Festering Lilies (25 page)

On that thought, she poured boiling water on to the instant coffee granules and carried the two mugs back into her living room.

‘There's sugar on the table, if you like it,' she said, handing one to the policeman. Taking off her spectacles to wipe away the steam, she looked at him from under her pale eyelashes.

‘Yes,' he said smiling at her with something like bitterness in his eyes, ‘you're quite right. I do not suspect you of murdering Algernon Endelsham. But I do want to know what the hell you're up to.'

Willow shrugged, sat down on the lumpy dark-blue and pink sofa, and drank some coffee, burning the roof of her mouth. The tiny pain and sensation of a loosened tassel of skin hanging from her palate removed all her remaining resistance.

‘All right,' she said, shrugging her thin shoulders. ‘If I'd been allowed to see you alone in the beginning, I'd have told you all about it then, but I couldn't just blow my cover at DOAP after all these years.' She looked up, surprising a most peculiar expression on his face. ‘Oh blast!' she cried. ‘Don't tell me that you didn't know about Cressida after all.' He shook his head.

‘I haven't a clue what you're talking about, but you'll have to tell me now. Come on: who is Cressida? Another of the deceased's bits of crumpet?'

It did not occur to Willow that he was trying to make her angry in order to get her to tell him everything; she was just surprised that so intelligent a man should use such an offensive expression.

‘Certainly not,' she answered, with such a bite in her voice that she surprised even herself. She was torn between saying nothing more without a solicitor present, telephoning Richard Crescent for help, and pouring out the whole story to the inspector. Reminding herself that she had originally planned to tell him the truth if she could only get to see him alone, she said: ‘Off the record?'

‘Don't be silly,' he said without heat. ‘You're quite intelligent enough to know that I could never agree to that.'

Willow, who had been accustomed for many years to people virtually fainting at her intimidating brilliance, found his lack of awe of her brains almost as attractive as his intriguing face and broken nose. She took a breath so deep that her voice came out wobbly as she made her confession.

‘She is what you might call my alter ego. The days I am thought to spend with my Aunt Agatha are in fact spent writing novels under the name of Cressida Woodruffe.'

‘Here?'

‘No. Since I made money as Cressida, I've also had a flat in Chesham Place,' said Willow not quite able to disguise her pride. ‘I was there the night the minister was killed.'

‘Alone?' The sharp monosyllabic interrogations unsettled her and she peered towards him as though she could bring sympathy into his cold dark eyes.

‘I thought you didn't suspect me,' she said sharply.

‘Stop wasting any more of my time, Miss Cressida Woodruffe, and tell me the whole lot now,' he said, but with the increase in words, his voice became marginally warmer, which helped her over the brink.

‘No, I was not alone. There was a friend with me called Richard Lawrence-Crescent, but he's dropped the “Lawrence” bit. I'd rather you did not interview him if you can help it, because he would simply hate it. He thought I was mad enough anyway.' She drank some more coffee, realised that she had ingested quite enough liquid already, and put the mug down on the low painted table in front of her.

‘Mad in what way? I don't think that's quite the adjective I'd have used,' said Inspector Worth, glaring at her over the rim of his own steaming mug.

‘I thought that if I could find out who had murdered the minister by the time you discovered that my alibi was false, we could do a deal. Richard was certain that I'd find out nothing and merely cause maximum embarrassment all round.'

‘Women!' said the inspector. ‘Can you imagine how much easier my life would be without you? No never mind. That wasn't a question,' he added, seeing her open her mouth, ‘nor was it meant as an insult. So tell me, what have you discovered so far?'

‘Are you quite sure you want to know the thoughts of a member of my despised sex?' The anger in Willow's voice was quite obvious, but the inspector only laughed.

‘Don't be so prickly,' he said. ‘I've enough respect for your brains to want to know what you think you've discovered about this case.'

‘Discovered would be putting it too high,' she said slowly. ‘There are various possible motives and various opportunities, but I can't really get any further, because I have no access to your information.'

