by Simon Brett
Opposite her in the sumptuous setting of the fin de siecle dining room, sat a thin-faced, earnest-looking man in his thirties. He wore an anonymously smart charcoal suit and sober tie. His right hand, slightly nervous on the crisp linen, toyed with the handle of his coffee cup.
“Sure you won’t have anything else, Mr Merriman?” asked Mrs Pargeter, after a delicious mouthful of sausage, egg and saute potato.
“No, really, thank you,” Nigel Merriman replied. “I breakfasted earlier.”
Mrs Pargeter loaded her fork with another consignment of bacon, egg, tomato and fried bread. “Well, you won’t mind me, I hope?”
“Of course not.”
She gestured permission with her heaped fork. “You talk while I eat. Seems a fair division of labour.”
“Yes.” He allowed himself a prim silence while he collected his thoughts and Mrs Pargeter munched contentedly. “What I’m really after… is anything you might know that could help in Mr Jacket’s defence.”
The fullness of Mrs Pargeter’s mouth excluded all responses other than an “Mm.”
“At the moment I’m afraid my client’s situation does look rather grim.”
The mouth was by now decorously empty. “Oh? You mean he actually had some connection with the dead man?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Mrs Pargeter wiped the side of her mouth with a napkin. “Who was the stiff then?”
Nigel Merriman could not suppress a slight wince at the colloquialism before replying, “A bricklayer and part-time villain called Willie Cass. Worked with Mr Jacket till relatively recently, but was dismissed when found to be selling on bricks and other materials his employer had paid for.”
She nodded. “If anyone was going to be ripping off the clients, the boss thought it should be him rather than one of his staff, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“So has this just happened? I mean, they’ve only recently fallen out, have they?”
“No, we’re talking a year ago. Unfortunately, though, Willie Cass has spent the last month shooting his mouth off round a lot of South London pubs, saying how he’d got some dirt on Concrete Jacket – Mr Jacket is nicknamed –”
“I know.”
“Anyway, Willie Cass was saying that Concrete would have to pay a great deal for his silence.”
“Blackmail,” said Mrs Pargeter, stacking another pensive forkful.
“Mm.” The solicitor cleared his throat, about to negotiate something unpalatable. “There is a further regrettable circumstance… in that the gun used to kill Willie Cass is owned by Mr Jacket.”
“Oh.”
“Illegally, I’m afraid.”
“Ah.”
“All of which, together with his previous record, makes things look a little uncomfortable for my client.”
“I can see that.”
“Particularly since the client in question seems unwilling to provide any information himself that might help his cause.”
“I heard. Odd, that, isn’t it? You’d have thought it would be a point of honour for Concrete to at least come up with an alibi.”
The solicitor shrugged. “Well, he won’t. There are any number of things he could say that might help get him off the hook… and he’s not saying any of them.”
“You think someone’s putting the frighteners on him? Do you think he’s protecting someone?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Mrs Pargeter. I can’t get at his reasons. All I know is that he seems determined to make things as easy as possible for the police prosecutors.”
Mrs Pargeter looked puzzled as she pushed her empty plate away and began absentmindedly to smother a piece of toast with butter and marmalade.
Nigel Merriman opened his hands out in appeal. “So anything you can think of, Mrs Pargeter… anything you heard Mr Jacket say, anything you remember that happened down at the site… please let me know before you tell anyone else.”
Mrs Pargeter looked affronted. “Who else do you think I might tell?”
“The police?”
She chuckled. “You clearly don’t know me, Mr Merriman.”
“No.” He paused, then spoke as if confiding something rather special. “Only by reputation.”
“Oh?”
The solicitor rationed himself a thin smile. “Which reputation makes me absolutely certain I want you on my side in trying to clear my client.”
Mrs Pargeter nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. “Unusual for someone in your profession to be so concerned, Mr Merriman. There aren’t that many solicitors who want to get involved with acknowledged villains – even villains who’ve been going straight for as long as Concrete has.”
