Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

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.”

? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?

Seventeen

The same efficient American voice answered the telephone. “Church of Utter Simplicity.”

“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?”

“Well, yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking,” Mrs Pargeter lied. The late Mr Pargeter, she knew, would forgive her in the circumstances, although what she said went very strongly against one of the basic tenets of his life. He could never have been described as a greedy man, but he had always had – and encouraged in his wife – a proper sense of the value of material things.

“And I don’t know…” she went on with increasing confidence. Now she had a line to follow, the words came with no problem. “The more things one accumulates, the more unimportant they all seem. And the more complicated everything gets.”

“Indeed,” Brother Michael asserted eagerly, pouncing on the cue. “And the more one feels in need of a more simple life.”

“Exactly.”

“This is a conclusion I myself and certain like-minded brethren reached some twenty years ago. And it was from that that the Church of Utter Simplicity was born.”

“Yes. I really would like to know more about your Church.”

“You are welcome to any information you may require. If, that is to say,” he admonished, “you ask in a spirit of genuine enquiry after Eternal Truth.”

Mrs Pargeter crossed her fingers. “Oh yes, of course I do.”

“Am I to understand that you are considering the possibility of joining our church?”

“Well, I had thought of it. I mean, I’d certainly like to know more about the set-up. There isn’t an age limit on entry, is there?” she added anxiously. “I’m not exactly in the first flush of youth.”

“There are no restrictions on entry to the Church of Utter Simplicity,” Brother Michael boomed. “The only qualification is a heart empty of acquisitiveness and a mind ready to devote itself to the contemplation of the Almighty Simplicity of God.”

“Yes. Yes, well, I think I could probably manage that,” Mrs Pargeter lied again.

“I must ask,” Brother Michael pressed on, “just a few details about yourself. You know, it would be time- wasting to arrange an interview if there were some obvious reason why we would not suit.”

What a strange way of putting it, Mrs Pargeter thought. In her own mind, she had already reached the conclusion that what wouldn’t make someone ‘suit’ was a completely empty bank balance. She had a feeling that the Church of Utter Simplicity, though emphasising that people could take nothing with them, would not welcome aspirant members who brought nothing with them. But perhaps she was being overcynical.

“First,” Brother Michael continued, “what is your marital status?”

“I am widowed,” she replied in appropriately subdued tones.

He produced an uninterested reflex condolence. “So your problem is not a husband who keeps lavishing worldly goods upon you?”

“Oh no. Mind you, he did in the past. He was very lavish, the late Mr Pargeter. But now, I’m afraid, I have to do most of the lavishing on myself.”

“You are at least fortunate – even though in the unhappy state of widowhood – that you do not have to worry too much about money.”

“Oh, goodness, no. That’s not a problem.” She stopped herself, and continued soberly. “Well, yes, it is a problem – that is what makes me so materialistic, which is the cause of my spiritual problems. But the lack of money is not a problem in the conventional sense.”

“No, no,” said Brother Michael judiciously. And then he went straight on to arrange an interview for the next morning. The ‘just a few details about yourself’ seemed to have become less important once the health of her bank balance had been established.

Or, again, Mrs Pargeter asked herself, was she letting her natural scepticism get the better of her?

? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?

Eighteen

Dunstridge Manor had presumably in its time been the home of the Lord of the Manor of