Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

∨ Mrs, Presumed Dead ∧

Seven

Mrs Pargeter put her feet up after lunch. It had been a tiring week. Not every day you move house. And, she thought as she looked fondly round the sitting-room she had now imprinted with her personality, I’ve achieved quite a lot. Certainly earned a little snooze in my own armchair.

The yielding upholstery and high back felt comfortingly familiar. After all the alien furniture of hotels and rented rooms, it was good to be among her own things.

The telephone woke her and for a second she wondered where she was. Then she reached for the receiver and read out the unfamiliar number.

“Could I speak to Mrs Cotton, please?”

It was a man’s voice. Oldish, sixties perhaps, and with a slight fruitiness. The voice of a man used to speaking in public.

“I’m sorry. Mrs Cotton has moved.”

“Ah, she’s actually gone, has she?”

“Yes,” Mrs Pargeter replied, slightly bewildered. “She moved out Monday evening.”

“I know that was when she was intending to go, but I thought perhaps her plans might have changed.”

“Not so far as I know.”

“It’s just, I was expecting to see her and…Look, never mind.”

He sounded as if he was about to end the conversation, so Mrs Pargeter interposed hastily, “I do have her new address, if that would help.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be any use to me, would it?” said the man rudely. “Goodbye.” And he put the phone down.

Mrs Pargeter was fully awake now. She stayed in her favourite armchair for a few moments, deep in thought.

There was something odd. Why should the man have been so dismissive of the offered address? Was he only interested in Theresa Cotton while she lived in Smithy’s Loam?

But no, that couldn’t be it. He knew that she had been proposing to leave on the Monday evening. And he had implied that she had arranged to meet him and then not turned up.

The situation gave Mrs Pargeter a strange but not wholly unfamiliar feeling, a compound of disquiet and of…yes, of excitement.

She picked up the telephone again and had another try at Directory Enquiries. Maybe the person she had spoken to on the Wednesday night had simply been inefficient. Maybe the paperwork of the Cottons’ new telephone number had not percolated through the system.

Directory Enquiries answered. She gave exactly the same information as she had done on the previous occasion.

And got exactly the same reply. There was no one called Cotton with a telephone at the address she mentioned.

She stayed in her armchair for another moment’s thought after she had put the phone down. Then she made up her mind and went into the hall to put on her fur coat.

♦

The original brochure for Smithy’s Loam did not mention, among its glowing list of the area’s amenities, that the development was near to an excellent public library. But then that would not have been regarded as particularly important by the kind of people who were likely to buy that kind of property. When she had first visited ‘Acapulco’ to inspect the property, Mrs Pargeter had seen no evidence of any books anywhere.

To her, however, books were extremely important, and one of her first tasks on arrival had been to get herself issued with library tickets and stock up with her first week’s reading.

But that afternoon her concern was with the reference section of the library, and this she found to be just as well stocked as the lending part. She explained the subject of her research to a most helpful librarian and was quickly directed towards the relevant maps, gazetteers and guide books.

It didn’t take long to have her growing suspicion confirmed. She double-checked, cross-referencing different maps. Then checked again in a variety of indexes.

But the facts were incontrovertible. In the small town of Dunnington in North Yorkshire there was no road called Bascombe Lane.

And if the road didn’t exist, then it couldn’t contain a house called ‘Elm Trees’.

In other words, Theresa Cotton had given a false address for her new home.

She had deliberately planned to go missing.