Page 81 of A Curious Ending

Lara knew she had finally rattled Joe. He looked like if he hadn’t been wedged in by a table and Mrs M he would have bolted. He wasn’t helped when Pinky broke in with, ‘I heard her. I heard her call him Reggie. I thought maybe she was drunk, but she definitely called you Reggie.’

Lara asked him outright, ‘Were you related to Lady Porter in any way, and I mean any way?’

‘Of course not!’ Joe exclaimed. ‘My family has farmed around here for years, you ask anyone. I never met the old girl until she moved down here. We just hit it off, that’s all.’

‘He’s right you know,’ Kate commented. ‘Everyone knows Joe’s family.’

Unexpectedly, Pinky looked up and said, ‘It’s true. I’ve painted most of their dogs.’

‘That still doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,’ Richard shot at them, bristling. ‘We only have his word he wasn’t worming his way in with Mother.’

Lara cut him short. ‘Ah, the thing is Richard we do have a very good witness. Somebody who has nothing to gain from this,’ she almost said, ‘unlike yourself.’ ‘He overheard Joe trying to persuade Lady Porter not to leave him her money.’

‘You say that—’ Richard blustered.

‘No. Thomas says that.’

‘Who the hell is this Thomas bloke?’ Richard demanded, banging the table in his frustration.

‘He is an honest man who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to gain by lying.’ Lara grinned as Abby added for her benefit, ‘It is perhaps just as well that they never meet our friend Thomas.’

‘Could we get him here?’ Dr Patil enquired eagerly. Now he was off the hook, it appeared he was taking more of an interest in who had killed the woman he had loved for so many years.

‘No, that’s not possible,’ Lara said with what she hoped was finality.

Joe and Richard started speaking at once. Joe demanding, ‘Was that it then? Do you believe me?’ And Richard talking about not being satisfied unless he saw a sworn affidavit.

Lara dealt with Joe first. ‘I don’t believe you were after her money, Joe. And I’m sure you didn’t kill her.’

He sat back in his chair and stared at the plate of cheese straws, but he seemed to have lost his appetite. Dr Patil leant towards him and said kindly, ‘It would have been her illness, the confusion, you know. And if she thought you were in any way like Reggie, it meant she held you in high regard.’

Meanwhile, Lara turned her attention to the Honourable Richard Porter. She had been looking forward to this and needed no prompting from Abby. ‘So you would be happy with a sworn affidavit?’

‘At the very least.’

‘But why would you trust a document when you know only too well they can be forged?’

‘You can’t prove it!’

At this point, Pinky Porter put her head in her hands.

‘What?! What?!’ Richard demanded, glaring around at all the people staring at him.

‘The “what”,’ Lara continued with relish, ‘is that you knew your mother was planning on making a new will. You knew this because your firm drew it up for her despite everything you said to dissuade her. Then, when on the 30th of July you brought the new will for her to sign, pretending that you had accepted the terms, you swapped the final signature page so that Lady Porter was in fact giving you power of attorney over her affairs. You then fraudulently marked each of the document’s pages with your mother’s initials, EP.’

‘You can’t prove it,’ Richard Porter repeated, but this time it was in a hoarse whisper. All the bluster appeared to have been sucked out of him, even his hair seemed flat. He was a pathetic figure and Lara saw Joe and Sarah look away as if they could not bear to watch.

Pinky reached out her hand, but did not touch her husband. ‘I think it was always going to come out. Too many people knew.’ Her eyes flicked towards Julian who was watching her with a look of calculated concentration on his face.

Richard looked at her in something like horror.

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ Lara said to Pinky. ‘You can’t keep much quiet in this town.’ This time her eyes involuntarily swept towards Julian. She concentrated back on Pinky. ‘It seems a lot of people round here knew you had money problems.’

Richard looked towards Lara with a ludicrous expression of surprise on his face. He really was a monumentally stupid man. Lara thought Pinky was right, he was always going to get caught. ‘Richard, you can’t not pay your bills without people talking about it. People don’t like being owed money for work they’ve done.’

‘It really pisses them off,’ Sarah blurted and Lara wondered how much the Porters owed The Red Pepper Deli.

‘People were also aware that Lady Porter had told you on more than one occasion not to expect any more handouts.’