Mrs. Pargeter's Plot (6 page)

But his professional skills had not proved equal to the task of getting much more information out of Concrete Jacket. ‘Of course I asked him,' the solicitor confided to Mrs Pargeter, ‘but my client denies there's anything anyone would want to blackmail him about.'

She put down her tea cup on Nigel Merriman's desk and sighed in exasperation. ‘But if Willie Cass appeared at his house in front of lots of witnesses demanding a payoff, Concrete must realize—'

‘I know, I know. I have made all those points to him, but he still says there's nothing. Presumably he's afraid that, by admitting Willie Cass did have a reason to blackmail him, he's going to make himself look even guiltier.'

Mrs Pargeter nodded. ‘That could be the reason. It's also possible that he's afraid of implicating other people.'

The solicitor nodded slowly, taking in the new idea. ‘I hadn't thought of that, Mrs Pargeter.'

She sighed again. ‘If only we could get someone to talk to him . . .'

This, however, was perceived as a slight on Nigel Merriman's professionalism. ‘I
have
talked to him,' he said. ‘We've known each other a long time. I like to think there's a good basis of trust between us. But, even so, he won't tell me anything.'

‘Hm. Presumably the police aren't that worried what the blackmail threat was about. It's enough for them that a lot of people saw Willie Cass threatening Concrete and demanding money from him.'

‘Yes. As is usually the case, so long as the police get a conviction, they're not that bothered about the detail. I'm afraid, Mrs Pargeter, it does look as if my client has been – as he himself might put it – very thoroughly stitched up.'

The solicitor spoke these words as if they put an end to the matter, but Mrs Pargeter was not so easily daunted. ‘Well then,' she said with a sweet smile, ‘it's up to us to unpick the stitches, isn't it, Nigel?'

The solicitor coloured at the intimate use of his Christian name. But he rather liked it.

Unpicking stitches from Concrete Jacket didn't prove easy. Mrs Pargeter arranged to visit him in Wandsworth Prison that afternoon, and deployed her full armoury of blandishment, cajolery and importunity. Unusually, however, these potent weapons were on this occasion without effect. Concrete was pleased to see her, was polite and amiable, but gave nothing. Whenever direct questions about Willie Cass's murder arose, he clammed up.

Eventually, in exasperation, Mrs Pargeter exclaimed, ‘But don't you realize – if you don't do anything to save yourself, you're going to get sent down for a great many years.'

‘If that's the way it's gotta be,' the builder responded doggedly, ‘then that's the way it's gotta be.'

‘But what about Tammy? What about the kids? What kind of a future are they going to have if you're put away for life?'

His face betrayed how much her words hurt, but he still didn't change his position. Concrete Jacket stayed silent.

A less positive personality would have been cast down by this lack of reaction. Mrs Pargeter, however, had always regarded a setback simply as a stimulus to renewed endeavour.

Maybe Hedgeclipper Clinton might know some way to get through to Concrete, Mrs Pargeter thought, as she arrived back at Greene's Hotel early that evening. Though she had never been privy to any detail of the varied projects undertaken by the late Mr Pargeter, she was aware that many of her husband's former colleagues had at times worked together. And that there had been amongst them a network of camaraderie, which might offer some recollected clue to the builder's secretive behaviour.

There was no one on Reception. As she had done the previous day, Mrs Pargeter crossed the foyer and knocked on the door of Hedgeclipper Clinton's office. Once again there was no response, and on this occasion she could hear through the door no murmured endearments, nor any chattering from Erasmus.

She felt an unaccountable dread as she turned the doorhandle, and the sight inside the office justified her premonition. The room had been ransacked – not systematically as if someone had been searching for something, but randomly as if some huge beast had been – literally – throwing its weight about.

Computers and telephones had been smashed, a wall-safe pulled bodily from its setting, light fittings ripped from the ceiling, and the furniture reduced to matchwood. Only two chairs had survived the onslaught, and on these, strapped with nylon cords, their mouths shut off by carpet tape, sat the hotel manager and one of his receptionists.

Mrs Pargeter rushed across to free the prisoners. Ladies first. With an apologetic shrug for the inevitable pain, she ripped the tape off the girl's mouth, then attacked the ropes that held her.

