“I told you to watch the old heroics, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I know, but –”
“I mean, if anything happened to you, Mrs Pargeter, I’d never be able to look myself in the face again. After all the things I promised your late husband, I’d feel terrible if –”
“Don’t think about it, Truffler. Nothing
“Yes.” There was a reflective pause from the other end of the line, and when Truffler spoke again, there was a new, unfamiliar quality in his voice. “You know, Mrs Pargeter, I haven’t felt like this since the last job I done with your husband.”
“Like what?”
“Sort of…excited. Mr Pargeter always had that ability of making things seem fun. And you know what, Mrs Pargeter – you got just the same thing going for you!”
Yes, there was no doubt about it. Truffler Mason sounded positively cheerful.
¦
Mrs Pargeter felt very secure in the knowledge that her minder was on his way, but she still thought she ought to check out other means of protection.
The late Mr Pargeter, though the most pacific of men, had had no illusions about the regrettably violent climate of the modern world and it was for that reason that, at times, he had felt obliged to carry a gun. Though of course he never used it, he recognised its occasional usefulness as a deterrent to the uncharitable intentions of others. (The nature of his work did not always allow him to be as selective in his choice of business associates as he might have wished.)
This small handgun, along with the extensive network of lavish financial arrangements specified in his will, he had bequeathed to his beloved wife.
Mrs Pargeter, though even less likely ever to use it than her husband, appreciated the legacy. At times, like the present one, it gave her a warm comforting glow to know that, tucked beneath the exotic silks of her underwear drawer, lay that small amulet against the forces of evil.
So her confidence mounted as she reached through her expensive lingerie. With Truffler arriving in an hour, and with the gun in her handbag, she would have nothing to fear from anyone.
It wasn’t there.
She checked and rechecked, scrabbling with growing feverishness through the slipperiness of the drawer’s contents.
Still nothing.
She pulled the drawer out, turned it over and dumped its shining riches on to the bedroom floor.
There was no gun.
Mrs Pargeter did not panic. Panic she recognised to be time-wasting and inefficient, and it was a temptation to which she almost never succumbed.
But the situation was undeniably serious. Assuming that the gun had not been mislaid, its absence meant that it had been removed by someone. And that someone was most probably the murderer of Theresa Cotton.
So the murderer had a key to ‘Acapulco’. Perhaps not such a difficult thing to obtain, considering the amount of mutual plant-watering that went on while the residents of Smithy’s Loam took their holidays.
More seriously, the removal of the gun revealed Mrs Pargeter’s adversary to be some steps ahead of her. Mrs Pargeter thought she had only alerted the murderer to her suspicions by her mention of the spurious notebook a few minutes earlier. But the absent gun told a different story.
The swordstick!
Suddenly she remembered it and scrabbled a chair into position against her cupboards. She opened the top one and reached in, her hand feeling along the uncluttered surface.
With a sickening access of understanding, she realised that she was not going to find the swordstick either.
Someone had been inside ‘Acapulco’ and made preparations. The house had been searched thoroughly for weapons.
The murderer was a long way ahead of her.
¦
At that moment, she heard the back door open. She knew it had been locked. The intruder was using a key.
Drawn by the sound of soft footsteps below, and mirroring them with her own, Mrs Pargeter moved across the bedroom to the landing.
Standing back from the top of the stairs, she could see a little triangle of the hallway.
She held her breath as the figure of a woman crossed that triangle, moving silently from the kitchen to the sitting-room.
And Mrs Pargeter saw who had killed Theresa Cotton.
? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?
Thirty-Nine
There was nowhere to hide.
As if drawn by magnetism, Mrs Pargeter found herself walking down the stairs towards her adversary. At their foot she stopped and saw the murderer pause behind the tall outline of an armchair. Mrs Pargeter’s favourite armchair.
It was then that she saw the naked blade of the swordstick in the murderer’s hand. She saw that hand withdrawn, ready to plunge into the back of the armchair.
“Stop,” said Mrs Pargeter calmly, “I’m not there. And I don’t really want to have to have it re- upholstered.”
The murderer swung round to face her and, again drawing back the sword, advanced.
Mrs Pargeter stood her ground at the foot of the stairs and, with a confidence she didn’t feel, said, “You can kill me if you like. Obviously. I can’t stop you. But all you’ll achieve by that is stopping me from taking Theresa Cotton’s notebook to the police in the morning. You won’t have the notebook itself.”
The murderer had stopped her advance, and stood, listening.
Emboldened, Mrs Pargeter continued, “And, without my help, you won’t find it. If you kill me straight away, you could search the house all night and still not find that notebook.”
Little did the murderer know how true that was. There was a kind of satisfaction in the thought of the murderer turning the whole house upside down looking for something that didn’t exist. But the satisfaction of the thought was considerably reduced when Mrs Pargeter reflected that it could only be realised after her own murder.
“The police, on the other hand,” Mrs Pargeter went on, “are experts in searching for clues. And, if my body was found here – or even traces of it – they’d certainly subject this house to one of their most thorough searches. I don’t think there’s any doubt that they’d find the notebook. And, of course, it’d be a simple matter for them to have the shorthand deciphered. And then they’d know what it was that Theresa Cotton found out about you – the truth that she confronted you with when she came round to your house the evening she died.”
“Where is the notebook?” the murderer hissed, once again threatening with the swordstick.
Mrs Pargeter moved forward. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about the notebook. In time. Now shall we go into the sitting-room and have a little talk…?”
Open-mouthed, the murderer watched as Mrs Pargeter moved past her in a stately manner and went to sit on the sofa. Ever the gracious hostess, Mrs Pargeter waved to the big armchair. “Please…”
With bad grace, the murderer sat down.
“I suppose you heard what I said about the notebook from behind the hatch…?”
The murderer nodded.
“I have to confess, it never occurred to me that it might be you, Kirsten,” Mrs Pargeter apologised. “You see, I was under the impression that only Sue was in the house the evening when Theresa called. That you were out.
