Mrs. Pargeter's Principle

by Simon Brett

  Erin’s house looked exactly as it had the last time Mrs Pargeter had seen it. Front room minimalist, back room full of neatly shelved old files. The fact that the entire contents had been removed and replaced by Kelvin Mitchell had left no trace.

  Once they were all supplied with coffee, Mrs Pargeter said, ‘Now, I really have got some news.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Truffler.

  ‘I cannot believe,’ she said, ‘that yours is quite as sensational as mine, so do you mind if I go first?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Gary.

  Mrs Pargeter looked at him fondly. ‘Sorry, I could have told you this in the car, but I didn’t want to go through the whole lot twice.’

  ‘Fully understood.’ He grinned back at her. ‘Fire away.’

  And Mrs Pargeter told them everything that she had learned from Conrad Skeet. At the end there was a long silence. They were all too surprised and impressed to speak.

  Finally, Truffler said, ‘So it never was Normington Winthrop who came to London. It was Hair-Trigger Hardcastle all the time.’

  ‘Hair-Trigger Hardcastle with a bit of cosmetic surgery, yes.’

  ‘Which makes Sir Normington Winthrop’s background even dodgier,’ Erin observed. ‘A multiple murderer, who spent all his life in England under a false identity.’

  ‘And him such a pillar of the establishment,’ said Gary. ‘Makes you wonder about the rest of the Great and the Good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I’ve always had my doubts about the lot of them,’ said Truffler.

  ‘Anyway, Mrs Pargeter, what are you planning to do with all this information?’ asked Erin.

  ‘What I’d like to do is for you and Truffler to build it all up into a dossier.’

  ‘No problem. What, and then we pass it over to the police?’

  Mrs Pargeter’s face wrinkled in disagreement. ‘I don’t think that’s really appropriate in this case.’

  ‘Then what do you want to do with it?’

  ‘Pass it over to Ellie Fenchurch.’

  ‘The journalist?’

  ‘Exactly. Then she can get a front page exposé that’ll really shake things up.’

  ‘Great idea,’ said Truffler. ‘She can—’

  Mrs Pargeter raised a hand to stop him. ‘There is, however, one person whose permission we must get first.’ She took out her mobile and called up a number from the memory.

  To her surprise, a man’s voice answered. ‘Lady Winthrop’s phone,’ it said.

  The penny dropped for Mrs Pargeter. Of course – Sir Normington’s widow was still under protection. ‘Napper,’ she said, ‘it’s Mrs Pargeter. Could I have a word with Helena?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Mrs Pargeter gave an edited version of what she had found out about Lady Winthrop’s late husband, and then said, ‘I want to break this to the press. Do you mind?’

  Helena Winthrop’s cut-glass voice was dipped in venom as she replied, ‘Mind? Why’d I mind? Publish whatever you want. It will be a welcome revenge for me after all I had to put up with from the bastard!’

  Something seemed to have put some fire into the painfully correct Lady Winthrop. And Mrs Pargeter had a strong feeling that that something could have been Napper Johnson.

  The excitements of Mrs Pargeter’s revelations had driven all other thoughts from the brains assembled in Erin Jarvis’s office, and Truffler Mason had to remind them that he also had some news on the case. ‘It’s not as dramatic as yours, Mrs P, but it does make a lot of things fall into place.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Truffler gestured towards Erin’s laptop and asked, ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He pressed various keys and scrolled through a few screens before he found what he was looking for. It was a scanned black and white photograph of what he identified as the third annual conference of BROG. ‘The “Britons, Restore Our Greatness” party,’ he glossed for those who might not know the acronym.

  At the front of the picture was a rather younger Derek Bardon, spouting at a microphone. Seated behind him was a row of glowering men. Amongst them, though he was wearing long hair and a youthful beard, it was quite easy to identify Edmund Grainger.

