Mrs Pargeter 01; A Nice Class of Corpse mp-1

by Simon Brett

  “Miss Wardstone, this is Mrs Pargeter.”

  “How very nice to meet you.” The tortoise face was bisected by the horizontal line of a smile, but the eyes still darted suspiciously.

  “Mrs Selsby…No, please don’t get up.”

  But Miss Naismith’s words were too late. The long bones unfolded as Mrs Selsby levered herself from the sofa to a precariously upright position.

  “No trouble,” she said. “I’m quite safe, you know.” But the trembling of her body and short-sighted blinking belied her words.

  “Pleased to meet you.” As she spoke, Mrs Pargeter gently took hold of a thin elbow and lowered its owner back down. Through the wool of the cardigan it felt as if there was no skin, only bone. Around the thin neck, Mrs Pargeter noticed, clung a double string of artificial pearls.

  “And, er, this is Mrs Mendlingham.”

  The washed-out eyes remained unfocused, fixed on nothingness in the middle of the room.

  “Mrs Mendlingham.” Miss Naismith did not actually raise her voice, but she reinforced it with considerable emphasis.

  The old eyes flickered with realisation, then with alarm. “Yes, of course. I was listening.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve met Mrs Pargeter.”

  Mrs Mendlingham, suddenly cunning, misread the intonation of Miss Naismith’s words. “Oh yes, of course I have.”

  She rose energetically from her armchair and shook the hand of a bewildered Mrs Pargeter, who had never seen her before. The old eyes looked at Miss Naismith, as if gauging the proprietress’s reaction. But they seemed disappointed in what they saw, and again lost focus as Mrs Mendlingham slumped back into her chair.

  Miss Naismith lingered for a moment, discreetly but suspiciously sniffing. Mrs Pargeter, too, thought that she could detect a slightly unwelcome smell.

  But no comment was made. “Well, that’s everyone,” Miss Naismith announced. “I do hope you’ll be happy with us. Now do tell Loxton how you like your tea.”

  The waitress came dutifully forward as her name was spoken.

  “Oh, hello, love. Like my tea good and strong, thank you.”

  “Indian or China?”

  Mrs Pargeter looked bewildered. “Well, Indian, of course.”

  Lady Ridgleigh gave an inward smile, vestiges of which appeared on her lips. There was certainly going to be no social contest with Mrs Pargeter. Indeed, Lady Ridgleigh might even find herself enjoying the rare pleasure of ‘slumming’.

  “Well, Mrs Pargeter, do take a seat. I’m sure you’re tired after your journey.”

  “No. Fine. Only come from London. And did stop for lunch on the way.”

  “I’m sure you could still do with putting your feet up, Mrs Pargeter.” Once again, without being raised in volume, Miss Naismith’s voice took on a steely edge.

  “Very well, then.” Mrs Pargeter flopped into a vacant armchair. “Oh, incidentally, everyone…”

  Hands froze on teacups. Scones were suspended between plate and mouth. They were not used to this. Residents of the Devereux were not in the habit of addressing the room at large. It was acceptable for Miss Naismith to make general announcements; it was allowable for anyone to come in from outside and pass an undirected remark about the weather; but residents of the Devereux did not address ‘everyone’ in this bald fashion.

  Mrs Pargeter continued, either impervious to or ignoring the reaction she had provoked. “Please don’t call me Mrs Pargeter. I’ve never been one for formality. Everyone always calls me by my Christian name. So please will you?”

  “And what is your Christian name?” asked Miss Naismith with frigid deference. The answer to this question would have great significance. Within her mind she had two rigid lists of names: those that were socially acceptable; and those that transgressed that First Great Commandment of her life, “Thou shalt not be common.”

  “Melita,” Mrs Pargeter replied.

  Miss Naismith was confused. Melita was such an unusual name that she had difficulty in deciding under which heading it should belong.

  This confusion reflected a more general uncertainty in her reaction to Mrs Pargeter. Her first instinct had been to classify the newcomer immediately as socially inferior. And yet, the longer she spent with her, the more difficult Miss Naismith found it to classify Mrs Pargeter at all.

