by Simon Brett
Table of Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles by Simon Brett
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
A Selection of Recent Titles by Simon Brett
The Charles Paris Theatrical Series
A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE
SICKEN AND SO DIE
DEAD ROOM FARCE
A DECENT INTERVAL *
THE CINDERELLA KILLER *
The Fethering Mysteries
BONES UNDER THE BEACH HUT
GUNS IN THE GALLERY *
THE CORPSE ON THE COURT *
THE STRANGLING ON THE STAGE *
THE TOMB IN TURKEY *
The Mrs Pargeter Mysteries
MRS PARGETER’S PACKAGE
MRS PARGETER’S POUND OF FLESH
MRS PARGETER’S PLOT
MRS PARGETER’S POINT OF HONOUR
MRS PARGETER’S PRINCIPLE *
* available from Severn House
MRS PARGETER’S PRINCIPLE
A Mrs Pargeter Mystery
Simon Brett
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2015
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition first published 2015 in Great
Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2015 by Simon Brett.
The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Brett, Simon author.
Mrs Pargeter’s principle.
1. Pargeter, Mrs. (Fictitious character)–Fiction.
2. Women detectives–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-074-4 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-557-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-653-3 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
To Liz and her mother,
persons of discrimination
(because they like my books)
And to Jenny Nagle who won in a charity auction
at Westonbirt School in aid of the
James Hopkins Trust
the right to have her name included in this book
ONE
Given the fact that they were all at a funeral, it was a surprisingly jolly occasion. But then Sir Normington Winthrop had led a very happy and full life – considerably fuller, in fact, than many of the mourners in the Abbey knew.
Certainly fuller than his widow knew. It had been a second marriage for Normington, and Helena, the new Lady Winthrop, fearful of feeling jealous of his deceased first wife and for other reasons best known to herself, had enquired very little about her husband’s past.
Which, in the view of a few people attending his funeral, was probably all to the good.
The congregation that April morning represented quite a wide spectrum of society. Cabinet ministers and City magnates filled the front few pews. Then there were representatives of the many charities to which Sir Normington had devoted so much of his money and time, as well as members of his livery companies. Business associates, many in the white robes of their Middle Eastern origins, occupied more pews. And any spaces left were filled with more of the Great and the Good.
But one row contained three people who looked different from the rest. Not out of place exactly, but different. The focus of the group, to whom the two men seemed to defer, was a comfortingly plump woman wearing a black dress with a design of bright-red poppies on it, which contrived to look both striking and respectful of the occasion. A black straw hat and some fairly elaborate jewellery added to the ensemble. And black high heels showed off surprisingly well-shaped legs.
On her right sat a good-looking young man in a dark chauffeur’s uniform. To the other side of her was a tall, lugubrious man with the mournful expression of a bloodhound for whom the Botox hadn’t worked. He was slightly scruffily dressed, but did have a black tie anchored round his crumpled shirt collar. The expression on the face of each man, when looking at the woman, demonstrated a devotion little short of adoration.
The woman’s name was Mrs Pargeter.
The chauffeur beside her was called Gary. He ran a very busy car-hire company, but he always saw to it that he was personally available when Mrs Pargeter required transport.
The tall man was a private detective called Truffler Mason. The one thing the two men had in common was that they had both worked for Mrs Pargeter’s late husband. And she had found them entered into the most valuable bequest that her husband had left her – a little black book containing the names of all his associates with descriptions of their specialist abilities. It was amazing what services she could access through that little black book, where names and contacts were stored under such headings as ‘Lock Specialists’, ‘Missing Persons Investigators’ or ‘Armourers’.
The little black book, indeed, provided the sole reason why Mrs Pargeter was attending the funeral. The name of Normington Winthrop appeared in its pages, and she thought the possibility unlikely that there were many Normington Winthrops around, so when she read the obituary and funeral notice in the Daily Mail Mrs Pargeter decided she had to attend. It was a matter of principle for her to show proper respect to anyone who had worked for her late husband. Besides, it was the kind of occasion where she might well meet other of the late Mr Pargeter’s associates. And if she found any of them suffering any kind of hardship, Mrs Pargeter regarded it as another matter of principle to provide help for them. She was really just carrying on her husband’s unfinished business.
And if either of the men sitting in the row wit
h her had been asked what the late Mr Pargeter’s business actually was, each one of them would unhesitatingly have replied that he was a philanthropist.
