Festering Lilies (28 page)

‘Pretending?' said Willow, sidetracked yet again.

‘The pig couldn't possibly distinguish one note from another. He really is the most complete philistine. But he fancies himself as having achieved a certain prominence, and prominent people enjoy opera…
quod erat demonstrandum.
'

‘Yes, I suppose so,' said Willow, looking sadly for any remaining scraps of
crème brûlée.
‘Does everyone on the paper hate him as much as you do?'

Jane laughed and the raucous sound brought back Willow's original thoughts about her macaw-like aspects. But what she said was useful.

‘A lot of them hate him a damn sight more. He has nothing on me and I'm using him for the experience and the connections I can get working on the “Gripes”. But some of the long-stay staffers would do anything to get rid of him – only there's nothing they can do while the “Gripes” sells the number of papers it does.'

‘Does no one get the better of him?' Willow said, almost to herself, but Jane attempted an answer.

‘Only one person ever has and that didn't last long,' she said, and her face closed into a kind of don't-ask-because-I'm-notgoing-to-tell-you expression.

‘Coffee?' suggested Willow, thinking back to her successful winkling of information out of Emma Gnatche.

‘What?' said Jane, quite obviously disconcerted. ‘Oh, yes. All right.'

‘And a little brandy?'

‘If you're trying to get me tight so that I tell you all my secrets, my dear Ms Woodruffe…'

‘Don't be idiotic,' interrupted Willow. ‘I'm excessively grateful for all the background you're giving me. And I realise how naive my views of Fleet Street have always been, but even they didn't ever lead me to think I could loosen the tongue of a journalist with alcohol.' They both laughed, and Jane agreed to have some cognac. The order given, Willow went back on the attack.

‘I had heard a story about an ex-chauffeur of Gripper's,' she said, not looking at Jane. There was such a long silence that in the end she did look up. Jane was looking at her with a hard expression in her green eyes; her full lips were tucked back and a crease ran on either side of her face from nostril to chin.

‘Have I by any chance been led up the garden path and made an almighty fool of myself?' she said. ‘You're not going to tell me that under some other name you write for someone else, are you?'

Startled, but she hoped not betraying it, Willow shook her head.

‘No, I've never written except as Cressida Woodruffe, and I've never contributed to any newspaper, if that's what you mean. Why? Have I hit the nail on the head with the chauffeur?'

Before Jane could answer, Willow felt a draught on the back of her neck and looked round idly to see who had arrived so late at the restaurant. What she saw made her grip her lips together and turn straight back to her guest.

‘Someone you know?' said Jane, clearly delighted to have a change of subject.

‘Just someone making a rather childish point,' answered Willow, determined to ignore the new arrivals. But she was not allowed to do that. A hand on her shoulder and Richard's familiar voice interrupted her.

‘Hello W.…' At that hint of danger, Willow turned round so fast that she almost pulled the table doth with her.

‘Hello Richard,' she said so sternly that he produced her public name.

‘Cressida,' he said, and Willow saw that he had been deliberately teasing her. ‘You remember Sarah Gnatche, don't you?'

‘Yes, indeed. Good evening, Sarah. It was very sweet of you to let me come to your party last week,' she said. ‘Jane, this is Sarah Gnatche and Richard Crescent. Jane Cleverholme.'

Jane smiled and waved her cigarette at the newcomers, who, perhaps driven away by the smoke, retreated to their own table at the other side of the restaurant.

‘What was that all about?' asked Jane as the coffee cups were laid in front of them with her glass of brandy. The waiter left them alone and Willow shrugged.

‘Just Richard punishing me for refusing to see him for the last few days. Over the last couple of years or so we've fallen into a routine of dining together a couple of times each week, but I've been a bit busy lately,' said Willow casually. She did not add that Richard was also in the habit of sharing her bed for most of the nights she spent in Chesham Place and might well have resented the interruption in his well-arranged life.

