Mrs, Presumed Dead

by Simon Brett

  And, predictably, not long after the police, the press arrived in droves. Mrs Pargeter was able to use the excuse of the forensic team’s presence not to let them in, but they tried all the other houses in the close.

  The varying receptions they met with were indicative of the characters of the residents. Fiona Burchfield-Brown, all bumbling good nature, invited them in. Vivvi Sprake was also welcoming, eager to talk, while Kirsten at ‘Perigord’ (her employer must still have been at the office) seemed to see their arrival as an opportunity for her to achieve international stardom. She stayed on the doorstep for some time, talking effusively, with many gestures, to anyone willing to listen.

  Carole Temple, predictably, slammed the door in the reporters’ faces.

  And, though her car stood in the drive of ‘Hibiscus’, and though there were lights on in the house, Jane Watson would not even come to the door.

  Mrs Pargeter sat on her bed gazing out over the lamplit circle of Smithy’s Loam, and thought.

  So . . . the first priority of the police was going to be to find Rod Cotton. Logical, really. In all marital murder cases, the most common criminal is the spouse. And, in this case, the murder weapon also pointed towards Theresa’s husband.

  Hmm . . . Mrs Pargeter wondered whether the police would find it easier to trace the missing man than she had. At least, she thought with an inward grin, Truffler Mason was already out looking.

  So she had a head start. And she had played fair with the police by giving them the letter to the Church of Utter Simplicity. Fair dos. Now they were starting on equal terms.

  Because, however much she tried not to, Mrs Pargeter couldn’t help seeing the murder investigation as a kind of contest.

  Mrs Pargeter versus The Police.

  And it would be a bold punter who would predict which of them was most likely to reach the solution first.

  25

  The Welsh voice answered. Mrs Pargeter did not take it to task about missing her out of the ‘market research’ survey. That was something to be raised discreetly at a later date with the voice’s employer.

  ‘Is Mr Mason there?’

  ‘I’m sorry. He’s out on an investigation. Can I take a message?’

  ‘No, there’s no – oh yes, well, you could actually. It’s Mrs Pargeter calling.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning. Yes, I’d be grateful if you could pass on the message to Mr Mason that there’s no longer any need to look for the woman. It’s just the man we need to track down now.’

  ‘Always bloody is, isn’t it?’ said the Welsh voice, predictably enough.

  It occurred to Mrs Pargeter that, though she had given the where-can-I-find-a-decent-gardener excuse a couple of airings, she hadn’t yet used it on her immediate neighbour. They had talked of gardening, but not of gardeners. And she had a feeling that the dramatic news of Theresa’s murder might make even the frosty Carole Temple relax a little into curiosity.

  Her guess proved correct. When she knocked on the door of ‘Cromarty’, its owner welcomed her with what, by Carole’s somewhat narrow standards, probably amounted to fulsomeness. The visitor was instantly invited in for coffee. Living in a house where a murder had taken place did give a certain social cachet.

  Mrs Pargeter was sat down in the sitting-room, while Carole went off to make coffee. The room was immaculately furnished – if one’s taste ran to louvred cupboard doors, beaten brass surrounds to log-effect fires, Capo del Monte figurines posing winsomely on top of dark veneered units, and curtains and chair covers with a frothing of frills on them.

  It was aggressively clean and tidy. Mrs Pargeter almost felt guilty for denting the cushions by sitting on them. A fantasy came into her mind of Carole Temple going round every hour on the hour removing individual specks of dust with a pair of tweezers, and of bashful motes deterred from entering the fanlight window by Carole’s balefully hygienic stare.

  The coffee cups and pot which her hostess brought in were sterile enough to be used in an intensive care unit. The biscuits had clearly been disciplined from birth not to shed crumbs, and the coffee-pot spout would not have dared to commit the solecism of dripping.

  Carole Temple quickly dealt with the supposed reason for Mrs Pargeter’s visit. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any good gardeners. Or bad ones, come to that. We do everything ourselves. As I believe I once told you,’ she recollected with some asperity. ‘I think possibly the Sprakes have a gardener who comes in from time to time – you could ask them.’

