Mrs Pargeter 05; Mrs Pargeter’s Plot

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧

Five

Clearly, dealing with the monkey was not proving easy. Hedgeclipper Clinton was too preoccupied by his task to be aware of Mrs Pargeter’s return to her suite. She stood in the doorway and watched the scene with considerable relish.

The hotel manager had freed the marmoset’s chain from its anchorage to the dresser, but the animal had evidently escaped and showed no relish for recapture. It was now perched on the pelmet, high above the tall windows, chattering at its pursuer with uninhabited amusement. In one hand the creature held a banana, an attempted bait that it must have snatched and got away with. Between chattering noises, the marmoset detached lumps of the fruit and swirled them around in its saliva, before hurling them towards the hotel manager. That its aim was unerring could be seen from the splodges on Hedgeclipper Clinton’s black tailcoat.

The general chaos of the room – overturned chairs, paintings askew, torn curtains and banana-smeared surfaces – suggested the chase had been lively and vigorous. And that the monkey was very definitely in control of the situation.

The volume of fruit splattered around the room showed Hedgeclipper Clinton must have come in with a considerable supply of bananas, but he was now running out. He held up the last one, its skin peeled back to show the tempting white flesh, imploringly towards the marmoset, while he murmured in seductive tones, “Come on, Erasmus. Come on, Erasmus, there’s a good boy…”

“Why on earth ‘Erasmus’?” asked Mrs Pargeter from the doorway.

“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.” He turned to look at her. “I had an uncle who had a pet monkey called Erasmus. Thereafter, I’m afraid, all monkeys have been Erasmus so far as I’m concerned.”

Hedgeclipper Clinton shouldn’t have taken his eyes off his quarry. The marmoset, acute to the lapse of concentration, leapt in one easy movement from pelmet to chandelier, gripped the stem with one nonchalantly prehensile foot, swung downwards to snatch the banana, and was back on the pelmet before the hotel manager had turned round again.

“Damn,” he said. Then, as another sucked blob of pulp caught him in the eye, “Damn!”

“Good luck,” said Mrs Pargeter, as she went smiling through into the bedroom. “I’m relying on you to sort it out, Hedgeclipper.”

♦

Gary’s limousine slid effortlessly out of the Dartford Tunnel on its way towards Essex. In the back, over glasses of chilled Chardonnay from the vehicle’s bar, Mrs Pargeter brought Truffler Mason up to date on the case.

“I mean, I’m sure it was just coincidence that I was there at the site when the police came. I’d only rung Concrete that morning and said I’d like to have a look at how the building was going. And then I’d rung Gary and he was free –”

“Always free for you, Mrs Pargeter,” the chauffeur chipped in.

“Less of that, young man,” she said sharply. “You got your own business now.”

“I know. But when I think of everything your husband taught me, the least I can do is to –”

“If I know anything about my husband,” Mrs Pargeter continued in the same tone of reproof, “he also taught you that there is no room in the commercial world for sentimentality. Compassion – yes. Sentimentality – no. You’re running a hire-car business, young Gary – you take all the bookings you can, and see that everyone pays. Including me.”

Subdued, Gary nodded his acceptance of this. But it was an ongoing running battle between them and he’d only lost the skirmish. In time he would return to the fray with ever more devious attempts to undercharge his favourite client – or ideally not to charge her at all.

Mrs Pargeter resumed her conversation with Truffler. “And the stuff you got on Willie Cass fits in with what Nigel Merriman told me, does it?”

A rueful nod. “Down to the last detail. I mean, I got feelers out, I’ll get some more info, but… The daft thing about it is how public Willie was about blackmailing Concrete. Short of buying advertising in the middle of Coronation Street, he couldn’t have let more people know what he was up to.”

“Yes, there’s so much evidence against Concrete, it’s got to be a frame-up.”

“Certainly. Whole case is far too tidy. All neatly tied up with a bow on top.” Truffler grimaced wryly. “Trouble is…”

“Hm?”

“The police like cases all neatly tied up with a bow on top.”

