Festering Lilies (32 page)

‘Oh yes, so you told me,' she said vaguely. ‘And Roger? Does he get arrested too?'

Worth nodded. At the sight of her face, white and tense, he said:

‘He may well not be charged, my dear. It's obvious that he played the most peripheral part in it all and was clearly forced to do that much. But it doesn't rest with me; the case'll go to the Director of Public Prosecutions now. Don't look like that, Willow,' he said sadly.

She shook her head and then tucked the thick red hair behind her ears.

‘It's not you,' she said. ‘It's me. You realise that this means that Roger – whom I have always rather despised for his silliness and indiscretion – has known about “Cressida Woodruffe” for years and kept it to himself… and that I…'

Tom Worth shrugged. ‘It can't be helped, my dear,' he said before she could finish whatever she had been going to say. ‘He's a victim – but not of yours.'

‘I don't know,' said Willow, turning away to look out of the window down into the dark street, where the snow was just beginning to lie. ‘Don't you see that if I hadn't made that silly, unnecessary joke, Albert would never have thought that I'd discovered what was going on.… None of this need have happened.'

‘Stop that, Willow,' said Worth. There was tremendous authority in his voice, and when he came to stand behind her she could feel his strength, although he only laid one hand on her shoulder.

‘If none of this had happened, Albert would still be running his conspiracy and threatening your clerk and his friend. However horrible, it's better that it's ended.'

‘You're right, of course,' she said, turning round to face him. ‘Thank you. If there's anything I can do for Roger, will you let me know? A lawyer, or a character testimonial or anything?' Worth nodded.

‘Thanks,' said Willow, hating herself. As a distraction she asked: ‘And what about the other investigation? How's it going?'

‘Hard to say precisely,' he said. ‘We've still got your tramp at the station. Don't look like that, my dear: he's warm, well fed, full of good strong tea. They've been taking him through a series of photographs, hoping for a firm identification, all day, but he's either being deliberately uncooperative or else he really can't identify anyone.'

‘I see,' said Willow. ‘Tom, I think I need…'

‘I know,' he said, moving away from her. ‘I'll get out of your way now. Try to sleep, Will, and don't worry too much.'

‘Tom?' Her voice was urgent.

‘I can't help it, my dear,' he said, easily understanding what she meant. But he was implacable. ‘If he did it, it's better that he should be charged and dealt with.…'

‘Prison?' said Willow, thinking of all the articles she had read and all the television documentaries she had watched of the wretched conditions in overcrowded prisons: of three men cooped up in a cell built for one for twenty-three hours a day; of inadequate sanitary facilities and ‘slopping out', of drug abuse and worse; of the effects of a long sentence on the mental health of prisoners.

‘It's better than hanging,' said Worth without any discernible expression.

‘Yes,' she answered. ‘I know. Will you tell me what happens?'

He nodded, touched her face lightly and then looked at her carefully, as though he was trying to make up his mind about something. Eventually he did say:

‘You told me yesterday that you didn't think Albert had the wits to run a scam like that on his own.'

‘Yes,' agreed Willow, her eyes sharpening and her voice lifting slightly as her mind welcomed the distraction. ‘It always seemed more likely that he was employed by someone cleverer.'

‘He was,' answered Tom, still standing very close to her. ‘Your friend Algy.'

‘What?' exclaimed Willow, genuinely flabbergasted.

‘That's what Albert claims,' said Tom. ‘He says that very soon after he got the job at DOAP Algy put the proposition to him…'

‘I wonder,' said Willow interrupting without ceremony.

‘What?'

‘Whether I was right that Albert wanted to work for Algy in order to blackmail him about Mrs Gripper. You see,' she went on, getting more excited about the idea, ‘Albert is about as subtle as a steam-roller and he would probably have plunged straight in with his demands without waiting to find the best way of putting them. Algy, past-master as he was at manipulating people, would have seen at once that the best way of deflecting Albert would be to suggest that they'd both make more money with the pensions scam. Thick as he is, Albert would have thought that a terrific idea, and then Algy would have had him exactly where he needed him. Any more threats of exposing Algy's private life could have been countered with the threat of exposing Albert's fraud.… Algy would of course have ensured that there was no evidence of his involvement at all.'

