to him. But he never made contact. And in fact, now I come to remember it, there were two or three occasions – you know, social functions – which we were both invited to, and each time he just didn’t turn up.”
“Coincidence.”
“Mmm,” said Hamish Ramon Henriques ruminatively. “More than coincidence I remember thinking at the time.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Almost as if Chris Dover was deliberately trying to avoid me.”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Package ?
Twenty-Five
Hamish Ramon Henriques had organised a range of clothes from her home wardrobe to be in Mrs Pargeter’s room in the Savoy and, after a bath, she selected a coral-coloured silk suit for her meeting with Truffler Mason. The late Mr Pargeter had always encouraged his wife to wear bright colours. “No point in trying to hide yourself, my dear,” he had frequently said, “when there’s such a delicious amount of you to hide.”
She cut a handsome figure in the Savoy bar. Truffler Mason looked less exotic. He wore his customary camouflage of nondescript sports jacket and brown trousers. His long, horse-like face looked even more gloomy than usual.
“Virtually nothing to report, Mrs Pargeter,” he apologised. “I’ve spent most of the day on the phone to contacts in Uruguay and still haven’t got any positive identification or details about Chris Dover’s life before he came to England.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Yes. What’s more, he seems to have slipped out of the country secretly, so there probably wouldn’t be any records.”
“And you didn’t find anything from his time in Uruguay back in the house?”
Truffler didn’t ask how she knew he’d searched the Dover family home. That was one of the things he liked about working for Mrs Pargeter. So little explanation was necessary. She understood his methods and just let him get on with it.
“No. He seems to have covered his tracks very effectively. I went through everything. There was some kid’s stuff, but it was all Sindy Dolls and what have you – clearly the daughter’s. I only found one thing that might have belonged to Chris when he was younger.”
“What was that?”
“A chemistry set. Kid’s chemistry set.”
“Oh. Where had it been manufactured?” Mrs Pargeter asked hopefully.
“In England,” Truffler Mason replied, immediately dashing her hopes of a Uruguayan connection.
“Ah.” Another thought came to her. “Was there any sodium carbonate in the set?”
“Didn’t notice. I’d have to check again.”
“It’s probably not important. What was the chemistry set like?”
“Fairly small set-up. A few test-tubes, a few little pots of chemicals. Manufactured in England, as I say. Done a bit of research and it seems it would have been available in toyshops here round the late Fifties.”
“Just about the time Chris came over here. So he probably bought it soon after he arrived…”
“Perhaps.”
“Maybe, for someone new to the country, that was the easiest way he could find of obtaining chemicals he needed.”
“Possible.”
“But I wonder what he needed them for…? Hm, we have no means of knowing. Too many things in this case at the moment that we have no means of knowing.” She slumped back into her chair, dissatisfied, and sipped her vodka martini. “There’s something here in England which explains why Joyce was murdered.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
Mrs Pargeter told Truffler about her encounter with Sergeant Karaskakis. “It was the speed with which he changed tack when I said I would go back to England to investigate. Up until then he’d been trying to persuade me to leave. The sooner I got out of Corfu and out of his hair, the better. But the moment I said – I was only bluffing, but I said I could produce evidence from England that Joyce had been murdered – and the moment I said it, suddenly he was desperate to keep me on the island until the investigation was over. Which must mean that I had somehow stumbled on the truth. There actually
Truffler gave his long chin a contemplative stroke. “The night Joyce Dover was murdered…”
“Mm?”
“You said that her suitcases had been searched…”
“Yes. So had mine.”
“And what do you think whoever did it was looking for?”
“Well, I’d assumed it was the ouzo bottle, which by chance was in my flightbag down at Spiro’s all the time.”
“Suppose they were looking for something else, too?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t anything else you noticed that was missing?”
“No. Mind you, I’d assumed it was the ouzo bottle they were after, so I didn’t look very hard.”
Truffler looked, if possible, more depressed than ever as he asked, “Joyce didn’t mention any letter, did she?”
“Letter?”
“Letter from her husband. Letter that she was to be given after his death.”
“No, I don’t think…” Suddenly Mrs Pargeter recalled Joyce’s words. “She did say something about Chris still trying to control her from beyond the grave and… Yes, yes, now I come to think of it, she did mention a letter.”
“But you didn’t see it? She didn’t show it to you?”
“No.”
“Just suppose for a moment,” said Truffler slowly, “that that letter was the reason why she went to Corfu in the first place…?”
“You mean that she was following Chris’s instructions? That it wasn’t just a random decision to go to Greece? She deliberately chose Agios Nikitas?”
“Mm. It’d make more sense of the murder. At least it would mean she had some connection with someone out there.”
“Yes.”
“You say she didn’t show you the letter. And you didn’t see a sign of any such letter when you went through her luggage after you’d found her body?”
“No.”
“Maybe that was what the murderer was searching for…? Maybe the murderer found the letter and took it…?”
“We’re assuming here that Joyce had got it with her, aren’t we?”
“Oh, I think that’s a reasonable assumption, Mrs Pargeter. I mean, if you were to receive a letter giving you detailed instructions to go somewhere you’d never been before, you’d take it with you when you went there, wouldn’t you? To check details, that kind of thing.”
“Yes, all right, I agree. I probably would. But there’s another, bigger assumption we’re making, and I’m not so convinced that that one is reasonable.”
“What assumption?”
“The assumption that such a letter existed in the first place.”
“It existed all right,” said Truffler with calm assurance.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve spoken to the solicitor who gave it to Mrs Dover.”
