Festering Lilies (33 page)

‘Just as I told you,' he answered. ‘I do truly think that that one was a coincidence. He wouldn't have recognised the name, you see, because he had no way of knowing what I'd decided to call myself. I changed my name by statutory declaration so that there would be no record. But I ought to have known that I'd never be safe. It may have been just damnable luck that Algy met my wife like that and was taken with her. She was exceedingly pretty – and susceptible: thrilled, I suspect, by his glamour.' He fell silent and when Willow refilled his glass he drank the warm wine down in one gulp.

‘She invited him to dinner with us unexpectedly or I'd have stopped it. You should have seen his delight when she introduced us! I could see straight away what he was going to do. You see, Willow, that was one of the ghastly things: I had to watch the seduction every step of the way and there was nothing I could do to stop it, although I tried. And even while Algy was reducing her to a state of desperate desire, he was watching me to see how I was taking it. In a way it was a kind of relief when she finally said that she was leaving me to go to him.'

Willow found herself quite unable to eat, but she too drank the stickily cooling wine and held up the empty jug to signal to the waitress for more.

‘But of course, Algy didn't want her. As soon as he had got her away from me, he dumped her,' said Englewood, staring down into the bottom of his empty glass. Willow looked at him in speculation.

‘And wouldn't you have her back?' she asked at last. At that his face began to redden and his moustache quiver with the anger that she now knew lay just below the placid surface of his character.

‘I begged her to come back,' he said, and Willow almost shivered at the sound of his voice. ‘But as I said before, she could not bear the thought of living with someone who had witnessed the whole of her humiliation.' His face had reverted to its normal pallidity and Willow saw that he was chewing at his bottom lip. She waited.

‘That's why I was so afraid for you, Willow,' he said. She shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his stare. ‘When I saw that you were not going to be taken in, I knew that he would be furious and I wondered what he would try next. He wouldn't have been able to leave you the winner like that. Somehow he was going to have to humiliate you… as he did everyone in the end.'

‘But he didn't, Michael,' said Willow gently. ‘It was months since he had understood that I would not sleep with him, and he was still perfectly friendly.' The new jug of wine was brought to their table and Englewood absent-mindedly poured them each a glassful.

‘I suspect he would have done,' he said sadly. ‘It was simply not possible for him to leave anyone else in a position superior to his own. That's why he was so successful always. He was driven to it.'

Englewood had been so absorbed in his story that he had never looked round when the door opened and new customers came in to find tables around them. As he produced his last indictment, the door opened once again and Willow looked up to see Inspector Worth flanked by two uniformed policemen come into the small wine bar.

Worth caught her eye and she knew that she had never seen him so angry. Checking that Englewood's attention was still deflected, she looked back at Tom Worth, shook her head very slightly and gestured towards an empty table. Much to her relief he took it and made his officers sit there with him. When they were settled, Willow poured out more wine and said softly:

‘How did it happen Michael?'

He put down his glass and covered his face with both hands. Gently she put her hands on his wrists and pulled them away from his face.

‘Michael,' she said. He sighed

‘You know,' he said at last, ‘I've been longing to talk to you about it. I nearly told you that other time we were here.'

‘I know you did,' said Willow. ‘Tell me now.'

‘All right. As you probably know, Algy couldn't help tormenting me. I'd done all right in the Civil Service. Under secretary (establishments) in DOAP isn't the most thrilling peak of a man's career, but it's all right.'

‘Of course it is, Michael.'

‘But Algy wanted me to know how pathetic he thought it – and then more: he wanted to show me that I couldn't even do that properly; and went out of his way to cause trouble and difficulty whenever he was bored.'

Suppressing the thought that poor Michael Englewood must have become paranoid about his brother, Willow sat and listened in silence; as did Inspector Worth and his men sitting at the next table.

‘Between that and what he was trying to do to you,' said Englewood, ‘I realised that I had to stop him or I'd have no self-respect for the rest of my life. I asked him to come to my office that evening to tell him that the worm had turned, that if he didn't lay off I'd blow his cover.'

