Bitter Herbs

by Natasha Cooper

‘But you can’t expect me to repeat any of that now you’ve cautioned me, can you? I’m not that stupid.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘But what I don’t understand,’ said Ann Slinter, ‘is why Vicky Taffle was carrying a hatpin in her handbag in the first place.’

  ‘Don’t be frivolous, Ann.’ Gerald Plimpton sounded angry, but Willow answered the question as though it had been seriously asked.

  ‘For protection, I think. When I asked her whether she was frightened of walking alone in the dark she told me that she wasn’t afraid of either two or four-legged predators any longer because she carried a personal alarm and … Then she stopped and I was fool enough not to press her to tell me what she meant.’

  ‘It’s such an incredibly Victorian idea,’ said Ann with a pitying smile. ‘But I suppose in some ways she was rather Victorian – the despised, unhappy, impoverished, governessy kind of Victorian.’

  ‘I should’ve thought it was quite a dangerous idea, too,’ said Willow, trying to find a light enough tone to keep her from thinking too much about the actual killing. ‘I’d have thought that, unless she were actually to wear it in her hat, it would constitute an offensive weapon. I must ask Tom.’

  ‘Can’t you two concentrate on the fact that this young woman actually murdered Gloria? Don’t you find it completely horrifying? We’ve known her for years, Ann, and had no idea she was capable of something like that.’

  The three of them were sitting in Ann’s office. An open bottle of claret stood on the table and the pleasant chaos of publishing was all around the room. The sun had already gone, although it was barely half-past three, and a peaceful, lavender-coloured twilight filled the room.

  They had met to decide on the propriety or otherwise of publishing anything at all about their once-star author who had been murdered by their least starry editor. Eve Greville was expected at any moment to discuss how much Willow should be paid for the work she had already done, and until she came they were filling in the gaps of each other’s knowledge of what had happened at the house on Kew Green.

  ‘Of course it’s horrifying,’ said Ann, pouring more wine into Gerald’s glass. ‘But we must face the fact that Gloria would have been going to die quite soon, and that she was not particularly happy in her life.’

  ‘How can you possibly judge that, Ann?’ Gerald’s voice was stern.

  ‘It’s not a question of having to judge. No one who could behave so badly to the people around her, who could be such a bully and so misuse her power, could possibly be happy.’

  ‘I think that’s rather sentimental,’ said Willow, idly turning her wine glass round and round between her long fingers. ‘Lots of horrible people have positively enjoyed being beastly. Gerald?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Will you tell me what was in the first will?’

  He uncrossed his legs, smoothed the fabric of his wonderfully cut suit, and then brushed his silver hair back over his ears.

  ‘After all, it can’t harm anyone now,’ said Willow with a quick smile at Ann.

  ‘I suppose not.’ He frowned in irritation. ‘You know, if you had come to me honestly when we first spoke and told me what you suspected, things would have been very much easier. And this ghastly business of an exhumation at dawn tomorrow would never have been necessary.’

  ‘I doubt if you’d have believed me. In any case, I was still only exploring the possibility when we spoke. Now, tell me: the first will.’

  ‘All right.’ He clasped his hands lightly on his knees. ‘The house was always going to Marilyn with the bulk of the money, although fifty-five thousand was to have been left to Peter Farrfield.’

  ‘Ah.’ Willow’s green eyes sparkled. ‘Which means that you lied to him.’

  ‘I suppose by implication I did. It seemed the only way to defuse that explosive atmosphere and prevent a worse scene.’

  ‘But if Marilyn was always going to get that much, why on earth did Gloria make such a point of telling her to expect nothing?’ asked Ann.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ The irritation had gone from Gerald’s face, to be replaced with a sadness that made him very attractive.

  Ann shook her head.

  ‘I suspect that she wanted to make quite sure she was not surrounded by hypocritical love,’ he said. ‘She always found it immensely hard to trust anyone’s affection. Provided Marilyn expected nothing from the will, Gloria would never need to question the way Marilyn behaved to her.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Ann was laughing again. ‘With the way Gloria carried on, she need never have worried about any sort of affection, hypocritical or otherwise.’

  She was tossing her gleaming hair back as she spoke and so she did not see Gerald’s expression. Willow did. He looked as though he was in physical pain and she realised that some of her assumptions about Gloria’s feelings might not have been wide of the mark after all.

  ‘It’s terribly sad,’ Willow said. ‘If only Gloria could have been a bit more open with Marilyn, they might have given each other what they both wanted so badly. Posy Hacket, too, could have been a friend – even a supporter – if Gloria hadn’t spent her entire life hiding what she really was and felt.’

