“You think someone’s putting the frighteners on him? Do you think he’s protecting someone?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Mrs Pargeter. I can’t get at his reasons. All I know is that he seems determined to make things as easy as possible for the police prosecutors.”
Mrs Pargeter looked puzzled as she pushed her empty plate away and began absentmindedly to smother a piece of toast with butter and marmalade.
Nigel Merriman opened his hands out in appeal. “So anything you can think of, Mrs Pargeter… anything you heard Mr Jacket say, anything you remember that happened down at the site… please let me know before you tell anyone else.”
Mrs Pargeter looked affronted. “Who else do you think I might tell?”
“The police?”
She chuckled. “You clearly don’t know me, Mr Merriman.”
“No.” He paused, then spoke as if confiding something rather special. “Only by reputation.”
“Oh?”
The solicitor rationed himself a thin smile. “Which reputation makes me absolutely certain I want you on my side in trying to clear my client.”
Mrs Pargeter nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. “Unusual for someone in your profession to be so concerned, Mr Merriman. There aren’t that many solicitors who want to get involved with acknowledged villains – even villains who’ve been going straight for as long as Concrete has.”
“What you say is true. Perhaps my different attitude derives from the somewhat unusual circumstances by which I came into my chosen profession.” In response to her quizzical look, Nigel Merriman elaborated. “I was lucky enough to be put through Law College, and supported through my articles… by a benefactor.” Another small smile. “His name was Mr Pargeter.”
“Really?” Mrs Pargeter nodded her understanding and beamed. Her late husband had shown great altruism in saving a lot of young people from dead-end lives by sponsoring their training. The list had included accountants, solicitors, barristers, doctors and journalists. And in each case the late Mr Pargeter’s altruism had continued to the extent of finding gainful employment for his proteges once they had qualified. She smiled at Nigel Merriman. “He always used to say it was very useful to have a solicitor on your side.”
A look of appropriate reverence came into the young man’s face. “He was a great philanthropist, your husband, Mrs Pargeter.”
“Oh yes,” the widow agreed fondly. “Yes, he was.”
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
Five
Clearly, dealing with the monkey was not proving easy. Hedgeclipper Clinton was too preoccupied by his task to be aware of Mrs Pargeter’s return to her suite. She stood in the doorway and watched the scene with considerable relish.
The hotel manager had freed the marmoset’s chain from its anchorage to the dresser, but the animal had evidently escaped and showed no relish for recapture. It was now perched on the pelmet, high above the tall windows, chattering at its pursuer with uninhabited amusement. In one hand the creature held a banana, an attempted bait that it must have snatched and got away with. Between chattering noises, the marmoset detached lumps of the fruit and swirled them around in its saliva, before hurling them towards the hotel manager. That its aim was unerring could be seen from the splodges on Hedgeclipper Clinton’s black tailcoat.
The general chaos of the room – overturned chairs, paintings askew, torn curtains and banana-smeared surfaces – suggested the chase had been lively and vigorous. And that the monkey was very definitely in control of the situation.
The volume of fruit splattered around the room showed Hedgeclipper Clinton must have come in with a considerable supply of bananas, but he was now running out. He held up the last one, its skin peeled back to show the tempting white flesh, imploringly towards the marmoset, while he murmured in seductive tones, “Come on, Erasmus. Come on, Erasmus, there’s a good boy…”
“Why on earth ‘Erasmus’?” asked Mrs Pargeter from the doorway.
“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.” He turned to look at her. “I had an uncle who had a pet monkey called Erasmus. Thereafter, I’m afraid, all monkeys have been Erasmus so far as I’m concerned.”
Hedgeclipper Clinton shouldn’t have taken his eyes off his quarry. The marmoset, acute to the lapse of concentration, leapt in one easy movement from pelmet to chandelier, gripped the stem with one nonchalantly prehensile foot, swung downwards to snatch the banana, and was back on the pelmet before the hotel manager had turned round again.
“Damn,” he said. Then, as another sucked blob of pulp caught him in the eye, “Damn!”
“Good luck,” said Mrs Pargeter, as she went smiling through into the bedroom. “I’m relying on you to sort it out, Hedgeclipper.”
¦
Gary’s limousine slid effortlessly out of the Dartford Tunnel on its way towards Essex. In the back, over glasses of chilled Chardonnay from the vehicle’s bar, Mrs Pargeter brought Truffler Mason up to date on the case.
“I mean, I’m sure it was just coincidence that I was there at the site when the police came. I’d only rung Concrete that morning and said I’d like to have a look at how the building was going. And then I’d rung Gary and he was free –”
“Always free for you, Mrs Pargeter,” the chauffeur chipped in.
“Less of that, young man,” she said sharply. “You got your own business now.”
“I know. But when I think of everything your husband taught me, the least I can do is to –”
“If I know anything about my husband,” Mrs Pargeter continued in the same tone of reproof, “he also taught you that there is no room in the commercial world for sentimentality. Compassion – yes. Sentimentality – no. You’re running a hire-car business, young Gary – you take all the bookings you can, and see that everyone pays. Including me.”
Subdued, Gary nodded his acceptance of this. But it was an ongoing running battle between them and he’d only lost the skirmish. In time he would return to the fray with ever more devious attempts to undercharge his favourite client – or ideally not to charge her at all.
Mrs Pargeter resumed her conversation with Truffler. “And the stuff you got on Willie Cass fits in with what Nigel Merriman told me, does it?”
A rueful nod. “Down to the last detail. I mean, I got feelers out, I’ll get some more info, but… The daft thing about it is how public Willie was about blackmailing Concrete. Short of buying advertising in the middle of
“Yes, there’s so much evidence against Concrete, it’s got to be a frame-up.”
“Certainly. Whole case is far too tidy. All neatly tied up with a bow on top.” Truffler grimaced wryly. “Trouble is…”
“Hm?”
“The police
“That may be so,” she remonstrated, “but this time surely anyone with a bit of imagination could see that –”
Truffler raised a hand politely to interrupt her. “Er, not ‘anyone with a bit of imagination’. I did say the police, Mrs Pargeter.”
“True.” She sighed glumly, took a swig of Chardonnay, and sank back into the limousine’s plush upholstery. “Oh well, maybe we can get some more stuff from Tammy.”
¦
The Jackets lived outside Basildon in a large modern house on which everything had been lavished but taste. The house was full of ‘features’ – windows of different shapes glazed in different styles and colours, walls of exposed brick, walls draped in hessian, walls covered in flock, vinyl and panelling. Interior doors ranged from studded monastic oak to chest-high Western saloon. Artex whirled, carpets swirled, and cocktail trolleys
