Mrs. Pargeter's Plot (22 page)

Nigel Merriman stopped his circuit of the room and nodded smugly. He was now standing between his quarry and the outer door. ‘Yes, I was one of the people involved in events in Streatham, Mrs Pargeter. Though – perhaps luckily for me – your husband was never made aware of my participation.'

He was impervious to the look of undiluted hatred that she trained on him. Nor was he aware of the tiny change that came into her expression as she noticed a slight movement behind him. Mrs Pargeter looked firmly into the solicitor's eyes to absorb his concentration, but still her peripheral vision watched in fascination what was happening to the outer door.

A tiny hand, at the end of a tiny fur-covered arm, was reaching in through the door's letter-box. Slowly, the hand snaked towards the large key in the lock.

‘You won't get away with killing me, Nigel,' said Mrs Pargeter, desperate to monopolize his attention. ‘I've got a lot of friends – a lot of my late husband's former colleagues – who'll come after you and find you.'

The solicitor let out a little dry laugh. ‘I don't think they'll find me where I'm going, Mrs Pargeter. We've got the perfect bolt-hole, don't you worry. This whole thing has been worked out in rather a lot of detail – and I'm particularly good on detail. One of the benefits of my legal training.'

Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Pargeter saw the tiny fingers extract the key from its lock, and saw the hand slowly withdraw. As the metal scraped against the frame of the letter-box, she was terrified that Nigel Merriman would hear, but he was far too jubilantly caught up in his triumph to notice anything else.

‘No, I'm sorry,' he continued. ‘You just represent too much of a risk for us to contemplate your getting out of this alive.' He raised the automatic pistol till the end of its barrel was only millimetres away from her temple.

‘So now,' he said, his voice laden down with mock-regret, ‘I'm afraid, Mrs Pargeter, the time has come to—'

The lights in the room were suddenly out. Mrs Pargeter felt herself falling as her chair was knocked violently sideways. There was a confusion of thumps, shouts, a gunshot and, above everything, the gleeful chattering of a triumphant marmoset.

The tables had been very effectively turned. The restraining ropes now attached Clickety Clark, Blunt and Nigel Merriman to office chairs. And since the three of them had proved unwilling to maintain a voluntary silence, the decision had been taken to affix firm strips of plaster across their mouths.

Mrs Pargeter beamed with satisfaction at the handiwork of her saviours. Truffler Mason, Gary and Hedgeclipper Clinton looked becomingly modest, but there was an undeniable air of satisfaction about their demeanour too. Erasmus was more overt in his triumphalism. He seemed to understand the importance of his contribution to the rescue, and circled the office in a continuing lap of honour, chattering self-congratulation, as he leapt from desks, chairs, and the heads of the three trussed malefactors.

Truffler surveyed the scene with that gaze of desolation which those who knew him well recognized as euphoria. ‘You know, Mrs Pargeter, it has to be said that your late husband did teach us how to do certain things extraordinarily well.'

‘Yes. Yes, he did,' she agreed, perhaps for a moment a mite tearful. But she shook herself briskly out of sentimentality. ‘I still can't believe my good fortune that you lot arrived when you did.'

‘Wasn't good fortune,' said Truffler. ‘It was research. I said I'd find out whether Clickety Clark and Blunt were acting on their own or whether they weren't. And I found out they weren't.' He looked across at Nigel Merriman with unqualified distaste. ‘And I found out who their puppet-master was.
And
I found out that he'd been involved in Streatham.'

Mrs Pargeter calmed the rising belligerence in his tone. ‘No personal revenge, Truffler. As usual, we'll go through the official channels . . .'

There was a sound – not so definite as a groan, more a sigh – of dissent and disappointment from her three rescuers.

‘. . . like the law-abiding citizens we are,' Mrs Pargeter concluded firmly. Then a sheepish expression came into her face. ‘Mind you, I am rather ashamed that I had to be rescued by a monkey.'

‘Particularly after all the nasty things you said about Erasmus.' Hedgeclipper Clinton's tone was reproving. The marmoset, apparently reacting to the mention of his name, jumped from the top of Nigel Merriman's head on to his owner's shoulder, and sat there looking pious and self-righteous. ‘I haven't actually heard you say a proper thank-you to him yet, Mrs Pargeter,' Hedgeclipper prompted.

