Bitter Herbs

by Natasha Cooper

  Listening for voices on the top-floor landing so that she could select the right door, Willow heard the doctor say:

  ‘But it’s all yours now. You can have as much heating as you want and you can tell everyone else to go to hell if that’s what you feel. So what if it ruins the furniture? You have the power in this household now and you need not put up with anything. It’s your turn at last, my child.’

  Willow knocked on the door with the edge of her tray. The doctor opened the door and took the tray from her.

  ‘Now,’ he said, laying it down on the empty dressing table, ‘would you like me to look at your injuries?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Willow, rubbing her shoulder and ignoring the dizziness that still plagued her. ‘I can move it, so it can’t be dislocated. The rest is only bruises and scrapes. If it were anything more I’d not be able to walk. But thank you.’ She turned to Marilyn, who was looking fragile and appealing in the big spare bed. ‘Do you need any help with your daughter before I go?’

  ‘She’s with a friend today. I sent her there before I tackled Peter this morning. Oh, dear! They’ll be bringing her back to the cottage and the front door’s locked. I don’t let her have a key any more because she always loses them. If Peter isn’t back, she won’t be able to get in. She may not think to come round to the Green and ring the bell here because she was never allowed to in the old days. I’d better phone … oh, no, that’s no good either. Liz said she’d take them swimming and come straight back here from the pool. I’ll have to go to bed over there.’

  Marilyn struggled with the blankets, which the doctor had tucked tightly into the mattress.

  ‘No, you don’t. That wretched, cold, damp, hen house would be bad for you,’ he said. ‘We can make some other arrangement.’

  ‘Why don’t I simply go across the garden and leave a note for your daughter on the front door?’ said Willow, not averse to seeing how easy or otherwise it might have been for Peter to get his wheelchair from the cottage to the main house.

  ‘Good idea,’ said the doctor as Marilyn relaxed. ‘Get your friend to bring her round here. Now, my dear child, will you be all right for a bit? I ought to get on with my calls.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Marilyn without thanking him.

  ‘I’ll look in again this evening, make sure everything’s all right and that you’ve got something to make you sleep. Don’t get out of bed until you have to. You need rest. Good bye, Miss King. I’m glad you’re all right. Thank you again for my lunch.’

  ‘It was a pleasure.’

  When he had gone, Willow seized the opportunity for which she had been angling.

  ‘Shall I fetch you some writing paper so that you can write a note to your friend for me to stick to the cottage door?’

  ‘That would be kind. There’ll be some in Aunt … in my study downstairs. It’s opposite the drawing room.’

  Willow left without another word. The study was as exquisite as the rest of the house. Both the panelling and shutters had been painted a soft creamy colour and the polished floor was partly covered by an old French rug woven in muted pinks and greens. The furniture was restricted to an impeccable walnut secretaire with an upright chair in front of it and two old wing chairs on either side of the delicately carved chimneypiece. The curtains were of old-rose and cream silk, looped back with twisted cords.

  The desk was open and the flap was covered in a mass of jumbled papers, which Willow was certain Gloria Grainger would never have allowed. Looking carefully but quickly through the top layer, Willow realised how furious Peter Farrfield must have been when he searched through it. The papers were all either fan letters or photocopies of adulatory reviews. There was nothing either legal or financial there at all.

  Frustrated herself, Willow reached into one of the compartments at the back of the desk and brought out a neat bundle of engraved writing paper. As she left the room she noticed that there was a draught-excluding piece of wood about an inch and a half high at the threshhold. That would not have been enough to prevent any wheelchair-bound person getting access to the room, but the three steps she could see between the hall and the door into the garden must have presented more of a problem.

  Marilyn wrote her note and gave Willow the key to the back door of the cottage, which could be reached only from the garden of the main house. As she walked along the brick path between the immaculately kept flowerbeds. Willow noticed all the unevennesses and shallow steps that might have impeded someone in a wheelchair. They were not enough to have made such a journey impossible without help, but it would have been hard.

