Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour

by Simon Brett

  Hamish Ramon Henriques shook his head dubiously. ‘I’m not sure that—’

  But Palings Price had the bit between his teeth and was not to be deflected. ‘Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy, HRH. If Mr Pargeter hadn’t given you your chance, you’d still be working for—’ – the travel agent tried to interrupt, but he was too late – ‘London Transport,’ the art dealer concluded implacably.

  HRH turned away in shame, effectively handing the victory to Palings Price. ‘So I think we should definitely give VVO the chance to be the courier for once.’ He turned to face their late employer’s widow. ‘What do you say, Mrs Pargeter?’

  She was torn. Caution told her that Hamish Ramon Henriques was in the right, but her natural generosity drew her towards the idea of giving VVO a break. And the thoughts she’d been entertaining about her husband suggested that he might have been inclined towards indulgence.

  ‘Please, please!’ the painter begged. ‘You won’t regret your decision. I’ll do the job perfectly, I promise.’

  Mrs Pargeter was not a weak or vacillating woman, and in this instance her natural big-heartedness did not allow her to hesitate for long. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said. ‘You be our courier, VVO.’

  ‘Yippee!’ The painter punched the air with delight, and did a little jig around the clutter of his studio. Mrs Pargeter looked at Palings Price and saw how pleased he was by what she’d said. But she avoided the eye of Hamish Ramon Henriques. She had a feeling his view might be rather different.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Inspector Wilkinson sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked car, chewing the end of his pencil. A police notebook lay open on his lap in front of him, but so far only one line had been written. As a line, he quite liked it, but it was writing a second, and a third, and a fourth that was proving difficult. Wasn’t there any word in the English language that rhymed with ‘ample’?

  Be simpler if he came from the North. Then presumably he could use ‘sample’ or ‘example’, with short ‘a’s. But that wouldn’t be right. He didn’t know much about poetry, but he did know neither of those would be a true rhyme. And he had to make his first poem a presentable one. A good copper doesn’t cut corners, even when he’s writing poetry.

  Inspector Wilkinson had never actually met a police officer who wrote poetry – outside of crime fiction – but he was sure there must be some. Maybe that was the way he’d make his mark in the Force, by showing his more spiritual, creative side. Yes, it was rather appealing, the image of himself, Craig Wilkinson, as a sensitive aesthete, even as the New Man perhaps.

  Women went for that kind of stuff, apart from anything else. Poets never had any difficulty getting women to go to bed with them. And because they were dealing with poets, the women didn’t expect anything like commitment or fidelity. They knew poets lived on far too high a plane to be sidetracked by details like that. Yes, Wilkinson thought to himself, I think I could have rather a good future as a poet (and forget the New Man bit of it).

  But not until I can find something to rhyme with ‘ample’, he was reminded as his eye caught sight of the notebook. There’s always a bloody snag, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the word ‘ample’ that needs changing, he wondered. It suits the rhythm of the line perfectly, but perhaps there’s something else that would fit in as well.

  He tried to think of some synonyms for ‘ample’. ‘Generous’ . . .? That was close, but it hadn’t got quite the same resonance. ‘Strapping’ . . .? Good for rhymes, but it wasn’t right for anything else. ‘Huge’ . . .? No. ‘Fat’ . . .? No, no, no. ‘Enormous’ . . .? Now this was getting silly.

  No way round it, ‘ample’ was the only word. It had to be ‘ample’. But . . . Suddenly a memory came from his schooldays, an echo of something his English master had said, half-listened to and unheeded until this moment. ‘Shakespeare wrote all of his greatest plays in blank verse, and blank verse does not rhyme.’

  That’s it. Wilkinson seized on the idea with delight. Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme! He looked down again at the notebook for a moment, but his glee was short-lived. The second line still didn’t leap out at him. He couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to say.

  God, he thought, this poetry lark’s bloody difficult. There must be easier ways in which I can make my mark. Maybe I should have a go at exotic sandwich-making or serial adultery instead . . .?