  And the more she began to suspect, with a degree of foreboding, that there might be more to Mrs Pargeter than met the eye.

  ∨ A Nice Class of Corpse ∧

  4

  By five to six Newth had changed from his white porter’s jacket into the red one with rolled black lapels that he wore in his role as barman. The Schooner Bar was on the ground floor, the other side of the Entrance Hall from the Seaview Lounge. It also commanded a view over the greyness of the March sea.

  Newth wiped down the veneered surface of the counter. Wiping it down had been his last action before lowering and locking the grille at lunchtime, but he knew how quickly dust could settle. Though only in his late forties, he had the bachelor fussiness of a much older man.

  As he stretched to the far end of the counter, he felt a slight pain in his chest, and took a few deep breaths until it went away.

  He reached under the bar for two sealed white plastic containers. From one he filled a dish with salted mixed nuts; from the other he filled a dish with stuffed green olives.

  He looked at his watch. Two minutes to six. He withdrew a bunch of keys from his pocket; they were on a chain that was clipped to his belt. He found a small one and undid the padlock that held down the grille at the front of the bar. (Miss Naismith made a point of telling all her new residents that this grille was not for internal security. The very idea of such a thing would be an insult to the integrity of her guests and staff. No, it was a deterrent to burglary. There was, regrettably, ‘a very unfortunate element’ in Littlehampton, and she did not wish to encourage their criminality by having strong drink readily accessible.)

  Newth pushed up the grille, again feeling a slight pang in his chest. Then he switched on the lights behind the bar and turned to the entrance to greet the first arrival, who he knew would be Miss Naismith.

  “Good evening, Newth.”

  It was one of the conventions of the Devereux that, although they all saw each other almost continuously, the day should be regularly punctuated by new greetings.

  It was also a convention that the day should be punctuated by changes of clothes. Though few of the residents ever undertook a more strenuous expedition than a stroll along the Promenade, they usually changed before and after these outings. And, though ‘changing for dinner’ did not go to the extent of evening dress, none of them would appear in the evening in the same clothes that they had worn all day. None of them, that is, except for Mrs Mendlingham, who seemed to be drifting ever faster into a world of her own, a world characterised by odd slippers, stained cardigans and inside-out dresses.

  “Can I get you a Perrier water, Madam?”

  “Thank you, Newth,” said Miss Naismith, as she did at this time every evening.

  And, as he did at this time every evening, Newth reached down under the counter for a green bottle, and from it filled a glass into which he had slipped two lumps of ice and a sliver of lemon. The pouring was done below the level of the counter, so that, if there had been anyone else present, they would not have observed that the bottle, rather than the bulb-like shape so heavily advertised by Perrier, demonstrated the squarer contours made popular by Gordon’s Gin.

  Newth passed across the glass of colourless fluid. It looked rather flat, as if the Perrier bottle had not been sealed as well as it should have been.

  Miss Naismith, however, did not complain, but downed the glass’s contents with considerable speed. Then she placed the glass on the counter. “Goodness, I’m thirsty today.”

  Newth, without further prompting, reached for a bulbous green Perrier bottle and, holding it above the counter, poured from it into the empty glass. The contents fizzed and spat bubbl
es in the air. Miss Naismith picked up the glass and turned to the door to welcome Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish, the one in a three-piece suit of mustardy tweed and the other in a charcoal-grey two-piece that gave him a clerical air.

  “Good evening, Colonel. Good evening, Mr Dawlish.”

  “Good evening, Miss Naismith.”

  “Good evening.”

  The Colonel reached to the counter and took a small handful of mixed nuts from the dish.

  “Here I go gathering nuts in March.” The Colonel made this pleasantry at six o’clock most evenings (though he did adjust it according to the relevant month).

  Mr Dawlish cackled dutifully, and Miss Naismith gave the smile of a Lady Mayoress being presented with a posy at a Primary School.

  “What can I get for you, gentlemen?” asked Newth, maintaining the illusion that one or other of them might suddenly ask for something different.

  Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish continued the charade of choice by chewing their lips and puckering their eyes, before deciding on ‘a large Famous Grouse’ and ‘a small dry sherry’, as they had every other night of their residence at the Devereux Hotel.