  Having climbed the gentle ramp up to the back door of the cottage, unlocked the door and left it ajar, she went into the spartan kitchen. There she found a baize-covered noticeboard with several spare drawing pins. Taking two, Willow went out into the narrow hall and the door that opened on to the street. She pinned Marilyn’s note to the outside of the door, before shutting it carefully. As she was slowly walking back towards the kitchen and the door that would lead back into Gloria’s garden, she heard the unmistakable sound of a footfall upstairs.

  ‘Hello!’ she called, surprised but not nervous.

  A tousle-haired young man dressed in jeans and a blue guernsey appeared at the top of the stairs. His broad face looked astonished.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered politely enough in a deep, pleasant voice. ‘Who on earth are you?’

  ‘A friend of Ms Posselthwate,’ she said in her best civil-service voice. ‘She asked me to leave a note on the door for her daughter. And you?’

  He hesitated for a moment and then smiled pleasantly again.

  ‘Poor old Peter asked me to come and pack up his things. I gather he’s fallen out with his young woman and so I’ve taken him in. Someone had to volunteer to pick up his stuff.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Willow, still puzzled. ‘Why are his things upstairs?’

  ‘He slept up here,’ said the young man, pointing to a rail that ran along the stairs and led to a padded chair Willow had not noticed.

  ‘Ah. Shall I give Ms Posselthwate a message for you?’

  ‘Oh no, don’t worry her. She’s got enough on her plate from all I’ve heard.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t let it go at that,’ said Willow, conscious of everything she had heard and suspected about Peter Farrfield. ‘For all I know you could be a burglar.’

  ‘Me?’ said the young man, his face breaking into a delightful smile as he flung his arms wide. ‘Come on up and see what I’m taking.’

  Willow did not move. She had that much sense; or perhaps the memory of having been thrown down one staircase had sharpened her always strong self-protective instincts.

  ‘Oh, all right. I’ll bring the cases down and show you the contents. I won’t be a minute.’

  Willow looked for the telephone she knew must be somewhere in the hall or kitchen. She found it on the untidy dresser in the kitchen, but before she could pick up the receiver, the young man was back. He laid two old-fashioned suitcases on the formica-topped kitchen table and flung back their lids. Piles of obviously male clothes covered shoes in one case and books in the other. The only incongruous item was a squash racket.

  ‘Poor man,’ said Willow pointing to it and suppressing a groan as the movement pulled at one of the bruises on her back. The young man smiled again.

  ‘I know. And he used to be so active. It’s rotten luck. He said he’d give it to me.’

  ‘I see. Now why not come across to the house and make yourself known to Ms Posselthwate? Then everything will be in order.’

  ‘I’d rather not actually,’ he said with an attractive air of confiding that brought a reluctant smile to her lips. ‘You can bear witness that I’ve taken nothing that’s not Peter’s and I don’t want to complicate her life any more. Tell her, if you will, that he’ll be all right with me. I’m Martin Smith. She’ll know. I’ll be in touch when the dust has settled.’

  He held out his right hand. Reluctantly Wi
llow accepted it. She was concerned but could think of no reason – or way – to force him to see Marilyn. He shut the lids and swung the two heavy cases down off the table as though they were filled with nothing more than empty paper bags. Willow made a mental note of his great upper-body strength.

  ‘So long,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Before you go,’ said Willow firmly, ‘you’d better give me the front-door keys he lent you. I’m sure Ms Posselthwate would prefer to have them under her own control.’

  The young man hesitated again, then tucked one heavy case under his left arm and took a pair of keys out of his right trouser pocket.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Here.’

  Willow took them and followed him to the front door to make certain that it was double locked behind him, before walking painfully back across the garden to report to Marilyn.

