And she chuckled wheezily, but merrily, at the thought.
¦
Now it was just the two women in the private room. “I asked you to stay,” Veronica Chastaigne murmured, “because there is one more thing…”
“Yes?” said Mrs Pargeter. “You tell me. Whatever it is, I’ll see that it gets done. It’s a point of honour with me to sort out all my late husband’s unfinished business.”
“It’s about Toby.” A hard look came into the old lady’s eyes. “I still don’t think Toby’s suffered enough.”
“Well, he hasn’t really suffered at all yet. He doesn’t even know Chastaigne Varleigh’s going to the National Trust. But don’t worry, I think he will suffer,” Mrs Pargeter reassured her. “The people who actually stole the paintings from the Long Gallery are in police custody. They’re bound to implicate Palings Price – that’s Denzil Price, the interior designer – and then I’m sure he’ll shop your son.”
“And what will Toby be charged with?”
“I don’t know what the technical expression will be – ‘aiding and abetting a robbery’ perhaps? I mean, he must’ve given the information to the thieves about the secret hoard at Chastaigne Varleigh. Or perhaps it’ll be ‘handling stolen goods’…”
“And you think he’ll get a custodial sentence?” asked the old lady eagerly.
“I would imagine so. Depends as ever, of course, on the kind of legal representation he gets. As Arnold Justiman would tell you, the right lawyer can get anyone off anything.”
“Yes.” Veronica Chastaigne shook her head thoughtfully. “No, I want something more watertight than that.”
“Sorry? What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want to ensure Toby goes to prison for a long, long time.” Mrs Pargeter was taken aback by the venom with which these words were spoken. A fanatical light blazed in the pale eyes, as Veronica Chastaigne went on, “What he was trying to do was a complete betrayal of me – and, even worse, of his father. Having spent his whole life disapproving and being sniffy about Bennie’s career, and having claimed he wanted nothing to do with the paintings in the Long Gallery, Toby was actually proposing to get them sold on the black market. He was intending to profit from the very business he claimed always to have despised. I’ve never had a problem with good, honest criminality, but if there’s one thing I cannot tolerate it’s hypocrisy!”
“Yes,” Mrs Pargeter agreed. “I’m with you on that one.”
“So I don’t want Toby to get away with it. I want to ensure that he gets punished for what he’s done.”
Mrs Pargeter grimaced. “The trouble is, he hasn’t done that much. He undoubtedly intended to sell off the paintings, but since they were returned to their rightful owners before the selling process could be started, he never got round to that part of the crime.”
“No,” Veronica Chastaigne’s mouth twitched angrily from side to side. It was amazing the intensity of seething that could fit into such a tiny body. “Well, that’s what I want you to do something about, Mrs Pargeter,” she said finally.
“Sorry? What exactly?”
“I want you to ensure that my son Toby goes to prison for a long, long time.”
“On what charge?”
“I’ve told you – hypocrisy!”
“Mmm…” said Mrs Pargeter tentatively. “Although I’m fully in agreement with you that hypocrisy is a despicable crime, I don’t think you’ll find that in the British system of justice –”
“I’m not talking about justice!” the old lady snapped. “I’m talking about what’s right!”
“Ah. Well, those are two very different things,” Mrs Pargeter agreed.
“And which do you believe to be the more important?”
“What’s right, obviously.”
“Exactly!” There was a gleam of triumph in the faded eyes. “So I want you to arrange that what’s right gets done. I want Toby to go to prison for a long time to pay for his crimes.”
“Even the ones he didn’t technically commit?”
“Yes! Particularly the ones he didn’t technically commit!” She looked pleadingly across at the younger woman. “Could you do that for me?”
Mrs Pargeter smiled comfortably. What she was being asked to do did fit in rather well with a plan that was already formulating in her mind. “Yes, Veronica. I can do that for you. No problem.”
¦
As she left the hospital, thinking back to the display of mother love she’d just witnessed, Mrs Pargeter decided it was probably just as well she’d never had children.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ?
Forty-Six
Once she had decided what needed doing, it was all done very quickly.
Immediately after her visit to the hospital, Mrs Pargeter convened a meeting with Truffler Mason and Hamish Ramon Henriques, and spelled out her plans to them. They were in complete agreement with what she proposed.
Their first port of call was the little terraced house where Jukebox Jarvis lived. He immediately accessed the police computer system (that day’s six-letter code-word was ‘peeler’, an inventive historical variation), and discovered that Sergeant Hughes had not used an office machine on which to compile his dossier.
This was only a minor setback, and indeed one that they had been anticipating. While still inside the police computer system, Jukebox Jarvis found Sergeant Hughes’s home address, and was also able to confirm from the duty rosters that the young man was at work all that day.
Keyhole Crabbe, the late Mr Pargeter’s most trusted security expert, had been alerted to a possible call-out, and was immediately summoned from his home in Bedford. Accompanied by Jukebox Jarvis, he went to Sergeant Hughes’s flat, where the double locks and burglar alarm proved only a momentary obstacle. Once inside, Jukebox quickly found the Sergeant’s laptop, located the file from which his dossier had been printed, and deleted the entire contents of that and its back-up. He resisted the temptation to leave a cheeky message.
All that remained to be done then was for Mrs Pargeter and Truffler Mason to concoct an alternative dossier on the alleged criminal activities of the late Mr Pargeter and his associates.
It was a work of great simplicity, but, in the view of its creators, considerable beauty.
Sergeant Hughes had done well in his researches. He was a gifted detective, who might well have lived up to his first name of Hercule, had not the jealousy of crusty old superiors like Inspector Wilkinson (and a little finessing by associates of Mrs Pargeter) held back his career.
Hughes had made the link between Chastaigne Varleigh and the series of international art thefts initiated by Bennie Logan. He had identified the role of Palings Price in these crimes and the interior designer’s current association with Toby Chastaigne.
More disturbingly, he had traced the links from Bennie Logan and Palings Price back to the late Mr Pargeter. Once that connection had been made, a whole set of new names became ripe for investigation. By going back into the old files from the period immediately before Mr Pargeter’s death, when Inspector Wilkinson had been getting close to arresting the whole gang, Hughes had named Truffler Mason, Hedgeclipper Clinton, Hamish Ramon Henriques, Keyhole Crabbe and Gary the chauffeur.
Truffler had not been guilty of hyperbole when he described the contents of the dossier as dynamite.
Still, the original had now been deleted from the Sergeant’s laptop. All that remained was to ensure that it was never reconstructed in the same form, and that Sergeant Hughes was discreetly removed from the scene.
It was to achieve this first aim that Mrs Pargeter and Truffler Mason compiled their revised dossier. The document did not attempt to excise all reference to the late Mr Pargeter. It was more subtle than that. As in Sergeant Hughes’s researches, links were traced between the dead man and a series of associates. It was in the names of these associates that the new dossier diverged from the original.
Rod D’Acosta was implicated in a series of the late Mr Pargeter’s operations. So were his acolytes, the heavies called Ray, Phil and Sid. Their involvement was at a strictly Rent-A-Muscle level, so their sentences would
