Free Poison Flowers by Natasha Cooper

and had fallen into the heaviest and most comfortable sleep she could remember enjoying out of either of her beds.
    Austerely laying her handbag and large notebook on a small table in front of a hard, upright chair, she then walked to the racks that ran down the middle of the room in search of the reference books Jane Cleverholme had recommended. To that pile she then added the Architects’Yearbook.
    From her loot she discovered that there was no immediately obvious connection between the 40-year-old actress and the 35-year-old-architect. They had been born and brought up in quite different parts of the country. Simon Titchmell had lived in Fulham and Claire Ullathorne in Canonbury. They were of different ages and sexes. It struck Willow that Claire Ullathorne’s divorced husband might have been the connecting link, but when she took a chance and looked him up in Who’s Who , she found that he was a distinguished soldier, twenty years older than Simon Titchmell and on the point of retirement. They – had had no children, which made her wonder about the evidence of childbirth she had read in the post-mortem report.
    Simon Titchmell did not figure in Who’s Who , but his godfather, the retired Chief Constable, did. The entry was not particularly illuminating, although it did list his recreations as ‘fine wine, good conversation, bridge and the theatre’. Willow filed that information, away in her memory and made a note to try to find out whether the Chief Constable’s interest in the theatre had ever led him to an acquaintance with Claire Ullathorne. His son, Commander Bodmin, did not appear.
    Willow replaced the fat, red book on its shelf and instead turned to the Architects’Yearbook in search of information about Simon Titchmell. There was no indication that he had ever done any stage design, but Willow thought it just possible that he might have designed a set or two and perhaps even met Claire Ullathorne that way. Willow resolved to ask his sister that at Richard’s dinner party. Before she abandoned the reference books, she looked up the entry for the architecture practice which had first employed Simon Titchmell.
    She saw that among the projects they had completed was a complex of buildings for the Metropolitan Police and at once she began to wonder whether Commander Bodmin might have had a hand in selecting the architects, giving the work to his father’s godson’s firm and consequently believing himself vulnerable to a charge of nepotism. That information, too, was filed both in her memory and her notes, although she could not quite bring herself to believe that anyone would refuse to pursue a murder investigation because of so vague a threat.
    Having gutted the reference books, Willow tidied up her papers, took the heavy volumes back to their shelves and then made her way down to the sepulchral basement where the back copies of The Times and Country Life were kept. It was often hard to stop herself browsing through the really ancient copies of The Times , but for once she was interested enough in her current enquiry to go straight for the volumes for the past few years. Heaving the great dark-red books on to the high metal table, she read through vast numbers of theatrical, film and television reviews, finding only four that referred to Claire Ullathorne. All were favourable and the most recent was positively eulogistic. Even though she had failed to get the part she evidently wanted, she was quite successful.
    There was nothing in any of the few architectural columns about Simon Titchmell. Country Life proved more fruitful, but only to the extent of a pair of articles about large country houses that he had restored. Looking at the photographs and reading the accompanying text. Willow thought that she understood precisely why Richard had called Titchmell’s work ‘precious’, but there was nothing there to throw any light at all on why he might have been