A fleet of limousines took the mourners from the Abbey to an exclusive hotel near Victoria Station (rumoured to be patronized by minor royals for saucy frolics), where in a private room the post-funeral drinks would be consumed.
Helena Winthrop, in designer black, did not look prostrated by grief, but then she had been brought up in the upper-class British tradition that any display of emotion was unseemly and embarrassing. Also, her face no longer had the capacity for much change of emotion. Feeling the approach of age, she’d had some work done, which had left her with an expression of permanent surprise at how old she was.
She had acted as hostess at many public events for her husband and appeared to bring the same professionalism to this one as she had to all the others. The absence of Sir Normington on this occasion was not something to which she thought attention should be drawn … though her guests did seem to want to keep talking about him.
Mrs Pargeter, experienced in widowhood, wondered whether Helena Winthrop would fall apart into a weeping mess the minute she got back to her empty Mayfair home, but rather doubted it. Unshakeable stoicism was ingrained into women of Helena’s class. She had spent so long suppressing her emotions, Mrs Pargeter reckoned, that she wouldn’t recognize a genuine one if it bit her on the bum.
The men who had shared the row in the Abbey with Mrs Pargeter did not recognize anyone else at the reception, which she thought was a little odd. If Normington Winthrop had really worked with the late Mr Pargeter, she would have expected more of his former associates to come to the funeral. Mutual support had been one of the guiding principles of her late husband’s business. She had an uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Maybe the world did contain more than one Normington Winthrop.
Though Mrs Pargeter was quite capable of introducing herself easily to strangers on such occasions, this time she was content to stay within her own group. She saw a lot of Gary when he chauffeured her around, but it was a while since she’d had a good chat with Truffler Mason. Anyway, the champagne and the nibbles were of a very high quality. And the waiting staff were very efficient at keeping everyone’s glasses topped up. So it was not an unpleasant way of passing a Thursday morning.
Truffler was a close colleague who had worked on most of the late Mr Pargeter’s projects. After his patron’s death, like many of the great man’s former employees, he had adapted his skills into a more traditionally legitimate area of endeavour. In Truffler’s case this had meant setting himself up as a private investigator in the Mason De Vere Detective Agency. (There was, incidentally, no ‘De Vere’ involved in the business. Truffler just thought the extra name made his set-up sound classier. And it avoided time-wasting phone calls from men with funny handshakes who kept talking about lodges.)
‘So, how’s business?’ asked Mrs Pargeter, in a voice that still retained a hint of her Essex origins.
‘Can’t complain,’ said Truffler, in a voice that sounded as though it was permanently complaining. If he had been announcing that he’d won the jackpot on the National Lottery, he would still have sounded as though he’d just lost a close relative. It was just the way he talked.
‘A bit of missing persons stuff,’ he went on, ‘but it’s still mostly matrimonial. Wives checking on husbands, husbands checking on wives. You keep reading about “open marriages”, people not getting upset about their partner having the odd fling … Well, you wouldn’t believe it from the kind of work that comes my way. Betrayal still seems to hurt as much as it ever did. I’d say people are more vindictive now than they ever have been. Lot of them still insist that if there’s evidence of an affair, then that’s the end of the marriage.’
Mrs Pargeter smiled sympathetically. Fortunately, that was something she and her late husband had never had to worry about. They had both been so wrapped up in each other that the thought of sneaking off with someone else would never have occurred to either of them. She had, she knew, been very lucky. And though in her years of widowhood other men had come on to her – she was still a very attractive woman – she had never been even mildly tempted. She knew that none of them could ever match up to the late Mr Pargeter.
‘But, of course,’ said Truffler, ‘you know that if ever you have need of my services, you have only to say the word, and I’ll drop everything to help you out. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I do indeed. And it’s a very comforting thing to know.’ Mrs Pargeter smiled a warm broad smile. She was very appreciative of the nurturing backup she received from her late husband’s associates. ‘And anything on the Old Boy front?’
It was part of a code between them. The ‘Old Boys’ referred to the wider circle of people (mostly men) who had been involved in the late Mr Pargeter’s business enterprises. Truffler Mason kept in touch with them, quick to detect if any were experiencing troubles in their lives. He acted as a kind of benign pension consultant (if that expression is not an oxymoron), reporting cases of hardship to Mrs Pargeter. And she would frequently provide financial aid to the needy from the very considerable fortune that her late husband had amassed during his hard-working life.