  ‘Martin Smith?’ she said, her face a study in astonishment. ‘I’ve never heard of him. And he’s going to look after Peter?’ She put one small hand up to hold her forehead as though the ache in her head was preventing her from thinking. At last she looked up again at Willow.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Willow. ‘I couldn’t think how to hang on to him, short of physical means and he was obviously a lot stronger than me even when I haven’t just been … fallen down an iron staircase.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ asked Marilyn, tugging at the taut blankets in an effort to get out of bed. ‘Ow!’ she screamed as she bent her sprained wrist again.

  ‘Careful,’ said Willow. ‘He’s gone now, anyway. There’s nothing you can do. He was not very tall – I’d say about five feet ten – but he looked immensely strong, particularly in the arms and shoulders. He had thick, untidy dark-brown hair. I didn’t notice what colour his eyes were, but his smile was very attractive. He was wearing jeans and a dark-blue guernsey. He had a deep and rather pleasant voice. What’s the matter?’

  There was an expression of intense concentration in Marilyn’s eyes.

  ‘Was the guernsey darned at all?’ she asked with a half smile that Willow could not read.

  ‘Good heavens, I don’t know!’ Willow was irritated by the question but she did her best to remember exactly what she had seen. ‘Actually I think there might have been a darn. Yes, that’s right: the colours didn’t match. That must be why I registered it. It was green and towards the cuff on one arm. I think the left.’

  Marilyn’s colour was fluctuating like an arty film advertisement for vanilla ice-cream covered with raspberry sauce.

  ‘That bloody, lying, exploiting little bastard!’ she said at last, her voice exploding into an uncharacteristically raucous shout on the last word.

  ‘Who?’ asked Willow just at the moment when she realised the answer. ‘You mean that was your supposedly wheelchair-bound friend himself?’

  ‘It must have been. Unless he’d lent his jersey to another short, dark, smiling man with a deep voice.’ Marilyn pushed her heavy hair away from her face. ‘I darned it for him all in a hurry one weekend when I couldn’t get out to the shops to buy dark-blue wool.’

  ‘But he was moving without any trouble at all,’ said Willow. ‘How could it have been him?’

  ‘It must have been. There can’t be two men who look like that. But we can settle it one way or the other. I’ve got a photo of Peter in my bag. Will you get it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Willow, when Marilyn had offered her the small colour print, which looked as though it had been taken for a passport. ‘That’s him. So he’s not disabled after all. Well, well, well.’

  All sorts of new possibilities crowded into her mind.

  ‘He must have been pretending to be crippled to get money out of his insurance company,’ said Marilyn, making Willow irritable all over again.

  ‘Come off it,’ she said at once. ‘How could he possibly have been doing that? You can’t even submit a claim for personal injury without doctors’certificates and a police report, let alone expect to get any money. Besides, wasn’t Peter’s story that there was another driver involved who died? No one could invent that for an insurance company without being exposed as a liar instantly.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ said Marilyn pettishly. She looked up at Willow through her eyelashes. ‘I’ve never driven a car.’

  ‘It’s much more likely that he was simply trying to charm money out of your aunt. Do you know if she gave him anything while she was still alive?’

  As she asked that, Willow became concerned for Marilyn’s blood pressure. Her face was so flushed that it looked almost purple and her eyeballs seemed to be swelling as they protruded between the lids.

  ‘Probably. I’d never thought of it, but it makes sense of a lot of things, doesn’t it? And to think that I was paying for everything for him all the time. It’s not fair. I …’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Willow, trying to soothe her. ‘Obviously you never even thought of doubting him.’

  Marilyn shook her head, her lips firmly closed.

  ‘It’s irrelevant now in any case. He must have realised that the goose that layed the golden eggs was dead and, since he must have known he’d get nothing out of you after the row, decided to cut his losses.’

  ‘When you said he was a shit,’ said Marilyn viciously, ‘you were flattering him, weren’t you? Think of everything I did for him. Lifting him in and out of his chair, taking him to hospital … No wonder he’d never let me stay while he actually saw a doctor. The whole bloody thing was fake. God! I feel a fool.’

