Page 4 of A Curious Ending

Abigail nodded encouragingly.

‘I first met her, Lady Porter,’ Lara began, ‘when I’d been living here for about ten months. I’d moved down from London when I couldn’t bear it in the City any longer.’ She looked up. ‘I did a peculiar type of job to do with the stock market – long hours, masses of pressure. I seemed to spend most of my life on the phone to places like Kuwait and Mumbai. I had no personal life. In the end I hated it.’ She turned to stare into the flames of the fire as if gathering strength from them. ‘As a student I had worked all my Saturdays and holidays in a flower shop. So that, plus an evening course in floristry, convinced me that this was the fresh start I needed. Maybe it was a good idea, I don’t know anymore. I do love it but I’m so tired all the time.’ Lara felt acutely self-conscious but battled on. ‘If I think about how naïve I was when I started, and yet how full of myself...’ She grimaced. ‘I soon realised that people round here are really good gardeners and I began to see I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. But I didn’t want them to think I was this fool from London, coming down and taking on the business, so I tried to bluff my way through it. I certainly wouldn’t ask for help… And don’t,’ Lara said, changing tack suddenly, ‘say that I should have listened to my mother more.’

Abigail made soothing noises. ‘I would not dream of doing such a thing,’ she said untruthfully, glancing at Lara’s mother’s photograph.

‘Anyway,’ Lara continued, ‘while I certainly didn’t make friends, I was just beginning to find my feet with the business and I might have got over a rubbish start, but then I blew it all by getting involved with Julian Armstrong.’

Abigail raised her eyebrows enquiringly at her.

Lara drew a deep breath, wondering where to begin. She decided on a question. ‘Have you ever met a man who makes you feel sexy, attractive… funny even…?’ She did not wait for an answer. Once Lara had started she wanted to get the humiliation over with as quickly as possible. It also occurred to her that it felt surprisingly easy to talk to this woman. ‘A man,’ she continued, plunging back into her story, ‘who you find mind numbingly attractive?’ Lara now turned and studied Abigail, who was looking into the fire, but could not read the expression on her face. ‘It’s awful. To start with, I used to pretend I had flower deliveries to make just in the hope of seeing him driving around in his Range Rover.’

Abigail looked at her swiftly, but again said nothing.

Lara picked at a loose thread on a cushion. ‘I just wish I knew what he really wanted.’ She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think I’m just one of a long line of women he’s made a move on. Then there are times when I think I’ve got under his skin. Anyway, we’re having this undignified fling and for a while I thought I was his girlfriend, especially when I started hanging around with his friends. If I’m honest I didn’t really like them much but I convinced myself that they were more like the people I used know.’ Lara looked up. ‘And the stupid thing was they were just the sort of people I was trying to get away from in London.’

‘What is happening between you now?’ Abigail asked, although she instinctively knew the answer.

‘Julian is contacting me less and less and sometimes when we meet he acts like nothing has really gone on between us. Then he messages me late at night and… I know I’m an idiot to go back for more, he is just so…’ Lara couldn’t finish. ‘It’s been dragging on like this for months,’ Lara confessed in shame.

‘Do you think he could be our murderer?’ Abigail asked hopefully, perking up.

Lara laughed. ‘No, but if you would like to wreak revenge on him for being a complete shit, feel free.’

Abigail did not answer but looked thoughtful.

‘Anyway,’ Lara continued, ‘too late, I began to work out that he wasn’t that popular, or at least not with the few people I’d met, who I would have liked to get to know. So I guess they assume I’m just like him. Plus they see me as a complete fool for falling for him.’ Lara took a deep breath, in the manner of one making a full confession (maybe, she thought, you did that with ghosts?) ‘And the worst of it is that when I see him, I still feel myself weakening and then I find it hard to be angry with him.’

‘Oh, I think we can do something about that,’ Abigail said, as one warming to a task. ‘But tell me, how does Julian fit in with Lady Porter?’

