“Oh, I’m sorry.” Mrs Pargeter shook her head at her own stupidity. “We’ve had this conversation, haven’t we?”
“I believe we did talk about it, yes.”
“‘Cause you said that you’d had to come home early from the office because Kirsten was up in London…”
“That’s right.”
“And Theresa came to see you…”
“Yes.”
“Just to say goodbye…?”
“That’s right,” said Sue Curle firmly. “Just to say goodbye.”
¦
There was such a thing, Mrs Pargeter reflected after her guest had left, as protesting too much. She might have suspected some of that was going on from the way Sue badmouthed her boss, even if she hadn’t seen them together looking so intimate in that pub but as it was…
So Sue was trying to throw people off the scent about her relationship with Geoff. Might not that suggest that her ‘working late at the office’ was as much of a euphemism as the expression traditionally is…?
And might not knowledge of her affair be just the sort of ammunition her lawyer husband would seize on in his battle to gain custody of their children…? Even to the extent of playing on the undoubted colour prejudice there was around…?
Suppose Theresa Cotton had known about the affair and ‘cleared her mind of grudges and resentments’ by telling Sue that she knew…
And suppose Sue had translated Theresa’s words into a threat to tell all to her husband…
Given the ferocity with which she was determined to hang on to her children, it looked as if Sue Curle was another Smithy’s Loam resident with a possible motive for murder.
? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?
Thirty-Four
Of course, there was someone else in Smithy’s Loam who might be capable of a totally irrational act like murder. Jane Watson gave every appearance of being completely mad, and, in her paranoid delusions, the permanent removal of someone who represented a threat to her might seem completely logical.
But Mrs Pargeter didn’t like that conclusion. For a start, she had a strong prejudice against murders committed by people who were mad. She had always disliked them in crime fiction and didn’t care for them much in real life. Madness was so vague, so woolly. Any motivation and logic could be ascribed to someone who was mad. At the end of a crime book in which a madman dunnit, Mrs Pargeter always felt cheated and annoyed.
Apart from anything else, the murder of Theresa Cotton did not look like the work of someone unhinged. It had not been an irrational act; rather the reverse, it had been a supremely rational act. Putting on one side for a moment the theory that the taking of human life is an act of madness under any circumstances, the strangling had been well thought out and executed.
No, it was simplistic to say: Jane Watson appears to be mad, therefore Jane Watson must have killed Theresa Cotton.
Anyway, even madness has its logic. There are reasons behind most irrational behaviour, even though those reasons often only make sense to the perpetrator of that behaviour. What Jane Watson had said to Mrs Pargeter had contained an internal logic for her, if not for anyone else.
And the more Mrs Pargeter thought about their encounter inside ‘Hibiscus’, the more she seemed to see a logic running through Jane Watson’s behaviour. Jane had not randomly identified Mrs Pargeter as an enemy; something in her visitor’s actions or behaviour had triggered that response.
Mrs Pargeter concentrated hard, and thought through everything that had happened that morning, and everything that had happened on every other occasion when her path had crossed with that of Jane Watson.
It took about ten minutes of thinking back, recreating the scenes, remembering the minutiae, and then suddenly all became clear.
The important encounter had been the one a few weeks before when Mrs Pargeter had gone across to see Fiona Burchfield-Brown and check on the identity of Theresa Cotton’s first bearded visitor. As she came out of ‘High Bushes’ she had almost bumped into Jane Watson. And Jane Watson had looked at her and run away as if scared out of her wits.
What Mrs Pargeter had forgotten until that moment was what she had been carrying on that occasion. Held against her chest had been the booklets of the Church of Utter Simplicity.
She began to see daylight. If one identified the ‘them’ of Jane Watson’s paranoid ramblings with the members of the Church, a kind of logic emerged.
¦
The police informer agreed that it was not his usual line of work. But, still, he worked a lot on the telephone and yes, of course he’d do it. Anything that the widow of the late Mr Pargeter required, whatever it was, no problem, he’d be happy to oblige.
“Say you’re a television researcher,” said Mrs Pargeter. “OK.”
“And say you’re researching a programme into dubious religious sects. And say that your aim is to expose some of the things they do…like brainwashing, or putting obstacles in the way of people who want to leave.”
“Right you are.”
“Do assure her that your aim is to have these abuses put right. And assure her that anything she says will be treated in absolute confidence, that nobody will ever know she told you…”
“OK”
“Say I gave you her name…”
“You, Mrs Pargeter?”
“That’s right. Say that I am determined to have the practices of this kind of place stopped at all costs…”
“Anything else?”
“That’ll do for the time being. Ring me back and tell me how she takes it.”
“OK.”
¦
He rang half an hour later. “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you before. She talked.”
“Had a lot to say?”
“You could put it like that, Mrs Pargeter, yes. Very difficult to stop her once she got started. Pretty highly strung lady, I’d say.”
Yes, highly strung, thought Mrs Pargeter, but not mad.
“Anyway, I got it all. That Church does sound a pretty dodgy set-up, I must say.”
“They wouldn’t let her leave?”
“That seemed to be her main problem, yes. Apparently even now, five years after she got out, she still lives in fear that they’re sending off people to fetch her back in.”
Yes, it all fitted. Mrs Pargeter thanked her unseen assistant profusely, and once again received assurances that, after all the late Mrs Pargeter had done for him, nothing was too much trouble.
¦
“No, I can fully understand,” said Mrs Pargeter, trying to stem Jane Watson’s flow.
“I’m sorry, but once I finally did get out of that place, I cracked up completely. You know, a really major breakdown. Lasted eighteen months or so. But I had help and drugs and things and gradually I began to come out of it. And then I met Roger and we got married and moved here, and I really thought things’d be all right. I mean, I was still in a strange state…you know, afraid of people, terrified of making contact. I’d just lost all my confidence about dealing with things. But Roger’s wonderfully supportive, I’m so lucky. And I really thought I was getting better.”
“Until Theresa mentioned that she was going to join the Church, too.”
Jane Watson became suddenly devious. “I didn’t say she said that.”
