Bitter Herbs

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Certainly not. I’ve never been humble in my life and I don’t intend to start now.’

  When they had first met, Willow had found his relentless masculinity and rollicking humour hard to take, but since then she had discovered that real discernment and intelligence lay behind them. She was rather proud of her own tolerant appreciation.

  ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  ‘Hearts,’ she said. ‘You’re good at hearts, aren’t you?’

  ‘Stuffed with prunes and bacon and steamed in the pressure cooker for forty minutes? Yes, all my friends enjoy them. A touch of coriander often helps.’

  ‘Idiot! Cardiology rather than cookery.’

  ‘Oh, how dull. A professional question. All right, but you’d better be quick because the bleeper’s going again.’

  ‘Is there any way a heart attack can be induced by someone wanting the patient to die?’

  ‘I’ll have to get back to you. The answer’s too long to give while the bleeper’s going. Bye for now.’

  ‘Good bye, Andrew. When?’ said Willow into an empty telephone. She replaced the receiver and sighed, turning over her letters to see if there were any that looked at all interesting. One with her agent’s distinctive typing on the envelope reminded her that Eve was still waiting for a call. Willow looked down at her watch and, seeing that there were still ten minutes until the end of Eve’s working day, picked up the receiver again.

  ‘Eve. Me: Willow.’

  ‘About time, too. I wish you authors would clear things with me before you go messing up my deals with your publishers. Purely editorial matters are of course a matter for you and Ann to discuss alone, but anything that affects money or agreements really ought to come through me. It saves confusion, if nothing else. She’s been on to me wanting to cut your fee for the synopsis because you’ve told her the book will have to be shorter, and I didn’t even know what she was talking about. It made me look a fool.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Willow recognised the justice of the complaint. ‘You’re right and I won’t do it again. As it happens, I think I may have found enough new information to bulk up what I’m going to write. The synopsis …’

  ‘Is already overdue.’ Eve’s voice was crisp and cold, like a fresh lettuce thought Willow irreverently, relieved that she could still amuse herself with verbal games. ‘Ann has pointed out that if they don’t get the complete manuscript within the next two months, there will be no point in even trying to publish it. Gloria will be not only dead and buried, but also forgotten within six. At the rate you’re going with the synopsis, you’ll never do it.’

  ‘I’ll try and do as much as I can tonight,’ Willow said, wondering whether she had the energy for anything except sleep, ‘and fax it to you as soon as possible tomorrow. Perhaps I’d better ring Ann to reassure her. Would you permit that, Eve?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I think it’s a good idea. Calm her down and possibly discuss the direction you’re planning to take. That ought to keep her on your side,’ said Eve, beginning to sound more relaxed. ‘But don’t forget when you’ve got Gloria out of the way, you’ve still got a new kind of novel to invent.’

  ‘And a committee looking into prison education to keep under control,’ said Willow completely sobered. ‘Why did I ever agree to that? I’ve even said I’d go to Great Garden prison on Friday morning and be shown the educational facilities and some of the work that’s getting done. God knows when the new novel will get sorted. But I promise I’ll deal with the Gloria synopsis as soon as possible. And I’ll ring Ann now.’

  ‘I should hope so too. You’ve never been this unprofessional before. Something seems to have gone to your head.’

  ‘How odd. I have just fallen on it. Perhaps I’m concussed.’

  ‘Don’t fall into that particular trap, Willow.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Using up your creativity to produce excuses for late delivery,’ came the tart answer. ‘It’s the beginning of the end: I’ve seen it too often to mistake.’

  ‘I have in fact just fallen down the spiral staircase in the Palm House at Kew and I’m covered with huge black bruises, and in fact reeling from shock.’

  Willow suddenly realised that that was actually true. She felt extremely wobbly. No wonder her subconscious mind had been throwing up bizarre ideas. Perhaps she need not worry about them after all. Much more lightly she added:

  ‘But I’ll take your warning to heart.’

