Mrs. Pargeter's Principle

by Simon Brett

  ‘Very well,’ said Shereen, though there was still an edge of suspicion in her voice. ‘And I should remind you, Mrs Pargeter, that since it was last Wednesday when you made the booking, cancellation now will involve the loss of your deposit, and if you cancel any time after this coming Saturday you will, under the terms of our contract, be liable for the full costs of the wedding.’

  ‘I am fully aware of the terms of the contract, Shereen. But have no worries on that score. Samantha Pinkerton and Kelvin Stockett will get married at Girdstone Manor on the twenty-seventh of May!’

  Confident and forceful though she sounded, Mrs Pargeter hoped to God that what she was saying was true. Though so well endowed by the late Mr Pargeter that she could pay for a hundred weddings without batting an eyelid, his widow was never profligate with her money. She believed in getting value for it, and so was very determined that the prophecy she had just made to the Girdstone Manor Bookings Manager would come true. Mrs Pargeter had set herself a challenge.

  Next, she rang Sammy. ‘Are you feeling any better this morning, love? Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘About the wedding? Certainly not!’

  ‘But have you heard anything from Kelvin?’

  ‘Yes, he finally turned up yesterday evening.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing has changed. I slept on the sofa in the living room. Our engagement is off.’

  ‘So he didn’t tell you where he had been on Saturday night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you mention your thought that he might have been with another woman?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘And did he deny it?’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘But did he provide any other explanation?’

  ‘No. He just had the nerve to say it was nothing I need worry about.’

  ‘Sammy …’ Mrs Pargeter chose her words with some delicacy. ‘Given Kelvin’s somewhat unusual profession … do you think it possible that he was out, as it were, on business?’

  ‘You mean: was he committing a burglary?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘I suggested that. He denied it. And I didn’t see any stuff.’

  ‘“Stuff”?’

  ‘Normally, when Kelvin has committed a burglary he brings the stuff he’s stolen back here … just for a few days. Until he sells it on to a fence he knows. I hate him doing that. I say it’s putting us into unnecessary danger; not that that stops him. But he didn’t bring anything home last night.’

  ‘How did he seem in himself? Cheerful? Cocky?’

  ‘Certainly not. He was very twitchy and upset.’

  ‘After you’d told him the engagement was off?’

  ‘Well, he was worse then, but he was twitchy and upset when he arrived. Like he was suffering from shock or something.’

  ‘Did you ask for an explanation of why he was in such a state?’

  ‘I did. And once again he refused to tell me anything.’ Sammy started to sob. ‘We used to tell each other everything, Mrs Pargeter. Now Kelvin just won’t communicate with me at all.’

  ‘Give me his mobile number. I’ll try to talk to him.’

  ‘I very much doubt if he’ll answer it.’ But Sammy gave the number. ‘He’s certainly not taking my calls.’

  ‘Now what are you going to do today? You mustn’t just sit around moping.’

  ‘Well, first thing I’ve got to do,’ Sammy wailed, ‘is to ring round all my friends from the hen party and tell them the engagement’s off.’

  ‘Don’t you dare do that,’ said Mrs Pargeter in a tone that had to be obeyed. ‘Don’t talk to any of them until you’ve heard from me.’

  Mrs Pargeter sat in her sitting room, looking for inspiration from the photograph of her late husband on the mantelpiece. He would have known what to do in these circumstances. He knew what to do in all circumstances. Mrs Pargeter tried to project herself inside his brain and join in with his thought processes.

  But her concentration kept being broken by the sight of a pink, white and gold china cat encroaching on her peripheral vision, and she became distracted by trying to think of ways of getting rid of the thing without offending Gary. Her cleaning lady had gone all self-righteous on her when she’d suggested the staging of an accident, so another disposal method would have to be found.

  To get away from the cat, Mrs Pargeter went through to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. Though accustomed to the finest Arabica at Greene’s Hotel, at home she always made do with instant.

