by Simon Brett
‘I’d have thought, the more I knew, the better it would be.’
‘In what way?’
‘Then we could discuss the information we have. We could have the benefit of each other’s input.’
‘Input?’ Inspector Wilkinson enunciated the word with distaste. ‘When I want your input, Hughes, I will ask for it. Anyway, that hasn’t really answered my question about how much you need to know.’
‘To put it at its most basic,’ said the Sergeant with a note of exasperation in his voice, ‘if I don’t know what we’re looking for in this surveillance, then I’m not going to recognize it when I see it, am I?’
‘A good answer.’ Wilkinson nodded. ‘Yes, a good answer – were it not for one small detail. A good copper, you’ll find, will always notice that one significant detail in any scenario. Any idea what the detail might be in this case?’
‘No,’ said the Sergeant, who didn’t want to get caught up in elaborate guessing games.
‘The detail is that you’re not looking for anything.’ The Inspector tapped his binoculars. ‘I am looking for things and telling you what I see. You are simply writing down what I tell you.’
‘Yes,’ Sergeant Hughes agreed listlessly. He hadn’t got the energy to point out that Wilkinson had so far missed the most important detail to have come up during their surveillance. They still had no idea what Veronica Chastaigne’s first visitor looked like.
‘But I will give you one piece of information relevant to the case . . .’ the Inspector went on with new magnanimity.
‘What?’ There was now a spark of animation in the Sergeant’s eye.
‘It concerns criminals.’
‘Oh.’ The spark was extinguished. ‘Thank you very much, Inspector.’
Back in the big house, Toby Chastaigne was himself involved in surveillance. All the way through their supper he kept a watchful eye on his mother, his anxious scrutiny masked by a veil of solicitude.
‘You should eat more,’ he said, as he watched her peck at a flake of salmon.
‘Why?’ Veronica asked abstractedly.
‘Build yourself up,’ Toby replied, as he reached across to replenish his plate with a mound of buttered new potatoes and dollops of mayonnaise.
‘What for?’
Her son looked thoughtful, but decided not to answer this. He let a pause hang between them, then, with over-elaborate casualness, asked, ‘Have you done anything about the will yet?’ Veronica looked up sharply, as he hastened to soften his bluntness. ‘I speak as an accountant, not as your son. This is the advice I’d give to any of my clients. It’s just that one has to be practical – one should always have all the loose ends neatly tied up.’
A pale smile came to Veronica Chastaigne’s thin lips. ‘That could almost be your motto, Toby, couldn’t it?’
He looked injured by the injustice of her implied slight. ‘Mother, I’m only thinking of you.’
‘Very kind.’ She smiled again, a kindly smile, though neither of them was in any doubt that the conversation was gladiatorial rather than benign. The courtesy was no more than a front. ‘Though I don’t really see how . . .’ Veronica went on lightly, ‘because loose ends aren’t going to worry me too much, are they?’
‘Well . . .’
‘After I’m dead,’ she continued easily, ‘they’ll be someone else’s problem.’
Toby coughed in embarrassment, sending a fine spray of potato over his plate. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about it, Mother.’
‘Why not?’ asked Veronica, enjoying her son’s discomfiture. ‘You said you wanted me to be practical. I’d have thought preparing for something you know is going to happen is extremely practical. And my death is certainly going to happen – in the not-too-distant future. You know, your father always used to say—’
Toby raised an admonitory hand. ‘I don’t want to hear any more criminal maxims, thank you, Mother.’
That really caught her on the raw. The gloves were very definitely off, as she snapped at him, ‘Don’t try and disclaim your own father, Toby! He worked harder than you’ve ever worked to provide us with all this.’
‘Hard work is not the point at issue,’ Toby snapped back. ‘It’s the nature of his work that was so shameful.’
His words only served to incense his mother further. ‘Shameful? Your own father? Bennie did all that work so that you would be able to take the legitimate route through life. Eton, Cambridge, the accountancy training. He gave you everything you now possess, Toby.’
‘That is your view, Mother.’ The flash of anger had given way to his customary controlled urbanity. ‘As you know, I don’t share it. I think my current position in life is due at least as much to my own intelligence and application as to anything my father gave me.’
‘I see,’ said his mother, still seething. ‘So you despise the things your father gave you?’
Toby tried to make his tone conciliatory, but he couldn’t keep out a little tinge of the patronizing. ‘I didn’t say that, Mother. It’s just . . . well, we both know what my father was . . . but there doesn’t seem to me any need to dwell on it.’
‘As you wish.’ Veronica Chastaigne sighed, aligned her knife and fork on her plate and pushed the hardly touched remains of her meal towards the centre of the table.
Toby smiled a self-satisfied smile, as though his point had been taken and he had won the round. Leaning forward to fork up another mound of salmon, potatoes and mayonnaise, he could not see the expression on his mother’s face. Had he registered its mix of distaste, shrewd calculation and sheer bloodymindedness, he would have realized that the round was far from won.
In fact, Veronica Chastaigne’s face showed a determination to escalate the conflict with her son into all-out war. And it was not a war that she contemplated the possibility of losing.
Chapter 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 w
hich 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.
Chapter Four
‘You know, a good copper,’ said Inspector Wilkinson, ‘is a copper who makes his mark.’
