Mrs. Pargeter's Plot (3 page)

‘No, that was strange. He hardly said a word when the police come. Went all quiet – almost like he was afraid of something.'

The private detective rubbed his long chin thoughtfully, as she went on, ‘Anyway, I'm sure that this killing's not Concrete Jacket's style. If he was going to do away with someone – and I somehow can't imagine he ever would – but
if
he did, he'd go for a method a bit more subtle than a bullet in the back of the neck. And he'd get rid of the body somewhere way off his own patch. He knows all the rules about not fouling your own footpath.'

‘He wouldn't do it, anyway, Mrs P. – not murder. Wouldn't do anything seriously wonky these days. Concrete's been pretty well straight ever since your husband, er . . .' Truffler's words petered out in another apologetic little cough.

Mrs Pargeter gracefully skirted round the potential embarrassment by ignoring it. ‘You're right. He might rip off the odd sub-contractor, overcharge a client or play fast and loose with his
VAT
returns, but that's normal business practice in the building trade. He'd never get involved in murder, though. No, somebody's framed him good and proper. They knew he was going to be at the site at that time and tipped off the police. Rozzers'd got all the details – arrested him straight away, no arguments. And, of course, it doesn't help that Concrete's got form.'

Truffler's reaction was instinctive. ‘Who hasn't?'

The violet-blue surface of Mrs Pargeter's eyes frosted over. ‘I wouldn't know.'

Truffler hastened to cover up his
faux pas.
‘No. No, of course you wouldn't.' A fond and misty expression spread down his long face. ‘Ah, when I think back to all those times working with your husband . . . He was a prince among men, Mrs Pargeter, a real prince.'

Mrs Pargeter, finding the emotion contagious, nodded.

‘Taught me the lot. I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now without Mr Pargeter, you know. He taught me how to apply the talents I had to crime.' He corrected himself. ‘The
solution
of crime, that is. No, he was a diamond.' But this was no time for nostalgia. Truffler straightened up in his chair. ‘Police didn't happen to let drop who the stiff was, did they?'

‘No. I tried to get it out of them, but they went all very strait-laced Mr Plod on me. “We are conducting our enquiries in our own way, thank you very much, Madam, and we're not in the habit of giving members of the public privileged information.” No sense of humour, the police, never did have.'

‘Leave it with me,' said Truffler. ‘I'll get the full history on the dead geezer – right down to his collar size and his favourite flavour of crisps. And don't you worry about a thing, Mrs P. We'll get Concrete off the hook, no problem.'

‘I hope so,' said Mrs Pargeter, rising to leave. ‘Otherwise I'm never going to get my house finished.'

‘You, er . . . wouldn't think of using another builder?'

She looked affronted. ‘No, Truffler. I do have my standards of loyalty, you know.'

‘Yes, of course you do. Sorry.' Truffler once again uncoiled himself from his chair to see her to the door. ‘Oh, one point. Where do I contact you? You renting a place at the moment or what?'

‘I'm at Greene's Hotel for the foreseeable.'

‘Hedgeclipper Clinton's place?'

‘That's right.'

‘I hope he's looking after you properly.'

‘I'm being spoilt rotten.'

‘Great. You deserve it.'

As soon as the door opened, they were aware of the continuing Welsh saga of masculine perfidy. ‘. . . and then, to cap it all, I get home yesterday and there's a message on the answerphone from him, asking if I could take two of his suits to the dry cleaners. “Don't worry, I'll pick them up and pay for them when I get back from Mauritius,” he says. The bloody nerve! Well, I took them somewhere, you'd better believe it – but it wasn't the dry cleaners. No, I put them in a couple of half-empty bags of organic fertilizer and took them down the municipal tip with all the rubbish I cleared from the back garden. Let him pick them up from there when he gets “back from Mauritius”. Honestly, you'd never believe that this was the man who . . .'

Bronwen was completely oblivious of their presence. Truffler gave an apologetic shrug as he saw his guest through the outer door.

‘Does she ever do any work?' asked Mrs Pargeter curiously.

The detective looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, I'm sure she will get back to working properly soon. She's a bit upset at the moment, what with the divorce and that, so, you know, I don't want to press it.'

