“No. No, of course not.” He moved hastily on to distance himself from the moment of embarrassment. “What’s odd about the whole business is who was in charge of the investigation.”
“Eh?”
“Jukebox Jarvis has done the usual checks in the police computers as to what happened down in Dover, and it turns out VVO was interviewed by none other than our old friend, Craggy Wilkinson.”
“Really?” This was a shock to Mrs Pargeter. After the reassurances given over the dinner at Greene’s Hotel, she had rather dismissed the Inspector from her thoughts. “Do you think we’ve got him wrong? Do you think he’s actually shrewder than his track record suggests?”
“You’d think he’d have to be,” HRH replied, “by the law of averages. But I still don’t see him working something like this out on his own.”
“He didn’t do it on his own,” said Truffler. “He’s got a new detective sergeant working with him. Keen, cocky young lad, I gather, glories in the name of Hercule Hughes. I reckon he’s the one behind VVO’s arrest.”
“Oh dear,” said Mrs Pargeter.
“Nothing to worry about, Mrs P. We’ll just keep an eye on the youngster, that’s all. Craggy Wilkinson on his own offers no danger. Craggy Wilkinson with an intelligent young sidekick could prove to be more of a challenge.” Truffler Mason gave a mournful grin. “But don’t give it another thought. Forewarned is forearmed. We’ve got it covered.”
“Oh, that is nice to know.”
“Yes.” Truffler stroked his chin. “What we must try and work out, though, is what effect VVO’s little disaster is going to have on the people who got away with the rest of the paintings.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well…” Truffler pointed to the newspaper report. “There’s no way now they don’t know that someone else is interested.”
“And you’re afraid this may make them speed up their plans and start selling off the goods?”
“It’s a possibility.”
As he spoke, Truffler Mason nodded gloomily. So did Hamish Ramon Henriques. To her annoyance, Mrs Pargeter found herself giving a gloomy nod too.
Truffler shook his huge head to jolt himself out of the communal despondency. “I think I’d better go and check it out,” he said.
♦
The Alsatian lying by the padlocked gates of the breaker’s yard snored evenly. From the corner of his slack mouth dripped bloody juices from the drugged meat he had so eagerly wolfed down.
In the car parked inside the yard facing the gates, two men, heavies called Ray and Phil, also snored in rhythmic counterpoint. On the dashboard in front of them stood the open thermos flask which had contained their drugged coffee, and the two plastic cups they had drunk it from. In sleep, the craggy lines of the men’s battered faces had been ironed out to give them a baby-like, almost cherubic, innocence. Between them were propped up a shotgun and a baseball bat, and against these they leant in touching tranquillity. In the mouth of one of the villains was lodged an infantile thumb.
Truffler Mason’s picklocks sorted out the red Transit van’s keyhole as easily as they had the padlocks on the back gate of the yard. With a quick look around the floodlit tangle of dead cars to check he was unobserved, Truffler slipped his tall body into the back of the Transit.
Once inside, he produced a pencil torch from his pocket and ran it quickly over the van’s contents. The frames were wrapped in rugs for protection, but he could easily move these aside to check which paintings were there. It didn’t take long to match the inventory on Palings Price’s list. So far none of the art works taken from Chastaigne Varleigh had been moved on. The hoard was intact.
There was a clattering of the main gate outside. Truffler froze, switched off his pencil torch and eased forward over the partition into the driver’s cab to see what was going on. Outlined in the open gateway of the yard, backlit by spotlights, stood two burly figures. He had no difficulty in recognizing Rod D’Acosta and the other heavy who had taken the paintings from Chastaigne Varleigh. One carried a baseball bat, the other a pickaxe handle.
Rod dropped to one knee to check on the Alsatian, and rose in fury when he saw the dog’s condition. He then pointed angrily to the parked car, and the two men moved towards it.
Seeing the state of the two guards, Rod and his henchman immediately started banging on the car roof with baseball bat and pickaxe handle. The cherubic peace of the heavies called Ray and Phil was rudely shattered.
But by the time the four villains had reached the red Transit van, its doors were once again firmly locked. Truffler Mason had slipped away through the jumbled wreckage of old cars, and melted into the night.
∨ Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour ∧
Thirty-One
“We need to talk to Veronica Chastaigne,” Sergeant Hughes announced.
“Now just a minute, just a minute,” said his boss. “I’m the one who decides who we need to talk to.”
“All right, you make the decision, but the fact remains that we need to speak to Veronica Chastaigne.”
“On what grounds? She hasn’t done anything wrong. We can’t charge her with anything.”
“We don’t need to talk to her as a suspect. We need to talk to her as a witness. Come on, she’s lived all those years at Chastaigne Varleigh. There’s no way that she was unaware of what there was up in the Long Gallery.”
“We have no proof that there was anything there shouldn’t have been up in the Long Gallery.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Inspector Wilkinson’s moustache (which he had, incidentally, decided to let grow) bristled with affront. “What did you say, Hughes?”
The Sergeant looked subdued. “Sorry, sir.”
“I should think so.”
The Sergeant looked less subdued. “What I meant to say was: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, sir!’”
Wilkinson stared narrowly at his colleague. “There’s a very disrespectful tone creeping into your voice, Hughes, and I don’t like it. Never forget that I am your senior officer.”
“I don’t get much chance to forget it, do I… sir?” The worm, which had always shown a propensity for at least looking over its shoulder, was certainly turning now. “I thought, when I joined the Police Force, that it was an organization in which people worked together.”
The Inspector removed his habitual cigarette to draw in a sharp breath through pursed lips. “I don’t know where you got that idea from.”
“Listen, I was the one who got on to Posey Narker. I was the one who followed Reginald Winthrop. I suspected that he was carrying the stolen paintings and had him detained at Dover. And then what did I do? I shared my findings with you. And I just wish you’d occasionally repay the compliment.”
Wilkinson shook his head knowingly. “A good copper, Hughes, is not in the business of repaying compliments. He’s in the business of frustrating criminals, and he does that by relying on his experience.”
“But, sir –”
“You don’t have any experience, Hughes, so I’m afraid it’ll be some time yet before you can be regarded as a good copper.”
Sergeant Hughes slumped in his chair, deflated by the hopelessness of his frustration. Inspector Wilkinson sat at his desk, smiling complacently, puffing on his cigarette and occasionally stroking his slowly burgeoning moustache.
“You know,” he announced after a long silence, “we need to talk to Veronica Chastaigne.”
♦
Gary’s limousine insinuated itself smoothly through the anonymous suburban streets of North London. In the back, between the brown suits of Truffler Mason and Hamish Ramon Henriques, Mrs Pargeter, resplendent in silk print, sat like the filling of a particularly exotic sandwich.