? Mrs, Presumed Dead ?
Ten
Mrs Pargeter began the continuation of her campaign at nine-thirty sharp on the Monday morning. She got through to Littlehaven’s straight away.
“Oh, good morning. My name is Pargeter. I wonder if you could help me? I’m ringing about a removal job you did last week.”
“Listen,” a truculent male voice objected, “if you’ve got any complaints, you should’ve got back to us within twenty-four hours. We can’t possibly be expected to –”
“It isn’t a complaint.”
“Oh,” said the voice, partly mollified but still wary.
“You see, I’m the person who’s moved into the house from which you removed the previous owner’s possessions.”
“If anything got left behind, we must’ve had instructions about it. My men are very thorough. They don’t go around –”
“No, no, it’s all right.” Mrs Pargeter was beginning to wonder whether paranoia was an occupational hazard of furniture removers. “The fact is,” she continued, “that the former owner of the house did give me her address, but I’ve lost the piece of paper she wrote it on and I am sure you must have on your records some –”
“Look, if you want a flaming Missing Persons bureau,” the voice complained, unaware of how apt its words were, “you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m running a removals business here. I haven’t got time to bust a gut chasing information about –”
It wasn’t worth pointing out that in the time he had taken to say all that, he could have found the information and given it to her. Instead, soothingly, she interrupted, “That wasn’t the only reason for my call. I might also be putting some business your way.”
The lie had the required effect. “Oh. What sort of business?”
“Um…A removal job,” she replied, thrown by the question.
“Well. In that case…who was the person you were enquiring about…you know, last week’s job…?”
“The name was Cotton. Smithy’s Loam.”
“Oh, yes. The Surrey job. Long way for us, that is. Don’t usually go that far. So what was it you wanted to know?”
“The Cottons’ new address. Where you delivered to the other end.”
The voice laughed harshly. “Well, we didn’t deliver the other end, did we?”
“What, you mean you got there and found the address didn’t exist?” Her question burst out instinctively.
“Eh?” The voice sounded bewildered. “No, of course we didn’t. It wasn’t a removal job from one house to another. It was a storage job.”
“So you mean you now have all the Cottons’ furniture in store?”
“That’s right. In containers. In our warehouse. Five miles away from here.”
“Ah.” The extent of the planning behind Theresa Cotton’s disappearance was becoming clearer by the minute. “And did Mrs Cotton say how long she wanted everything stored?”
“Well, she paid for six months in advance. Said it might be longer, though. Her husband had got some posting abroad or something.”
“Really?”
“Look, what is this?” The voice was again becoming suspicious. “Why are you asking all this stuff?”
“Well, as I say, what I really wanted was the Cotton’s new address…”
“I haven’t got it. And if you don’t mind, I –”
“But, in fact,” Mrs Pargeter came in quickly, “I was asking because it’s a storage job that I need doing.”
“Oh.” Once again the voice was calmed by an appeal to the profit motive. “What is it? Full house contents?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I say, we do containerised storage…”
“Yes, but you can store everything, can you? I mean, furniture, domestic appliances…?”
“The lot. Nothing perishable, of course, but everything else.”
“And everything would be safe in your warehouse? I mean, from burglars and –”
“Safe as houses, lady.” The voice allowed itself a brief joke. “Safer than most houses, actually.”
“Oh, that’s most interesting. Could you tell me how much that would cost?”
The voice reeled off a list of figures, with variations for the volume of goods stored and the period of storage. It concluded, “Let me take your particulars and then I can send you details through the post.”
“Yes. Thank you. Of course I am just getting quotes at the moment.”
“Shopping around, you mean?”
“Yes,”
“Right.” The voice turned shirty. “Look, you’ve wasted quite enough of my time this morning. When you’ve got a serious business proposition, ring back. Otherwise don’t bother!”
This time Mrs Pargeter was not quick enough to stop the voice from putting the phone down. Though she wasn’t sure what she could have said, anyway.
Oh, well, she’d got some useful information. Pity she hadn’t been able to get more. Littlehaven’s must have had some contact address for the Cottons. Surely they wouldn’t do business with people of no fixed abode…?
On the other hand, they had been paid for six months in advance. And, in a sense, the storage company had the advantage. The complete contents of a house were worth quite a bit of money. They wouldn’t anticipate anyone just leaving the stuff in their custody without reclaiming it. No, the goods were there as hostages against default of payment.
Anyway, given the thoroughness with which Theresa Cotton had disseminated her other lies, Mrs Pargeter felt sure she could have come up with something to cover this eventuality. The lie about not having the phone connected until they moved in had been glib enough; Theresa could easily have fabricated something else…Her husband was being posted abroad, but they didn’t know exactly where they’d be living yet…? They’d get in touch as soon as they had a permanent address…? Yes, that’d be good – enough to satisfy the voice on the phone. Particularly if he’d got six months’ advance payment in his pocket.
For a moment Mrs Pargeter wondered whether the story about a foreign posting for Rod Cotton could be true…
But no, surely not. If that were the case, then Theresa could have told everyone. In fact, given the emphasis in Smithy’s Loam on success and promotion, she would definitely have told everyone. She wouldn’t go to the trouble of inventing false addresses in North Yorkshire.
Unless, of course, the foreign posting was a demotion. Things hadn’t worked out for Rod in the North and now he had been forced to go abroad to get a job which would keep up their living standards…?
But somehow that didn’t seem very convincing, either.
Basically, Mrs Pargeter told herself, this is all conjecture. I don’t have enough facts yet.
Still, she hadn’t come to the end of her resources. There remained a variety of ways of getting more facts.
¦
“Oh, hello, Vivvi. This is Melita Pargeter.”
“How nice to hear you. I hope you had a good weekend.”
“Delightful, thank you.”
“Yes, not a lot happens round the close” – damn, she’d let it slip out – “at weekends, but I think that’s just the time when you can appreciate how secluded we are here. You really could be in the middle of the country at the weekends. Didn’t you find that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say. I was up in London.”
“Oh.” This again felt wrong to Vivvi. People who had just moved to Smithy’s Loam should stay in Smithy’s Loam. They shouldn’t go gallivanting up to London at the first opportunity.
