“Are you getting anywhere?” Mrs Pargeter asked diffidently. She knew that Truffler worked at his own pace, and didn’t want to appear to be nagging him.
“Yes, getting somewhere,” he admitted dolefully. “Finding out a lot about his background – and a few other people’s backgrounds. Haven’t actually found him yet, of course – you’ll know the minute that happens – but I’ve got a few leads.”
“Have you, by any chance…” Mrs Pargeter continued her cautious approach. “…found out where he went straight after leaving Smithy’s Loam?”
“Well, after he was made redundant, he stayed around at home for a couple of weeks…”
“So I gather. Maintaining the myth that he was going on to this great new job in the North?”
“That’s right.”
“Any idea what he did while he was at home for that time?”
“No, not really. Drank a lot, I think.”
And conducted his little affair with Vivvi Sprake, Mrs Pargeter reckoned.
“Then he seems to have gone off to various places. I haven’t checked them all out yet. I’d really rather, if you don’t mind, Mrs Pargeter, give you all the details when I’ve completed the investigation.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Truffler.” She wanted to ask how long he thought that might be, but again didn’t want to pressurise him.
Fortunately he anticipated her unspoken question. “I’m really moving along now, Mrs Pargeter. Hope to have some information for you within the week.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m afraid,” he went on, more dismal than ever, “it may be rather grim when we do find him.”
Mrs Pargeter was shocked. “You don’t mean that we’re going to find another corpse, do you?”
“Oh, no. Well, if we do, it won’t be murder.”
“Suicide?”
“I didn’t say that.” Truffler Mason was becoming uneasy. He didn’t like discussing one of his investigations until it was all neatly sewn up and delivered. “What I’m saying is, everything I’ve found out about Rod Cotton suggests he’s gone downhill.”
“Downhill?” asked Mrs Pargeter, eager to have the hint amplified.
But all Truffler Mason gave her was a gnomic ‘yes’, and apologised once again that he’d really rather not say more for the moment.
So she was left to brood on the tantalisingly small amount of information he had given her.
¦
Mrs Pargeter decided that she needed another treat. All this investigation was very exhausting emotionally. Fortunately, in her researches into the area before she moved, she had compiled a comprehensive list of local restaurants, and it was – in a spirit of devilment – the most expensive of these that she rang to book herself a table for dinner.
The restaurant was in a pub just outside Dorking, though diners had a separate entrance from drinkers. Mrs Pargeter enjoyed a leisurely vodka Campari in the bar, while she perused the menu, before selecting prawns in garlic and steak au poivre. She ordered a half-bottle of Vouvray to go with the starter, and of Crozes Hermitage for the main course.
From the restaurant bar, through a screen of wooden lattice-work, she could see into the pub, and it was with some shock that she recognised Sue Curle sitting in a private alcove of the saloon bar. Mrs Pargeter was close to the lattice and had no fear that she herself could be seen.
Sue was not drinking alone. The man with her was a West Indian of strikingly good looks, dressed in a very smart light grey suit. Their hands were intertwined and they were talking with the urgent intensity of people who have either recently been in bed together or will soon be in bed together.
As Mrs Pargeter looked on, Sue Curle glanced at her watch and reached suddenly across to touch her companion’s cheek. They kissed intimately, then she rose to her feet and, with a furtive look to left and right, walked out of the pub without a backward glance.
Instinctively, Mrs Pargeter looked at her watch. The handsome West Indian rationed out the remains of his glass of wine with slow slips, occasionally checking the time, then rose and, slinging his coat over his shoulder, walked jauntily out the same way.
Five minutes exactly by Mrs Pargeter’s watch. A familiar scenario. “We’d better not leave together – give me five minutes.”
Hm, so Sue Curle’s contempt for the male sex was not total.
Interesting…
¦
She sat over her garlic prawns and Vouvray and thought about Theresa Cotton’s murder. Or, more particularly, about the disposal of Theresa Cotton’s body.
That was the odd element in the case. The strangling itself, given the lack of evident marks on the body, had been conducted with exemplary efficiency.
It was the placing of the body in the freezer that struck a discordant note.
True, the freezer had a lock, which would have prevented its falling open by mistake when being shifted by the removal men. But there remained an element of risk in the procedure. Might not the removal men have become suspicious because of the unusual weight of the freezer? Or when it arrived at the warehouse might not suspicions be raised that it hadn’t been emptied properly and could contain perishable commodities (as indeed it did)?
Still, neither of these suspicions had arisen. In that sense, the murderer had succeeded. According to plan, the freezer had been stored away in its container, where it could have remained for some long time. As Keyhole Crabbe had said, the tightness of the polythene wrapping and the quality of the seal on the freezer lid had delayed decomposition and might well have contained the corpse’s smell.
And maybe, Mrs Pargeter reflected, the heaviness of the freezer wouldn’t actually have raised suspicions. Since the storage of furniture was paid for according to bulk, it would have been a logical economy to fill a vacant space like an empty freezer with smaller items, and probably that was a practice to which the Littlehaven’s men were accustomed.
But the fact remained that, even if the danger of immediate discovery was not great, the concealment of the body in the freezer could only be a temporary solution. Maybe not in the short term, but sooner or later, it was going to be discovered. And a murder enquiry, though delayed, would inevitably ensue.
Yes, the use of the freezer brought an air of improvisation into what was otherwise a well-planned murder.
Mrs Pargeter tried to think what motives could drive someone to dispose of a body in that way.
It could be just the product of panic. Maybe the murderer had thought through the strangling, but not thought beyond the crime itself.
Alternatively, the murderer may have been content to buy time. For some reason, he or she only wanted the investigation delayed, confident that by the time the body was discovered, he or she would no longer be a suspect.
Or could it be even simpler than that? The murderer was so confident of not even being considered as a suspect that he or she made only a token attempt at disposing of the body. Maybe the murderer had such a solid alibi that the police would never crack it.
Or maybe there was such an obvious main suspect that the murderer had no fear of being investigated at all.
Back to Rod Cotton, thought Mrs Pargeter. Truffler Mason had said that the dead woman’s husband had gone downhill. When the police finally found him, his prospects might be even more downhill.
? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?
Twenty-Seven
On the night she died, Theresa Cotton was known to have visited four of the women living in Smithy’s Loam. She had been to ‘High Bushes’ to see Fiona Burchfield-Brown, to ‘Perigord’ to see Sue Curle,