  Armed with a cup of strong black, she sat down at the kitchen table and tried to think what to do next.

  The events of the weekend had changed almost every aspect of the case and, though Mrs Pargeter was by nature ebulliently optimistic, even she felt a little subdued when she assessed the unknown villains who her team were up against. People who could not only steal all of Erin Jarvis and Truffler Mason’s archives, but also hack into Napper Johnson’s computer system and make him watch In the Night Garden were adversaries who could not be dismissed lightly. Edmund Grainger, she reckoned, must be involved in some way, but she couldn’t for the life of her work out how.

  The lines around the violet eyes scrunched up as she focused on her problems. Out of all the possibilities, one thing seemed clear. Every mystery that needed solving went back to the early days of her late husband’s business career: to the time when he, Holy Smirke and Tony Hardcastle left school. Tony Hardcastle was mostly likely dead; Holy Smirke was hopefully still alive, but frustratingly unavailable for consultation.

  Who else was there whose memory might go so far back as to remember the start-up of Mr Pargeter’s business empire?

  Suddenly, some words of Truffler Mason’s came into her head. ‘Worked with your husband pretty much from the start, I think.’

  Of course. Mrs Pargeter checked the phone number in the little black book and put through a call to Gizmo Gilbert.

  EIGHTEEN

  In the intervening ten days the old man seemed to have become more skeletal than ever. The decorative condition of his house hadn’t improved in the interim, either. But his old-fashioned courtesy was still all present and correct.

  ‘Mrs Pargeter, this is a great pleasure for me to see you again so soon. Tell me, have you had satisfactory experiences with your “Widow’s Comf—” erm, “Zipper Zapper”?’

  ‘I’ve just used it the once, and it worked a treat, Gizmo. It’s in my handbag as we speak. I never go anywhere without it.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘And I really do think it has commercial possibilities.’ Memo to self: check out start-up company for developing ‘The Zipper Zapper’ just as soon as all this Sir Normington Winthrop business is sorted out.

  ‘Oh, well, I hope you’re right. Now some tea.’

  Just as before, it was all laid out ready for her arrival. The same silver orb of a teapot, the same Denby ware crockery, the same 1947 Royal Wedding biscuit tin.

  ‘Trust you’ve been keeping well,’ said Mrs Pargeter as Gizmo poured out the tea. Once again the rock-like steadiness of his hand was a tribute to the many hours he had spent in his workshop.

  ‘Never better,’ the old man replied. ‘What you did last week gave the fillip my confidence needed. It encouraged me to believe that I’m still capable of inventing things with commercial possibilities. And in fact –’ he was really excited about something – ‘I’ve been working on a new invention that I think could be even better than “The Zipper Zapper”.’

  ‘Oh, what is it?’

  ‘Better I show you rather than describe it. When you finish your tea, you must come through to the workshop and I’ll—’

  But Mrs Pargeter was already out of her armchair, tea cup in hand. ‘I’ll bring this through. Can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with.’

  Gizmo Gilbert only demurred slightly out of politeness. He was as eager to show off his new creation as she was to see it.

  In
to the spotless workshop they went. An untidy array of components and tools lay on part of the work surface where he must have been working till interrupted by Mrs Pargeter’s arrival.

  ‘The thing that seems to be all the rage these days is making multifunctional objects. You know, if you have the right applications, you can run entire businesses from a mobile phone or a tablet. And I suppose the first major doubling up of functions was when someone had the idea of combining a mobile with a camera.

  ‘I must say, when that first came out, I couldn’t see it. I thought: what’s the point of having a camera on your phone? You might just as well have a pasta-making machine attached to your wristwatch.

  ‘Which just goes to show what a dinosaur I was – and still am. I got it all wrong. There’s a whole generation now that spend most of their lives photographing each other on their phones. But I still thought the principle was interesting – taking two existing pieces of kit and combining them in a way that’s simple and saves space.’