‘Such as?'

‘Oh, the state of the body; precisely what was done; whether the murderer would have been, for instance, covered in blood; who stood to gain financially from Algy's death. That sort of thing,' said Willow casually.

‘Considering that the deceased was by all accounts madly in love with you, you're taking a commendably cool look at it all,' said the inspector, betraying nothing more than mild interest.

‘My gossipping colleagues have always been rather unsophisticated in their judgments,' she said carefully. ‘I don't in fact think that Algy Endelsham was in love with me at all.'

‘No?' said the inspector. There was very little colour in his voice, but something in the way he produced that interrogatory word made Willow blush.

‘No,' she said firmly. ‘I think what he was in fact trying to do was to make me fall in love with him so that he could have me at a disadvantage. I've realised since he died that he hated having to deal with people who were not somehow in his power, and there was no other way he could control me. Besides, I find it easier to control my disgust and horror at what Algy must have suffered in those last minutes if I exercise my brains rather than my emotions.'

As she spoke, Willow realised that she had just told the truth. Despite what she had heard of Algy's seduction of Mrs Englewood, Willow was still disgusted and horrified at what had happened to him. Nothing, no humiliation, no pain could justify murder, she thought.

‘In some ways, Willow King, you're a girl after my own heart,' said the inspector, half-smiling at last.

‘That is almost as insulting as your previous statement about my sex,' said Willow, trying fruitlessly not to like him.

‘I'll do a deal with you,' he said. ‘I'll tell you about the body and so forth, if you tell me about the motives and so on.'

‘All right,' she said, deciding to amuse him so much with her stories about her encounter with Gripper, her hairdresser's gossip, the tramp, and even poor Roger that he would take no notice of the fact that she had been interrogating Englewood and forget to ask her about him.

‘There are several people with motives,' she said lightly. ‘Starting with the least likely, there is Roger Coverly in my office. I gather you've had several goes at him. The gossip is that he was infatuated with the minister, made some kind of approach, was crudely or cruelly repulsed and – as you might say – like a woman scorned lured the minister to the darkest part of the common and killed him.'

‘So likely,' was the only comment made to that by Tom Worth, and Willow played her next card.

‘Next is Eustace Gripper.'

‘Who?' demanded the inspector, apparently startled. ‘Not the gossip man – journalist?'

‘Yes. Surely you've ferreted out the fact that his wife was Algy's mistress?' She waited, but got no reaction. Not being at all sure whether he was merely leading her on or whether he had really not considered Gripper, Willow plunged on. ‘He's said to be a bully, prurient about other people's sex lives, possibly because of the barrenness of his own, viciously protective of his own dignity – and the previous employer (I think) of Albert the chauffeur.'

‘Albert's got an alibi,' said Worth coolly. ‘That is if you're thinking that this Gripper might have paid the bloke to kill Endelsham.'

‘Well,' said Willow, ‘I don't know enough about either Fleet Street or the world of contract killers, but wouldn't it be easy enough for Albert to get a brother or even just a mate to dress up in his uniform to sit under the street light at the top of Cedar's Road while Albert, perhaps alone or perhaps just in charge of hired desperados, did the deed?'

‘Easy enough,' said Inspector Worth. ‘But why would a man like Endelsham agree to go for a ramble across Clapham Common with his chauffeur?'

‘Was that why you were grilling Albert this evening?' Willow asked, distracted for the moment from her own speculation on the subject of the minister's enticement. ‘I can't really imagine that you hadn't thought of all this before.'

Inspector Worth smiled but did not answer. Instead he put another question.

‘What were you doing with Mr Englewood this evening?' There was enough seriousness in his tone to make Willow realise that she would have to answer and could forget all ideas of entertaining him with stories of the tramp.

‘How do you know I was doing any such thing?' she asked.

‘When I saw you leave the building with him, I got one of my constables to follow you,' he said impatiently. ‘Well?'

‘We were simply having a drink,' said Willow crossly. ‘The poor man has been under tremendous strain the last few days, you know.'

