Bloody Roses

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Richard?’ Willow’s voice echoed Emma’s tone of surprise. Emma nodded.

  ‘Apparently Richard is an unforgiving slavedriver.’ Emma looked at Willow from under her darkened eyelashes, her cheeks growing pink. ‘James thinks that he was in love with Sarah Allfarthing, too, and desperately jealous of the others who took her fancy.’

  ‘He told me himself that he thought she was wonderful,’ said Willow slowly, ‘but I don’t believe that whatever he felt for her could have led to murderous jealousy. Who are the others?’

  ‘Well, nearly all of them, but mostly the chief executive,’ said Emma, running one pink fingernail down the notes in her book. ‘He’s called Robert Biggleigh-Clart – the boys call him Biggles.’

  ‘Typical!’

  ‘And someone called William Beeking, who’s junior to Richard. He’s a bit of a spotter.’

  ‘A what?’ Willow put down her coffee cup and stared at Emma’s face, which was lit by a consciously mischievous smile.

  ‘A spotter,’ she repeated kindly. ‘It’s what the boys call people who are a bit thick, or not frightfully successful or glamorous.’

  ‘Oh.’ Willow was interested, as always by peculiar words or usages. ‘Does it derive from acne?’

  Emma put back her head and laughed. Her thick blond hair fell down behind her head like a well-conditioned lion’s mane.

  ‘Abs’y not. It’s short for train spotter.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Willow inadequately. ‘Well, did your sneering informant tell you why everyone thought Sarah Allfarthing was so marvellous?’

  Emma shook her head, her face sobering. ‘No. He did say she was very glamorous and fun to be with when she wasn’t involved in a tough deal; but that was all.’

  ‘I see. And was there anyone who hated Sarah?’

  ‘Only one of the secretaries in the department,’ said Emma. She picked up the big cup and drank some more coffee. ‘Apparently she is a real thicko and –’

  ‘Another spotter?’

  ‘No. Only boys can be spotters,’ said Emma earnestly. ‘But apparently Mrs Allfarthing used to lose her temper quite often with Tracy and she got so fed up she’s leaving the bank.’ Emma picked up the small silver knife and fork again and went on eating her melon.

  ‘Because of the murder?’

  ‘No. She gave in her notice just before it and everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief.’

  Willow fetched a notebook of her own and started to make a list under the encouraging heading ‘Suspects’.

  ‘Did you discover anything about the meeting that Sarah messed up for Richard?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Emma, pronouncing all four syllables for once. ‘James was full of the story: it seemed to give him a frisson even though she’s dead now.’ Emma put down her fork, looking sick. She added slowly, as though she were working it out as she spoke: ‘I think he was a bit frightened of Sarah, too, although he talked about her glamour and the fun and all the rest of it; and I think he rather liked the idea of shaking her himself.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ said Willow, who had suffered for years from the punitive impulses of her frightened colleagues at DOAP and could well imagine those that Sarah had aroused. She felt a stirring of identification with the dead woman and shuddered. ‘What about the British client whose deal she almost ruined?’

  ‘He was the owner of a medium-sized cutting-tool factory. It makes scissors, garden tools and penknives, razors and all that sort of thing. He’s called Ronald Hopecastle.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to him,’ said Willow, adding his name to her short list and then those of the two apparently besotted merchant bankers. ‘And of course her family. Emma, did your banker tell you anything about them?’

  ‘Mrs Allfarthing’s? No. I did ask James, but all he knew is that she is well and truly married. I mean, not divorced or anything. Still living with her husband and a daughter who’s just left school.’

  Knowing from what Martin Roylandson had told her that Sarah Allfarthing had been only a year older than she was, Willow was astonished that she should have a child that old. It was possible, of course, but strange. Looking across the breakfast table at the intent face of Emma Gnatche, who was eighteen, Willow realized for the first time that she was old enough to be Emma’s mother. It was a peculiarly disconcerting thought.