  ‘Well, that kind of figures,’ said Mrs Pargeter.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mrs Pargeter didn’t like waiting, and she had rather a lot of it to do in the next few days. It took a while for Truffler and Erin to check and verify all the information that was to be included in their dossier. And once it had been passed over to Ellie Fenchurch, more checking and verification were required before her bosses felt that it was safe to publish.

  As soon as she had done a draft of her exposé, Ellie sent a copy to Mrs Pargeter, who thought it was brilliant. ‘If I were your editor, I’d run it tomorrow,’ she said on the phone.

  ‘Yes, but they have to be very careful from the legal point of view. This is explosive stuff. If there are any inaccuracies in it, we could be in big trouble.’

  ‘What, you mean libel? I didn’t think you could libel someone who’s dead. And Sir Normington Winthrop is very definitely dead.’

  ‘Yes, but there are other names in there – names of people who’re still alive.’

  Mrs Pargeter wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the law to be able to argue further. Her late husband had frequently said, ‘Melita, my love, you only need to know enough about the law to keep on the right side of it,’ and as in all things she had followed his principle.

  She tried to fill the time by helping Sammy Pinkerton with her wedding plans, but her mind wasn’t really on them. Fortunately, Sammy was in too ecstatic a mood to notice any lack of concentration from her benefactress. She and her Kelvin were more of an item than ever, and she was totally unfazed by the prospect of becoming Mrs Mitchell rather than Mrs Stockett.

  She was also very relieved to know that her fiancé had given up his life of crime. Kelvin, now seeing his father as a very different kind of role model, had immediately started investigating how to join the police force, a career choice with which Sammy was much happier. He even contacted some cousins on his mother’s side of the family who, following the example of her Chief Constable father, had joined the Met. Once Kelvin Mitchell got an idea fixed in his mind, nothing could shake it out.

  Sammy’s only gripe was that she seemed to see her fiancé even less than usual over the next few days. Whatever he was doing took him away from the flat at least as much as his burglary site-casing had. And he was equally unhelpful when she asked him what he was doing. ‘It’s a secret mission,’ was all he would say. ‘An investigation of my own. If it’s brought to a successful conclusion, I think it could be a very good calling card for me to take to the Met.’

  For Mrs Pargeter the days passed slowly, and she began to wonder whether Ellie’s bosses were ever going to give the go-ahead for her scoop. She pottered round the Chigwell house, unable to concentrate on anything for long. She even occasionally switched on daytime television, only to discover how devastatingly accurate Holy Smirke’s assessment of it had been. She twitched around the house in a way that did not accord with her usual eternally positive manner.

  Finally, on the Saturday morning she had a call from Ellie Fenchurch.

  ‘It’s been green-lighted,’ the journalist said, with a sigh of relief.

  ‘They’re going to run it?’

  ‘Sure. Tomorrow. They say it’s the kind of story that needs the space only a Sunday paper can give it.’

  ‘And they haven’t made you cut anything out?’

  ‘No, it’ll be printed in exactly the version that you’ve read.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Yes. I’m very pleased with it. Also …’ said Ellie without false modesty, ‘something with my byline on it sells papers. And for me it’s been great, going back to my roots as an investigative journalist, before I got involved in all this celebrity interview nonsense.’

  It was on the front page
of the paper that fell on Mrs Pargeter’s doormat that Sunday morning. There was a colour photograph of Sir Normington Winthrop with Derek Bardon, both black-tied at some fund-raising dinner.

  The headline read: ‘CRIMINAL PAST OF BROG FUNDRAISER.’

  Mrs Pargeter went out to one of her favourite local restaurants for a full Sunday roast with all the trimmings. To celebrate, she had a whole bottle of champagne to herself.

  When she got back to the house she indulged in a very comfortable doze on her sitting room sofa, once again ensuring that when she returned to consciousness Gary’s cat would be out of her eyeline.

  She was woken by a call from a very ecstatic Ellie Fenchurch. ‘The story’s really gone down big. You should see all the stuff about it on Facebook and Twitter.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t do either of those,’ said Mrs Pargeter a little primly.