  ‘What’s that then?’ Wilkinson was so abstracted by his thoughts that a curious Sergeant Hughes was in the driver’s seat beside him before he’d noticed.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I was just, er, pulling together some of the threads of the case.’ The Inspector hastened to shove the notebook back in his pocket.

  But he hadn’t been quick enough. Hughes had caught sight of a word. ‘What’s “curvaceous” got to do with the case then, sir?’

  ‘Mind your own business, Sergeant. A good copper frequently takes an oblique approach to a subject. It rarely pays to go for the obvious. Lateral thinking is what you need in our line of work.’ Then, in a tone of professional grumpiness, he asked, ‘Anyway, what kept you? You were due here half an hour ago.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question. I asked what kept you. What have you been doing, Hughes? Where have you been?’

  ‘I was just doing a bit more research, sir.’

  ‘Research, eh? Into what?’

  ‘Into this case, sir. The case we’re working on.’

  Wilkinson’s eyes narrowed with distaste. ‘I thought I’d warned you about going out on a limb, Hughes. Never forget who’s in charge of this case. I am.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, sir, but I just thought, you know, two heads are better than one.’

  ‘A very dangerous supposition, Hughes. And one that certainly does not always prove to be correct. It depends entirely on the quality of the heads involved.’

  ‘Listen, sir. I’ve just been going through the old files again.’

  ‘Looking for what?’

  ‘Connections, sir.’

  ‘What kind of connections?’

  ‘Connections between some of the names involved in the case. You know, seeing who reports to who, who’s worked with who, looking for links, piecing together the network. Do you understand the kind of thing I mean, sir?’

  Wilkinson let out a long, weary sigh. He had spent most of his professional career going through exactly the process Sergeant Hughes had just described. ‘And have you reached any conclusions?’ he asked in a pained voice.

  ‘Well, assuming we’re right about the stolen paintings having been at Chastaigne Varleigh, then that immediately means that Bennie Logan has to have been involved. Now, amongst people he’d worked with in the past was an art thief called Fritzi the Finger, who works out of Salzburg.’

  ‘And?’ asked Wilkinson, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. It had taken him three years to work out the connection between Bennie Logan and Fritzi the Finger; Hughes appeared to have done it in as many days.

  ‘And, sir, both of them had occasional connections with a certain criminal mastermind.’

  ‘Who was that?’ The Inspector’s voice shrivelled under its own sarcasm. ‘Professor Moriarty?’

  ‘No, sir, it was a man who’s now dead, but who in his time was behind some of the biggest criminal operations in London. His name was Mr Pargeter.’

  ‘Really?’ Wilkinson tried to keep his voice as casual and uninterested as possible, but the name still brought him an unwelcome frisson.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m building up a dossier on his activities. The late Mr Pargeter, so far as I can tell, was a great coordinator. He knew all kinds of specialists in the underworld and his skill was in getting them together. He was the brains behind everything, but his influence reached out to a whole army of minor villains.’

  ‘Why’re you telling me all this, Hughes?’

  ‘Because if you entrap someone like Mr Pargeter, sir, you don’t just get one villain, you get a whole pack of them. Ap
parently, I read in the files, at one stage there was a police initiative to get him, but it was conducted so incompetently that—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Inspector Wilkinson interrupted testily. ‘There’s one thing you seem to be ignoring in all this extremely fascinating conversation, and that is that you’re talking about someone who is dead. I’m sure it would be entirely possible to set up a very clever operation to entrap Mr Pargeter, but you’d be ten years too late.’

  ‘Mr Pargeter may be dead, sir,’ the Sergeant said slowly, ‘but his influence didn’t die with him.’

  ‘What’re you saying, Hughes?’

  ‘I’m saying that Mr Pargeter’s network still exists.’

  ‘I see.’ The Inspector smiled sceptically. ‘And who, may I ask, runs this mythical organization?’

  ‘His widow.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His widow. Mrs Pargeter.’ Wilkinson gaped, and Hughes pressed home his advantage. ‘What is more, I have now established that, on the third day we worked together doing surveillance at Chastaigne Varleigh, she was the woman who arrived at the house by limousine.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I’ve checked it out.’ The Sergeant was now having difficulty keeping a note of smugness out of his voice. He’d really got the old dinosaur on the run now. ‘That woman’s name was Mrs Pargeter.’

