Mrs, Presumed Dead

by Simon Brett

  ‘Mr Wilson, I wonder . . . could you get a little more information for me . . . ?’

  ‘No problem at all, my dear Mrs Pargeter.’

  ‘Are you sure I’m not keeping you from your work?’

  ‘No, no, I’ve got a couple of sheikhs in the outer office, but they can wait.’

  ‘Now, I shouldn’t be stopping you from—’

  ‘Don’t think about it. They’re having such fun propositioning my secretaries, offering ever-increasing inducements for unlikely personal services, that they won’t notice the time.’

  ‘How do the secretaries react?’ asked Mrs Pargeter, intrigued.

  ‘Oh, they think it’s enormous fun. Finishing schools may not do much in the educational line, but they at least teach them how to deal with that kind of thing.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Anyway, what was the further information you required, Mrs Pargeter?’

  ‘It’s a few fine details. I’d like to know whether Mr Runcorn dealt just with Mrs Cotton or whether he dealt with the husband too. I’d like to know exactly what day and what time he collected the car. Oh, and I’d like a physical description of Mr Runcorn.’

  ‘Very well, Mrs Pargeter. I’ll call you back as soon as possible.’

  If Rewind Wilson had any curiosity as to why she wanted this information, he restrained it. He had no wish to make another gaffe like the one at the end of their previous conversation.

  He rang back within the half-hour.

  ‘Yes, I have it all, Mrs Pargeter. Sid Runcorn had no dealings with anyone other than Mrs Cotton. She was the one who rang him and offered the car for sale. She fixed the time for him to come and collect it, and she it was who let him in when he arrived.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last Monday. Week ago yesterday.’

  As she had thought. ‘And what time did he arrive?’

  ‘About seven in the evening. He’d gone down by train, you see, because he was going to be driving the Fiat back.’

  This again supported her conjectures. So did the physical description of Sid Runcorn. He was of medium height, with a beard that he never trimmed, and his customary working clothes were a grubby navy-blue overall and a woolly hat. In other words, he was Theresa Cotton’s second bearded visitor on her last day in Smithy’s Loam.

  ‘How long did he stay at the house?’

  ‘Not long. He looked at the car in the garage, took it round the block for a test-drive, then handed over the money, and went off. He was very chuffed. Beautiful little motor, he said. Low mileage, really been looked after.’

  ‘And what, did he give Mrs Cotton a cheque?’

  ‘No, no, cash. All Sid Runcorn’s deals are cash,’ was the firm reply.

  ‘How much was the price?’

  Rewind Wilson told her. Though apparently little for a car of the age and condition of the Cottons’ Fiat, it was still a lot for the average housewife to have loose in cash about her house.

  ‘And, Mr Wilson, when Mr Runcorn left, he didn’t take Mrs Cotton with him, did he?’

  ‘What?’ This time he could not keep the curiosity out of his voice. ‘No, of course not. Why should he do that?’

  ‘Oh, no reason. No, don’t worry about it. Look, Re –’ Oh dear, doing it again. ‘. . . Mr Wilson, thank you enormously for all your help.’

  ‘Think absolutely nothing of it, dear lady. It’s a mere drop in the ocean, compared to all your late husband did for me. You know, if I hadn’t been working with him, I’d never have been able to afford to set myself up in my current line.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’m so glad. Always liked to help others, Mr Pargeter did.’

  ‘Yes, he was a real Robin Hood.’

  ‘Except that Robin Hood was a thief.’ Mrs Pargeter reproved him mischievously.

  Rewind Wilson was once again swamped in embarrassment. ‘I’m so sorry. In no way did I wish to imply that your late—’

  Mrs Pargeter cut through all this. ‘Don’t you worry. I was only joking. Listen, thanks a million. I’ll get out of your hair now, and let you get on with the sheikhs.’

  ‘They’ll be no problem.’

  ‘Do they haggle about the price?’ she asked, curious.