‘How?' asked Willow involuntarily. Englewood shrugged his tweed-covered shoulders.

‘Oh, by telling the tabloids about him: the mistresses, the persecutions, forcing me to change my name – even my poor wife. And then he'd be exposed to the world for what he actually was: cruel, mischievous, power-crazy and damned dangerous.'

Willow caught sight of Inspector Worth gesturing to one of his men, who opened a notebook and took a pencil from his tunic pocket.

‘So what happened, Michael?' she asked.

‘He told me we'd have to talk about it and asked me to walk across the common with him to his car so that we could get it all said without inquisitive people listening to us. I heard him ring Albert and tell him to wait at the top of Cedar's Road, and then we set off.

‘At about half-way over, while he was talking and I was answering back for once, he suddenly grabbed me by my neck.' As he said that, Englewood pulled the cravat he wore away from his neck and Willow saw the fading remains of ferocious bruises on either side of his jugular.

‘As you probably know,' he went on while she tried to deal with the effects of shock in herself, ‘he was immensely strong and I panicked. All I had to defend myself was…'

‘Your chess computer,' said Willow suddenly. ‘That's what it was, wasn't it?' Englewood nodded. ‘And I suppose you just hit him and hit him and hit him until he let go,' she said. He nodded again.

‘And by then he was dead,' he said.

‘You needn't tell me the rest,' she said. ‘I know that you must have wiped the blood off your face and hands with something, put your reversible coat on the other way about so that the stains didn't show on the outside, and walked to Clapham Junction station. There you washed the remaining blood off your face and hands and neck in the gents'lavatory, and took a train to Surbiton – later than the six-fifteen from Waterloo, despite what you told me.'

‘Yes, that's right,' he agreed. ‘I should have known that someone would find out, but I never thought it would be you.'

‘And I suppose you got rid of the chess computer somewhere,' Willow went on, trying not to hear the pain in that statement.

‘Yes,' he said again. ‘And all the clothes I'd been wearing. That night when I met you outside the building, I was on my way to buy more. And when I got back to Surbiton that night, I soaked all the bloodstained stuff in a huge basin of surgical spirit to get the blood out and then in the middle of the night took it to the river, weighted it with a couple of bricks and chucked it in. I don't think anyone saw me.'

Willow saw Tom Worth standing up, but before he could cross the small strip of floor between their two tables, Englewood said:

‘I'd better go and find Worth now.' He smiled at Willow and she tried to think that there was a new look of peace in his face, but she could not quite manage it. ‘I suppose I always knew that I wouldn't get away with it in the end,' he said. ‘And I was always prepared to confess if they accused one of the staff.'

‘I realised that that was why you sat in on all the interviews,' said Willow. ‘I am sorry, Michael.'

‘Yes, Algy wasn't worth going to prison for,' he said and turned to face the police.

That evening at about half-past nine Willow's front door bell buzzed. She got up from the silk rug in front of the drawing-room fire and picked up the entry-phone.

‘Yes?' she said, hoping that it would not be Richard.

‘Willow, it's Tom. May I come up?'

‘Please,' she said simply and pressed the buzzer. When he reached her flat, she let him in. He no longer looked as angry as he had in the wine bar, but there was an expression in his eyes that worried her.

‘Drink?' she said as she had said the night before.

‘Whisky please,' he said shortly and then went and sat down on one of the bedroom chairs she had put in the drawing room until she could replace the damaged sofas. She went to pour him some of what little Emma had told her the Sloanes called Leapfrog whisky. Handing him the glass, she said:

‘Are you still angry with me?' He took a deep swallow of the peaty whisky and shuddered as it went down.

‘No,' he said, looking at her with a slight smile. ‘But I was when I discovered what you were up to. Willow, it was so damned dangerous: how could you have taken such a risk?'

Remembering that she had promised him that she would drop her investigation and ask no more questions that might inflame people, she tried to explain.

‘After Roger's bombshell, I couldn't just let it go. I'd been so wrong about Roger that I thought perhaps I was wrong about Englewood too. I was fairly certain that it was he whom you suspected, as I did, and I had to make sure. That's all.'

