Bloody Roses

by Natasha Cooper

  The change of subject was so sudden that Willow took a moment to answer the question.

  ‘Oh, well, if you’re having some, I’d love a cup.’

  Biggleigh-Clart strolled over to the door and leaned out to pass on the instruction. Willow could not believe that he was as unworried as he appeared and wondered why he should take such trouble to hide what would have been wholly understandable anxiety. What had she said that had made him need to interrupt their conversation so abruptly?

  ‘Now, how else can I help you?’ he asked when he came back.

  Willow sorted out her questions and decided to lead up to the more difficult ones.

  ‘What did you think of Sarah Allfarthing?’ she asked, her fountain pen poised above a leather-backed notepad she had taken from her handbag.

  ‘She was wonderful,’ he said with a smile that seemed entirely genuine and only slightly sad. ‘I fought hard to get her into Corporate Finance and she justified all my hopes and fulfilled none of the fears.’

  When Willow did not speak he added: ‘She was everything a woman in banking ought to be.’

  ‘Despite the effect she had on the emotions of her male colleagues?’

  Biggleigh-Clart laughed. ‘She was no flirt and I don’t think it did them any harm to have a glorious-looking, intelligent, well-dressed woman like that about the place. One or two of them might have let their emotions go a bit, but not to any dangerous lengths.’

  ‘I see. I understand that someone sent her roses twice a week. Who could that have been?’

  Willow was interested to see a faint hint of colour stealing along the chief executive’s perfect cheekbones.

  ‘I sent her a bunch just before she died,’ he said with a casualness that might have deceived an uninterested spectator. ‘She’d had rather a rough time over the American deal with Richard. I’m sure you’ve heard all about it. I simply wanted to express the bank’s confidence in her.’

  ‘I expect she was grateful.’ Willow looked down at her empty notebook and then squared her shoulders. ‘This may sound irrelevant,’ she went on, ‘but I have to ask. I gather that you left the building only a little time before Richard arrived from Tokyo. Were you not risking being late for the dance?’

  The handsome face seemed to harden slightly ‘Indeed I was. I was furious.’

  ‘So I understand,’ said Willow, allowing herself a glinting smile. It seemed to evoke an answering gleam in the banker’s brown eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘I had been waiting for my wife for some time. The plan was that my driver would collect her from Eaton Square, come here, ring up on the car telephone and I would go down. There was some problem with the phones that night and I had been unable to get through to the car to find out what was holding them up. Eventually the chauffeur got a clear line. When he rang me he was still at Eaton Square and he told me that my wife was suffering from a migraine and would not be able to come. Apparently she’d been trying to get through, too.’

  ‘I am sorry. Migraines can be dreadfully painful, can’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, recrossing his legs. He looked at Willow carefully and then smiled, not happily. ‘But I suspect that this one may have been diplomatic. Neither my wife nor I enjoy the enforced jollity of such occasions, and she does not always understand their importance.’ His eyebrows twitched. ‘Be that as it may, her decision – or migraine – made me late and the traffic held up my car so badly that in the end I had to take a taxi. Do you wonder that I was angry?’

  ‘Not at all. How was your wife when you got home?’

  For a moment Willow thought that he was not going to answer, but with noticeable if not successful efforts towards self-control he said:

  ‘I have no idea. We do not pig it together in the same bed, and I was disinclined to force my way into her room. Either she had had a migraine and needed all the sleep she could get or she had been faking and I might not have been sure of my temper.’

  Willow was tempted to write down his exact words, because they seemed so illuminating, but she thought that might make him wary.

  ‘When did you realize that something had happened here?’ she asked.

  Before he could answer, his secretary brought in a tray with two flowered porcelain cups of coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits. Willow accepted coffee without milk and declined the biscuits. Mr Biggleigh-Clart added milk to his cup and even stirred in a spoonful of sugar, before taking a biscuit. Willow looked at his broad shoulders and impressively taut figure in surprise.

  When Annabel, a slender, well-dressed woman who looked about twenty-four, had left, he answered Willow’s last question.

  ‘I began to wonder about Sarah – Mrs Allfarthing – when I saw her husband sitting beside an empty chair. Sarah was unfailing in her attendance at all the bank’s functions – except when she was on one of her holidays – and I knew that she had already left her desk by eight o’clock.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Willow asked quickly, thinking that at last she had stumbled on some useful information. She drank some of the excellent, strong coffee and waited.

  ‘Because I rang down to her office,’ he answered frankly. ‘It occurred to me that she might have been held up too and that it would be friendly to share the taxi with her. But there was no answer.’

  ‘And yet she must have been there.’

  ‘Perhaps she was in the ladies’room.’

  Or perhaps, thought Willow, she was already dead. Then she remembered what Richard had told her and sighed. If Sarah had still been bleeding when he found her body, it really did sound as though she had died only minutes earlier. Remembering the denouement of one of Dorothy Sayers’s detective stories, Willow wished that women suffered from haemophilia. If Sarah had been a ‘bleeder’, there might really have been some hope of persuading the police that she had died well before Richard’s arrival and that her blood had simply failed to clot.