  Yes, she would, Mrs Pargeter decided. She and Vivvi had never got round to having their conversation about gardeners, had they? Surprising how durable that simple excuse was proving.

  Carole Temple then moved on to the real reason for her sudden affability. ‘But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy’s Loam!’

  ‘Or anywhere,’ Mrs Pargeter observed mildly. She knew that its residents tended to see Smithy’s Loam as the centre of the universe, but murder did remain a relatively offensive crime even in other parts of the world.

  Carole Temple, stimulated by the news of murder, was prepared to be much less discreet than on their previous encounter. ‘Hmm,’ she ruminated knowingly. ‘I always thought there was something odd about that marriage . . .’

  ‘Odd?’ Mrs Pargeter nudged gently.

  ‘I mean, not on the surface. Theresa and Rod seemed . . . well, just like everyone else on the surface, but I had a feeling there were some pretty profound disagreements between them.’

  ‘Are you saying that you used to hear them quarrelling?’

  ‘Good heavens, no.’ Carole Temple looked affronted that such a vulgar idea should even be mentioned in the context of Smithy’s Loam. ‘No, I just sort of got this feeling that they didn’t see eye to eye on everything.’

  ‘What, on materialism, for example?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Carole looked completely blank. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’d sort of got the impression that maybe Theresa wasn’t as keen on material things as her husband was.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  ‘I mean that he was always wanting to buy things, keep up their standard of living, and Theresa wasn’t even interested.’

  Carole Temple still looked bewildered. ‘But they didn’t buy that much stuff. Well, only the sort of stuff one needs. If you’re living somewhere like Smithy’s Loam, you do have to maintain certain standards. I wouldn’t have said they were particularly conspicuous consumers.’

  No. No more than their neighbours, anyway.

  ‘And you never heard Theresa say she was dissatisfied with that kind of life?’

  This idea, too, was incongruous to Carole. ‘No. Of course not.’

  So the spiritual emptiness of Theresa Cotton’s life had, as Mrs Pargeter suspected, remained her own secret. That fitted in with the furtiveness of her contacts with the Church of Utter Simplicity.

  ‘Well, if it wasn’t that kind of thing, Carole, what was it that was “odd” about the Cottons’ marriage?’

  Faced with the direct question, Carole became coy and evasive. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just a sort of feeling I got. Well, I mean, their long separations, for a start . . . From the moment he went up North, so far as I know, Theresa made no effort to go up and join him – even for the odd weekend.’

  No, well, of course there were very good reasons why that hadn’t happened, but Carole Temple couldn’t be expected to know them.

  ‘You think they were growing apart then, do you?’

  ‘Reading between the lines, I’d say, yes.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mrs Pargeter nodded slowly. ‘Do you think there was any infidelity?’

  Carole’s face became cautiously knowing.

  ‘On either side?’ added Mrs Pargeter.

  ‘Well,’ said Carole Temple, condescending to share the great riches of her information, ‘let’s say it wouldn’t surprise me. Rod was away a lot, so presumably he had pl
enty of opportunities . . .’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Mrs Pargeter took a sip of her coffee and slowly put the cup down on its saucer. ‘And no rumours of anything nearer home . . . ?’

  Her hostess became insufferably arch. ‘Once again, all I think I’d better say is that it would not surprise me . . .’ Then, in response to Mrs Pargeter’s interrogative expression, she gave a little more. ‘No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that he’d made quite a close friendship very near to home. There was a week or so when he was between jobs—’

  ‘Between jobs before he went up North?’

  ‘That’s right. And Theresa was out a lot at that time. But Rod had fairly regular weekday visits from someone else in Smithy’s Loam.’ She let this hang in the air for a moment, before concluding, piously, ‘But I don’t think it would be fair for me to say any more than that. Do you?’

  Mrs Pargeter thought it would be perfectly fair. In fact, she thought it was extremely unfair for her companion to hint so outrageously and then withhold the most important detail. But she wasn’t optimistic about getting an actual name out of Carole.

