Page 87 of A Curious Ending

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.