  “Well,” ruminated the Colonel, after he had raised his glass to Miss Naismith, said ‘Cheers’ and taken a long swallow, “I wonder if we will find our new arrival is a drinks-before-dinner person…”

  Not all the Devereux’s residents visited the bar in the evenings. Miss Wardstone had never set foot in the room. All her life she had been a total abstainer (from everything, as far as anyone could tell). Lady Ridgleigh had used to come in every night for a ‘desperately dry Martini’, but of recent months had discontinued the habit. Mrs Selsby had been forbidden alcohol by her doctor, and Mrs Mendlingham was so comatose most of the time that she frequently had to be reminded to come down from her room for dinner, let alone for a pre-prandial drink.

  “Oh, I think we’ll find Mrs Pargeter is,” Miss Naismith decided, without saying that she based this conclusion on the new resident’s lunchtime indulgence.

  “It might be rather amusing…” Mr Dawlish’s cracked voice hazarded “…to conjecture what sort of drink Mrs Pargeter would select…if she were to prove to be a drinks-before-dinner person.”

  He lapsed into a satisfied silence, having started this conversational hare.

  Colonel Wicksteed barked out a laugh. “Kind of parlour game, eh? Could be amusing, yes. What drink would you suggest for Mrs Pargeter, Miss Naismith?”

  The proprietress of the Devereux bit back rejoinders about brown ale or port-and-lemon; instead, piously, she said, “I’m not sure that it’s quite the thing to make that kind of speculation about fellow residents.”

  The Colonel was instantly chastened and contrite, as if he had suggested the idea. “No. No. Quite. Of course not.”

  They were interrupted by the entrance of the object of their speculation, who arrived arm in arm with Eulalie Vance. For dinner Mrs Pargeter had chosen a dress in a rather bright (‘strident’ was the word that came into Miss Naismith’s mind) blue. With it she wore a whole new set of jewellery – ear-rings, necklace and bracelet, all featuring what were undoubtedly real sapphires. Miss Naismith, while of the opinion that the effect was excessive, could not help herself from being impressed. Once again, she encountered difficulty in categorising Mrs Pargeter.

  “Right,” said the newcomer, placing a plump hand on the counter. “What are you all going to have?”

  This was not right. For a start, Mrs Pargeter had not obeyed the ritual of exchanging ‘Good evening’s. Then, the manner of her question seemed more appropriate to a public bar than the cocktail lounge atmosphere of the Devereux. Finally, there was the whole issue of offering to buy drinks…

  Miss Naismith felt that she would have to intervene. Smiling the sort of smile a Lady Mayoress might use when the child presenting the posy had trodden on her foot, she murmured, incisively gentle, “Oh, Mrs Pargeter, of course you wouldn’t know, but I’m afraid a custom has developed at the Devereux that all residents buy their own drinks. It is not that we wish to be in any way incivil; just that with such a small group of people it can sometimes be difficult to work out the precise obligations of reciprocal entertainment.”

  She did not spell out the reason why this ‘custom’ had evolved – namely, that Lady Ridgleigh had proved rather readier to accept drinks from others than to buy them for others. The situation had almost led to unpleasantness. There had been complaints. And Miss Naismith had had to dig into her considerable reserves of tact before arriving at the solution.

  Mrs Pargeter was undeterred. “Don’t worry, love. My first night here, we’ll make an exception. Now, what’s everyone going to have?”

  Miss Naismith was too shaken by being called ‘love’ to offer any further resistance.

  Mrs Pargeter took the orders. Eulalie Vance wanted a white wine and soda, which she insisted on calling a ‘Spritzer’.

  “Miss Naismith?”

  “Oh. Well, I do tend just to drink Perrier water.”

  “But, come on, you’ll have something stronger tonight. In celebration of my arrival at the Devereux.”

  Miss Naismith was not yet convinced that this was a cause for celebration, but did concede that she might have a small gin. Newth reached for a glass, which absent-mindedly he started to fill up from the Gordon’s bottle.

  “A small one, Newth.” Miss Naismith’s hiss suspended his hand in mid-pour. “With tonic, please.”