  ‘Good heavens, no. With them and Rollers, it’s not a question of price, it’s a question of how many. Oh no, they’re prepared to pay for what they want.’

  Mrs Pargeter giggled. ‘Does that go for your secretaries’ services, too?’

  ‘It certainly does. Girl on Reception went out to dinner with one of our Middle Eastern clients last week . . .’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Came in this morning driving a brand-new Porsche.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mind you, she reckoned she earned every last hub-cap. Still, we don’t need to go into the details of that, do we?’

  ‘No. No, I suppose we don’t,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed, rather wistfully.

  She now had three new pieces of information.

  First, the appearance of Theresa Cotton’s second bearded visitor was explained.

  Second, on her last evening in ‘Acapulco’, Theresa Cotton had a great deal of cash with her.

  And, third, she didn’t leave her house at the time Fiona Burchfield-Brown had assumed she had left.

  In fact, no one had seen Theresa Cotton leave her house at all.

  16

  Mrs Pargeter decided she would have a little walk before lunch. She always tried to have at least one walk a day; she knew how important it was for people to keep mobile as they got older. And exercise, she hoped, might slow down her not-unattractive tendency towards plumpness.

  Also, she found walking very conducive to constructive thought.

  She determined that, rather than taking the customary route from her front door, she would explore round the back of the house. There was a high gate in the neat fencing at the end of her garden, and she had not yet had time to discover what lay beyond it. She did not entertain romantic notions of finding a secret garden like that in her favourite childhood book, but she still felt a little buzz of excitement at the thought of the unknown.

  As she walked down the path, she noticed how ragged the back garden had grown even in the brief period of her residence. All gardens look ragged in late autumn, but somehow the other householders of Smithy’s Loam had disciplined nature firmly to conform to their high standards.

  Mrs Pargeter decided she must organise the services of a gardener. Not, she proudly asserted to herself, because she gave a damn about what her neighbours thought; simply because she liked living in pleasant surroundings.

  For a moment she wondered whether she might be able to contact some of the men who proved so green-fingered during their enforced seclusion at the big house in Chigwell, but she quickly concluded that it might be a little difficult to arrange. No, better to apply for help locally. And asking advice on where to find a good gardener could be a useful excuse for paying a call on other Smithy’s Loam residents when the need arose.

  The gate had metal bolts at top and bottom, but these were not locked. It opened easily, and Mrs Pargeter found herself on a tarmacked path which ran along the line of fencing at the back of the houses. Across the path was a thin band of woodland, some fifty metres wide, beyond which, through the stripped trees of autumn, she could see the undulations of a golf course. This access to open space for the walking of dogs – or even for the playing of golf – was another of the features of which the original Smithy’s Loam brochure had made much.

  The strip of woodland was frequented by rabbits, squirrels and the occasional flasher, but Mrs Pargeter’s sensibilities were not challenged that morning. (In fact, if they had been, she would have coped better than many women of her age. On one occasion a few years previously, when walking along the dunes at Littlehampton West Beach, she had been confronted by a twenty-year-old man determined to show her his all. Without breaking her stride, Mrs Pargeter had stared at what was on offer, sniffed, said, ‘I’ve seen better’, and
continued her walk.)

  The path curved round the back gardens of all the houses in Smithy’s Loam. Each neat fence had its own neat gate, though on the tops of some, barbed wire or metal spikes had been affixed to deter intruders.

  At the apex of the close the woodland gave way to a long wall, topped with broken glass. As Mrs Pargeter walked along the narrow passage between the high fencing and this wall, she conjectured what might lie behind it. However, she was not kept in ignorance for long, because the path opened out into what proved to be the service road behind the Shopping Parade, and she could see at the entrance to the walled enclosure a sign identifying it as a local dairy depot.

  She continued her circuit, passing along the end of the Parade, past the threatened coffee shop, turning left on to the main road and then into Smithy’s Loam and back home.

  The excursion had taken her less than five minutes. Not long enough, really, to count as a constitutional. Certainly not long enough to have any counteractive effect on her potential weight problem.