“What you say is true. Perhaps my different attitude derives from the somewhat unusual circumstances by which I came into my chosen profession.” In response to her quizzical look, Nigel Merriman elaborated. “I was lucky enough to be put through Law College, and supported through my articles… by a benefactor.” Another small smile. “His name was Mr Pargeter.”
“Really?” Mrs Pargeter nodded her understanding and beamed. Her late husband had shown great altruism in saving a lot of young people from dead-end lives by sponsoring their training. The list had included accountants, solicitors, barristers, doctors and journalists. And in each case the late Mr Pargeter’s altruism had continued to the extent of finding gainful employment for his proteges once they had qualified. She smiled at Nigel Merriman. “He always used to say it was very useful to have a solicitor on your side.”
A look of appropriate reverence came into the young man’s face. “He was a great philanthropist, your husband, Mrs Pargeter.”
“Oh yes,” the widow agreed fondly. “Yes, he was.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Five
Clearly, dealing with the monkey was not proving easy. Hedgeclipper Clinton was too preoccupied by his task to be aware of Mrs Pargeter’s return to her suite. She stood in the doorway and watched the scene with considerable relish.
The hotel manager had freed the marmoset’s chain from its anchorage to the dresser, but the animal had evidently escaped and showed no relish for recapture. It was now perched on the pelmet, high above the tall windows, chattering at its pursuer with uninhabited amusement. In one hand the creature held a banana, an attempted bait that it must have snatched and got away with. Between chattering noises, the marmoset detached lumps of the fruit and swirled them around in its saliva, before hurling them towards the hotel manager. That its aim was unerring could be seen from the splodges on Hedgeclipper Clinton’s black tailcoat.
The general chaos of the room – overturned chairs, paintings askew, torn curtains and banana-smeared surfaces – suggested the chase had been lively and vigorous. And that the monkey was very definitely in control of the situation.
The volume of fruit splattered around the room showed Hedgeclipper Clinton must have come in with a considerable supply of bananas, but he was now running out. He held up the last one, its skin peeled back to show the tempting white flesh, imploringly towards the marmoset, while he murmured in seductive tones, “Come on, Erasmus. Come on, Erasmus, there’s a good boy…”
“Why on earth ‘Erasmus’?” asked Mrs Pargeter from the doorway.
“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.” He turned to look at her. “I had an uncle who had a pet monkey called Erasmus. Thereafter, I’m afraid, all monkeys have been Erasmus so far as I’m concerned.”
Hedgeclipper Clinton shouldn’t have taken his eyes off his quarry. The marmoset, acute to the lapse of concentration, leapt in one easy movement from pelmet to chandelier, gripped the stem with one nonchalantly prehensile foot, swung downwards to snatch the banana, and was back on the pelmet before the hotel manager had turned round again.
“Damn,” he said. Then, as another sucked blob of pulp caught him in the eye, “Damn!”
“Good luck,” said Mrs Pargeter, as she went smiling through into the bedroom. “I’m relying on you to sort it
out, Hedgeclipper.”
♦
Gary’s limousine slid effortlessly out of the Dartford Tunnel on its way towards Essex. In the back, over glasses of chilled Chardonnay from the vehicle’s bar, Mrs Pargeter brought Truffler Mason up to date on the case.
“I mean, I’m sure it was just coincidence that I was there at the site when the police came. I’d only rung Concrete that morning and said I’d like to have a look at how the building was going. And then I’d rung Gary and he was free –”
“Always free for you, Mrs Pargeter,” the chauffeur chipped in.
“Less of that, young man,” she said sharply. “You got your own business now.”
“I know. But when I think of everything your husband taught me, the least I can do is to –”
“If I know anything about my husband,” Mrs Pargeter continued in the same tone of reproof, “he also taught you that there is no room in the commercial world for sentimentality. Compassion – yes. Sentimentality – no. You’re running a hire-car business, young Gary – you take all the bookings you can, and see that everyone pays. Including me.”
Subdued, Gary nodded his acceptance of this. But it was an ongoing running battle between them and he’d only lost the skirmish. In time he would return to the fray with ever more devious attempts to undercharge his favourite client – or ideally not to charge her at all.