  ‘Right,’ she said with a crispness designed to get rid of the odd distaste she felt. Looking at her watch, she then drained her coffee cup. ‘I’ve got to go out now. Can you see what you can find out about her family and her past career? It’s possible that I’ll be working at the bank for a bit, and –’

  ‘Undercover?’ Emma’s blue eyes were gleaming. ‘Well done.’

  ‘Thank you. If it does come off, I can look into the meeting and who else might have been damaged by Sarah’s indiscretions.’

  ‘But, Cressida!’ Emma’s face suggested that she had seen some enormous obstacle. ‘James will recognize you.’

  Willow looked so blank that Emma tried to explain.

  ‘Don’t you remember? We both met him at that dinner of Richard’s last spring. James Montholme. The boy who’s been telling me all this.’

  ‘Oh, damn! Yes, I do remember, but I’m sure we can get round it somehow. Emma, I must go now. We can talk later, but I’ve an appointment to have all my hair cut off in an attempt to lessen the likelihood of recognition.’

  ‘That’s quite a sacrifice,’ said Emma, with obvious admiration. ‘I hope Richard won’t be cross. He’s always talked about how wonderful your hair is.’

  ‘Tough!’ Willow’s protest was robust. She was not prepared to explain to Emma that she was seeking a middle way for herself as much as trying to further the investigation.

  Emma got up, pushed her notebook and pencil back into her basket and waited while Willow fetched a jacket. Together they walked out into Sloane Street and parted at the door of the hairdresser’s.

  Having watched Emma walk off towards the buses that would take her back to Kensington, her pink-and-blue basket swinging from her shoulder. Willow took a deep breath and went into the calm black-and-white interior.

  She was taken away to have her hair washed and then offered a padded chair in front of an unforgivingly well-lit mirror. An apprentice teased out the inevitable tangles with a hard comb and then yielded his place to a casually dressed woman whose smile held more than a hint of amusement.

  ‘I love doing this,’ she said, picking up her scissors. ‘How short would you like it?’

  ‘Not exactly short,’ said Willow warily. She watched the scissors flash as they caught the light from an overhead spot. ‘A compromise length.’

  She felt a thick crunch as the scissor blades closed over the first handful of hair and winced, admitting for the first time that she had used her long red tresses as a western version of a yashmak. Feeling that more and more of her hidden selves were being revealed, she watched her hair being levelled off at about an inch below the point of her jaw.

  ‘How’s that for length?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much good if I said it was too short, would it?’ There was some civil-service asperity in Willow’s voice, but the hairdresser grinned.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’ll look quite different when I’ve shaped it.’

  Willow shut her eyes and felt the gentle, efficient hands complete their work of snipping, brushing, moussing, drying and brushing once more.

  ‘There! How’s that?’

  Willow opened her eyes and smiled at herself. The luxuriant curls had gone and in their place was a slightly tousled but shining helmet.

  ‘It makes you look younger.’ The hairdresser held up a hand mirror so that Willow could inspect the back of her head.

  ‘D’you know, I think you’re right,’ she said, turning her head one way and then the other. ‘But my earrings are all wrong.’

  ‘That’s a good excuse to buy some more,’ said the hairdresser with a hint of asperity herself. Then she looked more closely and adde
d: ‘Or to have them reset. I hadn’t noticed that they were real.’

  Willow met her eyes in the mirror and nodded. It was peculiarly restful, she thought, to have her hair cut without being treated to the ritual, meaningless flirtation her usual male hairdresser handed out to his women customers as part of his service.

  ‘Shall we be seeing you again?’

  ‘Very probably,’ said Willow, pushing back the black padded chair. ‘I think I like it quite a lot.’

  ‘It suits you and it’s less exaggerated than all those curls.’

  Willow smiled suddenly, not her usual smile of amused observation but something much warmer and more revealing.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she said and went off to pay her bill.