‘It all started to unravel about three months after I started doing her flowers,’ Lara recommenced her story. ‘She loved having them all around the house and liked me to come in and arrange them for her. Mrs M, her housekeeper, was good at keeping the plants alive but not so good at seeing what colours would look good where. It was fun. Lady Porter would follow me around the house chatting and then we would drink really strong espressos and eat Florentines in her kitchen. Sometimes Mrs M would join us, and that was fun too. They were so different but seemed really close. I guess she had worked for her for years.’ Lara could picture the sunny room, the three of them at the table, and almost feel the breeze from the French windows that opened into the garden. ‘With all the stuff going on with Julian, Lady Porter noticed how awful I looked and asked me about it. And suddenly I was crying and I couldn’t seem to stop. She was so kind, and funny at the same time.’ Lara felt her eyes filling up. ‘She had lived her early life in India and when we were alone, she was always telling me stories about her time there. You know the sort of thing…’ then thought, perhaps this ghost didn’t. She knew so little about her. After hesitating, Lara continued, ‘Tigers, elephants, the days of the Raj. She made it sound like a fairy story. Anyway, Lady Porter decided that what I needed was a Pink Gin, it was what she always drank as a young woman. And it became quite a habit, so I would often pop in for one after work. That’s how we became friends. She was my only friend really. She lives in… lived in Gillmore House, which is a large Georgian house that overlooks the Market Square, opposite my shop. Lady Porter was in her seventies, but was very stylish, and I never felt the age difference.’

‘I think she sounds like a lady of rare breeding. And very thoughtful,’ Abigail said appreciatively.

‘Oh she was!’ Lara said with great feeling ‘I was so lonely and felt so useless. I knew lots of people were talking about me behind my back – but she made me laugh and forget everything for a while.’

‘Did she know Julian?’ Abigail asked – she was interested to hear what Lady Porter had to say about him.

‘I think that’s one of the few times I ever heard her say anything remotely crude,’ Lara reminisced, ‘she said “Darling, he was a snotty little boy, he was a greasy teenager and he has grown up to be a complete wanker.’” As Lara finished she fervently hoped that her guest did not ask her what a wanker was. She also knew that even though she criticised Julian, Lady Porter never made her feel foolish for not being able to get over him.

‘Tell me about how Lady Porter died,’ Abigail suggested, moving on.

‘She died of an overdose of sleeping pills – that was about two months ago, at the end of August. The coroner concluded a probable suicide. There was talk of “deterioration consistent with a woman of her age” but no cancer or heart problems that might have killed her. And there was nothing to suggest a suspicious death. She was found by her son, Richard, who had been trying to ring her but hadn’t got any answer. It was Mrs M’s day off. He said as he was worried he decided to walk over at lunchtime. He runs a solicitor’s practice in town and his office is in the High Street,’ Lara explained. She sighed, ‘I remember that afternoon as it had turned suddenly cold. When I heard the news I remember thinking that as she slept and died the season died with her.’ Lara’s hands were shaking as she spoke.

The two women sat watching the fire for some moments. Abigail was the first to speak, ‘Did Lady Porter have a husband?’ She hated to be commonplace, but experience had taught her that one should never ignore husbands when it came to suspicious deaths.

‘No,’ Lara told her, ‘well that is, she did, but Lord Porter died about thirty years ago. I don’t think he was that old. And I do know Lady Porter was devastated. He made his money in printing and the main printing works they had at that time were in Nottingham. When he died, Lady Porter sold the business and moved to this part of the country to get away from the memories.’ Lara paused. ‘Mrs M told me some of this.’

So much for the husband, Abigail thought. ‘You mention a son, Richard. Were there other family?’

‘No grandchildren,’ Lara confirmed. ‘But Richard is married to Penny, one of our local artists. She’s not bad, if you like paintings of dogs and horses. She’s quite a few years younger than him and runs her studio from their house.’

Lara looked thoughtful.

‘Was Lady Porter’s death completely unexpected?’ was her next question. ‘For example, do you know if she left a note of her intentions?’

Lara shook her head. ‘I definitely know there wasn’t a note. I would have heard if there was. That’s the thing about being a florist, you spend a lot of time in other people’s homes and offices, in restaurants and hotels, churches, even at the undertakers – everywhere really. You would be astonished at what I overhear. And I would certainly have heard if she’d left a note or letter.’

Abigail considered this. ‘That is extremely interesting. I have observed in the past how people ignore the staff around them. To many people, servants and waiting staff simply form part of the inanimate landscape. So short sighted, I have always felt. I recall in a previous investigation how Doris, who worked at Betty’s tearoom in Harrogate, helped to apprehend Tubby Macgillycuddy in ’44,’ Abigail warmed to her subject, ‘but in 192 years I had not considered just how useful a florist might be.’