“And what was that?” asked Mrs Pargeter combatively. She felt pretty certain she’d made sense of the whole scenario, and was confidently prepared to argue her case.
She heard the door behind her open, and saw Nigel Merriman’s eyeline move to his new visitors. His expression had changed. Now it contained something gleeful. Unpleasantly gleeful.
With sickening certainty of what she was about to see, Mrs Pargeter slowly turned round.
Framed in the doorway, their faces bruised and scarred, and looking meaner than she’d ever seen them look before, were Clickety Clark and Blunt.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Thirty-Four
There was no give in the rope that tied Mrs Pargeter’s arms behind the chair and her legs to the chair legs. Her captors had made it clear that the smallest sound from her would result in her mouth being taped over with equal tightness. The outer door of the office had been firmly locked by a large key So she could only watch helplessly what was going on.
The thick curtains had been drawn, presumably to avoid anything being seen from adjacent blocks, and the lights were on. The surface of Nigel Merriman’s desk was covered with wads of banknotes, which Clickety Clark and Blunt were transferring systematically into a series of briefcases.
While they did this, the solicitor watched them, swivelling idly in his chair and playing with the point of a paperknife. He seemed much more relaxed now. His professional formality had been replaced by an impudent, almost daredevil, cheerfulness, as he spelled out the revised situation to his captive.
“The only effect your meddling will have had on us, Mrs Pargeter, is to move our plans forward a little. We had intended to leave the country at the end of the year, but we’ve got the bulk of the money together, so…” he shrugged carelessly, “… to make our departure now will represent no problem.”
As she had before in similar situations, Mrs Pargeter tried the breezy, facetious approach. “Oh well, if I haven’t caused you any problem, then you can just set me free, can’t you?” she suggested.
Her flippancy raised a thin smile from Nigel Merriman, but that was the full extent of its reward. “Ah, Mrs Pargeter… if only life were that simple. You see, you do know rather a lot about us. In fact, I was impressed by how much you managed to work out… and of course I was grateful for the way you kept telling me all about it. But… I’m afraid you do know a little too much to be allowed back into circulation.”
As he spoke, he reached into his desk drawer, and pulled out a stubby but businesslike automatic pistol. He gave a helpless shrug, as if he were at the mercy of forces beyond his control. “Sorry about this, Mrs Pargeter. Still, I suppose, in a way, it’ll be a kind of double for me.”
“What do you mean?”
He gave her a bland smile, as he rose from his seat and began to move expansively around the office. “Now – getting my own back on you. And before that – getting my own back on your husband…”
Suddenly Mrs Pargeter understood. Her late husband’s professional life had been conducted in a general atmosphere of goodwill and mutual cooperation, marred only by the occasional minor unpleasantness.
And one major unpleasantness. The occasion when the late Mr Pargeter’s natural bonhomie and trusting nature had been betrayed by one of his most trusted associates. The occasion when this evil man – Julian Embridge – had suborned others of the late Mr Pargeter’s entourage, men who had benefited hugely from their employer’s instinctive philanthropy, and persuaded them to join him in his perfidy. The ghastly incident had been known thereafter simply by the name of the place where it had been perpetrated. The name unfailingly sent a chill through Mrs Pargeter’s heart, and she felt that familiar uneasy frisson as she murmured, “Streatham?”
Nigel Merriman stopped his circuit of the room and nodded smugly. He was now standing between his quarry and the outer door. “Yes, I was one of the people involved in events in Streatham, Mrs Pargeter. Though – perhaps luckily for me – your husband was never made aware of my participation.”
He was impervious to the look of undiluted hatred that she trained on him. Nor was he aware of the tiny change that came into her expression as she noticed a slight movement behind him. Mrs Pargeter looked firmly into the solicitor’s eyes to absorb his concentration, but still her peripheral vision watched in fascination what was happening to the outer door.
A tiny hand, at the end of a tiny fur-covered arm, was reaching in through the door’s letter-box. Slowly, the 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. And I found out that he’d been involved in Streatham.”