‘Heard of a couple for whom things aren’t so fine and dandy,’ Truffler replied. ‘Do you remember old “Gizmo” Gilbert?’
‘I might have heard the name, but I never met him.’ Mr Pargeter had, quite shrewdly, only introduced his wife to a very close circle of his associates. One of his mantras had always been ‘what you don’t know about you can’t tell anyone else about’.
‘Gizmo was one of the greats,’ said Truffler Mason.
‘I’ll say,’ Gary the chauffeur endorsed gleefully.
‘Electronic whizz, old Gizmo,’ Truffler went on. ‘Way ahead of the game, he was. Now we take for granted remote controls on everything: change channel on your telly, turn your lights on, close your curtains. Gizmo Gilbert was doing that kind of technology way before it was available commercially.’
‘Yes.’ Gary chuckled. ‘Remember that thing he done that could open the main doors of the Shoreditch branch of NatWest Bank from the other side of the road? And open the vaults and all?’
‘I’ll say!’ For a moment Truffler Mason almost sounded enthusiastic. ‘One invention of his that stays with me is the thing that jammed the firing mechanisms on all the guns Dobbyboy Pelton’s lot was going to use in the Southampton bullion job.’
‘And then there was that little zapper he invented what put an electric current through the handcuffs the cops were carrying …’ Gary’s words trickled away as he saw the expression of bemused puzzlement on Mrs Pargeter’s face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said with naive innocence, ‘but I’m afraid I haven’t understood a word of what you’ve just been saying.’
‘Ah, well, it wasn’t really that important,’ mumbled Gary.
‘No.’ Truffler Mason also recovered himself. ‘What is important, though, is that Gizmo Gilbert’s fallen on hard times. He’s still trying to produce his inventions …’ He caught a look in Mrs Pargeter’s eye which made him say, ‘Different stuff now. More domestic applications than, er, professional. But nobody seems to want what he’s offering any more. Modern technology’s, like, caught up with him. Besides, he’s nearly eighty, and the arthritis is getting to the old fingers. He’s not, like, as dexterous as he used to be in his workshop.’
‘So he needs help?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.
‘Certainly. But it’s got to be done subtle, like.’
‘How d’ya mean?’ Gary asked.
‘Well, a geezer like Gizmo Gilbert’s got his pride. He won’t take a handout from no one – even refuses to take his state pension. Says he didn’t contribute enough in the right way to justify him having it. So the approach has got to be, like I say, subtle.’
‘“Subtle” is my middle name,’ said Mrs Pargeter.
‘Really?’ said Gary. ‘That’s unusual. Why did your par
ents choose that?’
She looked into his honest, confused face and decided it wasn’t worth explaining. Instead, she said to Truffler, ‘Give me Gizmo Gilbert’s contacts and I’ll pay him a visit. Anyone else in trouble?’
‘Well, there’s “Passport” Pinkerton. Know the name?’
Again, Mrs Pargeter replied vaguely that she might have heard it mentioned. ‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’
‘I’m afraid he’s snuffed it,’ said Truffler Mason, at last finding a topic appropriate to his lugubrious delivery.
‘I am sorry to hear that. Natural death, was it?’
‘Yes. Pancreatic cancer.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘The thing is, though, I only found out recently, but since your husband died, Passport Pinkerton never had two pennies to rub together.’
Instant concern came into Mrs Pargeter’s violet-blue eyes. ‘We should have helped him.’
‘He didn’t make it easy for us to do that. Moved to the Costa Brava and lived undercover there, different name and all.’
‘But what went wrong with his career? My husband was always very good at helping people out with vocational retraining and what-have-you.’
‘Yes, he was. Very generous man.’ Truffler allowed a moment of silent respect. ‘Passport’s problem was – like Gizmo Gilbert’s, though in a different way – the new technology. I mean, he was an artist, old Passport. Learnt his skills when he was a prisoner of war in Colditz. He could reproduce any document you wanted – all done with his ink-pens and paint brushes. And he still made a good living from that after the war.
‘But then all this fancy new printing and photocopying technology come in. No need for the gifted artist then; just someone who could feed data into a computer. And another fine traditional craft had been superseded.’ Truffler Mason shook his head at the inexorable – and not always beneficial – advance of science.