“That may be so,” she remonstrated, “but this time surely anyone with a bit of imagination could see that –”

Truffler raised a hand politely to interrupt her. “Er, not ‘anyone with a bit of imagination’. I did say the police, Mrs Pargeter.”

“True.” She sighed glumly, took a swig of Chardonnay, and sank back into the limousine’s plush upholstery. “Oh well, maybe we can get some more stuff from Tammy.”

♦

The Jackets lived outside Basildon in a large modern house on which everything had been lavished but taste. The house was full of ‘features’ – windows of different shapes glazed in different styles and colours, walls of exposed brick, walls draped in hessian, walls covered in flock, vinyl and panelling. Interior doors ranged from studded monastic oak to chest-high Western saloon. Artex whirled, carpets swirled, and cocktail trolleys proliferated. There was a lot of wrought-iron, gilt and onyx; coloured glass figurines decorated every surface.

For a moment Mrs Pargeter wondered whether the discordant styles simply reflected their owner’s light fingers. Had Concrete knocked off one item from every job he did and combined them all in his home? Or was his house a kind of living catalogue, round which prospective clients could be conducted to select their own fittings from the wide range on display?

But both explanations seemed at odds with the pride demonstrated by Tammy Jacket as she showed her guests round the place. No, the style was not accidental. This was actually how the Jackets wanted their house to look.

There was another clue to this in Tammy’s dress sense. She wore gilt leggings, and shoes encrusted with diamante. Her jumper was adorned with those random scraps of silver leather, bits of gilded chain and irrelevant tassels that denote purchase in a boutique for people with more money than taste. A spectrum of glittery eye-shadows vied for attention on the crow’s feet around her lids, and the lacquered superstructure of her hair was the colour of a reproduction copper kettle. Tammy Jacket was of a piece with her environment.

But despite her brassy appearance, there was an engaging innocence about the woman. Though He had perhaps been a little parsimonious when He allocated her quota of intelligence, God had more than made up for it by lavish rations of charm. It was impossible not to warm to Tammy Jacket.

The three of them – Tammy, Truffler and Mrs Pargeter – sat on a three-piece suite, whose colours screamed at the carpet. The carpet screamed back at the suite, and both joined forces to scream at their owner’s clothes.

“Cheers,” said Tammy Jacket cosily, and each of them raised a gold-patterned glass, filled with a dayglo drink on whose surface bright paper umbrellas wallowed in an archipelago of fruit.

“So you saw Willie Cass quite recently?” asked Mrs Pargeter, after a surprisingly rewarding sip from her glass.

Tammy nodded. “Oh yes. He come round here. Month or so back. Sunday lunchtime it was. I remember ‘cause it was Concrete’s fifty-fifth birthday. We was giving this big party, lots of friends and that – and then Willie Cass appeared. No manners – he never did have any. I mean, what kind of person comes round to your house Sunday lunchtime when you’re giving a party what he hasn’t been invited to?”

“The kind of person who wants a lot of witnesses to see them turn up?” Truffler suggested.

“Oh, I never thought of that,” said Tammy.

“And how did Willie behave when he was here?” asked Mrs Pargeter.

“Dreadful. Way out of order. He was drunk, I reckon. Must’ve been. Kept saying he wanted money from Concrete – or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Didn’t say exactly, but it wasn’t a trip to Euro-disney.”

“No.” Mrs Pargeter looked thoughtful. “I think you’re right, Truffler. Sounds like a heavy set-up for a very public row. How did it end, Tammy?”

“Well, eventually we just had to turn him out. Fortunately, wasn’t a problem. Lot of Concrete’s, er, business associates was here, so they dealt with it.”

“But Concrete himself wasn’t violent to Willie?”

“No, no, Mrs Pargeter. Concrete’s not a violent man,” said Tammy Jacket with the sublime confidence of a trusting wife.

“Not violent, perhaps…” Mrs Pargeter probed, “… but he still kept a gun here? I understand the gun that killed Willie Cass has been identified as belonging to your husband.”