A Forgotten Murder (Medlar Mystery 3)

“It was, but if you knew Thorpe... How do I explain? If Clive had said that, Nicky would have been furious, but Thorpe just made him laugh.” She looked at Jack. “I guess you know that you—”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said.

“What happened next?” Kate asked.

“I was invited to Oxley.” Diana paused. “I make fun of Willa, but when I look back on it, I wasn’t much better off than she was. I was a chauffeur’s daughter at a posh school. I didn’t belong with them.”

“But you did fit in with the Pack?” Sara asked.

“For a while, yes, I did. Bertie and I got on well. He knew nothing about horses but he was trying. He so desperately wanted to make enough money to repair Oxley Manor before it collapsed.”

“He didn’t like his son.” Jack sounded belligerent.

She gave him a sharp look. “Bertie spent his life trying to keep this place going, but he knew that Nicky would destroy it out of ineptitude and laziness.”

“It sounds like you all needed each other,” Kate said.

“Desperately.” Diana looked down at her hands for a moment. They were strong hands that had seen a lot of work. She looked at Sara. “I have a twenty-five-year-old son. He’ll be here soon.”

Sara blinked for a moment as she took in this news, especially considering the boy’s age. “He can play Nicky. We need—”

“No!” Diana shouted.

Sara was looking at her intensely. “How about if you and I go sit on the couch and you tell me everything that happened that night?” She aimed a pointed look at Jack and Kate.

He stood up. “Yeah, okay, we’re leaving.”

Sara took a piece of paper out of her pocket, made a few marks on it, then folded it. Jack took it and put it in his shirt pocket.

On the way out, Jack looked askance at Puck, and she nodded. He took two large bread rolls from a basket and some oranges, then he and Kate left the pretty little house and walked to the cemetery.

“So Sean was illegally selling horse semen to get money to support the woman he loved.” Jack sat down on a concrete curb and used his pocketknife to start peeling the oranges.

“And Diana was helping him.”

“That must have been a fun date.”

Kate tried to look stern but she couldn’t. “I feel sorry for Nadine. Diana said Sean gave her his suitcase, so when Nadine got there, everything was gone. She’s lived with that for years.”

“Maybe,” Jack said.

Kate didn’t reply but ate in silence. At last, she said, “So?”

“What do you mean?” He tried, but couldn’t resist a smile.

“Give me that!” She made a lunge for his shirt pocket, but he leaned away.

Kate held out her hand. With a fake gesture of capitulation, Jack removed the paper Sara had given him, handed it to her, then leaned over her shoulder as she opened it.

It was a list of characters in the play and who was to be whom.

“I’m to be Diana,” Kate said. “Horsey girl. Like I know about horses. Let’s see, the head has the eyes, right?”

“Who do you want to be?”

“Nadine, of course. Glamorous, rich, beautiful.”

“And you have the most dramatic scene of finding that the love of your life is gone.”