“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 is proof of the murder – or proof of the motive for the murder – over here. If only I knew what I was looking for.”
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.”
“Was that the one you mentioned to me on the phone? Double-barrelled name…?”
“Fisher-Metcalf, that’s right. Used to be Chris Dover’s solicitor. I went to see him yesterday, and I’ve fixed an appointment for you to go and see him at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“But no solicitor worth his salt is going to discuss the affairs of one of his clients, even if that client is dead – I mean, unless it’s the police or someone official making the enquiries.”
“Mrs Pargeter, I wouldn’t be so sure that Mr Fisher-Metcalf is worth his salt. I’m confident that he can be persuaded to talk.”
“You mean you’ve got something on him, Truffler?”
The satisfaction on the private detective’s face was so positive that he almost looked cheerful.
“Yes, Mrs Pargeter, I’ve got something on him.”
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Package ∧
Twenty-Six
The office was in Hackney and so drab that it looked like something out of a Fifties British B-feature. The adenoidal girl who let Mrs Pargeter into her anteroom would not have looked out of place in the same movie. Lank, dull hair, droopy cardigan, shapeless kilt in some tartan Mrs Pargeter did not recognise. Certainly not an obvious one like the Black Watch or Hunting Stuart. Moping Mactavish, perhaps?
“If you’d just wait a moment,” said the girl, as if through a nasal drip, “I’ll tell Mr Fisher-Metcalf you’re here.”
Mrs Pargeter sat on a cracked mock-leather chair and gazed on a dispiriting vista of faded green box-files. Whatever inroads the new technology might have made elsewhere, it hadn’t penetrated this little corner of post-war Britain. The telephone on the desk was a black Bakelite one, and the old manual typewriter, stuffed with a sheaf of paper and carbons, looked like a close relative of an eighteenth-century threshing machine. Only the dangling overhead light with its parchment shade confirmed that the place even had electricity laid on.
Over everything lay a thick blurring of dust. The room smelled of dust. And of something else, less pleasant, as though a cracked drain had been seeping quietly into the foundations for a couple of centuries.
The girl drooped back into the room with an apologetic sniff. “If you’d like to come through…”
Mrs Pargeter, glad that the purple and yellow flowers of her silk dress were bringing a splash of colour into this murk of greens and beiges, went through into Mr Fisher-Metcalf’s office.
Its owner would easily have qualified for a part in the same film as his secretary. Shiny pin-striped suit, white shirt, a tie patterned with dots so tiny that the effect was uniform black. His bald head was inadequately disguised with a meagre combing of salt-and-pepper hair. His face drooped with defeat, apology and a degree of guilt.
“Good morning,” he said. “Mrs Pargeter, isn’t it? Won’t you take a seat?” The anaemic secretary still lingered in the doorway. “Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee…?”
The smell of the anteroom had put Mrs Pargeter off the idea of anything prepared out there, so she refused the offer. The secretary vanished with a farewell sniff.
“Now, Mrs Pargeter, what can I do for you?”
The apology in his tone expressed a whole lifetime of failure. Clearly Mr Fisher-Metcalf had never quite been up to any of the challenges life had offered him. He had just scraped through exams at school, then just scraped through his legal exams, fortunate to be entering a self-perpetuating profession.
Though Mrs Pargeter knew some excellent solicitors – indeed, she owed the fact that she and the late Mr Pargeter had not been prevented from spending more of their married life together to the good offices of the famous Arnold Justiman – she did not have a very high opinion of the profession. She knew it to be one in which talent was not of paramount importance. The British legal system – created, of course, by solicitors – guarantees undemanding and lucrative employment for life to anyone who can be crammed up to qualify.