  ‘Yes?’ said Biggleigh-Clart.

  Ignoring the time of the murder for the moment, Willow put down her empty cup. ‘That was delicious. Thank you. There is one last question that I have to ask,’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead. There’s no need to look so troubled. Nothing could be worse than having one of our employees dead in such a manner on the premises.’

  ‘It has been rumoured that you and Sarah Allfarthing were more than … well, friends,’ said Willow, knowing how furious she would be if anyone were to ask her a similar question about her private affairs. He only laughed charmingly.

  ‘Gossip keeps the junior executives and secretaries amused.’

  ‘I see.’ Willow’s expression was doubtful enough to make him try again.

  ‘I had a profound admiration and liking for Sarah, and her death has left me extremely sad, but, as I have said, she was no flirt and I am not the kind of man to exercise droit de seigneur over the female members of staff. I suspect the origin of the tittle-tattle may have been that we belonged to the same health club.’

  ‘Really?’ No wonder his figure was so good, thought Willow.

  ‘It opened quite close to the bank last year and we both joined. We occasionally met there and must have been spotted as we sweated side by side in the gym.’

  ‘I’m anxious to find out all I can about her life in the last week or so; do you suppose I could get a temporary membership of the club?’

  ‘No need.’ The chief executive got gracefully up off the sofa. ‘They give us guest tickets every so often and I’ve plenty to spare.’

  He walked over to his desk, opened the top drawer and took out two pieces of stiff card, which he brought to Willow.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking them. ‘You’ve been very frank, and very helpful.’

  ‘It would have been a pleasure talking to you if the subject had been less painful,’ he said, his manners as impeccable as his appearance. ‘And if I have helped to further your investigation, I am delighted. Please don’t hesitate to telephone if you need to know anything else.’ He went
to open the door for Willow.

  As she left the anteroom, she felt uncomfortable and turned to see Annabel glaring at her with something like hatred in her dark eyes. Willow raised her eyebrows, but the girl’s gaze did not waver. Eventually it was Willow who turned away, her mind racing towards melodramatic outlines of crimes passionels and violent resentments.

  The first thing she did when she was let into the Corporate Finance Department by Maggie was to say:

  ‘Did you happen to notice when the chief executive’s secretary reached the dance last Friday?’

  Maggie looked thoroughly surprised, which reminded Willow that she was supposed to be a training analyst, but she answered easily:

  ‘We went together and got there at about a quarter to eight. We all met up at her flat with our boyfriends and went on from there.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, Maggie.’

  Willow walked round to Sarah Allfarthing’s desk, regretfully dropping the idea that Annabel might have murdered her out of a jealous passion for her boss. Laying her briefcase on the desk, Willow flipped on the computer in case anyone had sent her electronic messages, but no one had. She temporarily ignored the police photographs in her briefcase and dialled the number of Jeremy Stedington’s extension.

  ‘Hello, Jeremy?’ she said when he answered. ‘Could I possibly have a word?’

  ‘Miss King. Yes, now?’

  ‘Please,’ said Willow and took her briefcase with her into his office.

  ‘What’s new?’ he asked with a friendly grin.

  ‘I picked up the police photographs on my way in this morning and if I look at them out there anyone who peeks over my shoulder will know that I’m not here to look into your training needs. May I borrow a little space?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Willow thanked him and opened the manila envelope she had collected from Martin Roylandson. Even though she had listened carefully to Richard’s description of the body, she could not suppress a gasp as she looked at it.

  In neither of her previous investigations had she ever seen a body and she was not properly prepared for the horror of it. Although the photographs at the top of the heap were only black and white, there were coloured ones, too, in which the freshly shed blood was unmistakable, trampled into the carpet, gleaming on the squashed roses, and splattered against the elegant pale-yellow strapless evening dress that hung from the top of the partition.

  Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the photograph she was holding in her clammy hands was the sight of Sarah’s gaping throat. Willow could easily imagine what it must have looked like when Sarah’s body was suspended from the chair with her head hanging down, flapping like a slaughtered deer’s. Whatever beauty she had had in life had been entirely obliterated by the terrifying ugliness of the cut in her neck.

  Willow had once tried to disembowel a pheasant someone had given her and the memory rose sickeningly into her mind. She found herself imagining the smell of Sarah’s blood. Mingled with the disgust and the terror, Willow felt a profound sympathy for Richard and a sudden resurgence of faith in him. Anyone might have been reluctant to describe a scene like the one in the photographs.

  ‘I say, are you all right?’

  Willow forced herself to look away from the photographs and peered at Jeremy Stedington’s dark face as though through a fog.

  ‘What?’ she asked vaguely and then tried to pull herself together. ‘Oh, I’m fine. These are just rather shocking.’ She made herself smile and felt the usual relaxation of her muscles. ‘I hadn’t quite grasped how ghastly it must have been for Richard finding her like that. No wonder he didn’t think about things like fingerprints and not disturbing the scene.’

  ‘May I?’ Stedington held out a hand for the photographs.

  A little reluctantly Willow handed them over and watched the shock driving the blood out of his face. For the first time he looked vulnerable.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ he said, obviously determined to keep his voice steady. He handed the glossy prints back to Willow.

