by Simon Brett
Mrs Pargeter 05; Mrs Pargeter’s Plot
( Mrs Pargeter - 5 )
Simon Brett
Melita Pargeter, widow of much-loved crook Mr Pargeter, embarks on an escapade to prove the innocence of her beloved friend, builder ‘Concrete Jacket’, who has been arrested for murder. Someone has set him up – but who? Mrs P calls on her band of ex-cons to help her trap the real killer.
Simon Brett
Mrs Pargeter’s Plot
Mrs Pargeter #5
1996, EN
Melita Pargeter, widow of much-loved crook Mr Pargeter, embarks on an escapade to prove the innocence of her beloved friend, builder ‘Concrete Jacket’, who has been arrested for murder. Someone has set him up – but who? Mrs P calls on her band of ex-cons to help her trap the real killer.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
One
“And this, Gary, is where I’ll be living,” said Mrs Pargeter, as the limousine came to a halt by the gate.
“Very nice position.” The young chauffeur tipped his cap back and looked appreciatively up at the four-acre plot. It was still only a field, sloping indulgently down towards them. In a central position – surrounded by cement mixers, diggers and strapped piles of bricks – the foundations of a substantial dwelling were outlined by wooden posts and trenches. When it was completed, the house would command magnificent views over the valley below. Its outlook would be green, pastoral, with artlessly scattered clumps of trees in the folds of hills, quintessentially English.
“Never really seen you as a country person, Mrs Pargeter,” Gary went on.
“Don’t know till you try, do you? That’s true of everything.” The plump white-haired widow chuckled. “Might be just the thing for my declining years – little old lady devoting her life to breeding roses and bottling chutney.”
“Can’t see it.”
“Well, no, nor can I – not instinctively, like. But you never know.” The lids wrinkled round Mrs Pargeter’s violet-blue eyes as she tried to make the effort of imagination. Not achieving instant results, and not too worried by the lack of them, she moved cheerily on. “It’s only just over an hour from London, anyway. I can always escape when the birdsong and pure country air become too oppressive. Get back to my natural environment – where I can hear the birds cough, eh?”
“Suppose so, yes. I like the country,” said Gary, “that’s why Denise and me’ve moved out – but I reckon it might be a bit quiet for you, after the life you’ve led.”
Mrs Pargeter was imperturbable, as she smoothed down the bright silk skirt over her substantial thighs. “It’ll be fine. Anyway, it makes sense – economically. I’ve never wanted any of my money just to lie idle.” A little blush. “And it makes sense sentimentally, too.” She responded to Gary’s quizzical look. “My husband bought the plot years ago. One of his pipe dreams, this was. Always planned that we’d build a house here for our retirement, but… it was not to be.”
The chauffeur nodded soberly. “He was a saint, your husband, Mrs Pargeter.”
She indulged herself in a moment of dewy-eyed retrospection. “Oh yes. Yes, he was.”
“Mind you, can’t see him having found much to do in the country either.”
“There was a side of Mr Pargeter you never saw,” Mrs Pargeter reproved. “A quieter, less flamboyant side. A side that would really have responded to country life and country pursuits.”
Gary chuckled. “Huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’, eh? Well, I can believe he might have enjoyed the shootin’ bit, but…” In the rear-view mirror he caught the glacial violet-blue stare from his employer’s eyes, and the words dried up.
Further embarrassment was fortunately prevented by the approach from the opposite direction of a mud-spattered green Range Rover. “Ah, this’ll be Concrete,” said Mrs Pargeter.
The Range Rover stopped almost bumper to bumper with the limousine, and a burly man in a checked shirt got out. He had thinning ginger curls and skin the colour of the bricks that were his stock-in-trade. He came forward with hand outstretched to greet Mrs Pargeter as she emerged from the limousine.
“Bloody marvellous to see you, Mrs P. How’ve you been?”