‘And you were being the dear little woman comforting him? I find that hard to square with the Willow King who terrorises the department. Now, please stop playing games. I want to know.'

‘Is that why you lay in wait for me in the cold?' He nodded. ‘I simply wanted to find out whether he might have had a motive. He clearly had the opportunity – but then about a million people had that,' said Willow, hoping that she was not going to have to betray the bitter misery that Englewood had let her see.

‘You know perfectly well that he had a motive,' said Worth, getting out of his chair and coming to stand in front of Willow. She felt him looming over her and was suddenly aware of his size and obvious strength, and of his power. Seldom had she felt so female or so fragile. Never had she expected to enjoy such a sensation. Unfortunately she did. Despising herself, she looked up into his face and made her admission.

‘Yes, I know he had a motive of a sort. And yes, I do think it is possible – just possible – that he might have killed his wife's seducer at the time. But I find it impossible to believe that he would have waited ten years and then done it. Even if the awful coincidence of Algy's having been put at the head of the ministry had unhinged poor Englewood, he would surely have acted as soon as Algy got there – not waited three years. Englewood's basically such a gentle man, even if he has repressed a lot of hatred and anger; even if he is lonely as sin and seems to have been paranoid about the minister.'

‘And what part have you been playing in all this?' The inspector sat down beside Willow on the uncomfortable sofa. ‘You clearly know him extremely well; no one else in the department has tumbled to the fact that his wife levanted with the minister. Did you plot the whole thing together? Your enchantment and public refusal of Endelsham, and then when that didn't shut him up, the murder?'

‘What, as revenge for Algy's seduction of poor Michael Englewood's wife? Good God, you can't believe that,' said Willow, her mouth snapping shut on the last syllable. ‘You cannot. He never even told me about his wife until tonight. Besides,' she added, her sense of humour returning, ‘you cannot seriously believe that a man who has someone as rich and beautiful as Amanda Gripper as his mistress would fall into a trap set by a plain, middle-aged, ill-dressed woman like me?'

To her extreme surprise, the inspector did not laugh – or even smile at that. Instead he put out a hand and pulled Willow's chin round so that she was facing him. She kept her eyes firmly staring at him, refusing to let him frighten or shame her. After a bit he let her go, saying:

‘You don't really believe that, do you?' he said. ‘However much you dress the part, you know perfectly well it is a part, don't you?'

Not liking his tone or the fact that he seemed to have seen what no one in DOAP had ever seen, Willow tried to distract him. Playing the scene for all it was worth, as though that might make it all seem less real, she massaged her chin.

‘Physical bullying of suspects now! You might like to know that I bruise extremely easily and could no doubt have you put off the case if I displayed my chin to the complaints bureau,' she said, her voice quivering with rage, or perhaps the other, damnably inconvenient emotions that were churning around inside her.

‘I could strangle you, Willow King,' he said bitterly.

‘But why?' she demanded; then her voice changed infinitesimally. ‘Funny, someone else said that only a week ago. I wonder why?'

He lunged forward and grabbed her shoulders with one arm. With his other hand he gripped her chin again, forcing it upwards so that he could kiss her. All her cynicism, all her highly developed critical faculties and her determination to ignore her instinctive liking for him, were overtaken by physical sensations, of which the uppermost was the feeling of his exceptional strength. Richard's considerate embraces had not prepared Willow for the passion she felt in Tom Worth's arms.

It was not until she was lying on top of her Indian bedspread, with his hands skilfully unbuttoning her white shirt, that her brain started to work again.

‘Insp… Tom, really. This isn't suitable,' she said, her voice shaken by her passionately irregular breathing.

His strong hands stopped and, as he knelt over her, he burst into laughter.

‘Suitable,' he repeated, still laughing. ‘No, Will, it's not at all suitable. But that's just too bad. My God, I've needed you – ever since the beginning when I saw you sitting in front of me pretending to be so cool and spinsterish, while all the time you were positively pumping out physical attraction.'