Chapter 42
Lara knew that Dr Patil’s statement had even taken Abby by surprise. She was certain she heard a quickly suppressed, ‘Well I never!’
‘It’s all right, Mo. It’s kind of you, but I said when everyone arrived I was ready for this. I said whatever happened next,’ Mrs M insisted.
‘No! You don’t understand,’ Dr Patil said impatiently. ‘You cannot possibly have killed your sister.’
Mrs M stared at him. As did all the other occupants of the room.
Lara heard Joe mutter, ‘Now I’m really lost.’ However, it seemed that he had regained his appetite and she saw him reach for a sausage roll.
Lara thought everyone, with the exception of Joe, the doctor and possibly Sarah, looked anxious.
Even Kate looked worried. It struck her that someone nearby was really frightened.
Meanwhile, Abby started to pace up and down in front of the French windows.
Lara tried not to follow her with her eyes as she was sure this would look extremely odd, but she could hear Abby talking quietly to herself.
She couldn’t catch much of what she said, but she did hear her final, ‘Oh my goodness me. How could I have been so foolish. Such an elementary mistake.’
It was Sarah who voiced what everyone else was thinking, ‘How do you know she can’t have killed her?’ she demanded of the doctor.
Dr Patil turned to Mrs M. ‘You said you used the drugs I had prescribed her?’
Mrs M nodded. ‘I crushed up half a bottle.’
Dr Patil actually smiled. ‘The sleeping pills that I prescribed Elizabeth Porter were of an extremely low dose, barely more than a herbal remedy. I have always been reluctant to prescribe what is a highly addictive drug unless absolutely necessary and in my opinion Elizabeth’s insomnia was caused by mental strain.
Therefore, I believed a placebo would work just as well.
In this case a very mild sedative that would relax her and then her body would naturally do the rest.’ He turned to them all and Lara was reminded of the professional man she had visited in his surgery.
‘It was another thing that my son and I disagreed about. He felt that to “trick” a patient was ethically wrong, whereas I felt the ends justified the means.’ He turned back to Mrs M and took her hand.
‘Margaret, even if Elizabeth had taken the whole bottle, all that would have happened was she would have been extremely sleepy. They would not have killed her.’
Mrs M gasped and the gasp became a sob. She rocked on her chair and they heard her piteous cry, ‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’
‘So who did kill her?’ Joe asked the room in general.
Lara ignored the hubbub that broke out – including Richard Porter who was once more proclaiming, ‘It was suicide! Plain and simple.’ Lara only had eyes for her Kindred Spirit who had ceased her pacing and was now regarding her with an undeniably smug look on her face.
‘Lara, I need you to ask someone in this room a question. Are you ready?’
Even though she knew she would sound a little mad, Lara replied, ‘I think you will find I am always ready.’
Abigail Rossmore (deceased) bowed her head very slightly in Lara’s direction.
‘What?’ Kate asked Lara.
Lara smiled vaguely at Kate and turned to Richard Porter, repeating the words that Abby had given her. ‘Mr Porter, why did you visit your mother on the day she died?’
Everyone else stopped talking at once.
Richard looked around the room. ‘Well, that was pretty obvious and was covered at length by the coroner, during the official’ he stressed, ‘investigation.’
‘But why?’ Lara persisted.
‘It’s perfectly clear and simple. I didn’t get a reply from my mother when I called. I became worried and I went around. The rest you know. I found my mother dead.’
‘Why were you worried?’
‘I’ve told you, there was no reply.’
‘But why would you expect a reply? Lady Porter led an extremely active life. She might have been anywhere. In the flower shop, the deli…’ Lara smiled warmly at Sarah whose eyes were fixed on her. ‘She might have been having her hair done.’ This time she smiled at Kate.
Richard Porter did not say anything. He looked like a hunted animal. Which had nothing to do with the fact that Abby was now circling him.
‘The truth is, you were a pretty awful son, weren’t you?’ Lara continued.
Richard Porter did not say anything, but Lara noticed a nervous twitch at the side of his temple.
‘I don’t believe for one moment that if you’d called your mother and there had been no response you would have rushed around full of concern for her.
’ Lara stepped towards him. ‘The only reason you’d have been rushing round to see your mother was to get money from her and she had already told you there were going to be no more handouts. ’
Abby nodded approvingly at Lara. She felt enormously proud of her – it was a masterful performance. She also knew that her first instinct had been right: a leopard does not change its spots. Richard Porter had been a poor excuse for a son. That had not suddenly changed on the day his mother died.