  ‘There’s no point in thinking about it now,’ said Willow, becoming aware of something alarming that was rising up from her subconscious mind. It seemed to her then that anyone who was reckless enough to allow a man to live in her house ought not to be surprised if he turned out to be a criminal. The very extravagance of her generalisation appalled her, and so did its implications.

  ‘I ought to go now,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marilyn, hunching her shoulders under the blankets. She remembered her manners enough to add: ‘Thank you. You have been kind to me.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Willow, far more concerned about her own affairs than any of Marilyn’s. ‘Good bye.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Willow drove as fast as possible back to Belgravia, watching the rush-hour traffic flooding out in the opposite direction and trying quite hard to confront the significance of her own suppressed emotions. Her head and all her muscles ached, and one part of her mind rejected everything the other part suggested.

  When she reached the flat she sighed in relief to be home, alone. Fires had been lit in all the rooms. Christmas roses and bowls of white and yellow forced hyacinths added freshness to the air, and the light everywhere was mellow and calm. Mrs Rusham was in the kitchen, preparing dinner, and everything was as it should be.

  Willow stood in the doorway of her drawing room, breathing in the scents of the hyacinths and the fire, relieved that the money that made her secure was her own, earned by her, owed to no one and expected by no one. She was perfectly safe, she told herself, and wondered why the statement seemed so unconvincing.

  ‘Would you like tea now, Miss King?’ Mrs Rusham’s voice made her employer jump. ‘I am sorry to have surprised you.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Willow, unbuttoning her coat so that she could disguise her residual fear. ‘It’s a bit late to eat, but a cup of tea would be lovely. Could you get rid of these for me?’ She handed the housekeeper her coat and gloves and went to sink into the softness of one of her big sofas, letting her head flop back on to the cushions.

  Mrs Rusham brought in tea on a large Victorian black papier mâché tray, decorated with overblown painted roses and mother-of-pearl lozenges, which Willow had recently bought because it amused her.

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’ asked Mrs Rusham. ‘I have put the newspapers and the second post on the telephone t
able. Your dinner’s in the Aga and there should be plenty. I’ve laid the table. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Rusham, that seems splendid,’ said Willow, noticing that despite her refusal of food, her housekeeper had provided scones keeping warm over hot water beside small dishes of clotted cream and strawberry jam and a plate of egg-and-cress sandwiches. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  When she was alone, she decided that she could manage to eat a little, despite her late lunch, and split a scone and spread it lavishly with cream and jam. She enjoyed the crunchy lightness of the scone almost as much as the rich sweetness of its topping. The smoky, tarry taste of the Lapsang Suchong tea, sharpened by lemon, made the perfect contrast and she even toyed with the idea of eating all three scones before common sense returned to her.

  Laughing, she let her mind revert to the investigation, trying out first one explanation of Gloria’s death and then another. None of them seemed convincing, not least because Willow did not have enough facts about the state of Gloria’s body when it was discovered.

  Wishing that she knew more about forensic medicine, Willow decided to get some professional advice. She fetched the telephone and punched in the number of Dowting’s Hospital in South London. When she was answered, she gave her name and asked for Doctor Salcott, an old acquaintance who had often given her useful medical information. She was told that he was ‘on the ward’and was being bleeped. In four minutes she heard his voice:

  ‘Willow! You know that’s the oddest name. I still can’t help thinking of you as Cressida. It comes much more naturally.’

  Willow laughed.

  ‘Hello, Andrew. How are you?’

  ‘Much the same as usual: furious with the Minister of Health, furious with the chief executive of the hospital, furious with my wretched patients, furious with my accountant who can’t find a better way of dealing with the fees my foreign patients pay, and so on.’

  ‘Oh, the traumas of consultant status! Don’t you wish you were still a humble registrar?’