‘The unfortunate female with him was part of his past before me,' Willow went on. ‘She's now engaged to someone else. It's just a gesture showing me that Richard is quite capable of having a nice time without me. Doesn't matter at all. You were going to tell me about the chauffeur,' said Willow, not allowing Jane to escape. Jane managed to laugh, even though the sound was a trifle forced.

‘If you ever decide that you want a job ferreting out gossip for a tabloid, let me know,' she said, giving in with considerable grace. ‘You've put up a masterly performance and now I'm stuck with leaving you tantalised and likely to make all kinds of trouble finding out what was behind it or telling you the truth and hoping against hope I don't lose my job over it.'

‘Why should you?' asked Willow.

‘He's a very vindictive man is Gripper-the-pig; and if he got to know that I'd passed the story on, I'd be out of a job like a shot – and I could find it hard to get another,' said Jane with some bitterness. ‘He gave us all the most tremendous warning only last week about talking to people about him or his private life. It had been sparked off by some red-headed snooper he had found outside his hou…' Her voice died and she stared across the table at Willow.

‘It was you,' she said, very quietly but with absolute conviction.

‘I find that very hard to believe,' said Willow, trying hard to ignore the look of horror on her guest's face and drag the conversation back. ‘Surely the quality papers would never stoop to believe anything told them by a – what? – a pig? But in any case, he won't find out through me. I really am quite trustworthy.'

‘It was you, wasn't it? Oh, shit,' said Jane, looking seriously frightened. Willow was appalled.

‘Listen, Jane. It's pure coincidence, but I did run into him last Friday. I was walking down Graham Terrace and he almost grabbed me and issued some extremely exaggerated threats,' she said.

‘And so you thought you'd get hold of me and find out about him,' said Jane. ‘Christ, what a fool I am! Anyone would have thought I was your innocent virginal heroine – although,' she went on with a self-accusing laugh, ‘I don't suppose for one minute you're intending to write a novel.'

‘I am, in fact,' said Willow, filing away a determination to do just that to keep faith with this woman. ‘But, come on, bite the bullet and tell me about the chauffeur. I have given you an assurance that I won't pass it on. And you can hardly put yourself in a more difficult position than you are now.'

‘I can't imagine how you got on to it and I can only admire you,' Jane started, as though she recognised the truth of Willow's ruthless statement. ‘It was all supposition and suggestion… circumstantial evidence at the most. But Gripper-the-pig got very paranoid a couple of years ago that whenever we had a good lead on some really suppurating scandal in high life one or other of our rivals would get there first. We lost a lot of stories – and a lot of kudos at that stage.'

‘But how on earth can a … a chauffeur have been implicated?' Willow asked, wanting to hurry Jane up for the first time that evening.

‘Gripper decided – on no real evidence except his long-held dislike of his chauffeur, who had been a boxer and never quite kowtowed enough – that he must have listened to discussions that took place in the car and then sold the leads to rival papers,' said Jane.

‘Well that sounds perfectly likely,' said Willow, who had come across Civil Service colleagues with (possibly apocryphal) stories of drivers collecting information which they used to make money in the city. ‘I just can't imagine why he could have been so batty as to discuss secrets in a place where he could be overheard.'

‘The theory is that the back of his flashy Rolls is soundproofed. Clever old Albert, or so the story goes, must have planted a small bug under the back seat, taped the stories and sold the tapes. Gripper was convinced that he had made a tidy little fortune out of the scam. Because Gripper couldn't prove anything to the satisfaction of his relatively powerful enemies on the paper, Albert was persuaded to leave with a nice little redundancy package. God knows where he is now – or what he's doing.'

Willow had actually opened her mouth before she remembered that as Cressida Woodruffe she could not possibly know the identity of drivers at the Department of Old Age Pensions. The temptation to display her superior knowledge was almost overmastering, but the shock of it brought her back to her senses, and she called for the bill instead. While she was waiting for it she wondered whether Albert could have been blackmailing the minister. If Albert had known so much about Gripper's business, he might well also have known about Mrs Gripper's infidelity and hoped to extract money from her lover. That at least would explain the otherwise unlikely coincidence of his having gone to work at DOAP.