‘So why did you go to see her that day?’ Lara insisted.
Richard went to speak but no words came out.
‘I can tell you why you went around,’ Lara continued remorselessly. ‘You went to Gillmore House because you received a phone call. It wasn’t from your mother. She was already dead.’
Richard let out an almost inaudible moan.
‘It was a call from the one person you would have gone to help. The one person I do believe you love. Your wife, Pinky. Having killed your mother, she panicked and called you because she knew you’d help her.’
Richard looked pleadingly at his wife.
She did not look at him but sat staring straight ahead.
Abby studied them both, her head on one side.
She thought back to what Thomas had told her earlier, when she had visited him to ask about Lady Porter’s final day.
He had said he saw a woman slipping into the house on the day Lady Porter had died.
She had believed he had seen Mrs M. She had thought Margaret had not wanted to leave Elizabeth to die on her own.
As it was, Mrs M had left her sister sleeping and Thomas had spotted Pinky Porter entering the premises. She sniffed. She hated to be wrong.
Independently of Abby, Lara spoke. ‘You do know that the police will be able to work out where your wife’s phone was at that exact time, on that date.’ Her tone was almost conversational.
Richard’s voice when it came was a croak, ‘She was sorry. She said it had been a mistake. She said Mother was asking for a drink of water, she was muddled and drunk again. She said she just happened to have her pills with her. She ended up crushing up a handful of pills and adding them to the water. She put too many in…’
He looked around wildly at the stunned and disbelieving faces.
Their expressions seemed to bring home to him that nobody in their right mind was going to believe this was an accident. He turned in agony towards his wife, and a cry escaped him, ‘She did it for us, for me. To protect me because of the fraud and the will.’
‘Will you SHUT up!’ Pinky roared. She was on her feet, red faced and shaking.
‘You stupid man! All you had to do was say nothing! Keep quiet! You stupid, stupid man. Do you seriously think I did it by “accident”? Of course I meant to kill the bitch. For you? For YOU?!’ Pinky all but screamed, spit flying from her mouth.
‘I didn’t do it for you. I did it for him!
’ She turned in anguish towards Julian who also leapt to his feet, but was now quickly backing away from her.
His face was a picture of pure shock. ‘Julian,’ Pinky pleaded. ‘It was for you!’
‘No!’ he cried in revulsion, as he pushed her away.
In the commotion that followed, Kate texted Rod. It was brief and to the point. ‘You need to get round here and arrest Lady Porter’s murderer’. She also had the presence of mind to record Pinky Porter’s vitriolic rant on her phone. It went on for seven and a half minutes.
Two hours later, Lara was curled up in her armchair, Sarah and Kate were on the sofa and Abby had her feet tucked under her, nestled in the second armchair.
The wood burner was lit and each had a large glass of red wine in front of them.
There was even one for Abby. When Lara had placed this beside her she had declared, ‘For absent friends.’ Sarah and Kate had toasted the empty chair, which bearing in mind all that Abby had done, Lara felt was entirely appropriate.
‘But how did you know Mrs M was her sister?’ Sarah was asking.
Taking her cue from Abby, Lara replied, ‘I think it was how upset she was at Lady Porter’s death.
Also Mrs M owned a lot of things with lace on them, and I remembered from school that Nottingham was a centre for lace making,’ Lara lied.
‘I guess also she seemed to be throwing things in my way, like not wanting to talk about Lady Porter’s family.
It did seem she had plucked “Brown” from the air, so once we…
’ Lara corrected herself, ‘Once I started properly researching the names “Abbott” and “Maggie Linton” it fell into place.’
‘You sound like you’ve done this before. Are you sure you weren’t a private detective in another life?’ Kate asked.
Lara just laughed, trying not to catch Abby’s eye. ‘Dr Patil said to me at one point you can be led astray by names. We knew he was Vishnu, but his friends called him Mo. He got me thinking too.’
Kate made a disgruntled humphing noise. ‘I could cheerfully kick Rod,’ she blurted.
Sarah and Lara both looked at her.
‘Well, all that stuff with Jason. I thought it was murder he was talking about when he mentioned Lady P.’
‘And?’ Lara queried. She was still a bit confused about exactly what the police had been investigating.
‘It was a specialised art fraud team from London that were following up on Jason, and a whole load of others. Rod told me when he’d finished handcuffing Pinky.’
‘She did put up quite a fight,’ Abby observed dreamily.
