There was only a moment’s hesitation before Veronica Chastaigne also leant forward and began to share the problem that had caused her to summon Mrs Pargeter to Chastaigne Varleigh.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
Two
A silver open-topped Porsche was approaching the automatic gates of Chastaigne Varleigh as Gary’s limousine, with Mrs Pargeter tucked neatly in the back, swept out of the drive. The Porsche was driven by a man of about forty, dark-haired, good-looking, but beginning to run to fat.
He watched the departing limousine with curiosity tinged with suspicion before surging up the drive to the old house in an incautious flurry of gravel.
The Porsche’s driver entered the sitting room, gave Veronica Chastaigne a functional peck on the forehead and an “Evening, Mother,” before crossing to pour himself a large whisky.
She shook herself out of a wistful daze to greet her son. “Hello, Toby dear.”
“Who was that driving off in the limo?” he asked casually.
The faded blue eyes grew vague. “What? Oh, just someone about the Guide Dogs for the Blind Bring-and-Buy.”
“Ah,” said Toby, as if that settled the matter.
But his dark eyes, sinking in rolls of fat, flashed a suspicious look at his mother. He didn’t believe her.
♦
Veronica’s son wasn’t the only one with suspicions about Chastaigne Varleigh. Had Toby known it, the arrival of his Porsche had been observed through binoculars from an unmarked car parked at a local beauty spot which overlooked the estate. The same binoculars had also registered the arrival and departure of Gary’s limousine. And these comings and goings had been noted down on a clipboard by the passenger next to the man with the binoculars.
“Patience is probably the most important quality in a good copper, certainly in a good detective,” said Detective Inspector Craig Wilkinson, tapping the ash of his cigarette out of the open slot at the top of his window. “Patience and timing.”
“Yes,” said Detective Sergeant Hughes, not for the first time that day. He found that being with the DI involved saying ‘yes’ a lot. Not that the Sergeant regarded himself as a yesman. By no means. When the moment came he would assert himself, he had no doubt of that. Nor did he have any doubt about his exceptional skills as a policeman.
But he’d only just been made up to detective sergeant and transferred down from Sheffield; this day’s surveillance with Inspector Wilkinson was his first in his new status; so deference to superior experience was clearly in order. But Hughes didn’t plan that the situation should stay that way for long. This job with the Met was going to be a new start for him. He’d abandoned the girlfriend he’d been living with for the previous four years; he didn’t want any hangovers from his Sheffield life to slow down the advance of his career in London. Hughes was a bright, ambitious young man, and he was in a hurry to have his brightness recognized and his ambition realized.
“Oh no, softly, softly catchee monkey,” the Inspector went on. “When you’ve been in the Police Force as long as I have, you’ll find that’s the only method that really pays off in the long term. Though I dare say at times, to a youngster like you, that approach could seem pretty boring.”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Hughes, with rather more feeling than on the previous occasions. They had been sitting for four hours watching Chastaigne Varleigh; so far all they’d seen had been the arrival and departure of the limo and the arrival of the Porsche. To compound the pointlessness of the exercise, at the moment of Mrs Pargeter’s emergence from Gary’s limousine, Inspector Wilkinson had had his binoculars lowered while he pontificated about the number of years it took to make a good copper and how there were no short cuts possible in the process. Since he’d also managed to miss her coming out of the mansion, Wilkinson had no idea what Veronica Chastaigne’s visitor looked like. It was only at the insistence of Sergeant Hughes that they’d made a note of the limousine’s registration number.
To add to the serious doubts he was beginning to entertain about his superior’s competence, Hughes, a non-smoker and something of a fitness fanatic, was not enjoying the acrid fug that had been building up in the car. He knew that when he took them off in his flat that evening, his clothes would still smell of tobacco smoke.
Inspector Wilkinson’s ruminative monologue continued. “No, you have to plan, look ahead, build up your case slowly, and then, when everything’s ready, double-checked and sorted, you have to – move in like lightning!”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Hughes, who by now had an instinct for the length of pause that required filling.
“Hmm…” His boss nodded thoughtfully. Inspector Wilkinson was a large, craggy man, only a few years off retirement. He had all the standard accoutrements for someone in his position – a divorce and a variety of subsequent messy relationships, an expression of permanent disappointment, a thin grey moustache, and an antagonistic attitude to his immediate superior, whom he regarded as a ‘jumped-up, university-educated, pen-pushing desk-driver’.
Wilkinson was not close to any of his professional colleagues. He had always hoped that at some stage in his career he would be paired up on a regular basis with a congenial young copper, with whom he could build up an ongoing mutually insulting but ultimately affectionate relationship. However, it hadn’t happened yet, and from what he’d seen of his latest sidekick, wasn’t about to happen.
Wilkinson had been an Inspector for longer than most people at the station could remember. He had been passed over so often for higher promotions that now he no longer even bothered to fill in the application forms. But that did not mean he was without ambition. Once before in his career, he had been very close to making a major coup, bringing an entire criminal network to justice. For logistical reasons, things hadn’t worked out on that occasion, but now he felt he was close to another triumph on a comparable scale. And this time nothing was going to screw it up.
Inspector Wilkinson looked at his watch. Like all his movements, the raising of his arm, the turn of his wrist to show the time, was slow and deliberate. Sergeant Hughes already knew that if the two of them had to spend a lot of time together, he would very quickly get infuriated by these slow, deliberate movements.
“Another forty-two minutes and we can have another cup of coffee from the thermos,” said Inspector Wilkinson. Then, generously, “You can have another cup of mine, Hughes.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But another day, be a good idea to bring your own thermos. Always be as independent of other people as you can. That’s another mark of a good copper.”
“I’ll bring my own next time,” the Sergeant mumbled.
“Be best. Of course you have to plan your coffee intake when you’re on a stakeout. Don’t want to be needing a widdle at that vital moment when you have to – move in like lightning! Do you?”
“No,” said Sergeant Hughes, welcoming the variety. Then, emboldened by the change of monosyllable, he ventured a question. “Can you tell me a bit more about why we’re actually doing this stakeout, sir?”
“Well, I could,” the Inspector replied, tapping his nose slowly with a forefinger, “but whether I will or not is another matter. When I’m on a case, I always operate on a ‘need to know’ basis, and what I have to ask myself in this instance is: ‘How much do you need to know?’”
“I’d have thought, the more I knew, the better it would be.”
“In what way?”
“Then we could discuss the information we have. We could have the benefit of each other’s input.”