‘Isn't all that a little over-subtle?' asked Worth, the scepticism blatant in his eyes and voice.

‘I don't think so,' said Willow shaking her head and trying to keep a certain admiration out of her mind. ‘Algy was subtle – and clever – and very much enjoyed having people make fools of themselves. How he must have laughed at us all!'

‘No wonder your books are so successful!' said Worth, smiling. When Willow looked surprised, he amplified his compliment a little: ‘Somewhere in that famously cool analytical brain of yours is an excessively vivid imagination. Well, my dear, I'd better leave you to it. I'll be in touch.'

Almost as soon as he had gone the lightness and amusement Willow had achieved as she described Algy's possible involvement in the fraud disappeared. She was left with the guilt and regret about Roger's involvement and her fears about Algy's probable murderer. Telling herself that opportunity, anger, unhappiness and a certain intensity of character were not enough to prove a man's guilt, she still could not put them out of her mind; but nor could she imagine any motive that seemed genuinely convincing.

Dredging up the remains of her self-discipline, she put the problem from her and went to bed, where, despite taking two yellow sleeping pills, she had a disturbed night. In the morning, with her head aching and her eyes feeling burnt and sore, she went straight to her writing room after breakfast and tried to write.

Not surprisingly both inspiration and professionalism failed her and she turned instead to the perennial task of tidying up the room. It was the one place in the flat where she did not allow Mrs Rusham to work, and rough paper, notes, typescripts and proofs tended to pile up unmanageably.

The sorting and filing and throwing-away did soothe Willow after a time and she even began to enjoy watching the surface of her large desk becoming clearer. By the time she started to file the miscellaneous correspondence, she had achieved a reasonable degree of serenity. But as she reached for the file, which always hung at the back of the filing drawer, she noticed a rolled photograph jammed behind it.

Willow sat back, surprised, and carefully unrolled the long picture on her desk.

‘Why did I ever bring it here?' she asked herself aloud, for it was the one official photograph of the senior staff of DOAP that had ever been taken during her time. There had been some reason for it, which she could not now remember, and it had been taken soon after the arrival of Algernon Endelsham as minister.

It was posed like an old-fashioned school photograph, with the minister and the permanent secretary in the middle – on chairs – and the rest of the Civil Servants arranged in order of rank around them. The deputy and under secretaries stood in groups on either side of the minister and the perm., with the assistant secretaries flanking them, with the principals sitting on the floor in front like new bugs at a prep school.

Algy stood out, as he would have done in any gathering, for his height and his splendid shoulders and his features: the big grey eyes, the straight nose and dominating chin. Even his lips looked generous, thought Willow, knowing that she would never again believe those novelists who wrote that character could be read from a person's features. She looked along the lines of dark-suited men and the few women until she came to the man she suspected of the murder.

As she peered at his likeness on the stiff, glossy paper in front of her, she was visited by an extraordinary idea: an idea unlikely in the abstract and yet so obvious with the evidence in front of her that she wondered that she had never even considered it.

She pulled the telephone towards her and pressed in the number of the department. When one of the girls at the switchboard answered she asked to be put through to Valerie, the establishments officer's secretary.

‘I'll put you throu-ough,' sang the telephonist and a moment later Willow heard Valerie's voice, saying:

‘Can I help you?'

‘Valerie, it's Willow King here,' she said. ‘Is the under secretary still closeted with the police or could I have a word with him?'

‘I'm afraid he is still with Inspector Worth, Miss King,' said Valerie. ‘Is it very urgent? I know that they will be breaking for lunch at twelve today. Could I get him to call you then? Oh, but your aunt isn't on the telephone, is she? Well you could ring back.'