  ‘Well, you’d better watch the evening news. It’s going to be the big story then.’

  It was the lead item on the early evening news. There had been no reaction yet from Derek Bardon at his party headquarters, but a political correspondent couldn’t see how much longer the leader could continue in his job. BROG was finished. And though the correspondent’s stance of impartiality did not allow him to say it, his tone implied, ‘And good riddance!’

  Mrs Pargeter also watched the late evening news to see if there had been any developments. There had. Derek Bardon did not wish to be interviewed, but a still photograph of him filled the screen. He had issued a statement, saying that he was ‘shocked and disappointed’ by the revelations in a Sunday newspaper and that he ‘would be consulting his lawyers and considering his position’.

  But it was the second item on the bulletin that really shook up Mrs Pargeter. A journalist called Conrad Skeet had been found shot dead in his Barbican flat.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The phone rang before the television news had finished. It was Truffler. A very urgent-sounding Truffler. ‘You’re in danger, Mrs P! But don’t worry, we’re on our way. Gary and I will be with you as soon as we can. Lock all the doors, and don’t let anyone in!’

  ‘But who am I in danger from?’

  ‘Whoever killed Skeet. Which could well be Edmund Grainger. And if it’s someone else, they can easily find Skeet’s connection to Ellie’s exposé, which means they can find you too. I don’t think they’re trying to silence people any longer. Now it’s just revenge – payback time.’

  ‘But isn’t Ellie in danger too?’

  ‘Probably. I managed to prise Napper away from Helena Winthrop and sent him and some of his crew to protect Ellie.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘See you very shortly, Mrs P.’

  It was dark outside, and she didn’t know where she would feel safest. Her kitchen was the cosiest room in the house, but it was too near the great expanse of darkness that was her back garden. No, she was probably better off in the sitting room.

  She contemplated switching the television on. Not because there was anything she wanted to watch, but it might give her the illusion of doing something. Second thoughts stopped her, however. The noise from the television might drown out the sounds of someone trying to break in to the house.

  She couldn’t help feeling nervous. She crossed to the mantelpiece and looked at the unsmiling photograph of the late Mr Pargeter. ‘You got out of worse scrapes than this one, love. And I’ll get out of it too.’ But the level of confidence in her words was not reflected in her mind.

  She found she was looking at Gary’s wretched cat, so turned away.

  She sat down on the sofa and took the little black book out of her handbag. Flicking idly through it, she didn’t know what she was looking for. It was just a link to her late husband that gave her strength in moments of crisis.

  Unwittingly, she found the section entitled ‘Armourers’. And she scrutinized the name of ‘Normington Winthrop’, the trigger of her whole investigation. If she hadn’t found that in the little black book, she would never have gone to the funeral, never have become involved in the strange sequence of events that had ensued.

  And as she looked at the name, the explanation came to her. She remembered Truffler Mason commenting on the roughness of the surface of the paper on which it had been written and the way the ink had run. Instantly, she realised that it wasn’t just that the entry had been made a long time ago and the paper had suffered over the years. The truth was much simpler than that.

  The first entry in the ‘Armourers’ category had been ‘Tony Hardcastle’. It had to be. He was one of the original three, the founding core of the operation. Mrs Pargeter’s late husband, Gizmo Gilbert and Tony Hardcastle.

  And when Hair-Trigger had cheated Mr Pargeter and stopped working with him, her husband had expunged all record of him from the little black book. Erased the entry with one of those hard ink-rubbers which always left the paper rough (and frequently broke through it). Then, when the man called Normington Winthrop had come to England, in spite of his plastic surgery Mr Pargeter had recognized him as his former collaborator, Hair-Trigger Hardcastle. So he’d written the new name in the space where the old one had been.

  Now Mrs Pargeter looked closely at the smudged entry she could see that the ink was less faded than on some of the subsequent names. Which only went to confirm her developing outline of what had happened.