  Giving a little nod, he completed this unusual order. Then he produced the ‘same again’ for Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish. “For you, Mrs Pargeter?”

  They were all silent, waiting to have their unspoken conjectures confirmed or rejected.

  “A vodka Campari, please.”

  Miss Naismith was forced to admit that she would never have guessed that in a million years.

  “And what about you?” Mrs Pargeter continued. “You have one with me, Kevin?”

  Miss Naismith was thunderstruck. It was bad enough for Mrs Pargeter to offer a drink to one of the staff, but using his Christian name compounded the felony. Newth did not have a Christian name, except on official documents; so far as the Devereux was concerned, Newth always had been, and always would be, just ‘Newth’. The double affront deprived Miss Naismith of the power of speech.

  “That’s very kind of you, Mrs Pargeter,” replied the barman. “I’ll have a half of lager, thank you.”

  Oh dear, thought Miss Naismith. I may have to do something about Mrs Pargeter.

  ∨ A Nice Class of Corpse ∧

  5

  The thought did not leave Miss Naismith during the evening. There was nothing specific she could fault in Mrs Pargeter’s behaviour at dinner or afterwards; it was the newcomer’s style that grated on Miss Naismith’s nerves.

  Mrs Pargeter was too relaxed. She didn’t have the tentativeness – the deference even – appropriate to someone joining the select company at the Devereux for the first time. Rather than taking her cue from the others, she seemed determined to put the others at their ease. The fact that she was succeeding in this endeavour did not endear her to Miss Naismith. People should not, in the proprietress’s view, just walk into the Devereux and feel at home. They should start with a becoming reticence and spend a few weeks adjusting to the rhythms of life in the hotel. Then perhaps it might be appropriate for them to assert their own personalities.

  Why, Miss Naismith recalled, even Lady Ridgleigh, used to a lifetime of command, had been subdued when she first arrived. It was only after a couple of months that she began to become peremptory.

  But, even as she thought it, Miss Naismith knew the comparison was inappropriate. Mrs Pargeter was not peremptory. She was not unpleasant, not difficult. She was just very much at her ease, and very nice to everyone.

  Which made her that much more difficult to deal with.

  Miss Naismith brooded on this new situation as she mounted the stairs to her flat, converted from the hotel’s attic.

>   It was half-past ten. Days ended early at the Devereux. Loxton had dealt with the bedtime drinks orders, prepared the various trays of cocoa, Ovaltine, Milo and biscuits, and left the hotel for the small council house she shared with her invalid mother. Newth had provided Colonel Wicksteed with his nightcap of Famous Grouse, wiped down the counter and padlocked the grille of the bar. He would now be doing his round of locking up, before descending for the night to his bedsitter in the basement.

  Miss Naismith poured herself a tumbler of neat gin and slumped on to her bed. She picked up the remote control of her television and switched on to the video channel. She had been rather looking forward to seeing what Newth had selected from the Video Library this time. He knew her tastes well by now, and the title on the cassette, Confessions of a Swedish Schoolmistress, did sound promising.

  But it was some time before she could lose herself in the locker-room lubricities of the film. Mrs Pargeter was still on her mind.

  If she were to remain at the Devereux, the new resident might have to make some adjustments.

  ♦

  On the floor below, in her room at the back, Mrs Pargeter reflected that, if she were to remain at the Devereux, the hotel might have to make some adjustments.

  But nothing was insuperable and she did not envisage major problems.

  She dropped off to sleep, as always, cheerful and confident, though without the expectation of sleeping very well. The first night in a strange bed, she always found, tended to be a little restless and broken. But she accepted this fact philosophically. It took a lot to upset Mrs Pargeter…

  As anticipated, she did wake a few times during the night. Once she was woken by the sound of a door opening. She was not yet sufficiently familiar with the layout of the hotel to know exactly where the door was, but it seemed to be on the floor below.

  She lay in the darkness, aware of the unfamiliar, half-heard rhythm of the sea, then she heard the opening of another door, the flush of a lavatory and, subsequently, a slight commotion, perhaps a small cry, from somewhere below. She wondered, without much urgency, whether she ought to get out of bed to investigate the noise.