hand snaked towards the large key in the lock.
“You won’t get away with killing me, Nigel,” said Mrs Pargeter, desperate to monopolize his attention. “I’ve got a lot of friends – a lot of my late husband’s former colleagues – who’ll come after you and find you.”
The solicitor let out a little dry laugh. “I don’t think they’ll find me where I’m going, Mrs Pargeter. We’ve got the perfect bolt-hole, don’t you worry. This whole thing has been worked out in rather a lot of detail – and I’m particularly good on detail. One of the benefits of my legal training.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Pargeter saw the tiny fingers extract the key from its lock, and saw the hand slowly withdraw. As the metal scraped against the frame of the letter-box, she was terrified that Nigel Merriman would hear, but he was far too jubilantly caught up in his triumph to notice anything else.
“No, I’m sorry,” he continued. “You just represent too much of a risk for us to contemplate your getting out of this alive.” He raised the automatic pistol till the end of its barrel was only millimetres away from her temple.
“So now,” he said, his voice laden down with mock-regret, “I’m afraid, Mrs Pargeter, the time has come to –”
The lights in the room were suddenly out. Mrs Pargeter felt herself falling as her chair was knocked violently sideways. There was a confusion of thumps, shouts, a gunshot and, above everything, the gleeful chattering of a triumphant marmoset.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
Thirty-Five
The tables had been very effectively turned. The restraining ropes now attached Clickety Clark, Blunt and Nigel Merriman to office chairs. And since the three of them had proved unwilling to maintain a voluntary silence, the decision had been taken to affix firm strips of plaster across their mouths.
Mrs Pargeter beamed with satisfaction at the handiwork of her saviours. Truffler Mason, Gary and Hedgeclipper Clinton looked becomingly modest, but there was an undeniable air of satisfaction about their demeanour too. Erasmus was more overt in his triumphalism. He seemed to understand the importance of his contribution to the rescue, and circled the office in a continuing lap of honour, chattering self-congratulation, as he leapt from desks, chairs, and the heads of the three trussed malefactors.
Truffler surveyed the scene with that gaze of desolation which those who knew him well recognized as euphoria. “You know, Mrs Pargeter, it has to be said that your late husband did teach us how to do certain things extraordinarily well.”
“Yes. Yes, he did,” she agreed, perhaps for a moment a mite tearful. But she shook herself briskly out of sentimentality. “I still can’t believe my good fortune that you lot arrived when you did.”
“Wasn’t good fortune,” said Truffler. “It was research. I said I’d find out whether Clickety Clark and Blunt were acting on their own or whether they weren’t. And I found out they weren’t.” He looked across at Nigel Merriman with unqualified distaste. “And I found out who their puppet-master was.
Mrs Pargeter calmed the rising belligerence in his tone. “No personal revenge, Truffler. As usual, we’ll go through the official channels…”
There was a sound – not so definite as a groan, more a sigh – of dissent and disappointment from her three rescuers.
“… like the law-abiding citizens we are,” Mrs Pargeter concluded firmly. Then a sheepish expression came into her face. “Mind you, I am rather ashamed that I had to be rescued by a monkey.”
“Particularly after all the nasty things you said about Erasmus.” Hedgeclipper Clinton’s tone was reproving. The marmoset, apparently reacting to the mention of his name, jumped from the top of Nigel Merriman’s head on to his owner’s shoulder, and sat there looking pious and self-righteous. “I haven’t actually heard you say a proper thank-you to him yet, Mrs Pargeter,” Hedgeclipper prompted.
She looked balefully at the monkey. It returned an unflinching stare. The two of them were never going to like each other, but maybe some kind of mutual respect might in time evolve. “Thank you very much, Erasmus,” Mrs Pargeter mumbled. Then, relieved to have got that unpalatable task out of the way, she moved swiftly on. “All right, Truffler, let’s get to work.”
“Certainly.” His resentment of a few moments before instantly forgotten, the detective moved across the office and coiled his long body into a chair facing a word processor, which he switched on. “OK. Ready to go.”
“We need all the evidence spelled out in minute detail.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs P. I’m used to doing that. What distinguishes a good detective from an indifferent one is the kind of report he writes and, though I say it myself, I do write a bloody good report. Going to take some time, though.”
“We can wait.” Mrs Pargeter looked around the room. “Be nicer if we had a drink while we sit waiting, though, wouldn’t it?” She looked across at Nigel Merriman, whose dull eyes glared loathing over his plaster-covered mouth. “Too much to hope that you’d have a nice little drinks fridge for your clients, eh, Nigel? Far too tight-fisted, I imagine.”
Something in the solicitor’s body language confirmed that her guess had been correct. “Oh well, never mind.”
“Mrs Pargeter, allow me,” said Hedgeclipper Clinton, his hotelier manner at its most unctuous. In his managerial black jacket and pinstripes, he looked entirely at home in a solicitor’s office. The image, as ever, was only let down by the marmoset on his shoulder.
He reached a telephone from the desk and punched in a number. “Ah, Mario, could you do me a special delivery? Yes, sort of room service, though the room in question is not actually in the hotel.” He gave Nigel Merriman’s address. “Three bottles of the Dom Perignon… The ‘48, yes. Very cold. Four of the crystal goblets…”
His eyebrows responded to Gary’s upraised hand. “Hm?”
“Could we have some mineral water, and all? ‘Cause I’m driving.”
“Of course. Still or sparkling?”
“Sparkling, please.”
“Mario,” Hedgeclipper continued into the receiver, “could we add a bottle of sparkling mineral water… oh, and some of those more-money-than-sense-customer wedding snacks… Yes, you know, the Japanese titbits… Smoked salmon, obviously… The quails’ eggs, and the caviar, yes – red and black… I think that’s probably it…” A frenetic screeching from his shoulder made him aware of an omission. “Oh, and an extremely large bunch of bananas. Soon as possible, Mario, thank you.”
He put the phone down and beamed across at Mrs Pargeter. “Be about ten minutes. Then we’ll have a little something to sip and nibble while we wait for Truffler to complete his
There was a contented silence in the office, interrupted only by the plastic clacking of Truffler Mason’s fingers on the keyboard, and the scratching of Erasmus’s claws as he explored Clickety Clark’s thinning hair for nits.
“Presumably, once it’s all written up, you’ll hand it over to the filth – er, the police authorities?” asked Hedgeclipper Clinton.
Mrs Pargeter nodded. “That’s right. Direct them here.” She gestured to Nigel Merriman’s desk, on which the piles of banknotes and the half-filled briefcases lay exactly where they had when the lights went out. “I think that lot’ll probably help to convince them too.”
“Imagine so,” said Gary with a grin. “I haven’t seen that much loot since the famous occasion in that Ponders End depository when Mr Pargeter got the…” He caught a look from Mrs Pargeter and seemed suddenly to lose his thread. He began studiously buffing the badge on his peaked cap.
“So spell it all out, Truffler,” she continued serenely, as if the recent moment of potential unpleasantness had never happened.
“Will do.”
“We don’t want any room for ambiguity.”
“Don’t worry,” said the detective without pausing in his task. “I’ll do it so’s a ten-year-old child could understand it.”