  Then, logical in all things, her late husband had re-entered the name of Tony Hardcastle further down the list of ‘Armourers’ and put a line through it. Because, whichever way you looked at it, the old Tony Hardcastle was dead.

  So her husband had known all about the real identity of Normington Winthrop. Mrs Pargeter felt pretty sure, though, that he hadn’t known about the murderous methods by which Hair-Trigger Hardcastle had achieved the transformation. If he’d been aware of that, Mr Pargeter, who had always had a great respect for justice, would surely have done something about it.

  In a strange way, having interpreted the processes of his mind made her for a moment feel very close to her absent spouse. Also feeling great glee at having worked out the explanation of those distant events, Mrs Pargeter looked up from the little black book.

  And it was when she did that that she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man outlined in the doorway to the kitchen.

  Edmund Grainger. And he had a very purposeful-looking automatic pistol in his hand.

  ‘Mrs Pargeter,’ he said in a voice bleached of emotion, ‘I knew when I first met you at the funeral that you’d be trouble.’

  For some insane reason she thought that a cheeky response might be the best one. ‘Glad to be of service.’

  His rigid expression did not change. ‘You probably don’t realize the extent of the damage you’ve done.’

  ‘The aim was for it to be as extensive as possible,’ she explained in a friendly manner.

  ‘You’ve ruined BROG. You’ve ruined everything I’ve been working to build up over many years.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to my grave worrying too much about that,’ said Mrs Pargeter with an assumed breeziness. Too late, she rather regretted her words. The mention of ‘going to her grave’ might put ideas in Edmund Grainger’s head. Though she was rather afraid the ideas were already there.

  Get him talking, she told herself. Get him on to a subject he really cares about. She could only think of one. ‘Were you involved with BROG right from the beginning?’ she asked.

  And, sure enough, he couldn’t stop himself from replying. ‘Yes, I was. I met Derek Bardon at a Conservative Party Conference years ago. Back then we both hoped that the Tories might have the solutions to the country’s problems, but we pretty soon realized that, like the rest of the existing parties, they were full of nothing but wind and broken promises. We went off to a pub to have a few disillusioned drinks. And it was then Derek told me about his plans for a completely new political party – one that would blow away all the cobwebs from the corridors of power, one that would make the British once again feel proud
to be British.’

  ‘So it started with just the two of you?’

  ‘Yes, but we very soon found that there were millions of people in this country who were experiencing just the same kind of frustration with recent governments as we were.’

  Mrs Pargeter dared to be combative. ‘Well, it seems you somehow failed to get all those millions to come out and vote for you, didn’t you?’

  The combative approach proved not to be a good one. ‘Shut up, Mrs Pargeter!’ roared Edmund Grainger on a burst of dangerous anger. ‘You know nothing about politics, do you?’

  ‘I must admit that there are other subjects in life that I’ve generally found more interesting. And I do feel terribly sorry for those poor MPs who spend their lives going from one boring meeting to another and are not allowed to express their own opinions but have to follow a party line in spite of—’

  He overrode her. ‘Well, if you knew anything about the subject, you would also know that nothing comes for nothing. Every political party needs funding.’

  ‘Which is where Sir Normington Winthrop becomes part of the equation, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘At a Labour Party Conference the year after Derek and I had come up with the idea for BROG.’

  ‘And he had the same kind of ideas as you had?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edmund Grainger fervently. ‘Norm shared exactly the same kind of disillusionment as we did with the current state of politics. As we discovered at the conference, what Labour were offering was just as useless as the Tories’ solutions. They were all talking tired, old-fashioned politics.’

  ‘But surely,’ Mrs Pargeter suggested politely, ‘BROG was talking even more old-fashioned politics? I mean, going back to the days of the British Empire, sending immigrants home to—’

  ‘Mrs Pargeter, just shut up about things you don’t understand!’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, duly chastised. ‘But Sir Normington offered to fund BROG, did he?’