Read Online Poison Flowers by Natasha Cooper - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Natasha Cooper
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âBut sheâs bound to have been in The Stage .â
âYou are a mine of information, Jane. Thank you.â
âIâll ring you if I find anything in the library,â she said.
âAnd then we can have another of our dinners,â answered Willow gratefully. âGood bye, Jane.â
As soon as Jane had replaced her receiver and Willow could hear the dialling tone again, she tapped in Tom Worthâs home number. As she expected she was answered by his machine and carefully dictated into it the message she had planned:
âTom, Cressida here. Can you get me in touch with the PC who dealt with the Titchmell burglary? I need to find out everything he heard and thought about Titchmell and his girlfriend, and his house and the break-in. Thatâs all for the moment. Oh, and would you like to come to Sunday lunch here?â
That done she decided to go straight to Christieâs to see whether there was anything in the sale that might take the place of her ruined furniture. The sale rooms were conveniently close to the London Library, of which she was a member, and so she could consult whatever reference books they had while she was in St Jamesâs.
It hardly seemed worth while getting her car out of the garage just to drive it ten minutes across London only to struggle to find a parking space, and so she asked Mrs Rusham to ring for a taxi while she herself went to tidy her face and hair and get a jacket. The weather had been almost miraculously warm for April, but it might well change.
On that thought Willow pulled a straight-cut navy blue coat out of the cupboard instead of the jacket she had planned to wear and slung it round her shoulders.
It occurred to her as she took a quick, derisively admiring look at her reflection in the long glass in her bedroom, that a longish string of pearls would have gone well with the dress and lightened the heavy colour mixture, but she had none. When she had first been able to afford real jewellery she had wanted gold and diamonds and emeralds; the quieter charms of pearls had seemed less attractive. If the new book sold well, perhaps she should give herself some pearls at last.
âThe taxiâs downstairs, Miss Woodruffe,â called Mrs Rusham, and Willow went down to the street.
The large first-floor room in Christieâs main building was full of dealers, sightseers and a few private buyers when Willow arrived. She bought a catalogue and unscrewed her fat black Mont Blanc pen ready to mark anything she liked.
Some of the estimates were way out of her price range, but she found a charming eighteenth-century folding card table made of kingwood that she liked and fell badly in love with a superb seventeenth-century walnut secretaire. It was of much better quality than the bureau bookcase she had had before, and according to the catalogue the cloudy looking glass on its doors was original, as were the two perfectly preserved candlesticks. The estimate in the catalogue was high.
Quickly working out in her head precisely what she would receive of her publisherâs latest advance after the Inland Revenue had had their share, Willow decided that she could afford an extravagance and went to leave bids for the two pieces.
âShaking a little at the prospect of spending so much money and feeling for a disconcerting moment more like the frugal Willow King than the freely extravagant Cressida Woodruffe, she walked out of Christieâs and turned left along King Street and left again into St Jamesâs Square. She had joined the London Library after her first book had been published and loved the stateliness of it as well as the enormous convenience it offered.
Taking the creaking, groaning lift up to the first floor, she walked into the reading room as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the elderly gentlemen reading newspapers and journals in the low red-leather chairs. Willow herself had once spent a morning in one of those chairs
âYou are a mine of information, Jane. Thank you.â
âIâll ring you if I find anything in the library,â she said.
âAnd then we can have another of our dinners,â answered Willow gratefully. âGood bye, Jane.â
As soon as Jane had replaced her receiver and Willow could hear the dialling tone again, she tapped in Tom Worthâs home number. As she expected she was answered by his machine and carefully dictated into it the message she had planned:
âTom, Cressida here. Can you get me in touch with the PC who dealt with the Titchmell burglary? I need to find out everything he heard and thought about Titchmell and his girlfriend, and his house and the break-in. Thatâs all for the moment. Oh, and would you like to come to Sunday lunch here?â
That done she decided to go straight to Christieâs to see whether there was anything in the sale that might take the place of her ruined furniture. The sale rooms were conveniently close to the London Library, of which she was a member, and so she could consult whatever reference books they had while she was in St Jamesâs.
It hardly seemed worth while getting her car out of the garage just to drive it ten minutes across London only to struggle to find a parking space, and so she asked Mrs Rusham to ring for a taxi while she herself went to tidy her face and hair and get a jacket. The weather had been almost miraculously warm for April, but it might well change.
On that thought Willow pulled a straight-cut navy blue coat out of the cupboard instead of the jacket she had planned to wear and slung it round her shoulders.
It occurred to her as she took a quick, derisively admiring look at her reflection in the long glass in her bedroom, that a longish string of pearls would have gone well with the dress and lightened the heavy colour mixture, but she had none. When she had first been able to afford real jewellery she had wanted gold and diamonds and emeralds; the quieter charms of pearls had seemed less attractive. If the new book sold well, perhaps she should give herself some pearls at last.
âThe taxiâs downstairs, Miss Woodruffe,â called Mrs Rusham, and Willow went down to the street.
The large first-floor room in Christieâs main building was full of dealers, sightseers and a few private buyers when Willow arrived. She bought a catalogue and unscrewed her fat black Mont Blanc pen ready to mark anything she liked.
Some of the estimates were way out of her price range, but she found a charming eighteenth-century folding card table made of kingwood that she liked and fell badly in love with a superb seventeenth-century walnut secretaire. It was of much better quality than the bureau bookcase she had had before, and according to the catalogue the cloudy looking glass on its doors was original, as were the two perfectly preserved candlesticks. The estimate in the catalogue was high.
Quickly working out in her head precisely what she would receive of her publisherâs latest advance after the Inland Revenue had had their share, Willow decided that she could afford an extravagance and went to leave bids for the two pieces.
âShaking a little at the prospect of spending so much money and feeling for a disconcerting moment more like the frugal Willow King than the freely extravagant Cressida Woodruffe, she walked out of Christieâs and turned left along King Street and left again into St Jamesâs Square. She had joined the London Library after her first book had been published and loved the stateliness of it as well as the enormous convenience it offered.
Taking the creaking, groaning lift up to the first floor, she walked into the reading room as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the elderly gentlemen reading newspapers and journals in the low red-leather chairs. Willow herself had once spent a morning in one of those chairs
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