‘You've been splendid, Jane,' said Willow five minutes later as she signed the credit card slip. ‘I hope it hasn't bored you too much?'

‘Not remotely,' said Jane, who was beginning to recover her confidence. ‘For part of the time I enjoyed myself, and I shall just have to trust you not to blow my cover.'

Having decided to like Jane, Willow was tempted to exchange a confidence for a confidence and blow her own, but her deeply engrained sense of self-preservation stopped her just in time. They left the restaurant together and stood on the pavement outside the restaurant until a free taxi appeared.

‘Shall we share it?' said Willow. ‘I'm going to Chesham Place.'

‘Opposite direction,' said Jane. ‘I've just moved to Fulham from Putney. You take it.'

Willow signalled the taxi, but when it had drawn up, she did not get in for a moment.

‘Putney?' she said, looking at Jane, who was searching the middle distance for another orange taxi light. ‘Everyone seems to live there now. No, it's all right, I know you said you'd moved. But I was talking to someone the other day who'd just bought a house in Nanking Road,' she went on, trying to get some idea of the kind of people who lived there. Did you know it?'

‘You've rich friends, Cressida,' said Jane, smiling. ‘Half a million at least now. They're vast houses, with immense gardens.'

‘You want a cab or not, lady?' came a raucously Cockney voice from the taxi.

‘Yes, please,' said Willow getting in at last. She pulled down the window, thanked Jane again for all her information, and they parted on a note of restrained friendliness.

Sitting back in the taxi as it sped through the quiet streets, just sprinkled with the first snow, Willow thought from what she had heard that Gripper was unlikely to have engineered Albert's employment at DOAP for the purpose of shadowing and then murdering Algy Endelsham. Private enterprise on Albert's part seemed far more likely, and if Albert really had been clever and unprincipled enough to carry off the scam described by Jane, it was even possible that he himself was running a fraud similar to the one Willow had imagined for Michael Englewood. And if Albert's house had really cost half a million, he would have to have some source of money beyond his wages. Unless, of course, having lived in Putney all his life he had inherited it.… But that seemed just as unlikely. Willow concentrated hard on the memory of his personal file, and was almost certain that the address he had given had been quite different from Nanking Road, which would suggest that the house was a new acquisition.

Could Algy have stumbled on whatever nefarious things his driver had been doing? Willow asked herself. Or was there after all some foundation for the story she had heard at DOAP the previous week? It was the executive officer from registry who had suggested that Algy was being blackmailed and had got himself murdered when he had refused to pay any more to the blackmailer.

The more Willow thought about that the less she could believe it. Surely Algy was too powerful – and confident – ever to allow himself to be blackmailed. She much preferred the idea that he had uncovered some corruption.

‘And got himself murdered?' said Willow aloud at her most self-derisive. The cabby looked at her in his mirror in considerable surprise and Willow smiled placatingly at his reflection. ‘It's just near the corner with Lowndes Place,' she said to him and watched his face relax.

It would have to be a really enormously profitable bit of corruption, she thought, for Albert to have gone to such lengths. Could he possibly have organised a fraud as labour-intensive and wide-ranging as the one she had invented? And even if he had, how could Algy of all people have discovered it?

Willow's cogitations were brought to a halt with the taxi. Paying the driver and tipping him, she walked up the steps of her home and had a moment's violent irritation with the ground-floor lessee, who yet again had left the front-door unlocked, and climbed slowly up the stairs towards her bath and bed.

Muttering to herself, ‘We'll have a burglary if they go on bloody leaving the front door open,' Willow stalked upstairs. She was just feeling in her bag for her keys when she noticed that the door to her flat was standing about four inches open.

Slowly straightening up, with her keys in her hand, Willow stood looking at that gap. It was perfectly clear what had happened, but her mind tried out various other possibilities for her: Mrs Rusham might have left the door open; the lock might have failed; there might have been a small earth tremor that had shaken the bolts out. At last, even her imagination ran out of ideas and she was left alone to face the reality that her flat had been burgled.