  Ann looked from Gerald to Willow and back again. ‘What actually made Gloria change her will before Vicky … before Vicky’s intervention? Come on, you two. Stop exchanging meaningful glances and tell me what’s going on. I feel left out of this.’

  ‘Hasn’t Willow told you about Peter Farrfield and his little charade of disability?’ asked Gerald.

  ‘She’s explained the charade. But how did Gloria discover it?’

  ‘Marilyn told her just before Christmas,’ said Gerald casually, clearly rather enjoying the expressions on the faces of both women. It was Ann who spoke first.

  ‘Are you telling me that she knew he wasn’t a cripple?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so, don’t you, Willow? Somehow she managed to convince Gloria that she’d only just found out herself.’

  ‘I hope that Doctor Trenor never discovers it,’ said Willow, realising at last what had made Gerald so angry during his final lunch with Gloria. ‘He adores Marilyn and thinks of her as the saintly put-upon little woman who suffers and serves.’

  ‘From the little Gloria told me about her doctor, I imagine he’ll pretty soon work it out. He sounded quite intelligent, if bluff and rather hidebound. D’you know how much he knew of Farrfield?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Willow slowly as she ran through her mind the things Marilyn and the doctor had told her. ‘Farrfield wasn’t his patient. Everything the doctor knew must have come from Marilyn, and she’d have done all she could to foster the idea of dissension between them to avoid any suspicion that they were conspiring to fleece Gloria of her fortune.’

  ‘But what a risk Farrfield was taking,’ said Ann. ‘He must have known that Marilyn might do the dirty on him.’

  ‘He could hardly have carried it off so effectively and for so long without her help,’ said Gerald. ‘I wonder when she decided that she could do without him?’

  ‘If she did,’ said Willow. ‘We still don’t know whether that very public quarrel at the funeral was genuine or not.’

  ‘I know,’ said Gerald, his face showing real anger. ‘And we probably never will. It’s not as though either of them’s going to have to answer for what they’ve done in court – unfortunately. I’d like to see the pair of them behind bars, instead of living off Gloria’s money. Marilyn will probably put the house up for sale as soon as probate’s been granted.’

  ‘Well, this is all very cosy.’

  The overhead light was switched on and a harsh glare made them all blink. The three of them had turned at the sound of the hard voice and they saw Eve Greville standing in the doorway, looking as neat and controlled as ever in one of her crisply tailored dark suits. She was wearing a thick, ochre-coloured silk shirt under the black jacket and long, elaborately set amber earrings.

  Her half smile expressed all the ambivale
nce of the agent who wants her author to be on good terms with her publisher and yet not so cosy as to become too dependent on the publisher’s judgement. There might come a time when Eve had to argue with Ann about one of Willow’s contracts or threaten to sell her books elsewhere if Ann did not offer a big enough advance. If that happened and there was even the slightest possibilty that Willow might take Ann’s advice instead of her agent’s, Eve’s job would be impossible.

  ‘Hello, Eve,’ said Willow warmly, looking at her with real affection. ‘We’ve been having a post-mortem. Oh, dear. Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Eve said, coming to join them and accepting a glass of claret from Ann. ‘The whole episode sounds as though it’s been very melodramatic. Have you recovered from your various accidents?

  ‘Nearly. Most of the bruises are fading.’

  ‘Bruises?’ asked Gerald.

  ‘Marilyn pushed me down the spiral stairs in the palm house at Kew,’ she said. ‘I still have no idea whether it was deliberate or whether she merely slipped. I noticed that she did have metal edges to the heels on her boots and most of the steps are worn in the centre, so a slip isn’t wholly out of the question, even though it is unlikely. But could there possibly have been two murderous young woman in the same small circle of people?’

  Eve took out a cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Well, they all sound pretty revolting and selfish.’

  ‘Aren’t most people?’ said Ann cheerfully. With the entrance of a fourth person she was no longer feeling like an outsider to the other two’s conspiracy. ‘We’ve pretty much decided, Eve, that we ought to drop the idea of a memoir of Gloria, despite all the useful publicity of Vicky’s trial.’

  ‘I can see why you might want to play down the Weston & Brown part as much as possible,’ said Eve with a smile. ‘Willow, what do you think?’

  ‘I’m prepared to drop it now,’ said Willow, who had belatedly come to the conclusion that submerging herself in other people’s lives had been even more dangerous and uncomfortable than living her own.

  ‘As you say, they were a pretty unpleasant bunch of people. Talking to them all has been instructive, one way and another, but I’d be glad if I never had to think of any of them again.’ Willow stood up and looked at her watch.