  She said good bye before Eve could do more than sketch an apology, and immediately telephoned Weston & Brown. The receptionist put her straight through to Ann’s office, but it was obviously a bad time to have disturbed her. She snapped out a brief greeting and then said:

  ‘Look, I really haven’t time to talk now. Is it about the synopsis?’

  ‘Yes. Eve thought …’

  ‘Could you come in and talk about it tomorrow? I’ve a free half-hour in the afternoon, at half-past three. Could you make that? I’ll have time then to concentrate on it, but just now I have to go. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ said Willow since there was really nothing else to say.

  She went into her writing room and tried to work, but was not successful. Two hours later, she was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, thinking about going to bed really early, when she heard her front door bell ringing. Something about the dinner that Mrs Rusham said she had left in the oven began to make sense. Willow pushed herself up off her chair and went to open the front door. A sharp pain surged through her shoulder muscles as she raised her arm to the latch and she gasped.

  Tom was standing outside her door with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

  ‘I thought we’d celebrate,’ he said.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Willow, blinking as she wondered whether her continual failure of memory when it came to dates with Tom was as sinister and Freudian as she feared. Then she decided that her exhaustion gave her enough of an excuse for forgetfulness that evening. She put a hand on her forehead.

  ‘I’ve been working and my mind’s still half on what I’ve been writing,’ she said. ‘In a minute or two I’ll be in celebratory mood, too.’

  Tom frowned and Willow tried to make herself imagine what he might be feeling instead of simply assuming that it was anger.

  ‘You know where everything is,’ she went on. ‘Can you sort yourself out while I get my mind in order?’

  Tom looked carefully at her and seemed to decide that her blankness and slow voice were not designed to wound but were merely a function of her mind being on her work.

  ‘I’ll bung this in the fridge and lay the table,’ he said easily. ‘Don’t rush. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Willow, ‘but don’t worry about the table. Mrs R. has done it.’

  ‘Why not have a bath? I know you like one between work and food. I’ve still got today’s papers to read.’

  She smiled at him, her eyes a little more alert than they had been but still vaguer than usual.

  ‘I’d like that. You have good ideas, Tom.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ruffling her neatly arranged hair. ‘Are you all right?’ he added as she flinched. ‘You look at bit battered.’

  ‘I fell and banged myself this afternoon and various bits of me are rather painful, but I’ll live.’

  ‘You’d certainly better have a bath then. Would you rather I went away?’

  Willow looked at him carefully. The very fact that he had offered to leave made it unnecessary for her to accept and so she shook her head, wincing again as the movement exacerbated the pain.

  Emerging half an hour later, damp and still aching but much more alert than she had been, Willow found Tom lying on one of the sofas, his shoes conscientiously left on the floor beside the three newspapers he had finished. He was asleep. She stood looking at him, noticing the deep lines around his mouth and between his eyebrows. It was absurd to read mood into a sleeping face, but she thought it possible that he lo
oked worried rather than angry.

  Her own part in their difficulties, which she was just beginning to unravel, troubled her.

  ‘Tom,’ she said and when he did not wake laid one of her hands on his forehead. His eyelids lifted at once and he smiled.

  ‘I do like having my head held.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Willow, removing her hand at once. ‘It always makes me think of being sick. Come and have dinner. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Come to think of it, I am. I don’t seem to have had much time for eating the last few days.’

  ‘I thought you were looking a bit weedy. Hasn’t everything been sorted by your man’s confession?’

  ‘A lot of it, but the Crown Prosecution Service isn’t happy with the supporting evidence we’ve got. A confession isn’t enough these days: it’s too easily retracted,’ said Tom, leading the way into the kitchen, where he picked up an oven cloth and proceeded to remove a dish from the bottom oven of the big Aga.

  ‘It’s a carbonnade of beef,’ he said, smiling at her over his shoulder. ‘I peeked earlier – luckily, because Mrs R. had left a note asking you to finish it off with mustard-spread bread. I did that about half an hour ago.’

