Mrs Pargeter 06; Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour

∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧

Three

The offices of the Mason De Vere Detective Agency, situated above a betting shop in South London, would have got a very high rating from the Society for the Preservation of Dust. Other organizations – like the Society for the Maintenance of Tidiness, the Association for Efficient Filing or the Commission for the Removal of Encrusted Coffee Cups – might have marked it rather lower. In fact, they would have given it no marks at all.

But, though unlikely to impress potential clients, the office was arranged exactly the way Truffler Mason liked it. Since he was the sole proprietor – the ‘De Vere’ being merely a fiction to look impressive on a letterhead – he could please himself in such matters. And, though his office might have the musty air of an attic which had lain undisturbed for half a century, inside it he knew exactly where everything was. Every shoebox, fluffy with dust; every overfull and spilling cardboard folder; every pile of frayed brown envelopes, cinched by perished rubber bands; every crumpled clump of yellowed cuttings pinned to the wall; they all meant something to Truffler Mason. Whatever the reference that was required, within seconds and in a minor tornado of dust, he would have the relevant paper in his hand.

Mrs Pargeter had known her late husband’s former associate too long to pass comment on – or even to notice – the squalor in which he worked. Anyway, she was not a woman who set much store by outward appearances. She judged people by instinct; on first meeting she saw into their souls and instantly assessed them. Only on a few, painful occasions had her judgement been proved to be at fault.

And one select band of people she approved of even before she met them. These were the group honoured by inclusion in Mrs Pargeter’s most treasured heirloom – her husband’s address book. The late Mr Pargeter, an adoring and solicitous spouse, had left his widow well-provided for in the financial sense, but from beyond the grave he had also given her a far more valuable protection. In his varied and colourful business career, the late Mr Pargeter had worked with a rich gallery of characters of wide-ranging individual skills, and it was these whose names filled the precious address book. As a result, if ever his widow came up against one of those little niggling challenges which bother us all from time to time – finding a missing person, gaining access to a locked building, removing property without its owner’s knowledge, replacing a lost document, or even obtaining one which had had no previous existence – all she had to do was to look up in the book the number of a person with the appropriate skills, and her problem would be instantly resolved. Such was the loyalty inspired by her late husband amongst his workforce that the words on the telephone, “Hello, this is Mrs Pargeter” prompted immediate shelving of all other work and dedicated concentration on her requirements.

She had worked so often with Truffler Mason that she had almost forgotten he’d had a life before he became a private investigator. But she was gratefully aware of his unrivalled knowledge of criminal behaviour, his proficiency at obtaining information from people, and his encyclopaedic list of contacts when less sophisticated manpower was required. The fact that in learning these skills he had not followed the traditional career path of a detective was something to which Mrs Pargeter never gave a moment’s thought.

When Truffler’s tall presence came to greet her at the door of his outer office – a space only marginally less dusty than the inner sanctum – she commented on the absence of his secretary Bronwen.

“Ah, yes, she’s off for a while,” Truffler Mason intoned, in his customary voice, a deeply tragic rumble which made Eeyore sound as bouncy as Little Noddy.

“Not ill, I hope?”

“No, no, she’s got married.”

“Again?” Mrs Pargeter asked doubtfully. She knew that Bronwen’s marital history was a catalogue of unsatisfactory skirmishes and pitched battles, that in fact it shared many features with the Hundred Years War.

“Again,” Truffler concurred gloomily. “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about it for months. Love’s young dream this time. They were meant for each other. They’re blissfully happy. This time it’s for ever.”

“So are you going to have to hire someone else?”

He shook his huge head. “No, give it a couple of weeks… she’ll be back.”

From long, but unjudgemental, knowledge of the hygiene standards that obtained in his office, Mrs Pargeter refused Truffler Mason’s offer of a cup of coffee, but made no attempt to wipe the dust from the seat towards which he ushered her. He coiled his long body down into his own chair the other side of the desk, and listened intently while she brought him up to date with her visit to Chastaigne Varleigh.

“Mrs Chastaigne is dying, you see, Truffler,” said Mrs Pargeter.

“I’m sorry,” he responded automatically, in a voice more doom-laden than ever.

“No need to be. She’s very philosophical about it. Knows that the best bit of her life was while Bennie was alive. Knows that she’s had the great privilege of living in comfort surrounded by beautiful things…”

He nodded. Though Truffler Mason had never actually been to Chastaigne Varleigh, he’d heard on a secret grapevine of its amazing hidden art collection. “So what does she want from us, Mrs P?”

She grimaced. “It’s the beautiful things, Truffler…”

“What, all that stuff Bennie Logan nicked for her?”

Mrs Pargeter nodded. “Right. The paintings. She wants them returned.”

“Returned?”

“Restored to their rightful owners. Every last one of them.”

Truffler Mason let out a low whistle and shook his head in disbelief. “Blimey O’Reilly,” he muttered.