“Great, thank you, Concrete. Don’t think you know Gary…”
The chauffeur, also by now out of the car, shook the builder’s hand heartily. “Never actually met, have we, Concrete… but I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Nothing bad, I hope?”
“No, no. Good news all round. Everyone who worked for Mr Pargeter said Concrete Jacket was a real craftsman.”
“Oh.” The builder shrugged modestly, “Well… always did my best.”
“People still talk about that tunnel you built under the Nat West bank in Chelmsford. And the safe deposit box you fixed into the side of Chelsea Barracks.”
The builder’s face turned a deeper brick-red. “Yeah, I was quite pleased with those, and all.”
“Best builder around, I heard.”
Concrete Jacket shrugged again. In spite of his embarrassment, he was enjoying this.
Mrs Pargeter’s next words, however, cut him down to size. “Best builder around – when you are around, yes.” Concrete looked aggrieved as she explained to Gary: “Trouble with most builders – they’re always away doing other jobs. With Concrete, though, he was always being put away after doing other jobs.”
“Did have a run of bad luck,” the builder conceded.
“Bad luck? You were in and out of prison like Lord Longford.”
“Well, yes, it was difficult. After your husband died, I got in with some bad company and –”
“It meant all the jobs you started kept having two-or three-year interruptions in the middle of them.”
“All right, I know. But that’s all changed now. Totally different. I tell you, now I’ve started on this house for you, Mrs Pargeter, nothing – nothing on earth – is going to interrupt it till the job’s good and finished.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said darkly.
“Trust me.”
♦
They paced through the relief map formed by the foundations. Concrete’s steel-toed boots splashed unconcerned, while Mrs Pargeter’s high heels and Gary’s shiny black shoes negotiated the mud more circumspectly. As she looked around, Mrs Pargeter felt a little bubble of excitement at the thought of the house that would rise from these footings. It would be her dream home, her bolt-hole, a place that really expressed her personality. “So, Concrete, I just walk out of the sitting room here into the dining room here for an elegant dinner…”
“Exactly.” The builder was all smiles now he was back in her good books. “Not forgetting to pick up a nice bottle of plonk from the wine cellar.”
“There’s a wine cellar?”
“You bet.” He pointed to a square opening in the ground which was covered over by a couple of planks. “Your husband always used to say every house should have places where you can hide stuff.”
Mrs Pargeter smiled ingenuously. “Did he? I wonder what on earth he meant…”
Concrete Jacket went on, “And I can do the parquet flooring lovely so’s nobody’d ever know the entrance was there.”
Still looking innocent, she asked, “What would be the point of that, Concrete?” She moved forward, as if to lift up the covering. “Now I’d really like to see how –”
Concrete tried to intercept her. “Oh, I wouldn’t look under there if –”
But he was too late. Mrs Pargeter had shifted the planks aside and was looking down into the void. “So this is going to be…?”
But something she saw in the embryo wine cellar caused her words to evaporate into silence.
The builder and the chauffeur moved quickly forward and they too looked down.
“Oh, my God,” Gary breathed softly.
In a pool of water that had gathered at the bottom of the bricked-in space lay a man’s body. His hands had been tied behind him and in the nape of his neck was the discoloured puncture of a gunshot wound.
“Oh, my good Gawd,” said Concrete Jacket. “I never knew I was going to find that here.”
Mrs Pargeter looked at him, and the builder’s eyes shifted away from her piercing gaze. She was about to speak, but was distracted by the sound of approaching sirens. They all looked down the hill to where two police cars were screeching to a halt beside the limousine and the Range Rover.
“Well,” said Gary, picking up on Concrete’s last words. “It looks as if someone else knew you were.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Two
The limousine drew up on a double yellow line outside a betting shop in South London. “I’ll come in with you,” said Gary, as he helped Mrs Pargeter out of the back.
“Sure. Car be all right here, will it? Don’t want to waste all your profits in parking tickets, do you, Gary?”