  But quite long enough to stimulate some very useful thoughts.

  The back access to the path meant that one could leave ‘Acapulco’ without being seen from the other houses in Smithy’s Loam. And the fact that the bolts on the gate had not been closed from the inside suggested that someone might quite recently have departed by that route.

  But the path offered opportunities for arrivals as well as departures. Though, from what she had seen of them, it seemed unlikely that they ever would, the residents of Smithy’s Loam could pay each other clandestine visits that way.

  And, of course, it need not just be other residents who took advantage of this means of access.

  More than ever, Mrs Pargeter felt the urgency to make contact with either Theresa or Rod Cotton.

  The police, of course, have departments specialising in the location of Missing Persons, but one of the enduring legacies of her life with the late Mr Pargeter was a marked reluctance to contact the police when any possible alternative presented itself. They were, Mrs Pargeter thought in her altruistic way, very busy people and, if one could avoid adding to their work-load, one was behaving in a properly public-spirited way.

  The late Mr Pargeter’s address book, however, did offer an alternative means of setting a search in motion, and it was that number that his widow punched up as soon as she returned after her brief constitutional.

  ‘Hello. Mason De Vere Detective Agency.’

  ‘What!’

  The voice, female, righteously Welsh, repeated, ‘I said this is the Mason De Vere Detective Agency.’

  ‘Oh. Could I speak to Mr Mason, please?’

  ‘Can I say who wants him?’

  ‘Well, you see, my husband—’

  ‘Oh, I see, it’s matrimonial.’ The Welsh voice picked up speed as it spoke. ‘Don’t you worry, here at the agency we’re very good at those cases. You just tell us what he looks like and we’ll find out what he’s been up to. We’ll catch the grubby bastard with his trousers down, you can rest assured of that.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m talking about my late husband.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about “late”. I know all about that, too. Oh yes, always coming in when the supper’s burnt to a frazzle, with some excuse about “something having come up at the office” – and we all know what it was that came up, don’t we? You don’t have to tell me about that.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘And you know exactly where they’ve been, don’t you? Oh, they no longer have lipstick on their collars or come in smelling of perfume, do they? Too subtle for that, I don’t think. No, now it’s coming in smelling of deodorant and aftershave . . . I mean, I ask you – who puts on deodorant and aftershave just when they’re leaving the office? Unless they’ve got something to hide, eh? And then there’s always the bunch of flowers, isn’t there? Showing just how guilty the bastards are. Imagining the little wife’s so bloody stupid they fob her off with a bunch of flowers. Huh.’

  The righteous Welsh voice paused to breathe, and Mrs Pargeter took the opportunity to stem this anti-masculine tirade. ‘No, I’m sorry, you’ve got it wrong. I’m talking about my late husband. My dead husband.’

  ‘Oh. You actually killed the bastard, did you?’ asked the Welsh voice with a note of admiration.

  ‘No. My name is Mrs Pargeter. Mr Mason used to work with my husband. And I would be most grateful if you could put me through to Mr Mason.’

  ‘Oh.’ The monosyllable sounded disappointed that there was no husband-murder to prompt the call. ‘Very well.’

  The line went silent while the identity of his caller was conveyed to Mr Mason, and then a deep, mournful voice took over the phone. ‘Mrs Pargeter, what an enormous pleasure.’

  Someone who had never heard the voice before might have suspected irony, so at odds with the contents of the speech was its lugubrious delivery. But Mrs Pargeter knew the voice’s owner and his funereal manner from way back.

  ‘Truffler, lovely to hear you, too.’

  ‘Hmm. It’s really wonderful to be called “Truffler” again. Makes me feel quite young.’ This was delivered in the tones of a man who had just had his appeal against the death sentence rejected.