  ‘I suppose these things happen . . .’ she said equably.

  ‘Yes, yes, they do. I gather some women get very bored stuck in the house all day . . .’ This was another idea apparently incomprehensible to Carole Temple. Clearly, stalking specks of dust with a pair of tweezers absorbed one hundred per cent of her own attention and enthusiasm. ‘I suppose they’ll do anything for a change. And for someone that much younger, trapped in the house for most of the day with two children, maybe there’s a kind of appeal about it . . .’

  Mrs Pargeter nodded. Yes; Vivvi Sprake was quite a bit younger than most of the other denizens of Smithy’s Loam. Early thirties, while the rest were all safely over the forty mark. Their promised conversation about gardeners took on a new priority.

  ‘Anyway, up to them, really, I’d say . . . wouldn’t you?’ Carole Temple shrugged righteously. ‘I mean, I’m the last one to spread gossip . . .’

  Why was it, Mrs Pargeter mused, that the only people who said they were the last ones to spread gossip were always such arrant gossip-mongers? It was a completely self-negating remark like ‘I’m the last one to make a fuss . . .’ Fondly, she called to mind one of the late Mr Pargeter’s dicta: ‘Never believe a man who begins every sentence with ‘Quite honestly’ – it’s a sure sign he’s lying.’

  She didn’t think she was going to get much closer to the name of Rod Cotton’s local bit of stuff, but having already identified the guilty party to her own satisfaction, she felt able to move the conversation forward.

  ‘Do you think Theresa had any idea something was going on?’

  ‘I would imagine so,’ Carole Temple replied tartly. ‘Didn’t miss a lot, that one.’

  This was a new insight into Theresa Cotton’s character. And considering how sketchy the image of the dead woman appeared to be amongst her neighbours, it was a very important insight.

  ‘Are you saying that she was nosy?’

  For the first time in their conversation, Carole Temple seemed to feel she had said too much, and started backtracking. ‘Oh, I think most people are naturally curious, don’t you? Intrigued by what’s going on around them. Just as we’re all intrigued by having a murder case on our doorstep.’

  Mrs Pargeter wasn’t going to be shifted off her line of questioning quite so easily. ‘From what you said, you almost implied that Theresa Cotton used to spy on you . . . ?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Carole squashed this idea brusquely. ‘Well, if I gave that impression, I didn’t mean to.’

  But the cover-up wasn’t completely convincing. There had been some bad blood between the neighbours at some point, of that Mrs Pargeter felt certain. And if Carole had thought Theresa over-curious, then maybe Theresa had seen something that her neighbour had not wished her to see . . .

  And, if there had been some resentment or grudge between them, then it was just the kind of thing that Theresa would have tried to clear from her mind before dedicating herself to the Church of Utter Simplicity . . .

  ‘Tell me, Carole . . .’ said Mrs Pargeter abruptly. ‘Did Theresa Cotton come to see you the Monday evening before she left – or was supposed to leave – Smithy’s Loam?’

  ‘What?’ Carole Temple was thrown for a moment, but quickly regained control. ‘Oh, yes, she did. Just dropped in to say goodbye.’

  And what else, apart from goodbye, Mrs Pargeter wondered. She looked fixedly at her neighbour and was rewarded by Carole’s turning away to offer more coffee. Something had definitely happened, something had definitely been said that night. And Mrs Pargeter felt confident that, given time, she could find out what had happened, and what had been said.

  A pattern was beginning to emerge. A pattern of Theresa Cotton, following the recommendations of the odious Brother Michael, going round Smithy’s Loam, clearing her mind of resentments and grudges. Fiona Burchfield-Brown had admitted that Theresa had appeared; so had Sue Curie, Vivvi Sprake, and now Carole Temple. Mrs Pargeter wondered whether Jane Watson had been on the calling-list, too.