  ‘By the way,’ said Willow, not averse to catching him while he was off balance, ‘I see from the list you gave me yesterday that you were one of the last to leave the building on Friday.’

  ‘That’s right. Me and Beeking, James Certes and the client,’ he said.

  ‘What about the other side?’

  ‘There was no other side.’ Jeremy Stedington sounded rather impatient. ‘There’s no deal yet; we were planning a possible takeover, which will probably be contested.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Willow. ‘And you all left together, according to the list.’

  ‘That’s right. If you’re looking for alibis, everyone at the meeting has one.’

  ‘Right. Thanks. I’d better get back to my cubbyhole and do a little work on your training needs. One or two people are looking at me slightly askance.’

  ‘Suspicious lot, we bankers.’

  They both laughed, as though they were trying to banish the memory of Sarah Allfarthing’s butchered body.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ said Willow, stopping at the door of his office.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I need to talk to the British client who was at the meeting when Richard behaved so badly. I’ve got his name somewhere; was it Hopecastle?’

  ‘Why?’ Stedington’s voice and face were both guarded.

  ‘Because I need to know everything about her last weeks. The client may have some memory or insight that I’d get nowhere else. I promise I won’t ask any questions about mergers or takeovers.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Stedington, flipping through the cards on his Rolodex. When he had found the one he wanted, he copied the name and address down on a piece of paper and held it out.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Willow, coming back from the door to collect it.

  Chapter Seven

  The following morning Willow was once more woken by the sound of a telephone bell. Still half-asleep, full of a remembered fear, she reached out to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ she said as she tucked the cold plastic between her chin and her warm shoulder.

  ‘It’s only me, Will; don’t sound so worried.’

  ‘Tom!’ she said, recognizing his voice with a sensation of immense relief welling all through her. ‘Thank goodness! Where are you?’

  Willow stretched her legs out under the linen-covered duvet and smiled at the telephone as though Tom could see down the wires.

  ‘Back in the flat. I found that I couldn’t hang about in the villa without you. I got back yesterday and tried to ring.’

  ‘But you didn’t leave a message.’ Willow was shocked to hear herself sounding sulky and almost possessive. She quickly added: ‘Not that it matters.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure who you might have in the flat,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t want to broadcast my feelings through that machine.’

  Willow let out a short, snuffling laugh as she turned her head on the pillow towards the space where Tom’s might have been. They had once sat together in her drawing room listening to an absurdly pompous man from her publishers dictating a message on to the machine.

  ‘It’s good to have you back,’ she said, both more awake and more in control of herself. ‘I’ve missed you. How was the drive?’

  ‘Fine. Dullish, but I had some stunning meals through France. Did you really miss me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and quickly added: ‘I’m glad the meals were good.’

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, noticing that he was earnest enough to sound a warning.

  ‘Rather against my better judgement, I let myself run into Jane Moreby yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ There was more hostility than anxiety in her voice, and her muscles stiffened slightly as she waited.

  ‘I have to tell you: her case really does sound convincing.’

  Willow removed the telephone receiver from her shoulder and held it away from her while she fought for calm. She pushed herself up against the bedhea
d and brought the receiver back.

  ‘I know it does. Superficially it looks watertight. But I also know Richard. It is impossible that he should have done it.’

  ‘You said yourself that he’d been under terrific strain before we went away. Perhaps he just flipped.’

  ‘I do not believe it.’ Willow put unusual emphasis on the negative and hoped that she sounded convincing to Tom at least.

  ‘I don’t –’ Tom broke off, trying to protect her from disillusion but not wanting to sound patronizing. ‘When can I see you?’

  Willow shifted the receiver to her other shoulder and rubbed the red mark it had made on her skin. She had wanted him badly, but she knew it would be difficult not to let him see her doubts if they met and his obvious confidence in Jane Moreby shook her.

  ‘I’m a bit busy today, but do drop in tomorrow if you’ve time,’ she said coolly and then immediately wished she had been more welcoming. Despite his doubts of Richard she missed him.

  There was a noticeable pause before he said: ‘Fine. ‘I’ll do that. Be careful of yourself. Will.’

  ‘I always am,’ she said with the smile back in her voice. ‘Thanks for ringing.’

  She carefully replaced the telephone and got out of bed, deliberately not letting herself think about the things that Tom did to her emotions. Instead she concentrated on what she could do to collect more facts and ideas from which to construct an alternative explanation of Sarah Allfarthing’s death.

  Pulling on a yellow-and-white kimono that made her hair look richer and darker than usual and her face even whiter. Willow walked through to her writing room to compile a list of people outside the bank whom she might interview. The most important was Sarah Allfarthing’s husband and since he was also likely to be the most difficult, Willow decided to tackle him first. Mr Hopecastle, the British client, and the other even more peripheral figures like Robert Biggleigh-Clart’s wife could wait until later.

  When she heard the sound of Mrs Rusham’s key in the front door, Willow called out: ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Woodruffe,’ said the housekeeper, appearing in the doorway. She looked surprised to see Willow working at that hour. ‘Shall I prepare your breakfast straight away?’