Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧

Thirteen

It was night. Diluted moonlight washed over the gravel outside Chastaigne Varleigh, where a red Transit van was parked. A thickset man jumped out of the van’s back doors and said to his mate, “Nearly done. All we got to get now is the –”

“Who’s this coming?” the other man hissed, and pointed down the drive. Through the metal gates swung the headlights of another vehicle.

“Don’t think we’ll wait to find out!”

The two men leapt in the van’s cab, and gunned its engine into life. They waited till the approaching vehicle – also a red Transit van – had drawn up just behind them, then screeched off down the drive in a fusillade of gravel.

The two men in the newly arrived van only got a quick impression of the driver’s face. It was unfamiliar, heavy and sour-looking.

“Who the hell were they?” asked Truffler Mason in bewilderment.

“I don’t know,” Gary replied.

“D’you get their number?”

“Course I did.” Gary’s memory for number plates was photographic and infallible.

The two men jumped out of the cab and hurried towards the house.

“I don’t like the look of this at all,” murmured Truffler, pulling at the chain beside the heavy oak door and setting up a distant jangling inside the house. “Something’s seriously wonky.”

“Hope nothing’s happened to the old bird,” said Gary anxiously.

“No, it’s all right, I can hear footsteps. She’s coming.”

The door opened, and Veronica Chastaigne stood there, blinking at them in some astonishment. Outlined in the thin moonlight, she looked paler and more frail than ever. “Good evening. Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m Truffler Mason and this is Gary,” said Truffler. “We’ve been sent by Mrs Pargeter to collect your paintings.”

The old lady’s astonishment grew. “What? But some other men have been and done that.”

“The ones who’ve just gone?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t think they’d got all the paintings, but maybe they had.”

“Damn!” Truffler Mason looked down the drive without hope. The tail lights of the first Transit were long out of sight. “Damn!” he repeated. “Who the hell were they?”

♦

The walls of the Long Gallery looked depressingly bare, their oak panelling loweringly dark. Of the rich array of paintings Mrs Pargeter had been shown, only three remained. There were a couple of minor Madonnas and a voluptuous Rubens nude.

“I’m sorry.” Veronica Chastaigne shrugged helplessly. “I was told two men would be arriving in a red van. Two men arrived in a red van, so I naturally assumed they were the ones I was expecting.”

“Yes, of course, Mrs Chastaigne. It wasn’t your fault.” Truffler shook his head in frustration as he looked around the denuded space.

Gary was equally angry. “How did they know it was going to be a red van? Someone’s got to have been talking out of turn.”

“Yes, and I’ll damned well find out who –”

Truffler’s words were stopped by the sound of a little sigh escaping from Veronica Chastaigne. He turned, but neither he nor Gary was quick enough to catch the old lady before she collapsed unconscious on to the wooden floor.

The chauffeur was instantly kneeling down beside her. He lifted the pitifully light form a little to cradle her head in his arms. Veronica Chastaigne gave no signs of noticing what was happening to her.

“Blimey O’Reilly! She’s not dead, is she?”

“No.” Gary looked up unhappily at his colleague. “Doesn’t look too good, though.”