‘What happened?' she demanded, but the girl was hysterical and could not form an answer. ‘Don't you worry about a thing. I'll just get Mr Clinton free, and we'll find you a nice hot, sweet cup of tea,' Mrs Pargeter said soothingly.

The girl nodded through her tears, as Mrs Pargeter performed the same rough surgery on the tape across the manager's mouth.

Hedgeclipper was a lot more vocal than his underling. ‘He took Erasmus!' he screamed in fury. ‘The bastard took Erasmus!'

‘Don't fret. I'm sure the monkey won't come to any harm,' Mrs Pargeter reassured meaninglessly. ‘Now you just hold still while I get these knots undone.'

By the time the manager was free, the receptionist had recovered sufficiently to make a practical suggestion. ‘Shall I go and phone the police?' she asked through the final spasm of her sobs.

Mrs Pargeter looked sharply across to check Hedgeclipper Clinton's reaction. Her own attitude to the police was one of great respect and admiration, but she knew there were certain occasions when it was simply not worth adding to their already excessive workload.

Hedgeclipper's reaction revealed that this was one of those occasions. ‘No,' he said judiciously. ‘I think we might be better advised to keep this quiet. We do have to think of our guests. The presence in the hotel of a crowd of noisy policemen would be bound to disturb the more sensitive amongst them.'

The girl looked dubious. ‘But, I mean, when someone's caused this amount of damage to the place, surely the proper thing to do is—'

‘Oh, this isn't really much damage. No, absolutely no problem at all,' said her boss breezily. ‘I'll get this little lot cleared up in no time.'

‘Even so,' the receptionist continued pugnaciously, ‘it's not just the assault on property – there's also the assault on us.'

‘He didn't hurt us much – just tied us up, that's all.'

But she wasn't going to be fobbed off by that kind of reassurance. The receptionist was a girl of her time, aware of her rights as a woman, and of the political ramifications of any form of violence against her sex. ‘You may not mind being assaulted and tied up like that – I regard it as an actionable assault against my freedom as an individual – and as a woman.'

‘Oh, come
on
,' Hedgeclipper pleaded.

But the girl was not to be so easily diverted. She turned for support to Mrs Pargeter. ‘Surely you must agree that we should call the police?'

If, however, she'd been looking for female solidarity, she'd chosen the wrong ally. Mrs Pargeter had quite detailed views of her own on the subject of women's rights, but she was first and foremost a pragmatist. If Hedgeclipper Clinton was signalling that the police should not be involved, then she was sure he was doing so for very good reasons.

‘No, no, I agree it would only upset the other guests,' she said airily.

The receptionist looked shocked to hear such political flabbiness from a member of the sisterhood.

‘Maybe,' Mrs Pargeter continued, looking across at Hedgeclipper, ‘if the young lady were offered some compensation for the appalling distress that has been caused her, she might see the situation rather differently . . .?'

He caught on instantly. ‘That's a good idea,' he said, moving quickly across to where the safe lay on the floor, and twiddling the knobs to open it.

‘If you think you can fob me off with money to stop me complaining about an assault on my dignity as a woman . . .' the receptionist began.

But when she saw how much money her boss was offering for her silence, she allowed her words to trickle away. Reaching across to take the two folded fifties, she concurred that it probably didn't make sense to upset the guests.

‘No, I think you're absolutely right,' said Hedgeclipper. ‘So glad you see it my way.'

‘A mature, adult response,' Mrs Pargeter agreed, as the girl moved across to the door.

With her hand on the handle, she turned back curiously. ‘Funny he didn't take the safe, isn't it . . .? Or try to break into it . . .? Or steal something other than the monkey . . .?'

Another fifty hastily thrust into her hand melted away her inquisitiveness. With the shrug of someone who knows which side her bread's buttered, the girl left the room, the events of the previous hour expunged permanently from her memory.

‘So what was it, Hedgeclipper?' asked Mrs Pargeter when they were alone. ‘Or should I say
who
was it?'

His face turned grim as he replied, ‘It was Fossilface O'Donahue.'