  He carried the dark-red enamelled dish through into the dining room, leaving Willow to collect a bowl of salad and the unsuitable champagne from the fridge. She opened the bottle while he dished up the carbonnade.

  ‘Here’s to a successful conclusion of our various tasks,’ she said, holding up her gently singing glass.

  Tom picked up his, looked at her over it and then nodded.

  ‘Success to us both,’ he agreed and drank. ‘Talking of which, how is your work on the old novelist going?’

  ‘Not too badly actually,’ said Willow, cutting into one of the half-crisp, half-soggy pieces of toasted, mustard-spread French bread. ‘I’ve virtually written the synopsis in my head and it’ll get typed up tomorrow.’

  Willow looked at him speculatively and decided that he was just relaxed enough to be able to give her some of the help she needed in working out what had really happened to Gloria. She found that she also wanted to share her discoveries with him.

  ‘And I have become completely convinced that she really was murdered,’ she said more tentatively than she usually spoke to Tom.

  ‘I might have known it,’ he said, frowning horribly at her like a pantomime villain.

  She laughed and was glad when he smiled back. It looked as though they were beginning to get back to their normal pleasure in each other’s company.

  ‘I’m glad you are yourself again, so that I won’t have to remind you that you once came to me for help when you were convinced against all the odds that several apparently unconnected deaths were the work of a single murderer.’

  ‘Well, I was right,’ he said with an indignation at least as theatrical as his grimace had been.

  ‘And I am right now. I know I am. Listen, Thomas. I’d like your opinion if you could give it to me uncorrupted by anger or sentiment.’

  ‘I think I could probably manage that,’ he said, starting to eat.

  He looked up at her every so often as she described what she had learned, guessed or imagined. When she eventually came to the end of her story, he laid down his knife and fork.

  ‘So, you’re suggesting that the novelist could have been killed by her niece for the money, by the doctor for love of the niece, by the niece’s boyfriend for the money because he didn’t realise she’d changed her will, by the charwoman for money, by the secretary out of hate, by the secretary’s friend out of protectiveness of the secretary, by the journalist out of hate or fear of the libel action, or by Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.’

  ‘I love the way you take my ideas so seriously,’ said Willow, trying to look seductively at him.

  ‘Did you know that cats do that to express a lack of aggression?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Narrow their eyes at other cats – or people.’

  ‘No, I didn’t actually. But do be serious for a minute, Tom. The least obvious suspect is Mrs Guy the cleaner. Despite the money, I’d have said that she had the most to lose by Gloria’s death, and I think their affection sounds quite genuine. Mrs Guy is the only person who’s been made at all miserable by the death.’

  ‘Since she’s the least likely, I’m amazed that you don’t suspect her most.’ The mockery in Tom’s voice and eyes was not unkind, but Willow disliked it all the same.

  ‘You can be intensely irritating sometimes. I’m serious, you know,’ she said.

  ‘All right. I can’t think why. The whole scenario seems ludicrous. You must see that.’

  ‘Actually I don’t and I don’t think you would if your mind was working properly.’ The ache in her head had started to nag again.

  ‘Oh well, if you are determined to believe it was murder, I suppose you’d better tell me who your most obvious suspects are.’

  ‘The niece and the doctor, probably working in tandem.’ Willow was too absorbed in her thoughts to see Tom’s real reluctance to listen to her suspicions or to wonder about it.

  ‘They had the greatest opportunity and possibly the strongest motive. The doctor adores the niece and she has just inherited a fortune. Her aunt changed her will two weeks before she died. She’d told Mrs Guy about her legacy and so it’s quite possible that Marilyn knew about hers, too, and was lying when she told me she had no expectations. Perhaps she wanted to ensure that her aunt died before she could make any more changes.’

  Tom sighed. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t see that you’ve any evidence at all. It’s pure speculation.’

