.’

  ‘I’m sure, although her heirs might not have pursued it even if they could have done,’ said Willow, still not quite convinced of Posy’s supposed ignorance of the law. ‘None of the possible people seem too keen on her. I’ve been trying to find out who they are for my memoir, but apparently she left strict instructions that none of them was to be told anything until after the funeral. That’s this Friday.’

  ‘I see. No one’s told me. Not surprisingly, perhaps.’ Posy Hacket was silent after that, and Willow felt forced to say:

  ‘There is something else that you might like to know.’

  ‘Really? What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve discovered during my researches that Gloria Grainger was herself a witness to, if not actually a victim of, male violence, which might explain the bias of her books, even if it doesn’t excuse it.’

  ‘Hell!’ said Posy again. Willow waited for a while and then said:

  ‘Posy? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. How do you know?’

  ‘I spoke to an old friend of hers and got it out of him – not without difficulty.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. For some reason w— people are always ashamed. As though suffering it is somehow worse than perpetrating it. Who was it, her husband?’

  ‘She never had one. It was her father.’

  ‘I wish I’d known … Except that she should bloody well have known better. If she knew … Oh, bugger it all! God, how one gives oneself away! I’d be grateful if you’d not tell people. I know theoretically that there’s no actual shame in having been beaten up, but I still feel it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Willow carefully.

  She was glad to know that there had indeed been a personal reason for Posy’s loathing of Gloria’s books, but she was not certain quite how much significance she could give it.

  ‘I won’t say that I had no idea because it had occurred to me. I feel nothing but sympathy for you.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I want your sympathy – or anyone’s. But t
hank you all the same. Good bye.’

  As Willow sat with the telephone receiver in her hand, she wished that she had been able to watch Posy Hacket’s face as they talked. It was hard to judge quite how deep her loathing had been and consequently how realistic her place among the suspects.

  The idea that Gloria might have been murdered no longer seemed at all exaggerated, but Willow knew that no one else would be convinced until she could offer not just her own growing certainty but also hard evidence of who had killed Gloria and how.

  The first thing she would have to do was talk to Gloria’s doctor and find out the truth about her heart condition as soon as possible. Willow flipped through the pages of her notebook and found the doctor’s name and address. His telephone number was listed in the directory and she dialled it. The telephone rang and rang until a bad-tempered male voice said:

  ‘This is the doctor’s surgery but he is not on duty at the moment. Appointments may be made between ten and twelve-thirty. Surgery is from four-thirty and emergencies should be referred to 081-873 6945. This machine does not take messages.’

  At first Willow had thought that she was being answered by a recorded message, but by the time the voice had reached the emergency telephone number, she realised she was connected to a human being in spite of the last sentence.

  ‘Doctor Trenor?’ she said quickly before he could cut the connection. ‘My name is Willow King. I am not a patient. Marilyn Posselthwate gave me your name. Have you a moment even though you’re off duty?’

  There was a short, gusty laugh.

  ‘So you weren’t taken in by my impersonation of the broken answering machine?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. It was the irritability of your voice that gave you away. People dictating into machines tend to sound bland or throttled, but never angry.’

  ‘I see. Young Marilyn has told me about you and warned that you might be in touch. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, I hoped that we might meet so that I could ask you questions about your late patient, the sort of questions that I have found myself unable to put to either her friends or her relations.’

  ‘I expect that would be all right, always bearing in mind medical ethics and confidentiality.’

  Remembering what she had heard about the allegedly ‘dirty’ doctors the previous evening in El Vino’s, Willow almost laughed. She managed to control herself and promised that she would always consider medical ethics when she was putting her questions to him.

  ‘Splendid. Then what about meeting this morning? As you’ve heard, I am not on duty just now.’

  ‘Unfortunately I am. What you might call my day job demands my appearance at the Home Office in fifteen minutes. But I’ll be free this afternoon. If your surgery is not until four-thirty, perhaps we could meet before that.’

  ‘Hmm. I’ve several house calls to make, but I’ll have to eat. Lunch in the Maids of Honour in Kew Road at … when could you make it?’

  ‘Quarter past one,’ said Willow, only just suppressing a sigh at the thought of yet more food. She would have to stop Mrs Rusham cooking whatever she had selected for lunch.

  ‘You’re on. I’ll see you then. I shan’t have much time and so if you’re late I’ll simply start eating. Acceptable?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Everything seemed under control when Willow reached her office in the fortress in Queen Anne’s Gate and listened to her staff reporting on what they had done since she had last been there. They all seemed thoroughly on the ball and capable of doing exactly what she had asked. She congratulated them more warmly than she would have done in the days when the civil service was her entire life.

  Sandra, the Higher Executive Officer, reported that the Directorate of Prison Affairs had suggested that Willow should visit a tough prison called Great Garden in Berkshire, whose governor was a member of the new committee. An appointment had been made for Friday at eleven o’clock.

  Remembering that Gloria’s funeral was to take place at three-thirty that afternoon, Willow asked that the appointment be shifted back to nine so that she would have enough time even if there were bad delays getting back into London.