  There was a silence, then Inspector Wilkinson broke it with a patronizing chuckle. ‘Hughes, Hughes, Hughes,’ he said pityingly, ‘what it must be still to have the boundless enthusiasm of youth.’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I mean that you have no basis for assuming that the woman who entered Chastaigne Varleigh has anything to do with the late Mr Pargeter.’

  ‘But of course I have. For heaven’s sake, she’s got the same surname!’

  ‘Yes, and so the obvious thing to do would be to assume that they’re related.’

  ‘Seems reasonable to me, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it probably does to you, Hughes, but what distinguishes an exceptional copper from a run-of-the-mill copper is the ability to see beyond the obvious. Sometimes, you know, we can learn from the world of crime fiction. Have you read any of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, Hughes?’

  ‘No. I’m more interested in real-life crime than that kind of hokum.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be hasty, Hughes. You’d be very unwise to dismiss Sherlock Holmes as hokum. The important lesson he offers to every real-life copper is that one shouldn’t look for the obvious. Are you familiar with The curious incident of the dog in the night-time?’

  ‘No,’ the Sergeant replied sullenly.

  ‘Well, you should be. I mean, what would you expect a dog to do in the night-time?’

  ‘Sleep?’

  ‘Yes. Or bark.’

  ‘It’d only bark if something disturbed it.’

  ‘Exactly, Hughes, exactly! You know, you might have the makings of a half-decent cop yet,’ Wilkinson conceded generously. ‘In the relevant Sherlock Holmes story, it’s what the dog doesn’t do that’s important. The reader’s expectations are reversed – therein lies Conan Doyle’s cunning. And it’s just the same in this case. Mrs Pargeter has the same surname as the late Mr Pargeter – and that is the very reason why they’re not related.’

  ‘So are you going to leave it like that, sir? Assume they’re not related without even checking?’

  ‘No, no, Hughes,’ the Inspector replied patiently as if to an overexcited five-year-old. ‘Of course I’ll check it out. A good copper always checks things out. But I’ll be very surprised if my instinct isn’t proved right once again. You’ll see, Hughes – and hopefully you’ll learn too, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hughes replied sullenly.

  ‘Remember what I said. It rarely pays to go for the obvious. Lateral thinking is what you need in our line of work.’

  Inspector Wilkinson grinned complacently. Sergeant Hughes seethed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gary’s limousine sighed to a halt outside an ordinary-looking terrace in a North London suburb. Even though this was not a commercial booking and his passenger was only Truffler Mason, force of habit made the chauffeur get out and open the back door. Everyone who travelled in one of Gary’s cars got the same first-class treatment.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Truffler, and looked up at the house. ‘He’ll be goo4 on this stuff, Gary. He’s great on computers, but anything to do with motors, I always go to Jukebox Jarvis too. You know him?’

  Gary opened the gate and they walked up the short path to the front door. It only took one and a quarter of Truffler’s huge strides. ‘I’ve heard of him, obviously,’ said the chauffeur, ‘not met him. One thing I’ve always wanted to know, though, was why he was called “Jukebox”.’

  Truffler Mason lifted the Lincoln Imp doorknocker and let it fall. ‘Because he was Mr Pargeter’s archivist.’

  ‘Archivist? But I still don’t get—’

  Patiently, Truffler spelled it out. ‘Because he kept the records.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gary. ‘Right.’

  The door opened to reveal a small, balding, inoffensive man in a homely cardigan. Behind thick glasses, his eyes sparkled as he recognized one of his visitors.

  ‘Truffler!’ he cried, seizing the tall man’s hand. ‘How you doing, me old kipper?’

  Jukebox Jarvis’s office was in his front room, a tangled maze of computers, monitors, printers, modems and scanners, all interconnected in a lunatic cat’s cradle of cables. So extensive was the array of hardware that it was impossible to see the tables and filing cabinets on which the equipment rested.