  She walked briskly back to Chesham Place to hear from Mrs Rusham that Mr Stedington had telephoned from the bank. Willow thanked her and went into her writing room, where a pile of dusty typescript reminded her that she had promised to send a full synopsis of a new novel to her agent at least a month ago. Telling herself that she would be able to polish it off in no time once she had got Richard out of prison, Willow ignored her notes for the book and picked up the telephone.

  Jeremy Stedington told her that the chief executive had agreed to their plan for getting her into the bank and invited her to a meeting in his office at half past five. Checking that she had plenty of time, Willow agreed to the appointment and went to dress herself up as Miss King, the training consultant, in one of the two new suits.

  It sat well on her tall figure, its long, collarless green jacket and straight black knee-length skirt looking both elegant and businesslike. For that first meeting she wore it without a shirt and was amazed at the length of her neck, newly revealed by the short hair.

  She made up her face carefully to disguise the size of her nose and the paleness of her eyes, changed her earrings for a pair of large gold knots, slipped a big pad of lined paper into the leather briefcase in which she took her novels to her agent and publisher, and went downstairs to hail a taxi.

  At the bank she gave her name to one of the two security guards and was politely asked to wait in the reception area for Mr Stedington. She had hardly had time to settle herself in one of the angular but comfortable dark-red chairs in the plant-filled waiting area before he appeared.

  ‘I think I’ve persuaded Robert Biggleigh-Clart of the sense of our proposition,’ he said as he held open the lift doors for Willow, ‘and I’m hoping we can get him to agree to an immediate start.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ asked Willow, immediately suspicious. Biggleigh-Clart was after all a potential suspect. Stedington flushed slightly.

  ‘I suppose because I don’t know enough about what you called your administrative career to persuade him that you’ll be able to do any good, and he’s reluctant to let a stranger into the bank.’

  ‘I see. How do you suggest I tackle him? I don’t think a c. v. is quite appropriate in this case.’

  ‘I suspect once he’s talking to you, he’ll see the point of letting you in, but there will be one or two parameters to sort out.’

  Trained as a mathematician, Willow always disliked the sloppy misuse of technical words like ‘parameter’, but she smiled at Stedington and decided to ignore his ignorance.

  He took her up to the top floor of the tower, where, despite the modernity of the building, the chief executive’s office had been decorated to look like an eighteenth-century library. Nothing could disguise the plate-glass window, which gave on to a spectacular view over the City towards the river, but the other walls were covered with mahogany bookshelves ranged above low built-in cupboards. His desk was a large flat-topped affair, from which all signs of modern office life had been banished. There was a telephone on a discreet side table, but it must have been the only room in the entire building that held no computer screen of any kind. To add to the illusion, there was a set of library steps and even a pair of antique globes.

  As they walked into the room, the sound of their footsteps absorbed in the velvet pile of the pale-grey Wilton carpet, a man rose from behind the desk. The smoothest-looking person Willow had ever seen in the flesh, he could not have been much more than forty-eight or so. He was of middle height, his hair looked as though it never moved independently of his head, and his complexion was absolutely clear and perfectly matt, as though he never sweated at all. His suit was of bird’s-eye worsted of such perfect cut that it seemed hardly real.

  Walking round the desk, he held out his right hand. Willow saw that his nails were not only clean but also neatly filed, with the cuticles kept under impressive control. She shook his hand, thinking of the things she had heard and read about him in the five years he had been in charge of the bank.

  The most impressive – or sinister – was that he was adored by the upper echelons of both the main political parties. Those of the Labour rank and file who were aware of his existence distrusted his apparently effortless success, his enormous salary and his glamorous life, but he had so efficiently assisted their front-bench colleagues in their attempts to build up a coherent economic policy that would keep the financial institutions from panic that they would have done almost anything for him.

  One of Willow’s principal informants had told her that various junior members of the bank resented the fact that their chief executive paid so little attention to the bank’s own work, although they were glad enough that his circumspection had kept them out of all the scandals of the last few years. In fact, by his shrewd political manoeuvring he had probably done more to ensure their continuing employment than any of their own marathon negotiating sessions or last-minute dashes to New York to save their deals.

