Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

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