  The only objects in the room which weren’t computer-related hung on the walls. They were sentimental animal pictures of quite mesmerizing awfulness. The level of winsomeness among their fluffy chicks and simpering Scotties made VVO’s daubs look like models of classical restraint.

  Jukebox Jarvis clearly knew all the short cuts of his computer system. A few clicks of the mouse and he had found the relevant information bank.

  ‘You’re sure it’s a red Ford Transit we’re looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘Certain,’ said Gary. ‘Because we was driving the same model. Remember thinking when I saw it – well, there’s a coincidence.’

  ‘No coincidence really,’ Truffler pointed out, ‘when you come to think of it, because we was both intending to load up with the same goods. And Mrs Chastaigne had been told to expect a red Transit.’

  ‘Yeah, but we didn’t know that at the time.’

  Truffler Mason let out a hollow laugh. ‘No. Otherwise we’d have stopped them then and there, got the loot and saved Jukebox all this hassle.’

  The computer buff airily waved away the suggestion of inconvenience. ‘It’s no bother, really, Truffler, me old kipper. Never have any problem hacking into the police’s vehicle records.’ He chuckled. ‘Sometimes a bit trickier to get into their system on a murder enquiry, mind you . . .’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘. . . but I usually manage it,’ said Jukebox Jarvis with a complacent smile. ‘Always nice to know how far the Plod are behind amateur investigations, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very useful,’ Truffler agreed. ‘And in the old days used to be handy knowing how up to speed they were on the next little job Mr Pargeter had in mind. And how much info Posey Narker had given them.’

  ‘Yeah. Happy days, they was, eh? Happy days.’ Jukebox Jarvis sighed, but then giggled. ‘Incidentally, I heard about that case you done for Mrs Pargeter. You know, when you nailed the blokes who’d killed Willie Cass. I gather you gave the police a full report on that and just told them who needed arresting.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Truffler smiled modestly. ‘I suppose they might have got there in their own time, but, quite honestly, did anyone want to wait that long?’

  Jukebox Jarvis looked back at his screen, where the cursor blinked, demanding information. ‘Now, Gary, the number of the van . . .?’

  The chauffeur place
d his fingertips on his temples, screwed up his eyes and concentrated fiercely. ‘Yeah,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve nearly got it.’

  The other two watched as he went into a state that was almost trance-like. ‘Must be great having a photographic memory,’ Jukebox whispered to Truffler.

  ‘Isn’t really that,’ the investigator whispered back. ‘It’s training. Mr Pargeter taught him the techniques, so whenever Gary went out on a job he’d automatically make a mental note of any registrations that might be suspicious.’

  ‘Right.’

  Gary’s eyes suddenly flashed open and he announced the relevant registration.

  ‘Great.’ Jukebox Jarvis keyed in the information. ‘You reckon we should be looking for hijack and theft of red Transits or just straight ownership, Truffler?’

  ‘Start with the owners. Depends who the thieves was. If they didn’t think anyone was on the lookout for them, they wouldn’t have needed to cover their tracks, would they? So they could have used a legit motor. Anyway, lot of villains work behind the cover of some kind of front business, don’t they?’

  ‘True.’ Jukebox’s mouse clicked on another icon, and lines of data began to stream quickly up the screen. ‘Just take a minute and we’ll be there.’ He sat back, waiting for the computer to complete its search. ‘Want a cup of tea or anything, either of you?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Gary. ‘You doing mostly this research stuff these days, are you, Jukebox?’

  ‘Yes. Seems to be quite a demand for it. In the old days police information was always a bit iffy, but now they’ve updated their operating systems, they’re really quite efficient. So you can pick up some useful stuff.’

  ‘No problems hacking in?’

  ‘With the police?’ Jukebox Jarvis snorted with laughter. ‘You gotta be joking. Well, they have a new six-letter password each day . . .’

  ‘Funny,’ said Truffler. ‘We was only talking about that last night.’

  ‘Anway,’ Jukebox went on, ‘I’ve devised a programme that can test out all the available options on that within thirty seconds.’