‘I'm not with her today,' said Willow, pleased to notice that Roger's indiscretion and Albert's discovery had not yet reached their colleagues. She improvised quickly: ‘I've had to get a neighbour in to see to her while I come up to London today. But I must see Mr Englewood. Look, will you tell him that I shall be in Selina's wine bar – where he and I had a drink the other day – from twelve onwards. Can you ask him to join me if it's humanly possible?'

‘Of course, Miss King. Ill tell him,' said Valerie, sounding as though she was enjoying the hint of drama. Willow thanked her and put down the receiver. She went to change into her noncommittal jeans, called out to Mrs Rusham that she would be out for the rest of the day and left for Abbeville Road.

The temperature was even lower than it had been the previous few days and the new snow was lying thickly on the pavements. As she walked towards the tube station, Willow kept sliding and nearly lost her balance more than once.

But she reached Clapham at about ten to twelve and made her way as carefully as she could to the wine bar. There she ordered a jug of mulled wine, two helpings of hot
pâté en croûte
, and settled down to read the newspaper she had brought with her. It was only a few minutes before she was interrupted.

‘Willow, my dear,' came Englewood's voice, sharp and anxious. ‘Are you all right? What has happened?'

‘Michael,' she said, flinging down the paper. ‘Thank you for coming. Sit down and have a glass of wine.'

‘But what is it? Valerie told me you sounded distraught on the telephone,' he said, and her conscience pricked as she saw how worn he looked and how the lines on his face had deepened since the beginning of the investigation.

‘I'm afraid she must have been investing a perfectly ordinary message with drama, Michael,' she said unfairly. ‘Roger is for ever doing it. But I did badly want to see you.'

‘Why?'

‘Have some wine,' she said, pouring him a glassful. ‘And some
pâté.
'

‘Why did you want to see me, Willow?' he asked, and there was a quite different note in his voice. For the first time since she had decided to talk to him she remembered her promise to Tom Worth, but despite the promise and her sudden fear, she did not consider abandoning her task. As though the sound of his voice had stiffened her resolve, she sat up straighter, looked at him directly and said:

‘Michael, I cannot believe that you intended to kill your brother. I am quite sure it must have been an accident. But you can't really have expected to keep it secret for ever, can you?'

At that he did pull out the chair opposite hers and sat down heavily. His shoulders drooped and he breathed deeply several times.

‘How did you find out?' he asked at last in a voice that expressed no more than a mild interest.

‘About your relationship?' asked Willow. He nodded. ‘I can't think why I never realised it before,' she went on. ‘But today I was looking at that photograph that was taken of us all and I saw how alike you are to him. Take away the moustache, and your faces are exactly the same shape. Take away his arrogance and the drawl, and your voices are – were – the same. Your hands, too, now I come to think of it.'

He snatched them off the table and stuffed them between his knees. But he did not speak.

‘What horribly bad luck that he turned up at DOAP,' she said with some genuine sympathy. ‘Having changed your name and got away from him, you must have thought that you were safe.'

‘The change was no choice of mine,' he said, and again she heard that faint echo of Algy's voice. ‘He was still at Cambridge when I left my humble red-brick university, and he was already making a name for himself. He told me that I was to call myself something different because he did not want his future to be messed up by any embarrassing connection made with me.'

‘God, he was a shit!' said Willow, her own voice warm with anger. Englewood made his usual half-bow in acknowledgement of her sympathy.

‘Yes,' he said as he expelled a deep breath. ‘You obviously know rather more about us both than I had realised and so I won't need to give you the background of our childhood.' He laughed and curiously there was little bitterness in the sound. ‘You're right about his shit-like character, but I was pleased enough to do what he wanted then. I made him a deal: I would change my name, never communicate with him, never tell anyone I was related to him however wonderfully successful he became, on condition that he never approached, spoke to, or searched for me again.'

‘But it went wrong,' said Willow. ‘How did he meet your wife?'