‘Really?’ On his third day of sitting in an unmarked smoke-filled car with the DI, Sergeant Hughes was beginning to vary his responses. No longer was he content with just the subservient ‘yes’; now increasingly he used words that ended with question marks, implying a degree of scepticism, even the blasphemous possibility that he was not accepting everything the Inspector said as gospel truth.
Initially, Hughes had given his boss the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that ponderous manner and apparent stupidity masked a brain of rare brilliance. Maybe the unprepossessing exterior was a smokescreen for a genius of detection.
After two days spent in the man’s company, the Sergeant had ruled out both these possibilities. With Inspector Wilkinson, he came to the conclusion, what you saw was what you got. The only smokescreen he was capable of putting up came from his cigarettes.
‘Yes,’ said Wilkinson.
Maybe it was this transient moment of role reversal that emboldened Hughes to ask a direct question. ‘And would you say you have made your mark, sir?’
‘Oh, I think people remember me. Yes, though I say it myself, I think Detective Inspector Craig Wilkinson is a name that has a certain resonance in the Met.’
‘And for what reason does it resonate?’ Boredom was driving the Sergeant’s questions ever closer to the limits of acceptability.
This one, however, prompted another slow finger-tap to the inspectorial nose. ‘Bit hush-hush. Mostly for the kind of undercover operations that, by their very nature, can’t have too much publicity. But which are deeply appreciated by those few authority figures who’re in the know.’
‘Oh yes?’ Hughes’s sceptical intonation was now a million miles from the unquestioning yeses of his first day. ‘Would you be refering to the painstaking stalking and capture of criminal masterminds, sir, that sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Inspector Wilkinson confirmed with a knowing nod of the head. ‘That sort of thing, yes, young Hughes. Of course, I’d like to tell you more, but we’re treading around the kind of delicate area in which one can’t be too careful.’
‘And is what we’re engaged in at the moment another operation that involves the painstaking stalking and will lead to the eventual capture of another criminal mastermind, sir?’
‘Shrewd guess, Hughes, shrewd guess. You are not a million miles from the truth there.’
‘I still think it’d help if you told me a bit of detail about the case we’re actually investigating at the . . .’
But a slow, admonitory finger had risen to Wilkinson’s lips and once again the Sergeant’s words trickled away into frustrated silence.
‘No, no,’ said the Inspector. ‘A case has to be conducted at the appropriate pace, and information has to be fed out sparingly. A few careless words in the pub, a bit of incautious pillow talk . . . those are the kind of things that can ruin months – even years – of punctilious build-up.’
‘Yes,’ Sergeant Hughes agreed listlessly, his moment of assertiveness past.
Complacently, Inspector Wilkinson stroked his moustache. It was a sad moustache. An old moustache. A moustache dating from the days when a pencil line along Clark Gable’s upper lip was deemed to be sexy. And even for people who liked that kind of thing, the Inspector’s moustache was disfigured by being grey – except for a small patch, slightly right of centre, which was yellow from his habit of smoking untipped cigarettes right down to the end.
‘No, you’ll find that a good copper,’ he went on, ‘a good copper is aware at all times of the level of security required in a given situation and the degree of information dissemination necessary to—’
‘Excuse me, sir. Don’t you think that could be the person we’re looking for? She looks as if she’s going to get into the car.’
The Inspector followed Hughes’s pointing finger to see a plump, white-haired woman in a bright red coat stepping daintily across the pavement between the betting-shop entrance and a limousine parked on the double yellow lines directly outside.
‘Well spotted, Hughes.’ Wilkinson opened his car door.
‘Shall I come with you, sir?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘But I’m the one who found out where we’d find the limousine. I got on to the police computer and—’
‘Computers, huh.’ Inspector Wilkinson let out a patronizing chuckle. ‘Your generation thinks computers can give all the answers. But, you
know, they’ll never replace the instincts of a good copper.’
‘Oh, can’t I come with you?’ Hughes pleaded pathetically.
‘No, no. Subtle approach is what’s required at this moment. Don’t want to raise any suspicions.’
‘About what?’ asked the Sergeant in a wail of frustration. But the car door had already closed behind his uncommunicative boss.
Mrs Pargeter was settling into the comfortable upholstery of the limousine’s back seat when she heard a tap on the window. She pressed a button and the pane slid silently down. Facing her she found the craggy face of a man in his fifties. He had a thin moustache and a cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth. ‘Good morning, officer. Can I help you?’
‘Officer? Do you know me? Have we met before?’
‘No, but I can tell you’re a policeman.’
‘Oh. Well, you’re right. I am. Plain clothes.’
Mrs Pargeter smiled sweetly. ‘I pieced that together too. From your lack of uniform.’
‘Right.’ Wilkinson reached for his inside pocket. ‘Would you like to see some identification?’
‘I don’t really think I need to. I can tell you’re the genuine article.’
‘Oh.’ He looked a little nonplussed and withdrew his hand.
‘So . . . how can I help you?’
‘Well, it’s a matter in relation to this car, madam,’ the Inspector improvised, not very convincingly. ‘We’ve had a report of a car of this make with this registration number having been seen in the vicinity of an area where a recent crime took place and we are following that up . . .’
A look of shock came into Mrs Pargeter’s innocent violet-blue eyes. ‘You’re not suggesting that I might have been involved in something criminal, are you, Inspector?’
‘No, no, I— Here, how did you know I’m an inspector? I didn’t tell you that, did I?’
‘No, you didn’t, but it’s self-evident.’