Mrs Pargeter shook her head. ‘You're too soft. Remember, you're running a business here, Truffler, and the recession's still not completely bottomed out.'

He hung his head sheepishly. ‘Nah, you're right.' Although Bronwen was far too preoccupied with her own grievances to be listening, he lowered his voice. ‘Thing is with her, apart from anything else, we haven't got any of the right work going, so there's not that much she could be doing at the moment. When we get one of her speciality cases, she'll be on to it like a terrier, work her little socks off, no one can touch her.'

‘What are her speciality cases?'

‘Matrimonial.'

‘Ah, that would figure.'

‘Worth her weight in gold, Bronwen is, when we've got some poor little wife suspects her husband's doing naughties. Do you know, she once staked out a motel for a whole month, twenty-four hours a day, and produced this great dossier of all the times the man in question went in and out. Every single detail, lovely piece of work it was.'

‘So then she presented the wife with evidence of adultery, did she?'

Truffler coloured. ‘Well, no. Trouble is, the wife hadn't told her the husband actually
worked
at the motel as a chef, but I merely mention it to show how hard-working Bronwen can be when she's got the right sort of case.'

‘Fine,' said Mrs Pargeter. ‘You've convinced me. Cheerio, Truffler. Be in touch.'

‘. . . and if I could have threaded barbed wire into his boxer shorts, I would've!' were the last Welsh words she heard as the door closed behind her.

Downstairs Gary was perched on a stool watching the horses getting into the stalls for 4.00 at Lingfield. Rising to his feet as Mrs Pargeter approached, he reached into his pocket and handed her a bundle of fifty-pound notes.

‘Had you heard something from the yard about that horse Prior Convictions?'

‘No,' Mrs Pargeter replied with a little smile. ‘Just liked the name.'

The mid-morning sun fell on the windows of Greene's Hotel, but the curtains of Mrs Pargeter's suite were far too opulent to allow any of it in. She lay in the bedroom, under the mound of her duvet, exhaling evenly with a sound that was just the gracious side of a snore.

The suite was decorated with gratuitous antiques to appeal to the American guests who formed the backbone of Hedgeclipper Clinton's clientele. In heavy frames on the wall hung assemblages of fruit and dead poultry, interspersed with eighteenth-century portraits of unmemorable people's even less memorable relatives. The carpet and curtains were deep, as was the shine on the dark oak furniture and the brass light fittings.

Mrs Pargeter had made no attempt to impose her own style on the rooms. All her furniture was in store. The stay at Greene's Hotel had been originally intended as a short one, but comfort and convenience had kept her longer. She had then decided that she might as well stay until her house was completed, and had not yet reassessed the situation since recent events had moved that horizon yet nearer to infinity.

The only personal touch in the suite was a silver-framed photograph on Mrs Pargeter's bedside table. It was a studio portrait of a highly respectable-looking gentleman in a pinstriped suit.

The telephone – in the tasteful antique style which would have been the automatic selection of any Regency gentleman, had telephones been available in those times – rang, summoning Mrs Pargeter from a blissful dream of sunlight and strawberries. As she reached blearily towards the bedside table, her eye caught the photograph. ‘Morning, love,' she said to the late Mr Pargeter.

She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?'

‘Mrs Pargeter,' said the French-polished tones of the hotel's manager.

‘Morning, Hedgeclipper.'

This was greeted by a discreet admonitory cough. ‘I believe I did request you not to use that name within the purlieus of the hotel, Mrs Pargeter.'

‘Oh yes, forgive me. Half asleep.'

‘Well, I'm very sorry to have been the cause of the interruption of your slumbers, but there's a gentleman down here in the foyer who wishes to see you as a matter of some urgency.'

‘That sounds exciting. Who is he?'

‘His name is Mr Nigel Merriman.'

‘Doesn't ring a bell. Should I know him?'

The poshness of Hedgeclipper Clinton's accent slipped instantly away, to reveal the original Bermondsey beneath. ‘He's only Concrete Jacket's bloomin' solicitor, isn't he?'

Once she was dressed, Mrs Pargeter would have gone straight downstairs to breakfast and Nigel Merriman had she not found something rather unusual in the sitting room of her suite.