  ‘It is good of you to come and see us, Miss King,’ he said as he shook her hand, adding with a smile of great charm: ‘I understand from Jeremy that that is what you would prefer to be called.’

  ‘It seems sensible,’ Willow answered, watching him closely. He seemed to be entirely genuine, but she was not prepared to trust anyone in the bank without good evidence and was quite ready to consider the possibility that he might be the kind of man who so firmly believed in each part he played that it seemed real even to him while he was playing it.

  ‘I’m glad that you share my conviction of Richard’s innocence,’ she went on, ‘although I understand that you are reluctant to let me try to prove it.’

  ‘Hardly reluctant,’ he said, turning to his subordinate with a frosty expression in his eyes. He turned back to Willow, again smiling. ‘But I remain to be convinced that the upheaval you might cause in Corporate Finance would be outweighed by anything you could discover here. Have you any particular talents or experience in detection?’

  Willow said nothing for a moment. It was a fair question.

  ‘I have no specifically appropriate qualifications,’ she admitted, ‘but I can tell you in confidence that I was involved in the unmasking of a murderer a few months ago. If you need a referee, you could always speak to the policeman in charge of that investigation. I’m afraid that he is on holiday in Tuscany at the moment, but I could give you his number there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the chief executive, holding out his hand. ‘That is reassuring.’

  Surprised, because she had assumed that he would accept her assurance, Willow scribbled the number of the villa on a piece of paper with Tom’s name and rank, adding:

  ‘I’ve given you his office number in London, too, because it’s sometimes impossible to get through to Italy. He’s due back at the weekend. Now, can you tell me why you believe so strongly in Richard’s innocence?’

  ‘Naturally I will,’ he said, ushering her towards a group of chairs and sofas beside the astral globe, ‘but I’ll deal with this first. Jeremy, will you see to drinks?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Miss King, what will you have?’ He opened one of the cupboards beneath the bookshelves, while Robert Biggleigh-Clart left the office.

  ‘Is that Vichy water? If so, I’d love some.’

  Sted
ington smiled at her as though admiring both her abstemiousness and her taste in mineral water. He mixed himself some weak whisky and soda and settled down to entertain her until Biggleigh-Clart returned.

  He was back in a remarkably short time, saying: ‘That seems quite satisfactory, Miss King. Now –’

  ‘May I ask how you got through to Italy so quickly?’ asked Willow with a smile. ‘It always takes me ages.’

  Biggleigh-Clart smiled too.

  ‘I didn’t. I spoke to Chief Inspector Worth’s superior, who appeared to know enough about you to confirm your claim about the investigation you assisted. May I welcome you formally to the bank and say that I shall do all I can to help in your search?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Willow sounded wary. She wondered whom Biggleigh-Clart had talked to at Scotland Yard and what on earth he had said.

  ‘Now,’ he said when he was sipping a different brand of chilled water, ‘I think that you should start tomorrow: Jeremy’s idea of your apparently studying the training needs of the Corporate Finance Department seems ideal, but to make it realistic you will have to do something to convince the staff of your bona fides.’

  ‘That ought not to be a problem,’ said Willow crisply. ‘I’m pretty well briefed about techniques of stress management, the development of skills and the deployment of human resources.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it, although I do wonder why,’ said Biggleigh-Clart.

  Willow ignored his interpolation. She felt that she had done quite enough to persuade him of her credentials.

  ‘Human resources may be the most important, because I shall have to talk to the secretarial staff as well as the bankers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Biggleigh-Clart, drawing out the word so that it sounded doubtful yet acquiescent.

  ‘I suspect you’re thinking about Tracy, but I’m quite experienced enough to disregard her malice, and her very interest in Mrs Allfarthing will probably make her a useful witness.’

  Jeremy Stedington started to laugh and then turned the sound into a cough that he soothed with a draught of whisky.