  ‘I’m going to have to leave you to your negotiations,’ she said. ‘I have an appointment elsewhere.’

  Eve squinted up at her through the cigarette smoke, her mouth twisting in amusement and irony.

  ‘Any thoughts on the new book? It’s beginning to look rather urgent, isn’t it, Ann? Particularly if you’re not going to write the memoir.’

  ‘Lots of thoughts,’ said Willow without waiting for her publisher’s comments. She smiled. ‘I haven’t even started to write a synopsis yet, but I’ve just this minute decided to concoct a novel around a group of people, each one of whom is kind, trustworthy, interesting and attractive.’

  ‘Oh God!’ said Eve in a sepulchral voice. ‘That would be a disaster – and boring too.’

  Even as she spoke, Gerald Plimpton was looking worried and shaking his elegant head and Ann Slinter had raised her eyes to heaven.

  ‘Honestly, Willow,’ she said, sounding as tactful as any publisher having to criticise a bestselling author, ‘I really don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

  ‘I suspect she’s teasing you,’ said Gerald, who had been looking at Willow’s reaction to their protests.

  She laughed and left them for a meeting with her solicitor who had drawn up a deed of gift that would hand a half share in her mill over to Tom Worth. When it was signed, she thanked the lawyer and put the document in her quilted leather shoulder bag. Her next stop was at a locksmith’s, who was cutting a duplicate set of all her keys. As she paid for it, she felt bathed in benevolence and rather enjoyed the sensation.

  Then she drove back to her flat for tea alone in front of the drawing room fire. Tea over, she had a long bath, reading an excellently funny novel that had been waiting in the pile beside the bath since before Christmas. Warm, comfortable, amused and at ease, she dressed in a pair of jeans she had just bought and the same thick, smooth violet cashmere sweater that clashed so interestingly both with her hair and the copper cushions in the drawing room.

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ she murmured as she felt the silkiness and the warmth of the expensive wool. She grinned at her reflection in the long looking glass inside her wardrobe door. Behind her she could see the pile of psychoanalytical text books she had bought.

  Pushing open the kitchen door a few minutes later, she said:

  ‘Mrs Rusham, didn’t you say you were collecting jumble for a bazaar?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Have you got some after all?’

  ‘Yes, if these will do for the bookstall. Can you carry them all?’

  ‘I expect I’ll manage. May I say how well you’re looking?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow, surprised by the compliment. Before she could say anything else, Mrs Rusham had turned back to the large pan she had just put on the Aga. Dismissed, Willow left the room.

  Tom came soon after that, looking wary.

  ‘I got your message,’ he said. ‘What is it that you want to give me so urgently? A formal warning of dismissal?’

  She shook her head, unsmiling, and took the document and the spare keys from her bag.

  ‘These,’ she said abruptly, thrusting them at him and looking over his left shoulder so that she did not have to meet his eyes. ‘There’s not the remotest obligation, but if you’d like them, I’d quite like you to have them.’

  He looked at what she had given him for a long time and then up at her face. She looked rather tired, but as though something in her had been freed.

  ‘By gum!’ Tom said unexpectedly, like a 1920s schoolboy. ‘That’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Willow coolly. ‘But not half as dangerous as what I have been doing.’

  ‘Oh, and what’s that?’ He was smiling as he watched her think about how to phrase whatever she wanted to tell him.

  ‘Becoming more and more of a slapper every day – emotionally speaking that is,’ she said at last, her green eyes gleaming as she smiled.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘And you’re prepared to say that, not to speak of giving me this magnificent present of half the mill, even before I’ve abased myself for not listening when you first said that La Grainger had been murdered, are you?’

  Willow nodded. Tom looked down at the deed of gift again and then said slowly:

  ‘Come to think of it, this looks as though you’re offering to make an honest man of me. Or am I jumping the gun?’

  Willow’s face put on, if not the light of children praised, at least unshadowed happiness.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that was rather the idea. Will you?’

  ‘Ah, Will,’ he said, hugging her. ‘Who’s like you? Absolutely no one in the world. Yes, please.’

  ‘Good,’ said Willow decisively.

  Tom stood looking at her, a smile licking around the corners of his eyes and lips.

  ‘It looks as though you must quite like me after all,’ he said.

  ‘D’you know,’ she said with wholly artificial earnestness just before she bit his earlobe, ‘I think I must.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1993 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

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3855-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3854-6 POD

  Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1993

  The right of Natasha Cooper to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

&nb
sp; Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’).

  The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.

  This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original.

  Bello has no responsibility for the content of the material in this book. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not constitute an endorsement by, or association with, us of the characterization and content.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books

  and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and

  news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters

  so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.