‘How did you discover that he was Algy's brother?' said Tom.

‘That was chance, but I can't think why I never suspected it before. I was sitting looking at an old office photograph and realised how alike they were; then I remembered that poor Roger had once overheard them quarrelling and been unable to distinguish which one of them was talking – their voices were extraordinarily similar you know, except that in normal speech Algy drawled. And then it all just fell into place. I'd heard a lot about the brothers when they were at prep school and Michael Englewood really did seem to be the kind of man that pathetic Endelsham Ma. might have grown into. What'll happen now?'

‘Well, what he said to you is not admissible evidence, unfortunately, but we did finally get an identification from the tramp,' said Worth.

‘Are you telling me that Englewood hasn't confessed formally?' said Willow, astonished. ‘But that was what he was going to do.'

‘I know,' said Worth. ‘But I reminded him of his right to have a solicitor present during our interview.' He fell silent and sat turning the heavy glass tumbler round and round in his strong hands.

‘Ah,' said Willow, thinking both that she now understood the odd expression in Worth's eyes and that he was going to be immensely unpopular with his superiors for effectively silencing a confession. ‘But you have your identification.'

‘Yes, we have,' agreed Worth. ‘But whether your tramp'll identify Englewood in court and whether he'd withstand a good cross-examination, I don't know.'

‘Why? D'you think he was drunk?' At that Tom looked up at last and even smiled.

‘It helps to talk to someone intelligent,' he said. ‘Yes, and not only drunk but the kind of ill-washed homeless man who travels the tubes and trains and frightens other passengers into changing carriages; no jury is going to send a man down for life on his evidence. There's no harm in him at all and he has perfectly good eye sight and plenty of intelligence. But not a good witness.'

‘No,' agreed Willow, ‘but whatever his solicitor has done so far, I think Michael might plead guilty when it comes to court.'

‘Perhaps,' said Tom. ‘And perhaps they will get him off on self-defence.'

‘Surely not all the way off,' protested Willow, actually shocked, although a moment earlier she had been appalled by the prospect of life imprisonment that Michael Englewood faced.

‘Shouldn't have thought so. Manslaughter, probably. But it'll be a horrible case: there's the public view of Algernon Endelsham, you know, and the judge and jury will have to be convinced by the defence that he wasn't at all like that before they'll even begin to understand that pathetic man.'

Willow stood, looking down at the bowed head of Tom Worth, hardly even aware that she was thinking of his really remarkable charity: surely most investigating officers would be so pleased to have unmasked their murderer that they would hardly spare a thought for the poor chances of his defence, particularly if the Sunday paper's article was right and Tom had been put on the case because it was thought to be insoluble. Forgetting Michael Englewood for the moment, all Willow could think of was that she minded very much that Tom Worth was feeling unhappy.

He lifted his head and looked up at her for a long, silent moment.

‘What'll you do?' he asked heavily at last. ‘Will you go on at DOAP?'

‘Oh, I think so,' said Willow. ‘For the moment anyway; I've had a lot of shocks one way and another just recently; and I need to get back into my old routine before I can absorb them and decide what to do about them.' She tried to smile at him.

‘Am I one of them?' he asked gently and when she nodded silently, he added: ‘Well you don't have to worry about me. I meant it all, including the fact that I don't plan to smother you with emotion.' He stopped there and she could not think what to say next.

‘Thank you,' she said at last and from the way he smiled at her thought that he had understood her fears and her reservations.

‘Could I have some more whisky?' he said. Willow got up and poured them both more. She sat, sipping her drink, thinking about the two unhappy Endelsham brothers, and all the people who had been hurt by Algy's games: Michael Englewood, who had been driven to kill and now faced years in gaol; Amanda Gripper, desperately unhappy and stuck with her dreadful husband, who would probably resent her inheritance from Algy's estate even more than he had resented their love affair; little Emma Gnatche who had loved him too; even Richard, whose schooldays he had made miserable; and all the people who had ever worked for him and been alternately exalted and humiliated to suit his capricious pleasures. Perhaps he was better dead, she thought a little desperately.