  ‘So what two things have you combined?’ asked Mrs Pargeter excitedly.

  ‘Well, you know that lots of people these days are drinking too much?’

  ‘So I’ve heard, yes.’

  ‘And there’s quite a market for personal breathalyser testing kits.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it, Gizmo.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with most of them is they’re too big. You know, size of a mobile phone. Fine if you test yourself at home before going out to see if you’re OK to drive. Not so good, though, if you’re at a party with lots of people and want to check out whether you should stop drinking. So …’ The old man reached down to the work surface and lifted up a very small shiny piece of porcelain. ‘Any idea what that is, Mrs Pargeter?’

  ‘It looks like a crown for a tooth.’

  ‘Excellent! Spot on! You have won a coconut at your first attempt! That is exactly what it is – a crown for a tooth. But this is no ordinary crown. Within it I have fitted – by considerable miniaturization – a working personal breathalyser.’

  ‘What, so it’d stay in there all the time and let you know when you’re going over the limit on the old booze?’

  ‘Exactly. Where better to fit such a device than in the mouth, the very conduit through which all consumed alcohol passes?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds very clever, but how does the device let you know when you’ve had enough? ’Cause if a buzzer sounds in your mouth or something, that’s going to draw attention to you at a party, isn’t it?’

  ‘I agree. And for that reason I have invented a much more subtle device than that.’ He picked up a small object that looked like an electronic key fob. ‘You carry this in your pocket or handbag. And when you’ve reached your alcohol limit, it doesn’t do anything so crude as buzz. No, it vibrates, thus communicating the information to you without anyone else present being aware of what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s very clever,’ said Mrs Pargeter.

  The old man beamed. ‘Yes, I’m extremely pleased with it myself. And I wouldn’t have embarked on inventing anything new if I hadn’t received the boost – both financial and personal – I got from your reaction to “The Widow’s Comf—” I mean, “The Zipper Zapper”. That gave me so much confidence.’

  ‘Good.’ Mrs Pargeter wasn’t totally convinced about the commercial possibilities of Gizmo Gilbert’s latest invention, but she didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, so she asked cautiously, ‘And have you got a name for it?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the proud reply. ‘It’s called “The Pocket Vibrator”.’

  ‘Hm.’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘Does what it says on the tin.’

  ‘Yes, sure, but I … er … think it could be another candidate for a change of name, actually, Gizmo.’

  They were back in the front room with full tea cups when Mrs Pargeter asked, ‘You go back a long way, working with my husband, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly do. I was with him pretty much from the start.’

  ‘Were you at school with him?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Cheesemongers’ Hall?’

  ‘No, I don’t go quite that far back.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘Well, my dad was an electrician, and he always assumed I’d follow him into the business. I started a training course at a local Technology College, but I wasn’t a very good student, I’m afraid. The teachers, like, wanted me to follow their curriculum, and I wanted to be experimenting with my own stuff. So I dropped out after a couple of terms – well, “was asked to drop out” might be more accurate. So then, anyway, I go back to working with my father, and that wasn’t a big success either.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Same reason. He wanted me to get on with mending fuse boxes, setting up light fittings, rewiring houses that were only one step up from slums, and I … well, I was still more interested in trying new things out … inventions, I suppose.

  ‘Anyway, one day we get a call that some geezer’s got a problem with his hi-fi and needs someone to help him out. Well, my old man can’t be bothered with jobs like that, so I end up going out to his place, and I’m expecting, like, another dilapidated East End terrace. But no, it’s a really nice house, in one of those squares where the prices have gone through the roof in the last twenty years. But round then everything was very shabby – except this one house. Which I think is odd, because when a house gets tarted up like that the locals get quite shirty. They assume these’re posh incomers, so pretty soon any tarted-up house has got graffiti all over it and bricks through a few windows and, you know – “Welcome to the neighbourhood and go back to where you come from!”