Mrs Pargeter resumed her conversation with Truffler. “And the stuff you got on Willie Cass fits in with what Nigel Merriman told me, does it?”
A rueful nod. “Down to the last detail. I mean, I got feelers out, I’ll get some more info, but… The daft thing about it is how public Willie was about blackmailing Concrete. Short of buying advertising in the middle of Coronation Street, he couldn’t have let more people know what he was up to.”
“Yes, there’s so much evidence against Concrete, it’s got to be a frame-up.”
“Certainly. Whole case is far too tidy. All neatly tied up with a bow on top.” Truffler grimaced wryly. “Trouble is…”
“Hm?”
“The police like cases all neatly tied up with a bow on top.”
“That may be so,” she remonstrated, “but this time surely anyone with a bit of imagination could see that –”
Truffler raised a hand politely to interrupt her. “Er, not ‘anyone with a bit of imagination’. I did say the police, Mrs Pargeter.”
“True.” She sighed glumly, took a swig of Chardonnay, and sank back into the limousine’s plush upholstery. “Oh well, maybe we can get some more stuff from Tammy.”
♦
The Jackets lived outside Basildon in a large modern house on which everything had been lavished but taste. The house was full of ‘features’ – windows of different shapes glazed in different styles and colours, walls of exposed brick, walls draped in hessian, walls covered in flock, vinyl and panelling. Interior doors ranged from studded monastic oak to chest-high Western saloon. Artex whirled, carpets swirled, and cocktail trolleys proliferated. There was a lot of wrought-iron, gilt and onyx; coloured glass figurines decorated every surface.
For a moment Mrs Pargeter wondered whether the discordant styles simply reflected their owner’s light fingers. Had Concrete knocked off one item from every job he did and combined them all in his home? Or was his house a kind of living catalogue, round which prospective clients could be conducted to select their own fittings from the wide range on display?
But both explanations seemed at odds with the pride demonstrated by Tammy Jacket as she showed her guests round the place. No, the style was not accidental. This was actually how the Jackets wanted their house to look.
There was another clue to this in Tammy’s dress sense. She wore gilt leggings, and shoes encrusted with diamante. Her jumper was adorned with those random scraps of silver leather, bits of gilded chain and irrelevant tassels that denote purchase in a boutique for people with more money than taste. A spectrum of glittery eye-shadows vied for attention on the crow’s feet around her lids, and the lacquered superstructure of her hair was the colour of a reproduction copper kettle. Tammy Jacket was of a piece with her environment.
But despite her brassy appearance, there was an engaging innocence about the woman. Though He had perhaps been a little parsimonious when He allocated her quota of intelligence, God had more than made up for it by lavish rations of charm. It was impossible not to warm to Tammy Jacket.
The three of them – Tammy, Truffler and Mrs Pargeter – sat on a three-piece suite, whose colours screamed at the carpet. The carpet screamed back at the suite, and both joined forces to scream at their owner’s clothes.
“Cheers,” said Tammy Jacket cosily, and each of them raised a gold-patterned glass, filled with a dayglo drink on whose surface bright paper umbrellas wallowed in an archipelago of fruit.
“So you saw Willie Cass quite recently?” asked Mrs Pargeter, after a surprisingly rewarding sip from her glass.
Tammy nodded. “Oh yes. He come round here. Month or so back. Sunday lunchtime it was. I remember ‘cause it was Concrete’s fifty-fifth birthday. We was giving this big party, lots of friends and that – and then Willie Cass appeared. No manners – he never did have any. I mean, what kind of person comes round to your house Sunday lunchtime when you’re giving a party what he hasn’t been invited to?”
“The kind of person who wants a lot of witnesses to see them turn up?” Truffler suggested.
“Oh, I never thought of that,” said Tammy.
“And how did Willie behave when he was here?” asked Mrs Pargeter.
“Dreadful. Way out of order. He was drunk, I reckon. Must’ve been. Kept saying he wanted money from Concrete – or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Didn’t say exactly, but it wasn’t a trip to Euro-disney.”
