He wanted me to say that I'd observed financial mismanagement, that I had personal knowledge the household was unstable. He paused. I told him I had no such knowledge. He said he'd make it worth my while financially to to remember differently. The kitchen was quiet.
He offered you money to lie about us, Thomas said. Yes, Gerald said. And you came here instead, Clare said. Gerald looked at her. My father knew your father," he said to Thomas.
"And what Whitmore has been doing to families in this county?" He stopped, shook his head. I'm not the only one he's approached. I think you need to know that. I think Daryl needs to know that.
Thomas looked at Clare. This was not the end. This was a new dimension of it. Whitmore, having lost the direct approach, was trying to buy testimony, which meant he was not done, which meant the board meeting and Holts report and the revised mortgage terms had hurt him, but not stopped him. "Will you put that in writing," Clare said to Gerald.
"What he offered you, what he asked for?" Gerald Pratt looked at her. "That's why I came," he said. "I already wrote it down. I brought a copy for Darrow."
He reached into his coat and produced a folded paper. And I talked to my brother and to James Hadley. They've had similar conversations with Whitmore's people in the past month. Clare took the paper. She looked at it.
She looked at Thomas. This is different from the bad faith argument. She said, "This is attempted subnation of testimony. This is this is criminal," Darl said. When they were in his office in Milbrook the following morning, he read Gerald Pratt's statement and the two similar statements from the Hadley family and the widow Jansen and he set them on his desk with the careful precision of a man handling something significant.
This changes the entire picture. Can he be prosecuted? Thomas said, "That depends on the territorial prosecutor," Darrow said carefully. And on how many witnesses are willing to make formal statements and on political considerations I cannot entirely predict. He paused.
What I can tell you is that with these statements combined with the Kettleworth correspondence and the timeline of the welfare complaint, I can file a formal complaint with the territorial court that will make Richard Whitmore's practices a matter of public record regardless of what the prosecutor decides to do with it. Public record. Clare said, "Everything he's done," Darl said. "On the record, unavoidable." He looked at them both over his spectacles.