It was aggressively clean and tidy. Mrs Pargeter almost felt guilty for denting the cushions by sitting on them. A fantasy came into her mind of Carole Temple going round every hour on the hour removing individual specks of dust with a pair of tweezers, and of bashful motes deterred from entering the fanlight window by Carole’s balefully hygienic stare.
The coffee cups and pot which her hostess brought in were sterile enough to be used in an intensive care unit. The biscuits had clearly been disciplined from birth not to shed crumbs, and the coffee-pot spout would not have dared to commit the solecism of dripping.
Carole Temple quickly dealt with the supposed reason for Mrs Pargeter’s visit. “I’m afraid I don’t know any good gardeners. Or bad ones, come to that. We do everything ourselves. As I believe I once told you,” she recollected with some asperity. “I think possibly the Sprakes have a gardener who comes in from time to time – you could ask them.”
Yes, she would, Mrs Pargeter decided. She and Vivvi had never got round to having their conversation about gardeners, had they? Surprising how durable that simple excuse was proving.
Carole Temple then moved on to the real reason for her sudden affability. “But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy’s Loam!”
“Or anywhere,” Mrs Pargeter observed mildly. She knew that its residents tended to see Smithy’s Loam as the centre of the universe, but murder did remain a relatively offensive crime even in other parts of the world.
Carole Temple, stimulated by the news of murder, was prepared to be much less discreet than on their previous encounter. “Hmm,” she ruminated knowingly. “I always thought there was something odd about that marriage…”
“Odd?” Mrs Pargeter nudged gently.
“I mean, not on the surface. Theresa and Rod seemed…well, just like everyone else on the surface, but I had a feeling there were some pretty profound disagreements between them.”
“Are you saying that you used to hear them quarrelling?”
“Good heavens, no.” Carole Temple looked affronted that such a vulgar idea should even be mentioned in the context of Smithy’s Loam. “No, I just sort of got this feeling that they didn’t see eye to eye on everything.”
“What, on materialism, for example?”
“I’m sorry?” Carole looked completely blank. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’d sort of got the impression that maybe Theresa wasn’t as keen on material things as her husband was.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I mean that he was always wanting to buy things, keep up their standard of living, and Theresa wasn’t even interested.”
Carole Temple still looked bewildered. “But they didn’t buy that much stuff. Well, only the sort of stuff one needs. If you’re living somewhere like Smithy’s Loam, you do have to maintain certain standards. I wouldn’t have said they were particularly conspicuous consumers.”
No. No more than their neighbours, anyway.
“And you never heard Theresa say she was dissatisfied with that kind of life?”
This idea, too, was incongruous to Carole. “No. Of course not.”
So the spiritual emptiness of Theresa Cotton’s life had, as Mrs Pargeter suspected, remained her own secret. That fitted in with the furtiveness of her contacts with the Church of Utter Simplicity.
“Well, if it wasn’t that kind of thing, Carole, what was it that was ‘odd’ about the Cottons’ marriage?”
Faced with the direct question, Carole became coy and evasive. “Oh, I don’t know. Just a sort of feeling I got. Well, I mean, their long separations, for a start…From the moment he went up North, so far as I know, Theresa made no effort to go up and join him – even for the odd weekend.”
No, well, of course there were very good reasons why that hadn’t happened, but Carole Temple couldn’t be expected to know them.
“You think they were growing apart then, do you?”
“Reading between the lines, I’d say, yes.”
“Hmm.” Mrs Pargeter nodded slowly. “Do you think there was any infidelity?”
Carole’s face became cautiously knowing.
“On either side?” added Mrs Pargeter.
“Well,” said Carole Temple, condescending to share the great riches of her information, “let’s say it wouldn’t surprise me. Rod was away a lot, so presumably he had plenty of opportunities…”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Mrs Pargeter took a sip of her coffee and slowly put the cup down on its saucer. “And no rumours of anything nearer home…?”
Her hostess became insufferably arch. “Once again, all I think I’d better say is that it would not surprise me…” Then, in response to Mrs Pargeter’s interrogative expression, she gave a little more. “No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that he’d made quite a close friendship very near to home. There was a week or so when he was between jobs –”
“Between jobs before he went up North?”
“That’s right. And Theresa was out a lot at that time. But Rod had fairly regular weekday visits from someone else in Smithy’s Loam.” She let this hang in the air for a moment, before concluding, piously, “But I don’t think it would be fair for me to say any more than that. Do you?”
Mrs Pargeter thought it would be perfectly fair. In fact, she thought it was extremely unfair for her companion to hint so outrageously and then withhold the most important detail. But she wasn’t optimistic about getting an actual name out of Carole.
“I suppose these things happen…” she said equably.
“Yes, yes, they do. I gather some women get very bored stuck in the house all day…” This was another idea apparently incomprehensible to Carole Temple. Clearly, stalking specks of dust with a pair of tweezers absorbed one hundred per cent of her own attention and enthusiasm. “I suppose they’ll do anything for a change. And for someone that much younger, trapped in the house for most of the day with two children, maybe there’s a kind of appeal about it…”
Mrs Pargeter nodded. Yes; Vivvi Sprake was quite a bit younger than most of the other denizens of Smithy’s Loam. Early thirties, while the rest were all safely over the forty mark. Their promised conversation about gardeners took on a new priority.
“Anyway, up to them, really, I’d say…wouldn’t you?” Carole Temple shrugged righteously. “I mean, I’m the last one to spread gossip…”
Why was it, Mrs Pargeter mused, that the only people who said they were the last ones to spread gossip were always such arrant gossip-mongers? It was a completely self-negating remark like “I’m the last one to make a fuss…” Fondly, she called to mind one of the late Mr Pargeter’s dicta: “Never believe a man who begins every sentence with ‘Quite honestly’ – it’s a sure sign he’s lying.”
She didn’t think she was going to get much closer to the name of Rod Cotton’s local bit of stuff, but having already identified the guilty party to her own satisfaction, she felt able to move the conversation forward.
“Do you think Theresa had any idea something was going on?”
“I would imagine so,” Carole Temple replied tartly. “Didn’t miss a lot, that one.”
This was a new insight into Theresa Cotton’s character. And considering how sketchy the image of the dead woman appeared to be amongst her neighbours, it was a very important insight.
“Are you saying that she was nosy?”
For the first time in their conversation, Carole Temple seemed to feel she had said too much, and started backtracking. “Oh, I think most people are naturally curious, don’t you? Intrigued by what’s going on around them. Just as we’re all intrigued by having a murder case on our doorstep.”