“Be fine.” The chauffeur reached into the back door’s side pocket, extracted two items and placed them on the shelf under the rear window. They were a copy of the current Police Gazette and a Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s cap.
Mrs Pargeter grinned and led the way into the betting shop.
It was midafternoon and the assembled punters perched in excitement, or lounged in lethargy, on round-topped stools. She was reminded of Dr Johnson’s description of a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience. The wall-speakers crackled with the latest betting; on coloured monitors horses milled around starting stalls; the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and disappointment. The litter of crumpled and torn betting slips on the floor bore witness to the continuing and inexorable rise in the bookmakers’ profits.
Mrs Pargeter’s high heels picked their way daintily through the debris. Gary’s neat grey uniform and peaked cap attracted more attention than her ample figure in its bright silk dress. In spite of her handsome appearance and colourful taste in clothes, Mrs Pargeter rarely looked out of place in any environment.
She moved across to the cork board on which one of the day’s racing pages was pinned. She looked at the listings and checked her watch. Then she drew a fifty-pound note and a five-pound note out of her pocket, and pressed the fifty into Gary’s hand.
“Prior Convictions in the three-thirty at Haydock.” He nodded. She handed across the fiver. “And pay the tax.”
“Then shall I come to his office?”
A shake of the head. “Wait down here.”
As Gary went to the Bet Here window, Mrs Pargeter moved across to the Pay Out. “Looking for Mr Mason,” she said.
The thickly bespectacled girl behind the glass jerked her head towards a door marked: Private – Staff Only. “Second floor,” she mumbled.
“Thank you.”
The narrow stairs were rendered narrower by boxes piled along their sides. Must be a real fire hazard, Mrs Pargeter thought, as she puffed upwards. The doors on the first landing bore names of travel agents, though the dust on their padlocks and the spillage of junk mail outside suggested potential clients would be well advised to look elsewhere for their dream holidays.
There was only one door on the second landing. Some long time ago it had been painted grey, and the newly applied adhesive gold lettering merely emphasized its shabbiness: MASON DE VERE DETECTIVE AGENCY.
Mrs Pargeter paused for a moment to gather her breath, then reached a hand up to the bell-push at the side of the door. But the sight of loose wire-ends spilling out of it changed her mind and she knocked instead. Receiving no reply, she pushed the door open.
The first thing she was aware of was a Welsh voice, taut with affront. “… and so I spend the whole weekend tidying up the garden – and it’s all stuff he just left there, kept saying he’d get round to clearing it up but never did. ‘Oh, it’s a big job, Bronwen,’ he was always saying, ‘take time that will, have to wait till I can get a week’s leave.’ And it takes me just one weekend to clear the lot – and all the time I’m sweating away, knee-deep in garbage, I know that the bastard’s sitting in some luxury hotel the other side of the world with that brainless teenager…”
While this diatribe continued to pour out like molten lava, Mrs Pargeter took in her surroundings. The outer office was cluttered by old files bulging with yellowed documents, piles of newspapers, telephone books and other impedimenta. The predominant colours were buff, brown and institutional green. If she hadn’t known these to be new offices, she would have assumed that the Mason De Vere Detective Agency had worked out of the premises for decades. Clearly everything – the furniture as well – had just been lifted up bodily from the old office and dumped here. Its dust may have been temporarily disturbed by the upheaval, but had by now had time to resettle exactly where it had lain in its previous environment.
The only object that looked new was a gleaming wall-planner for the current year. It was pinned proudly behind Bronwen’s desk, with a little plastic container of different-coloured stickers attached to the bottom. Along the top of the chart the words MASON DE VERE DETECTIVE AGENCY had been picked out in the same adhesive gold as on the outer door. Beneath this, in contrasting silver, were the words, CURRENT COMMITMENTS. A line of coloured stickers ran down the side under the optimistic title ‘Legend’, but no words were offered to explain their significance. And, though it was already summer, in the virgin white daily rectangles of the year-planner there were no stickers of any colour.