She looked balefully at the monkey. It returned an unflinching stare. The two of them were never going to like each other, but maybe some kind of mutual respect might in time evolve. ‘Thank you very much, Erasmus,' Mrs Pargeter mumbled. Then, relieved to have got that unpalatable task out of the way, she moved swiftly on. ‘All right, Truffler, let's get to work.'

‘Certainly.' His resentment of a few moments before instantly forgotten, the detective moved across the office and coiled his long body into a chair facing a word processor, which he switched on. ‘OK. Ready to go.'

‘We need all the evidence spelled out in minute detail.'

‘Don't worry, Mrs P. I'm used to doing that. What distinguishes a good detective from an indifferent one is the kind of report he writes and, though I say it myself, I do write a bloody good report. Going to take some time, though.'

‘We can wait.' Mrs Pargeter looked around the room. ‘Be nicer if we had a drink while we sit waiting, though, wouldn't it?' She looked across at Nigel Merriman, whose dull eyes glared loathing over his plaster-covered mouth. ‘Too much to hope that you'd have a nice little drinks fridge for your clients, eh, Nigel? Far too tight-fisted, I imagine.'

Something in the solicitor's body language confirmed that her guess had been correct. ‘Oh well, never mind.'

‘Mrs Pargeter, allow me,' said Hedgeclipper Clinton, his hotelier manner at its most unctuous. In his managerial black jacket and pinstripes, he looked entirely at home in a solicitor's office. The image, as ever, was only let down by the marmoset on his shoulder.

He reached a telephone from the desk and punched in a number. ‘Ah, Mario, could you do me a special delivery? Yes, sort of room service, though the room in question is not actually in the hotel.' He gave Nigel Merriman's address. ‘Three bottles of the Dom Perignon . . . The ‘48, yes. Very cold. Four of the crystal goblets . . .'

His eyebrows responded to Gary's upraised hand. ‘Hm?'

‘Could we have some mineral water, and all? 'Cause I'm driving.'

‘Of course. Still or sparkling?'

‘Sparkling, please.'

‘Mario,' Hedgeclipper continued into the receiver, ‘could we add a bottle of sparkling mineral water . . . Oh, and some of those more-money-than-sense-customer wedding snacks . . . Yes, you know, the Japanese titbits . . . Smoked salmon, obviously . . . The quails' eggs, and the caviar, yes – red and black . . . I think that's probably it . . .' A frenetic screeching from his shoulder made him aware of an omission. ‘Oh, and an extremely large bunch of bananas. Soon as possible, Mario, thank you.'

He put the phone down and beamed across at Mrs Pargeter. ‘Be about ten minutes. Then we'll have a little something to sip and nibble while we wait for Truffler to complete his
magnum opus
.'

There was a contented silence in the office, interrupted only by the plastic clacking of Truffler Mason's fingers on the keyboard, and the scratching of Erasmus's claws as he explored Clickety Clark's thinning hair for nits.

‘Presumably, once it's all written up, you'll hand it over to the filth – er, the police authorities?' asked Hedgeclipper Clinton.

Mrs Pargeter nodded. ‘That's right. Direct them here.' She gestured to Nigel Merriman's desk, on which the piles of banknotes and the half-filled briefcases lay exactly where they had when the lights went out. ‘I think that lot'll probably help to convince them too.'

‘Imagine so,' said Gary with a grin. ‘I haven't seen that much loot since the famous occasion in that Ponders End depository when Mr Pargeter got the . . .' He caught a look from Mrs Pargeter and seemed suddenly to lose his thread. He began studiously buffing the badge on his peaked cap.

‘So spell it all out, Truffler,' she continued serenely, as if the recent moment of potential unpleasantness had never happened.

‘Will do.'

‘We don't want any room for ambiguity.'

‘Don't worry,' said the detective without pausing in his task. ‘I'll do it so's a ten-year-old child could understand it.'

Mrs Pargeter looked dubious. ‘Truffler, could you make that a five-year-old child? We are dealing with the police here, after all.'

Truffler Mason nodded and continued typing.

