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 magnum opus.”
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.”
Mrs Pargeter looked dubious. “Truffler, could you make that a five-year-old child? We are dealing with the police here, after all.”
Truffler Mason nodded and continued typing.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ∧
Thirty-Six
The Rolls-Royce, once again gleaming and free of its wedding encumbrances, was parked on a double yellow line directly outside Bow Street Police Station. Gary drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Hedgeclipper Clinton sat tensely forward in the back seat. Even Erasmus seemed subdued. Only Mrs Pargeter was serenely relaxed, leaning back against the car’s luxurious upholstery with a vodka Campari in her hand.
“He’s been in there a long time,” Gary murmured after a silence. “You don’t think they’ve nicked him, do you?”
“What on earth could they nick him for?” asked Mrs Pargeter reasonably. “Truffler’s got no form, no previous convictions, and what he’s doing at the moment is certainly not illegal. It’s the act of a public-spirited, law-abiding citizen. The police should fall over themselves to welcome people like that. Save them a lot of effort if every member of the public started doing their job for them.”
“Hm.” Gary didn’t look entirely convinced. “I don’t know. I still don’t like it. Going voluntarily into a police station… well, doesn’t feel natural. Looks to me like asking for trouble.”
“That attitude,” said Mrs Pargeter with some asperity, “is a hangover from your past, young Gary. And it’s something you should very definitely have grown out of by now.”
“Yes, all right,” he mumbled truculently.
“Truffler’s too canny to say the wrong thing, anyway. Isn’t he?” said Hedgeclipper Clinton, without complete conviction.
“Of course he is. Honestly, what’s got into you two? You’re behaving like a pair of teenage girls at their first dance. Truffler had to see to it personally that the dossier got into the hands of the right person, and that’s what he’s doing. There won’t be any problem.”
At that moment a familiar tall figure emerged from the doors of the police station and walked in a leisurely fashion towards the Rolls-Royce.
“See?” said Mrs Pargeter.
Gary started the engine as Truffler settled into the back seat between Hedgeclipper Clinton and his employer. “They took it all right?” she asked.
“No problem,” Truffler replied.
“And you’re sure they’ll act on it straight away?”
“Oh yes. They’re raring to go. I should think a squad car’s arriving at Nigel Merriman’s office even as we speak.”
He sounded so confident, Mrs Pargeter couldn’t help asking, “What did you say?”
Truffler gave a wolfish grin. “I told them it was three certain arrests, couple of percentage points up on the local clear-up rate, and a good chance of an OBE for the officer in charge.”