Mrs Pargeter left Hedgeclipper Clinton on the phone, trying to get a lead on Fossilface O'Donahue's possible whereabouts, and went up to her suite. She needed to call Truffler Mason.

Her first surprise on entering the sitting room was that the monkey was there again. Exactly as he had been a couple of days previously. Erasmus was on the floor, with his chain once again anchored to the leg of the dresser. Once again he had managed to leave his marks – scratches and other, less salubrious, souvenirs – around his small circle of territory.

As soon as she came into the room, he rose up on his hind legs and strained towards her, chattering frantically. His behaviour would no doubt have been appealing to Hedgeclipper Clinton – or perhaps to any other marmoset-lover. It wasn't to Mrs Pargeter. Why is it that animals instantly recognize the human beings who find them most repellent, and immediately focus all their attention on those poor unfortunates? Some animal behaviourists claim the response arises from an atavistic conciliatory instinct; Mrs Pargeter reckoned it was sheer bloodymindedness.

Still, she was in no mood to be distracted. The welcome news for Hedgeclipper, that his precious Erasmus was safe, would have to wait until after she had spoken to Truffler. She opened her bedroom door.

It was then that she had her second surprise. And it was an even less appealing one than the rediscovery of the monkey.

As she opened the door, Mrs Pargeter found its frame filled with the huge bulk of a man in a grey suit. He was built like a harbour wall and, incongruously, wore a clown mask over his face. It was plastic with a red nose, huge melon-slice mouth, exclamation-mark eyes, and ginger ropy hair radiating out from its dome.

Mrs Pargeter didn't often scream, but she did this time. It wasn't fear, she tried to tell herself, just shock.

‘Mrs Pargeter.' The monster's voice was deep, without intonation, and very scary.

What was worse, she realized with a little gulp of horror, he knew who she was.

‘Don't worry,' the voice went on. ‘I'll take the mask off.'

If this action had been designed to allay her fears, it could not have been less effective. The face which the removed mask revealed she had only seen once, in a magazine photograph, but she had no problem in recognizing who it belonged to.

Fossilface O'Donahue.

Mrs Pargeter screamed again.

She backed away, her eyes locked on to the reaction-less pebbles caught in the crags of his features. Fossilface O'Donahue waved the clown mask towards her. ‘Don't you think this is funny, Mrs Pargeter?'

His voice was deep, and he spoke as if the words were too big and cumbersome for his mouth.

She managed to find enough voice to reply, ‘No, not at all funny, actually.'

‘And what about the monkey? Don't you find that funny either?'

Mrs Pargeter shook her head. Fossilface O'Donahue looked downcast. ‘Well, that's a pity, isn't it? Pity I'm not giving you a jolly laugh, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' she concurred, trying out of the corner of her eye to judge how far she was from the door and what her chances of escape were. They didn't appear to be good. The man was huge. His arms looked long enough to reach out and snatch her from the other side of the room.

Another of the Greene's Hotel Regency telephones stood on a small table, tantalizingly close. But even if she could reach it, there was no chance the thug would give her time to dial for help.

He moved one ponderous, threatening step towards her. ‘We've never met before, have we, Mrs Pargeter?'

‘No.' Her confidence and resilience were beginning to trickle back. ‘Never had that pleasure.'

‘No.' He nodded slowly. ‘I tend to keep myself to myself, as a rule. Though of course I did have quite a lot of dealings with your late husband . . .'

‘So I gather.'

‘It has to be said . . .' he continued slowly, ‘that Mr Pargeter and me did not always see eye to eye about everything . . .'

‘Yes, I'd gathered that too.'

He advanced another step. Mrs Pargeter wilted in the face of his overpowering presence, but managed to hold her ground.

‘No, Mr Pargeter and I did have our disagreements. He didn't always like the way I conducted business.'

Mrs Pargeter couldn't stop a defiant response coming out. ‘My husband always did have very high standards.'

Fossilface O'Donahue gave another ruminative nod. Somehow the slowness of his approach, the evenness of his tone, made him seem more rather than less menacing. When the violence came, Mrs Pargeter feared, it would be sudden and entirely devastating.