Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

∨ Mrs, Presumed Dead ∧

Thirty-Two

That evening Mrs Pargeter lay long in a hot bath, still thinking about the murder in Smithy’s Loam. Slowly, she once again went through all the elements of the case, testing them out, linking facts and pulling them tight, checking out whether there were any holes in her logic, any details she was missing out.

But nothing new came to her, no blinding insight into the identity of Theresa Cotton’s killer. Everything else in the case made sense; the shape, the outline was clear; but there remained a great hole at the centre. One unanswered question: who had actually done it?

Mrs Pargeter had narrowed down the list of suspects. She was now convinced that Theresa Cotton had been killed by one of the women in Smithy’s Loam. And that the reason for the murder was something that had been said during Theresa’s conscience-clearing circuit of the other houses in the close early on the evening she died.

To all of the women she had revealed that she knew secrets about them. But to one the secret was so important that she was prepared to kill to keep it quiet.

Mrs Pargeter was slowly building up a list of what those secrets might be, but as yet her list was incomplete.

♦

When she got out of the bath and wrapped herself in a sheet-size bath towel, Mrs Pargeter felt cold. There was a draught coming from behind the curtain. Must have left the fanlight open.

She reached up to release the prop that held the window ajar, but it wouldn’t budge. She climbed up on a bathroom chair and, with the curtain bunching round her like a cloak, tried to shift the jammed lock.

It gave after a moment’s effort and she closed the window. She was just about to step down from the chair when she saw something that froze her where she was.

The bathroom was on the side of the house, facing the Temples’. Up to fanlight level, the window glass was discreetly frosted, but above that it was plain. And through this plain glass Mrs Pargeter could see into Carole and Gregory Temple’s bedroom.

The curtains were only half-drawn, which was strange.

But not as strange as what Mrs Pargeter could see through them.

She saw a backview which must be Carole, though somehow it didn’t look like Carole. Anyway, surely she had seen Carole’s car leaving just before running her bath…?

And why would Carole be dressing up so elaborately and preening herself in front of the mirror? She was wearing a low-backed red satin cocktail dress, stockings and silver high-heeled shoes. The ensemble didn’t conform with her customary rather dour style of dress.

Still, perhaps she was going out to some smart function in the near future and was just testing the effect.

But the way she was preening and parading in front of the mirror also seemed at odds with what Mrs Pargeter knew of her neighbour’s character. There was something strange in her movements, too. Could Carole Temple possibly be drunk?

Suddenly the figure in front of the mirror turned to check the straightness of her stocking seams in the mirror.

It wasn’t the unaccustomed heaviness of the make-up that took Mrs Pargeter by surprise – it was the moustache.

The oddness of the figure was suddenly explained. It wasn’t Carole Temple who was preening herself in the red cocktail dress – it was her husband, Gregory.

Hmm, thought Mrs Pargeter, now that is interesting.

Suppose Theresa Cotton had witnessed a similar parade on a previous evening when Carole Temple had been out…

And suppose she had told Carole Temple what she had seen…

Might not that be the sort of secret that should be kept from spreading amongst the other residents of Smithy’s Loam?