Mrs Pargeter 02; Mrs, Presumed Dead

cases, the most common criminal is the spouse. And, in this case, the murder weapon also pointed towards Theresa’s husband.

Hmm…Mrs Pargeter wondered whether the police would find it easier to trace the missing man than she had. At least, she thought with an inward grin, Truffler Mason was already out looking.

So she had a head start. And she had played fair with the police by giving them the letter to the Church of Utter Simplicity. Fair dos. Now they were starting on equal terms.

Because, however much she tried not to, Mrs Pargeter couldn’t help seeing the murder investigation as a kind of contest.

Mrs Pargeter versus The Police.

And it would be a bold punter who would predict which of them was most likely to reach the solution first.

? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?

Twenty-Five

The Welsh voice answered. Mrs Pargeter did not take it to task about missing her out of the ‘market research’ survey. That was something to be raised discreetly at a later date with the voice’s employer.

“Is Mr Mason there?”

“I’m sorry. He’s out on an investigation. Can I take a message?”

“No, there’s no – oh yes, well, you could actually. It’s Mrs Pargeter calling.”

“Good morning.”

“Good morning. Yes, I’d be grateful if you could pass on the message to Mr Mason that there’s no longer any need to look for the woman. It’s just the man we need to track down now.”

“Always bloody is, isn’t it?” said the Welsh voice, predictably enough.

¦

It occurred to Mrs Pargeter that, though she had given the where-can-I-find-a-decent-gardener excuse a couple of airings, she hadn’t yet used it on her immediate neighbour. They had talked of gardening, but not of gardeners. And she had a feeling that the dramatic news of Theresa’s murder might make even the frosty Carole Temple relax a little into curiosity.

Her guess proved correct. When she knocked on the door of ‘Cromarty’, its owner welcomed her with what, by Carole’s somewhat narrow standards, probably amounted to fulsomeness. The visitor was instantly invited in for coffee. Living in a house where a murder had taken place did give a certain social cachet.

Mrs Pargeter was sat down in the sitting-room, while Carole went off to make coffee. The room was immaculately furnished – if one’s taste ran to louvred cupboard doors, beaten brass surrounds to log-effect fires, Capo del Monte figurines posing winsomely on top of dark veneered units, and curtains and chair covers with a frothing of frills on them.

It was aggressively clean and tidy. Mrs Pargeter almost felt guilty for denting the cushions by sitting on them. A fantasy came into her mind of Carole Temple going round every hour on the hour removing individual specks of dust with a pair of tweezers, and of bashful motes deterred from entering the fanlight window by Carole’s balefully hygienic stare.

The coffee cups and pot which her hostess brought in were sterile enough to be used in an intensive care unit. The biscuits had clearly been disciplined from birth not to shed crumbs, and the coffee-pot spout would not have dared to commit the solecism of dripping.

Carole Temple quickly dealt with the supposed reason for Mrs Pargeter’s visit. “I’m afraid I don’t know any good gardeners. Or bad ones, come to that. We do everything ourselves. As I believe I once told you,” she recollected with some asperity. “I think possibly the Sprakes have a gardener who comes in from time to time – you could ask them.”

Yes, she would, Mrs Pargeter decided. She and Vivvi had never got round to having their conversation about gardeners, had they? Surprising how durable that simple excuse was proving.

Carole Temple then moved on to the real reason for her sudden affability. “But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy’s Loam!”

“Or anywhere,” Mrs Pargeter observed mildly. She knew that its residents tended to see Smithy’s Loam as the centre of the universe, but murder did remain a relatively offensive crime even in other parts of the world.

Carole Temple, stimulated by the news of murder, was prepared to be much less discreet than on their previous encounter. “Hmm,” she ruminated knowingly. “I always thought there was something odd about that marriage…”

“Odd?” Mrs Pargeter nudged gently.

“I mean, not on the surface. Theresa and Rod seemed…well, just like everyone else on the surface, but I had a feeling there were some pretty profound disagreements between them.”

“Are you saying that you used to hear them quarrelling?”

“Good heavens, no.” Carole Temple looked affronted that such a vulgar idea should even be mentioned in the context of Smithy’s Loam. “No, I just sort of got this feeling that they didn’t see eye to eye on everything.”

“What, on materialism, for example?”

“I’m sorry?” Carole looked completely blank. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d sort of got the impression that maybe Theresa wasn’t as keen on material things as her husband was.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I mean that he was always wanting to buy things, keep up their standard of living, and Theresa wasn’t even interested.”

Carole Temple still looked bewildered. “But they didn’t buy that much stuff. Well, only the sort of stuff one needs. If you’re living somewhere like Smithy’s Loam, you do have to maintain certain standards. I wouldn’t have said they were particularly conspicuous consumers.”

No. No more than their neighbours, anyway.

“And you never heard Theresa say she was dissatisfied with that kind of life?”

This idea, too, was incongruous to Carole. “No. Of course not.”

So the spiritual emptiness of Theresa Cotton’s life had, as Mrs Pargeter suspected, remained her own secret. That fitted in with the furtiveness of her contacts with the Church of Utter Simplicity.

“Well, if it wasn’t that kind of thing, Carole, what was it that was ‘odd’ about the Cottons’ marriage?”

Faced with the direct question, Carole became coy and evasive. “Oh, I don’t know. Just a sort of feeling I got. Well, I mean, their long separations, for a start…From the moment he went up North, so far as I know, Theresa made no effort to go up and join him – even for the odd weekend.”

No, well, of course there were very good reasons why that hadn’t happened, but Carole Temple couldn’t be expected to know them.

“You think they were growing apart then, do you?”

“Reading between the lines, I’d say, yes.”

“Hmm.” Mrs Pargeter nodded slowly. “Do you think there was any infidelity?”

Carole’s face became cautiously knowing.

“On either side?” added Mrs Pargeter.

“Well,” said Carole Temple, condescending to share the great riches of her information, “let’s say it wouldn’t surprise me. Rod was away a lot, so presumably he had plenty of opportunities…”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Mrs Pargeter took a sip of her coffee and slowly put the cup down on its saucer. “And no rumours of anything nearer home…?”

Her hostess became insufferably arch. “Once again, all I think I’d better say is that it would not surprise me…” Then, in response to Mrs Pargeter’s interrogative expression, she gave a little more. “No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that he’d made quite a close friendship very near to home. There was a week or so when he was between jobs –”

“Between jobs before he went up North?”