  Each of the women Mrs Pargeter had spoken to had said that the murder victim had come just to say goodbye. And yet each had spoken with some embarrassment. And, from the letter she had discovered, Mrs Pargeter knew that the intention of Theresa’s visits had been much more than just to say goodbye.

  She became aware that Carole Temple was talking again. ‘It’s tragic, isn’t it, really? That people can do that kind of thing to each other?’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Mm. And to do it to someone you love – or at least to someone who presumably you did once love . . .’

  ‘“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,”’ Mrs Pargeter murmured,

  ‘By each let this be heard,

  Some do it with a bitter look,

  Some with a flattering word.

  The coward does it with a kiss,

  The brave man with a sword!’

  Carole Temple looked at her in amazement. Evidently literary quotation was not part of the Temple lifestyle. Yes, suddenly Mrs Pargeter noticed something she had missed about the spotless sitting-room – as in her own house during the Cottons’ ownership, there were no books in evidence, no books of any sort, anywhere.

  ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ she supplied helpfully. ‘My late husband was very fond of the works of Oscar Wilde.’

  It was true. The late Mr Pargeter had found Wilde a great solace, especially in times of enforced idleness. The Ballad of Reading Gaol had been a particular favourite. That and De Profundis.

  ‘Ah.’ Carole Temple remained nonplussed. ‘Still, as I say, it is tragic.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed devoutly. ‘So . . . you think that Rod murdered Theresa?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course. He was her husband.’ The matter-of-fact way in which this was said did not argue a very high opinion of the institution of marriage. ‘He must have done it. It’s the only possible solution, isn’t it?’

  Well, no, thought Mrs Pargeter to herself, there are one or two other possibilities.

  26

  ‘Mrs Pargeter, it’s Truffler,’ said the familiar bereaved voice. ‘I got your message.’

  ‘Oh, hello. Thank you for ringing back.’

  ‘I think I’d probably have worked out for myself that it was only the man you were after.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I was just afraid that, if you were actually out investigating, you might not have seen the papers or heard the news.’

  ‘No, I heard. Sad business, isn’t it?’ Since Truffler Mason made everything sound like a sad business, his intonation did not change for this observation.

  ‘Yes. Very sad.’

  ‘Did you suspect that that was what had happened when you asked me to trace her?’

  ‘I hoped it hadn’t,’ Mrs Pargeter replied cautiously, ‘but I was rather afraid it might have done.’

  Truffler Mason let out a
mournful sigh. ‘Of course, it means that I’m not going to be the only one trying to find the husband . . .’

  ‘No. The police are definitely on to him. They came and talked to me.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Still, you’ve got a start on them.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Truffler Mason agreed lugubriously. ‘Yes, a bit of a start, yes.’

  ‘Are you getting anywhere?’ Mrs Pargeter asked diffidently. She knew that Truffler worked at his own pace, and didn’t want to appear to be nagging him.

  ‘Yes, getting somewhere,’ he admitted dolefully. ‘Finding out a lot about his background – and a few other people’s backgrounds. Haven’t actually found him yet, of course – you’ll know the minute that happens – but I’ve got a few leads.’

  ‘Have you, by any chance . . .’ Mrs Pargeter continued her cautious approach. ‘. . . found out where he went straight after leaving Smithy’s Loam?’

  ‘Well, after he was made redundant, he stayed around at home for a couple of weeks . . .’

  ‘So I gather. Maintaining the myth that he was going on to this great new job in the North?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Any idea what he did while he was at home for that time?’

  ‘No, not really. Drank a lot, I think.’

  And conducted his little affair with Vivvi Sprake, Mrs Pargeter reckoned.

  ‘Then he seems to have gone off to various places. I haven’t checked them all out yet. I’d really rather, if you don’t mind, Mrs Pargeter, give you all the details when I’ve completed the investigation.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Truffler.’ She wanted to ask how long he thought that might be, but again didn’t want to pressurise him.

  Fortunately he anticipated her unspoken question. ‘I’m really moving along now, Mrs Pargeter. Hope to have some information for you within the week.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he went on, more dismal than ever, ‘it may be rather grim when we do find him.’