  ‘Well she did push me down the spiral stairs at the palm house in Kew this afternoon,’ said Willow indignantly.

  ‘What?’ asked Tom sharply. ‘You said you’d fallen and banged yourself. You are mad, Willow. Are you all right? Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘Yes to both,’ she said, not bothering to explain that she had not allowed Doctor Trenor even to look at her injuries.

  ‘You do frighten me sometimes,’ he said, sounding breathless. ‘All right. So you’re not injured. Well, thank God for small mercies.

  Now where were we? Yes, you being pushed down the stairs. Are you sure that was deliberate?’

  When Willow shook her head, he smiled, looking much happier.

  ‘There you are then,’ he said. ‘Once again you’ve nothing substantial. Anyway, I’m surprised to hear you talking about spiral stairs. You’ve always told me they should be helical.’

  ‘Don’t mock me,’ she said crossly and then laughed with him, thinking that she recognised an attempt to resuscitate an old joke and perhaps retrieve some of the old freedom. ‘You’re right, of course, but ever since you took to teasing me by calling them stelical haircases, I’ve given up in despair.’

  Tom got up to put his arms round her, apologising when she winced. He stroked her hair and kissed her white forehead.

  ‘Thank you for admitting that at least something I’ve done or said has influenced you,’ he said as he went back to his chair. It was not as light as it should have been and it locked on to all the peculiar ideas that had been bothering her since she left Marilyn.

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ she said, running away from them into trivial, self-protective teasing. ‘It’s a pretty minor point.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s real,’ he said with relish.

  That was better, more convincing, and so she smiled at him.

  ‘But come on, Will, let’s be serious for a minute. If you really think that every dead slapper who was disliked by her family has been murdered, you’re off your trolley.’

  Willow put down her knife and fork, happily allowing herself to be completely distracted for the moment.

  ‘What’s a slapper?’ she asked, intrigued as always by new slang. Tom coughed and then laughed.

  ‘It’s what a lot of my colleagues call women; it’s a fairly derogatory expression, implying a considerable degree of roug
hness.’

  ‘I must say it sounds pretty derogatory.’

  ‘All right, just suppose she really was killed,’ he went on, ignoring the digression. ‘How do you imagine the heart attack was achieved?’

  Willow finished her beef and reached forward to pour herself another glass of the warm champagne.

  ‘There must be dozens of ways: tampering with the drugs she took for her angina or making her furious about something, or making her struggle physically, I imagine. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that angina can be brought on by violent effort, and I’m just as sure that it can be fatal. Or they might have induced a heart attack in some other way. I’m waiting for my medical source to produce suggestions.’

  ‘Do you really think that a respectable and respected doctor would have done something like that?’

  ‘I can’t see why not. A medical qualification doesn’t turn a human into a saint, any more than a police uniform sanctifies a thug. I can’t see why there shouldn’t be just as many rotten apples in the medical barrel as in any other. Although in this case I don’t think the doctor did it with his own hands, because he wasn’t in the house at all on Gloria’s last day. I asked the secretaries. But it’s possible that he might have told Marilyn how to do it and then deliberately ignored the evidence when he came to certify the death. He didn’t do a post-mortem.’

  Tom grimaced, shaking his head. When he saw her face change from intent to obstruction, he reached across the table for her hand, rubbing his thumb up and down her fingers.

  ‘But don’t you see, Will, the very plethora of suspects suggests the whole thing’s nonsense?’

  ‘No, I don’t see that at all. Rather the reverse. It’s the number of people who hated and feared her that’s made me certain she didn’t die by chance – or of natural causes.’

  He looked at her and tried to think of a way out of the muddle of feelings in which he was lost. Shaking his head and trying not to sound as irritable as he felt, he said:

  ‘I’m not trying to criticise you, Will. As you’ve pointed out I’m in no position to do so and even if I were I’d try not to. I know you hate that more than anything else.’