  ‘But what’s with all this “Detective Agency”? Have you gone legit. ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Truffler Mason admitted apologetically. ‘Really, after Mr Pargeter was out of the business, it all got a bit predictable. And I thought, goodness, I’ve got all these qualifications – why don’t I turn them to good account? Anyway, the whole emphasis of the old business has changed. Used to be plenty of work looking for missing people. Now most of the big boys just want help in making people go missing. Never my style, that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor Mr Pargeter’s.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyway, I find it’s all working out rather well,’ said Truffler Mason, sounding as if he’d just heard of the death of all his family in a motorway pile-up.

  ‘And who’s De Vere?’

  ‘De Vere?’

  ‘In the agency’s name?’

  ‘Oh, that De Vere. There isn’t one.’

  ‘Then why use the name?’

  ‘First few weeks I started, it was just the “Mason Agency”, but I kept getting calls from people reckoning I had the ear of some Grandmaster or something and could get them into a Lodge or wore an apron or had a funny handshake . . . I don’t know. So I thought it’d be simpler if I just changed the name. And De Vere added a bit of class. It’s raised the class of the clients no end.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’

  ‘Anyway, what can I do for you, Mrs Pargeter? Anything you ask shall be done. You know, without Mr Pargeter’s training, I couldn’t have begun to think of setting up on my own.’

  ‘No. Well, actually, Truffler, it is Missing Persons work.’

  ‘Good. I enjoy that,’ he commented in the voice of a man three minutes fifty-nine seconds into the four-minute warning.

  ‘There are two people I need to track down. Husband and wife.’

  She gave him the sketchy details she knew of Rod and Theresa Cotton’s lives. He asked a few unlikely supplementary questions and then said he would do his best. He was far too professional to ask the reason why she wanted the couple traced.

  ‘Leave it with me, Mrs Pargeter. I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve got a whisper.’

  ‘Thanks, Truffler. I knew I could rely on you.’

  ‘Any time. Anything. Oh, and . . .’ His voice grew even deeper, conspiratorially gloomy. ‘I hope you didn’t have any trouble with the girl on the switchboard,’ he murmured.

  ‘Well, um . . . no. She was . . . maybe a bit strange.’

  ‘Mm. You got to make allowances, though. She is just coming to the end of a particularly sticky divorce.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

  17

  The same efficient American voice answered the telephone. ‘Church of Utter Simplic
ity.’

  ‘Oh, hello. I wonder if you could help me . . . ?’ Mrs Pargeter was playing for time; she had not yet worked out what was going to be her best approach.

  ‘Yes. And what sort of help was it that you required?’

  ‘Well, I suppose . . . spiritual help.’

  The woman on the switchboard was unfazed by this request. No doubt, Mrs Pargeter assumed, places with names like the Church of Utter Simplicity were used to dealing with telephonic enquiries on spiritual matters. ‘I’ll put you through to Brother Michael,’ the American voice said.

  This was, in a way, what Mrs Pargeter had wanted to happen, but now it was happening, it caused her some anxiety. She had already had two telephone conversations with Brother Michael. If he recognised her voice, his suspicions might be aroused.

  On the other hand, she had not mentioned her name on either occasion. She decided to identify herself immediately and hope that, out of context, he would not make the association.

  ‘Good afternoon, my name is Mrs Pargeter,’ she announced boldly, as soon as the fruity voice had answered.

  ‘Well, Mrs Pargeter, and what can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s difficult . . .’ she began, still shaping her plan of campaign.

  ‘The Church,’ he pronounced pontifically, ‘is here to be an ever-present help in time of trouble.’ Whether he was referring to the Church of Utter Simplicity or to some larger concept of the Christian Church was not clear, but Mrs Pargeter rather suspected it was the former.

  ‘Yes. The fact is . . .’ She edged forward cautiously, remembering the tone of Theresa Cotton’s unposted letter. ‘. . . that in recent years I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the kind of materialism I see all around me.’

  ‘Our Lord,’ Brother Michael intoned, ‘came into the world, like us, with nothing. And when we leave the world, we will leave it with nothing. Does it not therefore seem irrelevant to set store by the riches of this world?’