Festering Lilies by Natasha Cooper Page B

a muted stripe that combined all the other blues and greens in the room. The chimneypiece was white marble and over it hung an oval Chippendale looking glass, which reflected the pride of her collection, a blazing Turner watercolour of sunrise over Durham Cathedral. Celadon lamps with cream-silk pleated shades cast an easy mellow light over the room, and the rose and violet colours on the cream background of the glazed chintz warmed it.
    Relaxing into the pleasure of her ritual inventory of the ravishing things her novels had bought her, Willow wandered over to the Pembroke table on which Mrs Rusham always arranged her post and messages. There was the usual collection of bills, fan letters, letters from her publisher and agent, proofs of other people’s novels with requests for comments, and a message written out in Mrs Rusham’s laborious hand:
    â€˜Mr Lawrence-Crescent telephoned to say that he will be held up at his office this evening, and so he won’t be able to arrive until about nine-thirty. Unless he hears from you to the contrary, he will still come to take you out to a new restaurant he has discovered.’
    Willow smiled as she thought of the pleasure Mrs Rusham must have had in talking to Richard Crescent on the telephone. There must be something about his very restrained good looks and well-mannered Englishness that strongly appealed to the housekeeper, for she was devoted to him and obviously considered that Willow herself treated him with far too little care.
    In fact Willow did care for Richard, who had become her first and only lover three years earlier. Despite the unparalleled physical intimacy she had achieved with him, Willow liked to keep a certain emotional detachment in their relationship, and she was fairly certain that Richard also felt safer with that than he would have with a more conventional love affair. He had let her know very early in their acquaintance that he loathed talking about his feelings and would have found it embarrassing to have to listen to hers.
    Not too displeased to have an extra couple of hours in which to prowl about her kingdom, Willow collected a second glass of sherry and a copy of a new novel she badly wanted to read and took them both with her into the bathroom, where she ran herself an enormously deep, hot bath, scented with Chanel No. 19 bath oil.
    As she lay in the fragrant water, becoming more radiant by the minute, she ignored the book and bent her mind to the question of how on earth she was to pursue the only real lead she had into the mystery of who had killed Algernon Endelsham. She wondered what Gino could have meant by saying that Mrs Gripper had been ‘terrified’? Terrified of what, or of whom? Unlike the fortunate police, Willow could not ask direct questions of anyone she suspected. Instead, she would have to dig things out without help from anyone. Clearly she was going to have to get to know Mrs Gripper quickly.
    Perhaps she could hang about outside the house in Graham Terrace Gino had talked about, and then faint across the doorstep just as the woman emerged.… Willow put that promising fantasy aside as she remembered that Mrs Gripper had not left the house even for her weekly hair appointment. For the first time in her life as Cressida, Willow thought it a pity that she had deliberately evaded all her agent’s and publisher’s attempts to introduce her to people. After all, if she had allowed them to do as they had wanted, she would probably have been able to badger a friend or acquaintance for an introduction to the apparently bereaved Mrs Gripper. Richard Crescent could have helped her to meet any number of merchant bankers and probably owners of stately homes and Scottish grouse moors, but rich gossip-column journalists were not likely to form part of his circle.
    An hour later, her skin bright pink and slightly puckered and her expensively arranged hair rather fluffy from the steam, Willow emerged from the bathroom