“Oh. Yes. Of course,” the interior designer lied.
VVO didn’t seem entirely convinced by the cover-up. “After I’m dead, you know,” he said truculently, “the true value of my work will be recognized.”
“Yes, VVO, I’m sure it will,” Mrs Pargeter agreed, her soothing tone disguising the ambiguity of her words.
VVO was reassured, anyway. “Thank you, Mrs Pargeter. At least you recognize what I’m capable of.”
“Oh, certainly.” And before the painter had time to spot another double-edged compliment, she rubbed her hands together with relish and said, “Great, terrific. So all we need now is a courier to get the paintings down to Berne…”
VVO looked hopefully round the room until his glance engaged with Mrs Pargeter’s. She did feel tempted to give in to the appeal in those dog-like eyes. The skittish mood was still with her. The courier job wasn’t complicated. Surely VVO couldn’t mess it up. And the late Mr Pargeter had been renowned for constantly opening up new opportunities for his staff, trusting them with ever greater responsibilities.
But her indulgent fantasies were interrupted by the voice of Hamish Ramon Henriques. Shaking his head decidedly, the travel agent pronounced a firm “No.”
“Oh, come on,” the artist wheedled, “you could let me do this. It’s not fair, I’m never allowed to do any of the exciting stuff. And it’d be so easy for me to be your courier. Me and Deirdre could be going off in the camper for a continental holiday. Why not? it’s something we often do.”
But that suggestion prompted another shake of HRH’s fine Iberian head. “I said no. Apart from anything else, it’s always a risk entrusting this kind of thing to someone with a criminal record. The police are –”
Fury burned in the eye of VVO. “Now hang on a minute. Just because you’ve got a criminal record, there’s no need to imagine –”
“How dare you!” HRH snapped back. “I can assure you I do not have –”
Mrs Pargeter raised her hands as if to smooth out a lumpy duvet. “Please, please. There’s no need to argue. I’m sure no one in this room has any kind of criminal record.”
VVO and HRH looked a little sheepish after their outburst, and Palings Price’s face was fixed in a rictus of self-righteousness. Mrs Pargeter gave a reassuring smile to all of them. “Good. See, no worries on that score.”
“No,” HRH agreed, eager to sweep the disagreement hastily under the carpet. “Your late husband took enormous care of the people who worked for him.”
Palings Price gave a nostalgic nod. “Oh yes. You know, I was just thinking, Mrs Pargeter…”
“Yes?”
“… what a fine man your husband was…”
“Thank you.”
“And, you know,” the interior designer went on, “one of the wonderful things about him was the way he encouraged the people who worked for him by always giving them new challenges, offering them the chance to do something a little different…”
This so closely echoed Mrs Pargeter’s recent thoughts that she found herself nodding. Even HRH said, “He was excellent at that, I agree.”
“So…” Palings Price went on, “I think we should follow his example…”
“By doing what?” asked Mrs Pargeter.
“By letting Vincent Vin Ordinaire be our courier.”
“Oh, please!” the painter squealed, though the expression on HRH’s face, which had been moving towards the conciliatory, had quickly changed and was now far from endorsing the suggestion.
Palings Price gestured to the three aluminium-framed pieces of artwork. “I’m sure VVO’s capable of getting these three…” another word hovered on his lips, but he managed in time to convert it to “…paintings down to Fritzi in Berne.”
Hamish Ramon Henriques shook his head dubiously. “I’m not sure that –”
But Palings Price had the bit between his teeth and was not to be deflected. “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy, HRH. If Mr Pargeter hadn’t given you your chance, you’d still be working for –” – the travel agent tried to interrupt, but he was too late – “London Transport,” the art dealer concluded implacably.
HRH turned away in shame, effectively handing the victory to Palings Price. “So I think we should definitely give VVO the chance to be the courier for once.” He turned to face their late employer’s widow. “What do you say, Mrs Pargeter?”
She was torn. Caution told her that Hamish Ramon Henriques was in the right, but her natural generosity drew her towards the idea of giving VVO a break. And the thoughts she’d been entertaining about her husband suggested that he might have been inclined towards indulgence.
“Please, please!” the painter begged. “You won’t regret your decision. I’ll do the job perfectly, I promise.”
Mrs Pargeter was not a weak or vacillating woman, and in this instance her natural big-heartedness did not allow her to hesitate for long. “Oh, very well,” she said. “You be our courier, VVO.”
“Yippee!” The painter punched the air with delight, and did a little jig around the clutter of his studio. Mrs Pargeter looked at Palings Price and saw how pleased he was by what she’d said. But she avoided the eye of Hamish Ramon Henriques. She had a feeling his view might be rather different.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
Twenty-One
Inspector Wilkinson sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked car, chewing the end of his pencil. A police notebook lay open on his lap in front of him, but so far only one line had been written. As a line, he quite liked it, but it was writing a second, and a third, and a fourth that was proving difficult. Wasn’t there any word in the English language that rhymed with ‘ample’?
Be simpler if he came from the North. Then presumably he could use ‘sample’ or ‘example’, with short ‘a’s. But that wouldn’t be right. He didn’t know much about poetry, but he did know neither of those would be a true rhyme. And he had to make his first poem a presentable one. A good copper doesn’t cut corners, even when he’s writing poetry.
Inspector Wilkinson had never actually met a police officer who wrote poetry – outside of crime fiction – but he was sure there must be some. Maybe that was the way he’d make his mark in the Force, by showing his more spiritual, creative side. Yes, it was rather appealing, the image of himself, Craig Wilkinson, as a sensitive aesthete, even as the New Man perhaps.
Women went for that kind of stuff, apart from anything else. Poets never had any difficulty getting women to go to bed with them. And because they were dealing with poets, the women didn’t expect anything like commitment or fidelity. They knew poets lived on far too high a plane to be sidetracked by details like that. Yes, Wilkinson thought to himself, I think I could have rather a good future as a poet (and forget the New Man bit of it).
But not until I can find something to rhyme with ‘ample’, he was reminded as his eye caught sight of the notebook. There’s always a bloody snag, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the word ‘ample’ that needs changing, he wondered. It suits the rhythm of the line perfectly, but perhaps there’s something else that would fit in as well.
He tried to think of some synonyms for ‘ample’. ‘Generous’…? That was close, but it hadn’t got quite the same resonance. ‘Strapping’…? Good for rhymes, but it wasn’t right for anything else. ‘Huge’…? No. ‘Fat’…? No, no, no. ‘Enormous’…? Now this was getting silly.
No way round it, ‘ample’ was the only word. It had to be ‘ample’. But… Suddenly a memory came from his schooldays, an echo of something his English master had said, half-listened to and unheeded until this moment. “Shakespeare wrote all of his greatest plays in blank verse, and blank verse does not rhyme.”