“No.” Mrs Pargeter looked thoughtful. “I think you’re right, Truffler. Sounds like a heavy set-up for a very public row. How did it end, Tammy?”
“Well, eventually we just had to turn him out. Fortunately, wasn’t a problem. Lot of Concrete’s, er, business associates was here, so they dealt with it.”
“But Concrete himself wasn’t violent to Willie?”
“No, no, Mrs Pargeter. Concrete’s not a violent man,” said Tammy Jacket with the sublime confidence of a trusting wife.
“Not violent, perhaps…” Mrs Pargeter probed, “… but he still kept a gun here? I understand the gun that killed Willie Cass has been identified as belonging to your husband.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Six
If Mrs Pargeter had been hoping that her question would produce a reaction of guilt, she was disappointed. Tammy’s shrug dismissed it as an irrelevance. “Yeah, the gun was here, but that was from way back. Kind of thing you forget you’ve still got. You know, like the other day, I was in the loft and I come across a baby buggy. Got to be twenty years since we last needed that, but, you know, you don’t think about things when you’re not using them.”
Truffler looked sceptical. “And you’re saying that’s how it was with the gun?”
There was no doubting the innocence of Tammy’s reply. “Quite honestly, it was only when the police asked, I remembered we’d still got it.”
“Except you hadn’t still got it,” Mrs Pargeter pointed out.
“No. Right. Well, it’d been nicked, hadn’t it?”
“But you’ve no idea when it was nicked?”
“Sorry, Truffler.” Tammy looked contrite. “When the police asked, I told them where we kept it, but when we looked, it wasn’t there.”
Mrs Pargeter and the detective exchanged glances. The openness of Tammy Jacket’s naivety was of the kind that could give wrong signals to a suspicious policeman. Her artless statements of truth could sound like impudent defiance, and all too easily do a disservice to her husband’s cause.
Mrs Pargeter cleared her throat. “Going back to Willie Cass…”
“Mm?”
“He didn’t say why he wanted m
oney from Concrete? Didn’t say what kind of hold he might have over your husband? Didn’t give any inkling of what it was about?”
Tammy Jacket shook her head. “No. But if it was something wonky, it must’ve gone back a long way, ‘cause Concrete’s been straight since… well, since after your husband died, Mrs Pargeter.” There was a pause. “I never actually met your husband, but from all accounts –”
The paragon’s widow, unequal at that moment to another tribute, moved the conversation quickly on. “Yes, yes, he was.” She fixed her violet-blue eyes sternly on Tammy’s hazel ones. “But you’re sure that since then Concrete hasn’t been involved in anything he shouldn’t have been?”
“No, no,” the loyal wife insisted instinctively. Then honesty prevailed. “Well…”
Mrs Pargeter was immediately alert. “What?”
“Well…” Tammy confessed with reluctance, “he did sometimes do jobs for cash and forget the VAT – the VAT man’s after him for that, actually – but then, I mean, that goes with the territory. He’s a builder, after all, isn’t he?”
Mrs Pargeter relaxed. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“And a very good builder at that,” Truffler Mason endorsed. “Job Concrete done on that tunnel between Spud-U-Like and the Midland Bank in Milton Keynes – magic. Wonderful feat of engineering – Brunei wouldn’t’ve been ashamed of that one. Don’t you agree, Mrs Pargeter?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Truffler,” his employer replied frostily.
Truffler covered his uncharacteristic lapse as best he could. “No, no, of course not.”
Tammy Jacket added to her husband’s glowing testimonials. “Concrete was even asked to do work abroad, you know, he was that good.”
“Oh yes?” The casual nature of Mrs Pargeter’s response belied her alertness.
Tammy reached to a brass and onyx magazine rack beside her chair and pulled out a glossy folder, which she opened to extract an equally glossy prospectus. On the cover was a photograph of a lavish sun-drenched villa standing at the centre of a secluded beach. Deep blue sea and lighter blue sky framed the perfect setting. The builder’s wife could not restrain her pride as she handed the prospectus across. “Couple of years back he done this,” she announced.