The Rolls-Royce, once again gleaming and free of its wedding encumbrances, was parked on a double yellow line directly outside Bow Street Police Station. Gary drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Hedgeclipper Clinton sat tensely forward in the back seat. Even Erasmus seemed subdued. Only Mrs Pargeter was serenely relaxed, leaning back against the car's luxurious upholstery with a vodka Campari in her hand.

‘He's been in there a long time,' Gary murmured after a silence. ‘You don't think they've nicked him, do you?'

‘What on earth could they nick him for?' asked Mrs Pargeter reasonably. ‘Truffler's got no form, no previous convictions, and what he's doing at the moment is certainly not illegal. It's the act of a public-spirited, law-abiding citizen. The police should fall over themselves to welcome people like that. Save them a lot of effort if every member of the public started doing their job for them.'

‘Hm.' Gary didn't look entirely convinced. ‘I don't know. I still don't like it. Going voluntarily into a police station . . . well, doesn't feel natural. Looks to me like asking for trouble.'

‘That attitude,' said Mrs Pargeter with some asperity, ‘is a hangover from your past, young Gary. And it's something you should very definitely have grown out of by now.'

‘Yes, all right,' he mumbled truculently.

‘Truffler's too canny to say the wrong thing, anyway. Isn't he?' said Hedgeclipper Clinton, without complete conviction.

‘Of course he is. Honestly, what's got into you two? You're behaving like a pair of teenage girls at their first dance. Truffler had to see to it personally that the dossier got into the hands of the right person, and that's what he's doing. There won't be any problem.'

At that moment a familiar tall figure emerged from the doors of the police station and walked in a leisurely fashion towards the Rolls-Royce.

‘See?' said Mrs Pargeter.

Gary started the engine as Truffler settled into the back seat between Hedgeclipper Clinton and his employer. ‘They took it all right?' she asked.

‘No problem,' Truffler replied.

‘And you're sure they'll act on it straight away?'

‘Oh yes. They're raring to go. I should think a squad car's arriving at Nigel Merriman's office even as we speak.'

He sounded so confident, Mrs Pargeter couldn't help asking, ‘What did you say?'

Truffler gave a wolfish grin. ‘I told them it was three certain arrests, couple of percentage points up on the local clear-up rate, and a good chance of an OBE for the officer in charge.'

‘Lovely, Truffler.'

‘But they can't've just let you walk out. Didn't they demand you give them a contact number?' asked Hedgeclipper Clinton, still uneasy.

‘'Course they did.'

‘So did you give them one?'

‘'Course I did.'

Mrs Pargeter smiled in pleasant anticipation. ‘And who will they get through to if they ring it, Truffler?'

‘London Zoo, Mrs P. Then they can have a chat with some of Erasmus's relatives, can't they?'

Mrs Pargeter chuckled as the Rolls-Royce drove off into the night.

The following day, Truffler Mason had a piece of good news. The manager of the betting shop beneath his office told him that a lot of papers had been found stuffed into a skip in their back yard. On inspection, these turned out to be all the detective's tatty old records, complete to the last scribbled bus ticket.

Truffler was ecstatic. True, some of the precious dust on his papers had been dislodged in their removal, but he felt confident that that would be replaced in time. Even after such a few days, the gleam had already gone from his new office furniture, and the surfaces were beginning to get comfortably cluttered with shreds of paper, newspaper clippings and encrusted coffee cups.

Truffler decided, however, that he would not entirely reject Fossilface O'Donahue's misplaced generosity. Though the detective himself would never change his old methods of finding information, after the scare of believing he'd lost the lot he could recognize the value of having his irreplaceable archive backed up on computer.

To that end he dispatched Bronwen off on a month's computer course. As a matter of fact, his motives for doing this were not unmixed. While he certainly did want to get his archive computerized, he could also see the advantages of having his secretary out of the office until she'd calmed down a little after the courtroom encounter with her latest ex-husband.

In fact, as things turned out, Truffler didn't gain much from his actions. On the course Bronwen met another man who, by the time she came back to the office, she was clearly lining up to be her next husband.

Truffler Mason resigned himself to the prospect of history repeating itself again . . . and again . . . and again . . .