  Willow then turned to Raymond Beete, who had already drafted his position paper on the existing educational opportunities in Great Britain’s prisons. He had also talked to a prison psychiatrist about the possibility of commissioning a report on the changes that he believed were necessary within the education system to assist in the preservation of the inmates’mental health. What he had not yet done was sound out any members of the Prison Officers’ Association about their reaction to any changes in the system.

  ‘Good. I think it’s far too early for that yet,’ said Willow, giving Raymond her full attention. ‘Now tell me what you’ve discovered so far.’

  As they talked, she became so interested in the points he raised that she was surprised when he said it was twelve forty-five and that he must leave for an important meeting. Her own appointment with the doctor in Kew seemed to be in jeopardy and so she hastily locked away her papers, told Sandra that she had to leave but that she could be telephoned at her flat later if anyone needed her, and ran out of the building into Petty France. A taxi was passing the door of the Home Office and she hailed it. The cabby stopped with a wail of his brakes.

  She gave him the address of the restaurant in Kew, adding: ‘And hurry. I’m horribly late.’

  ‘Okay, Miss, have you got everything?’ he said, leaving his brakes on.

  ‘What?’ asked Willow, furious. ‘I asked you to hurry.’

  ‘If you’re in that much of a hurry, Miss, you’ve probably forgotten something,’ he said infuriatingly. ‘Money, briefcase?’

  ‘I’ve plenty of money.’ She felt as though she should physically hold the anger inside her head. ‘Please get a move on.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said the driver, setting off. Talking over his shoulder, he then proceeded to tell her horror stories of passengers who had reached Heathrow before they discovered that the crucial document they needed in the States had been left in their office, passports mislaid, and tickets left on the hall table.

  Willow, her temper rising with every yard they travelled, decided that she would crack completely before they reached Kew and diverted him towards Chesham Place, so that she could pick up her own car. The detour might make her late, but at least it meant that she would arrive with her self-control intact and her mind alert.

  She handed the cabby a five-pound note, not caring that the fare was only half that or that he was furious at losing the chance of a much larger one, and shoved her key into the door of her own car.

  As she was sitting waiting at a set of lights in the Cromwell Road fifteen minutes later, she wished that she had succumbed to the blandishments of a cellular-telephone salesman she had once summarily rejected. If she could at least reassure Doctor Trenor that she was on her way, he might wait for her. As it was he would probably have eaten and gone by the time she reached the Maids of Honour.

  The thaw was beginning and the hard impacted snow on the roads had been reduced to mounds of watery brown slush. It was easier to drive over, but looked so depressing that Willow would have preferred the dangers of the icy snow. She reached Kew and found a parking place quite quickly, but it was half-past one by the time she walked into the restaurant and looked around for the doctor. Either her fears had been reasonable or he, too, was late.

  Willow found the table he had booked and when a waitress in a blue-and-white overall came to take her order, she asked whether he had left a message for her. The waitress went to consult her colleagues and reappeared with the comforting news that there had been no messages for anyone that day. Willow sighed and ordered herself the set lunch of soup, roast and pudding, because it seemed such remarkably good value. While she waited she looked around the room, which seemed pleasantly countrified with its pink-washed walls, wheel-back chairs and open fire.

  Amused and relaxed by her surroundings, she took her leather-b
ound notebook out of her bag and started to write up accounts of her discussions in Kew the previous afternoon and her telephone call to Posy Hacket that morning, as well as an analysis of the possible extent of Posy’s anger and its consequences.

  The soup was brought before Willow had time to finish her analysis, let alone consider the implications of what Gloria’s secretaries had told her. That there were several serious implications seemed certain to Willow and she let her mind play about with them as she drank the soup.

  She had finished it and had managed to eat quite a lot of her large plate of meat and vegetables by the time she was interrupted by a familiar, bluff voice:

  ‘Miss King?’

  Willow looked up and saw a large freckled man in late middle age dressed in a baggily cut suit of hairy green-brown tweed and highly polished, heavy, brown brogues. He would not have looked out of place in a farmhouse on Dartmoor. Willow was amused at the idea that he must consider Kew to be ‘country’rather than town and wondered what his younger patients thought of him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, putting her knife and fork together and getting out of her chair. ‘You must be Doctor Trenor. What can I get you?’ She smiled at one of the waitresses, who came straight to the table.

  ‘You’re buying are you? Something to be said for feminism after all. Hah! I haven’t time for a whole lunch so I’ll have two of their little pasties and some cider.’ He pronounced ‘pasties’in the West Country way with a long ‘a’, and Willow was glad that she had picked Dartmoor as his natural setting.

  She put her notebook away into her handbag and watched the waitress walk out into the shop-part of the room. She was back four minutes later with a plate of pasties and a glass of cider.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ said the doctor, raising his glass to her.

  Willow winced, but he seemed not to have noticed.

  ‘Aah, it’s good to sit. Sorry I was late: one elderly patient had had a bad fall last night and I had to arrange to get her checked over at X-ray in the local hospital. Now, what is it you think I can do for you?’

  ‘As Marilyn has probably told you, I am writing a memoir of Gloria Grainger for her publishers,’ said Willow, her coverstory fluent and convincing.