It was a monkey.

She thought she'd heard some rather strange noises while she was dressing, but put them down to a quirk of the hotel's air conditioning or some extravagance of one of the other guests. (It took only a short stay in Greene's Hotel for the average person to become extremely broad-minded about the behaviour of other guests, and of course, when it came to broad-mindedness, Mrs Pargeter had a considerable head start over the average person.)

But when she went through to the sitting room, the noises – pitched somewhere between a chatter and a whimper – were immediately explained.

It was a nice enough little monkey, if you happen to like monkeys (which Mrs Pargeter decidedly didn't). It was about the size of a rat (and to her mind the similarities didn't stop there) with brownish fur and a doom-laden little old man's face. Had Mrs Pargeter had any interest in the subject, she might have recognized from its size and colouring, or from the fact that its hind limbs were 25 per cent longer than its forelimbs, that she was looking at a South American marmoset, a member of the
Callitrichidae
family, from the suborder
Anthropoidea
of the Primate order. However, nothing could have interested her less, so she neither knew nor cared.

Around the creature's neck was a padded crimson velvet collar, to which had been attached a silver chain. The loop at the end of the chain had been slipped round the leg of a heavy oak dresser. Scratches on the wood and surrounding carpet suggested that the monkey had tried to break free, but without success.

Its reaction to Mrs Pargeter's entrance was one of excitement rather than fear. Here, it seemed to feel, was not a threat, but a potential saviour – or even playmate. This suggested that the animal was accustomed to human society, and had possibly been someone's pet.

The monkey rose up on its hind legs – clearly a party trick for Mrs Pargeter's benefit – and chattered in an almost human manner. One thin-fingered hand tugged pitifully at its chain, while the dark eyes looked up appealingly into hers. ‘Set me free,' it seemed to be saying. ‘Set me free.'

‘In your dreams, sweetheart,' said Mrs Pargeter, as she left the room.

Hedgeclipper Clinton was by Reception when she emerged from the lift into the foyer. He gave her a smile of unctuous sincerity.

‘There's a monkey in my room. Could you deal with it, please?' said Mrs Pargeter, as she passed through into the dining room.

The Greene's Hotel ‘Full English Breakfast' was extremely full. No refinement of bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, grilled mushroom, fried bread, sauté potato, kidney or black pudding was omitted from the piled plate into which Mrs Pargeter tucked. Some mornings, in a momentary pang of righteousness, she asked the waitress not to include the fried bread, but this morning was not one of them. She had the tingling feeling of beginning to be involved in an investigation, and needed to keep her strength up.

Opposite her in the sumptuous setting of the
fin de siècle
dining room, sat a thin-faced, earnest-looking man in his thirties. He wore an anonymously smart charcoal suit and sober tie. His right hand, slightly nervous on the crisp linen, toyed with the handle of his coffee cup.

‘Sure you won't have anything else, Mr Merriman?' asked Mrs Pargeter, after a delicious mouthful of sausage, egg and sauté potato.

‘No, really, thank you,' Nigel Merriman replied. ‘I breakfasted earlier.'

Mrs Pargeter loaded her fork with another consignment of bacon, egg, tomato and fried bread. ‘Well, you won't mind me, I hope?'

‘Of course not.'

She gestured permission with her heaped fork. ‘You talk while I eat. Seems a fair division of labour.'

‘Yes.' He allowed himself a prim silence while he collected his thoughts and Mrs Pargeter munched contentedly. ‘What I'm really after . . . is anything you might know that could help in Mr Jacket's defence.'

The fullness of Mrs Pargeter's mouth excluded all responses other than an ‘Mm.'

‘At the moment I'm afraid my client's situation does look rather grim.'

The mouth was by now decorously empty. ‘Oh? You mean he actually had some connection with the dead man?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

Mrs Pargeter wiped the side of her mouth with a napkin. ‘Who was the stiff then?'

Nigel Merriman could not suppress a slight wince at the colloquialism before replying, ‘A bricklayer and part-time villain called Willie Cass. Worked with Mr Jacket till relatively recently, but was dismissed when found to be selling on bricks and other materials his employer had paid for.'