“No, but –”
“No, actually, the thing that sparked it all off again was seeing someone from…someone from…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “…someone from that place, here, in Smithy’s Loam.”
“Brother Brian?”
Jane Watson nodded. “I saw him going up Theresa’s front path. I thought he was coming for me and had gone to the wrong house. I’m afraid I just went. Instantly I was right back like at the beginning of the breakdown. I hid. I locked myself in the lavatory.”
“But Brother Brian didn’t come to your door, did he?”
“No, but I was convinced they were on to me. I was convinced that they’d tracked me down. And I thought they’d take me away from my house and from Roger and –”
“They haven’t got the power to do that, Jane.”
“Oh, they have. They’re very powerful, Mrs Pargeter, very persuasive.”
“Yes, but you’ve got free of them, you really have. You’ve broken away and made your own life, outside the Church of Utter Simplicity.”
“I know,” said Jane. “I know I have.” She didn’t sound very convinced by her assertion. “But when I see them again, I just feel utterly powerless.”
“You’ll be all right,” Mrs Pargeter soothed. “Even if they did know where you are, they’d have given you up as a bad job by now. Anyway, they got all your money when you joined, didn’t they?”
The woman nodded.
“That’s all they’re really interested in.”
“Yes, but now I’m well-off again. I mean, Roger’s got a good job and…”
“Jane, that is your husband’s money. He’s not going to give it to some loony sect, is he?”
“No, no, I suppose not. I’m sorry, I do just panic when I see anything to do with them. I’m not rational.”
“Which is why you rushed away when you saw me carrying their leaflets?”
“Exactly. I thought you were another one. I just get so confused, I’m not really responsible for what I do.”
“Listen…” Mrs Pargeter took the woman’s trembling hand. “It’s all right. You’re quite safe here. There’s no one out to get you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, I know you’re right. I still just panic when I meet people.”
“Well, you needn’t. Come on, you must get to know your neighbours. They don’t mean you any harm. They can even help you.”
Jane didn’t look convinced by this assertion. Mrs Pargeter wondered how much she was convinced by it herself. One at least of the other Smithy’s Loam residents had proved unhelpful to the point of murdering someone.
Unless, of course, it had been Jane herself.
“Tell me,” Mrs Pargeter began in a tranquillising tone, “what happened that day Theresa left?”
“Mm?” Jane looked at her blankly, as if she had just dragged back from another plane of being.
“The day you saw Brother Brian…?”
“I don’t know. As I say, I just panicked. I took a lot of these pills the doctor had given me.”
“Tranquillisers?”
“That kind of thing, yes. They make me all woozy. I don’t really know what I’m doing when I have a lot of them. Just walk around in a dream.”
“Hm. And did Theresa come and see you?”
“When?”
“That evening. The evening after you’d seen Brother Brian. She went round and said goodbye to everyone else in the close.”
“Oh.”
“Did she come and see you?”
“Yes. I can’t remember. Maybe she did. I think so.”
“Came just to say goodbye.”
“That’s right.” said Jane Watson, nodding her head slowly in confirmation. “Just to say goodbye.”
¦
No, Jane Watson couldn’t be ruled out, either. True, the heavily tranquillised state she was in on the night of the murder did not fit in well with the meticulousness of the crime.
But then there was no guarantee that she was telling the truth about what had happened.
And, given Jane Watson’s terror of being taken back there, Theresa Cotton might only have needed to mention the Church of Utter Simplicity to sign her own death warrant.
? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?
Thirty-Five
Which really just left Fiona Burchfield-Brown.
Mrs Pargeter wondered whether there could be anything that Theresa Cotton had challenged Fiona Burchfield-Brown with when she visited her on the night before her death. Fiona seemed so aristocratically bumbling, so earnestly incompetent, so transparent, that it was hard to imagine her as the possessor of a guilty secret. But Mrs Pargeter was far too canny an old bird to be deceived by appearances.
She settled down that evening over a large vodka Campari to think about what might worry Fiona Burchfield-Brown.
It didn’t take long for her to decide to ring Truffler Mason. He had after all investigated the residents of Smithy’s Loam in his search for Rod. Was it possible that his Welsh ‘market researcher’ had come up with something that might be relevant?
¦
His voice sounded as mournful as ever, but it contained no trace of resentment. He was still quite happy to give Mrs Pargeter any assistance she might require.
“I’ll ask and get back to you,” she said. Then, with a note of concern in his voice, he continued. “Does this mean, Mrs Pargeter, that you’re still on the case…?”
“Well…”
“I thought the husband-kills-wife scenario was a bit obvious myself.”
“I think it’s just worth my asking around a bit.” Mrs Pargeter conceded cautiously. “You know, see if I get any leads.”
“Hmm. All right. But you be careful.”
“What do you mean, Truffler? I’m not in any danger.”
“Don’t you believe it. You’re up against someone completely ruthless.”
“Yes, but I’ll keep a low profile and –”
“Look, the murderer has already killed two people to keep whatever secret it is quiet.”
“Two?”
“Well, I’d have said quite possibly two, yes, Mrs Pargeter. Do you really think Rod Cotton fell in the Thames by mistake?”
“I had assumed that, yes. Or it might have been suicide. I mean, he was in such a hopeless state, he had no idea what he was doing. He’d already fallen and had one accident. He could hardly stand up straight.”
“Make him all the easier to push in, wouldn’t it?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Look, Mrs Pargeter, you’ve established that the murderer knew about what had happened to Rod Cotton…”
“I think so, yes.”
“Must be right. Only someone who knew the state he was in would have dared to dispose of the body that