‘You know,’ Sarah reflected, ‘when she was drunk and sitting on this sofa, Pinky told us she’d done it.’
Lara and Kate looked at her in surprise. But Abby nodded at her in approval.
‘She said, “Shouldn’t have done it”. We thought as she then said Julian’s name she was talking about getting together with him, or maybe that he shouldn’t have done it.
I think she meant she shouldn’t have done it.
I also wonder now if it was Pinky that I overheard Lady Porter talking to on the phone, when she said she was going to do something about the fraud. ’
Lara nodded thoughtfully.
‘I thought she liked Lady P, the way she called her Lizzie,’ Kate mused.
‘I did think it was odd that she would steal from her when she did her shopping,’ Lara said. ‘I could never quite get my head around that.’
‘Once a thief always a thief,’ Abby commented.
‘A leopard doesn’t change its spots,’ Lara said vaguely, smiling in Abby’s direction. ‘And I know she was fluffy most of the time, but sometimes she could be pretty determined and I began to think she wasn’t so…’ Lara searched for the word.
‘Pigeon-brained?’ Abby supplied.
‘Yes, but murder?’ Sarah queried. ‘Do you think it was all because of Julian?’
‘’Fraid so,’ Lara said, as one who knew how all-consuming a Julian Armstrong infatuation could be.
‘You would never have killed for him though, Lara,’ Abby said from the sidelines.
‘I got it completely wrong,’ Kate stated. ‘I started to think it was something to do with blackmail. I knew how Lady P liked to gossip.’
Lara shook her head. ‘Mrs M told me something about that as I was leaving tonight. When Lady Porter got ill, she started taking out money for her. She didn’t want to include her sister in the will, but she wanted her left with more than the cottage and a small pension.’
‘Ah, so that’s what she meant by looking after her real family,’ Sarah commented.
‘Makes sense,’ Kate agreed. ‘Has she sold her cottage?’
‘I think so,’ Lara said, ‘but she was pretty vague about her plans. I don’t suppose she’s had much time to think about what comes next.’
‘What do you think is going to happen to Pinky?’ Sarah asked.
‘No idea,’ Lara admitted.
‘I would suggest that the Honourable Richard Porter will prove to be a better husband than he was son. Or that Pinky proved to be as a wife. I imagine he will get the best legal advice for her and what time Penny Porter spends in prison, at least she will have peace and quiet to paint,’ Abby reflected.
Lara could not share this with her friends but she did say, ‘I think it’s sad that the aunt who he clearly despised would have saved him from prison, but the wife who he clearly loved would have hung him out to dry.’
They sat in silence for a while sipping wine.
‘What was it with India and Lady P?’ Kate eventually asked. ‘I didn’t really get that.’
‘Oh, I think an imaginary place to hide. Somewhere that felt safe,’ Lara suggested. ‘Now when I look back, she told me tales of India and fed me Pink Gin when I was having a horrible time with Julian. I think for Lady Porter it represented an escape and she wanted to share that with me.’
‘I miss her,’ Kate said sadly.
Sarah and Lara nodded.
‘Her Ladyship is very proud of you all,’ Abby commented, smiling serenely at the women around her.
Lara knew she ought to feel surprise, but then nothing really surprised her about her Kindred Spirit anymore.
Having said goodbye to her friends, Lara returned to the sitting room to find Abby reading the final page of Far from the Madding Crowd.
At her entrance, Abby rose, smoothed her skirt and adjusted her hat. ‘Now, I really must be going.’
‘What, going, going?’ Lara said suddenly appalled.
‘Yes, I am afraid so,’ Abby said smiling at Lara and trying to look and sound a lot more matter-of-fact than she felt.
‘You’ll want to see Mum before you go. We could have a supper to say goodbye,’ Lara said. She sounded desperate even to her own ears.
‘I hate goodbyes, Lara,’ Abby told her.
Lara had always known Abby was going to leave.
Often she had wished she would disappear and never come back.
But now she was not going to see her again, she viewed the prospect with a rising sense of panic.
‘But we don’t know what’s going to happen with Mrs M yet,’ Lara said, anxious to think of anything to detain Abby.
‘Oh, I think that bird has flown,’ Abby said, speaking figuratively and literally.
‘How do you know?’ Lara asked suspiciously.
‘It’s a knack,’ Abby said, smiling warmly at Lara. With that she sank into a deep curtsey. ‘Lara Petunia McGregor, it has been an absolute pleasure,’ and with that she was gone. All that was left was the faint scent of gardenia.