“You are what I’ve been looking for all my life. I always knew I was going to make my mark one way or another. For a long time, I thought it would be as a detective. I thought I’d pull off the one big operation that ensured I was remembered for ever. But to have the one great relationship would be equally satisfactory. Then my life would not have been wasted.
“And don’t worry about money, Mrs Pargeter. I’m reasonably well paid now, and will soon be receiving a decent pension. I don’t have to pay any maintenance to my former wife, because she’s living with someone else. We could have a very nice lifestyle.” He gestured expansively around the grubby restaurant. “We could eat out at this kind of level every night of the week if we wanted to.
“And there are no logistical problems. We’re both free. I’m divorced, you’re a widow. There’s nothing to stop us following the dictates of our hearts.
“So, go on, Mrs Pargeter, put me out of my misery. Tell me – will you marry me?”
“You ready to order now?” Unseen by the Inspector, the waiter/owner/cook had lumbered up behind him and broken the moment.
“No!” Wilkinson snapped. The ash, which had been accumulating at the end of his cigarette throughout his long oration, now dropped on to the sticky plastic tablecloth.
“Give us another five minutes, if you would,” said Mrs Pargeter, more politely.
Grumbling in some foreign tongue, the waiter/owner/cook shambled back behind his beaded curtain.
“So, come on – what do you say, Mrs Pargeter?” The Inspector smiled what he deemed to be a sexy smile. “Incidentally, given the circumstances, it does seem very formal for me to keep calling you ‘Mrs Pargeter’. Your first name’s Melita, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It is. But very few people use it.” In fact the only person who’d really used it had been the late Mr Pargeter. It was a private thing between the two of them. She certainly didn’t want someone like Inspector Wilkinson using the name.
“Ah. Anyway, I’ve had my say. You know where I stand.”
“I certainly do.”
“So then – what’s your answer?”
He beamed at her confidently. The awful realization hit Mrs Pargeter that Craig Wilkinson had not considered the possibility of her refusal. He had become so caught up in his own interpretation of the scenario that he had taken her positive response for granted.
She decided to play for time, while she worked out the most tactful way of letting him down gently. “Well, Inspector – ” she smiled, “Craig… you must give me a minute or two to gather myself together. What you’ve just said has come as rather a surprise to me.”
“Not really?” He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Surely you must have felt the electricity between us from the moment we first met?”
“Well…” Mrs Pargeter replied discreetly. “Not immediately, no.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised rather than disappointed, concluding perhaps that women were just slower than men at recognizing their destiny.
“There were a couple of things you said, Craig, about your professional career…?”
“Yes?”
“Two occasions when you got very close to pulling off coups, but something went wrong…?”
He nodded, immediately blushing at the recollection.
“Could you tell me a bit about them?”
Wilkinson grimaced. “I wouldn’t normally talk to anyone about this, but, given the situation between us…” (Mrs Pargeter decided it would be prudent to get the information before defining too precisely what the situation between them was.) “I’ll tell you.” He lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one and ground out the butt on his side plate. “Both of the incidents concerned a gentleman called Mr Pargeter…”
“Oh, really?” She smiled innocently.
“Yes.” Wilkinson again acknowledged the coincidence. “Same surname as you’ve got.”
“Mmm.”
“But, as we’ve established, nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, no.”
“Your late husband was a reputable businessman.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, on both occasions I was acting on a tip-off, and –”
“Excuse me, who would that tip-off have been from?”
“It was a regular copper’s nark. Informer who went under the name of Posey Narker.”
“And did you meet him face to face?”
“No, there was just a phone number we rang, and his payment went into a secret bank account.”
“Right,” said Mrs Pargeter thoughtfully.
“So, anyway, the first incident happened in – ” Inspector Wilkinson shuddered – “Chelmsford.”
“Oh?”
“I was duped, led up the garden path –” – He bowed his head – “even made to look a fool.”
“Dear me.”
“I don’t want to go into too much detail, but basically I ended up arranging a police escort to the docks at Dover for what I believed to be an ambulance, but was in fact a van containing a gang of villains and a huge haul of used fivers.”
“Bad luck,” Mrs Pargeter murmured, and then let out a little cough, almost as if she were trying to suppress some other sound.
“Yes, it was. Very unfortunate. Kind of thing it takes a long time to live down in the Police Force.”
“I can imagine.”
“What was really strange about it…” the Inspector went on thoughtfully, “was that only today, I got involved in another case which bore distinct similarities to the Chelmsford operation.”
“How very odd,” said Mrs Pargeter, all wide-eyed interest. “You said there was a second occasion when you had rather bad luck…?”
“Yes. This was again acting on a tip-off…”
“From Posey Narker?”
Wilkinson nodded. “This time I would have got the whole gang. Mr Pargeter was planning a really big raid on a Hatton Garden jewellers. It was going to involve every single person who’d ever worked for him. I could have arrested the lot of them. Whole thing was set up, I’d made detailed plans to entrap them, and…”
“And what?” asked Mrs Pargeter, knowing the answer.
“And the raid never happened. Mr Pargeter died just before they were due to start.”
“Ah.” She looked a trifle misty-eyed. “I see.”
“Anyway…” Craig Wilkinson shook himself out of his retrospective mood. “That’s all in the past. So far as I’m concerned, all failure is in the past. Because now I have you. And together we can ensure that everything in the rest of our lives is successful.”
“Ye-es.” Mrs Pargeter began cautiously. “When you say ‘now you have me’…”
“Sorry.” The Inspector chuckled. “Jumping the gun a bit there perhaps. Yes, we should get the formalities out of the way first, shouldn’t we? Right, here’s the official proposal. Do you want me to go down on my knees?”
“Certainly not. Not on this carpet.”
“Right.” He looked straight into the violet-blue eyes. “Mrs Pargeter, will you marry me?”
“Oh…” Looking at him with an expression that mingled pity, anguish and confusion, and lying through her teeth, she replied, “That’s one of the most difficult questions I’ve ever had to answer. You’re a fine man, Craig…”
“I know.” He nodded complacently. “You said that once before.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. When we met for that drink in Greene’s Hotel. You told me that I belonged to a fine body of men, and that I was a fine man myself…”
“Yes?”
“… and that was the first time I realized that you felt the same way about me as I did about you.”
“Ah. Erm, Craig… Yes, yes, you are a fine man, and – ” she lied again, “there are women all over the world who would give their eye-teeth to have an offer like the one you’ve just made to me…”
He nodded, stroking the line of his moustache with satisfaction.