  ‘But this one house hasn’t been touched, which tells me the owner’s got a lot of respect in the area. He’s the kind of guy nobody’s going to mess with. So I knock on the door – and that’s the first time I meet Mr Pargeter.

  ‘One thing I notice about him straight away is that he’s only a year or two older than me – if even that much. And, looking round the house, I see he’s really done well for himself. The hi-fi system he’d got the problem with, that was state-of-the-art, must have set him back a few grand even then – and we’re talking a good few years ago.

  ‘Anyway, I pretty soon see that the problem he’s got is with his subwoofer, and it doesn’t take me long to sort that out. I was very interested in sound systems back then and had just started to explore what could be done with remote controls. So I set up a remote control for your husband’s set-up, and he’s tickled pink with it.’

  ‘Yes, he did love his music,’ said Mrs Pargeter fondly.

  ‘So, anyway, the two of us get talking about this and that, and he’s really interested in the potential of remote controls … and wider applications for them beyond tellies and radios and that. And then he sets me, like, a challenge. He says it’s just for fun, but he’ll pay me a grand if I can invent a remote control that’ll work over a distance of two hundred yards.’

  ‘What, to open a door?’

  ‘No, wasn’t a door. It was for something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A gun.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Your husband wants me to produce a remote control that will make a gun fire even though the person firing it is two hundred yards away.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, obviously, I’m up for the challenge, aren’t I? I mean, a grand’s a lot of money back then, but apart from the money I’m intrigued, want to know if I can really do this. So I get the gun and—’

  ‘You got the gun?’

  ‘No, no, your husband got it … Well, no, that’s not strictly true. He put me in touch with the man he called his “Armourer”, and the Armourer got the gun for me. It was an automatic pistol, actually.’

  Mrs Pargeter leant forward excitedly. ‘And what was the Armourer’s name?’

  ‘“Hair-Trigger” Hardcastle.’

  ‘Was his real first name Tony?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never heard him call
ed nothing else but Hair-Trigger.’

  ‘It has to be the same guy!’

  Gizmo Gilbert looked at her in some bewilderment. He didn’t know what she was getting so excited about.

  ‘Sorry, I interrupted your story,’ said Mrs Pargeter contritely. ‘What happened about your remote control for the gun?’

  ‘I am glad to say that I managed it perfectly.’ He glowed with remembered professional pride. ‘Produced exactly what your husband had requested. The only difficult bit, really, was miniaturizing the receptor on the pistol’s handle. Remote’s no problem at all – just developing the range of existing technology.

  ‘So I make the thing within a week – want to impress your old man with how quick off the mark I am. And when I’m working it, I suddenly realize that making stuff like that is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And everything’s fine – well, except for my old man. I’m working hard on my invention when I should be putting extra plug sockets in people’s bedrooms or mending old ladies’ kettles. So, basically, by the end of the week my dad’s booted me out of the business.

  ‘But I don’t care, because I’m convinced I have made an invention that really works. So I go back to your old man’s house exactly a week later to see if the thing will do the business under test conditions. And we don’t do it round there – built-up area and that. Your old man was always very good on the old Health and Safety.’

  ‘Oh, he certainly was.’

  ‘So he drives me to this bit of open ground he knows just on the edge of Epping Forest. And he sets up the gun fixed to a tree and pointing at a target on another tree a good fifty yards away. Then he gets out a tape measure and measures out exactly two hundred yards from the tree with the gun on it. And then he says, “Over to you, Gizmo.”

  ‘And that kind of cheers me up. No one’s ever called me nothing but my proper name before. Your husband invented my nickname. And when he did that, it gave me a good feeling. So I point my remote at the gun and I give myself a countdown.’ The old boy was enjoying his narration. ‘Five … four … three … two … one … I press the button on the remote … Bang, pistol fires. Then I stroll back down nonchalantly with your old man to check the damage. Pistol fired perfectly into the bull of the target. I know I’m not really responsible for the positioning of the pistol that got the bullseye, but who cares? I feel great.