Mrs Pargeter looked across at Bronwen, who was still monologuizing into the telephone. Mid-thirties, she was attractive in a dark wiry way, though her lips were tight in a perpetual grimace of annoyance. Eventually Mrs Pargeter managed to make eye contact with the girl, who seemed unfazed by and uninterested in her visitor. “Mr Mason?” Mrs Pargeter mouthed, for some reason inhibited from intruding too forcefully into the flow of Welsh vituperation.
Without drawing breath, Bronwen jerked her head towards a door. “… and all the time I’m thinking – only reason I have to do this is so that we can get a better price for the house – which I wouldn’t have to be selling but for the way he’s behaved – and then he’ll simply have to pay me less in my settlement. My God, they always said there was one law for the men and one for the women. All you have to do is get born with a tassel and –”
Mrs Pargeter passed through into the inner office and the door shut off further righteous fury.
The lugubrious, horse-faced man in the wooden swivel chair looked up from what he was reading. It was a magazine, and the only dustfree item in the room. Clearly the man’s desk, with its pile of papers, files, encrusted coffee cups and fluff, had also been moved intact from its previous home with all the care for exact repositioning that would attend an avant garde sculpture in the Tate Gallery.
“Mrs Pargeter,” he intoned dolefully, unwinding his surprising height as he rose from the chair. “Mrs Pargeter! How wonderful to see you!”
“Great to see you too, Truffler.” She gave his outstretched hand a little squeeze. “See you’ve got De Vere back.”
“What?”
She nodded her head towards the outer office. “Sorry. Always think of her as De Vere. Other half of the agency.”
“There isn’t another half of the agency. I just put the ‘De Vere’ in to make it sound more impressive.”
“I know that. Still always think of Bronwen as De Vere, though.”
“Well, she’s not a partner – only my secretary,” said Truffler with slightly dented professional pride. “Handles the telephone.”
“And how! Handles it like a shearer handles a sheep.” Mrs Pargeter grinned. “Taking on staff again, eh? This mean the recession’s bottoming out for you, does it?”
“Wouldn’t say that.”
Truffler’s normally mournful tone took on a note of deeper pessimism. “Business still very shaky, I’m afraid. No, I got Bronwen back, because… well, she’d got problems – you know, divorce and…”
“This must be the longest divorce in history. I mean, last time she was working for you, you said she was in the middle of a very sticky divorce.”
“Yes. This is another divorce.”
“Oh. You mean she went off and remarried?”
“Mm. And now she’s redivorcing.”
For the second time that afternoon Mrs Pargeter was reminded of Dr Johnson’s words about the triumph of hope over experience. “She must be a glutton for punishment.”
“If that’s what Bronwen is, what does it make the men who keep marrying her?” asked Truffler gloomily. “Anyway, what can I do for you, Mrs Pargeter? Anything, anything at all.”
“I’m not interrupting, am I? Should you be concentrating on your reading? Is it something important?”
“No, it’s only the Lag Mag.”
Her violet-blue eyes peered at him curiously for an explanation.
“‘Lag Mag’ – that’s what it gets nicknamed. Really called Inside Out.”
“And it’s a kind of specialist magazine, is it?”
“You could say that.” He let out a mournful chuckle. “Yes, it’s for specialists who might be interested in… people’s movements.”
“People’s movements?” she echoed, perplexed. “You’re not talking about aerobics, are you?”
“No, no. I’m talking about who’s going in, who’s coming out…”
From her expression, this was clearly insufficient information, so Truffler Mason elaborated. “… who’s being transferred… you know, from High Security to Category B… Cat. C to an Open Prison… who’s got time off for good behaviour… all that kind of stuff.”
Mrs Pargeter’s mouth hardened into a line of prim disapproval. “Prisoners, you mean? I didn’t think you had anything to do with that kind of person now, Truffler.”