Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour (11 page)

‘Couldn't I do that?' Mrs Pargeter volunteered eagerly.

It was just her skittish mood of the morning finding expression, but the suggestion clearly shocked Hamish Ramon Henriques. There was a strong tone of disapproval in his voice as he said, ‘I wouldn't want you to put yourself at any risk, Mrs Pargeter.'

‘Besides,' the gallery owner interposed, ‘smuggling old masters is actually a criminal activity . . .'

‘Oh yes.' She was properly contrite. ‘Sorry, I got carried away there.'

Palings Price continued to spell out the situation for her. ‘And you've never been personally involved in anything illegal, have you?'

An innocent blush suffused her cheeks at the very idea. ‘Good heavens, no,' said Mrs Pargeter.

The studio of VVO still looked as cluttered, but this time Mrs Pargeter was aware of how
hygienic
all of its clutter was. Having met the houseproud Deirdre Winthrop, she could no longer believe in the reality of the husband's bohemianism. The studio now appeared to her like a stage set, its dust neatly scattered, its cobwebs recently sprayed on. Even the splashes and splodges of paint on every surface no longer looked random; their exact positioning and their precise level of exuberance had been carefully calculated.

Since his last encounter with Mrs Pargeter and HRH, VVO had been busy – though not as busy as he'd have had to be if all the pictures from Chastaigne Varleigh had been saved. The fruits of his labour were there to be seen, but this time there was no fake Rubens flesh to excite charming comparisons. What VVO had been busy on was his own work, the kind of paintings which he believed he had been placed on this earth to produce.

‘Oh dear,' thought Mrs Pargeter, as she looked at the latest creations. There were three of them. In one a lamb with a watermelon grin, wearing a pink bow whose wingspan would not have shamed a jumbo jet, cavorted in front of a quaint windmill. On the second, two lovable ducklings skidded hopelessly on an icy lake, trying to catch up with the mother and the rest of her family procession. And in the third – returning to one of the artist's favourite themes – a winsome Scottie dog in a natty little tartan coat circled a blossom-laden tree, from whose branches a fluffy white pussy cat grinned down cheekily.

Two of the paintings were already fixed into aluminium frames, and VVO was easing the Scottie dog into the third. Empty, propped against the wall, stood the finely wrought wooden frames of the Rubens and the two Madonnas.

‘There,' said VVO, as he screwed the last crosspiece into position at the back of the canvas.

Palings Price looked admiringly at the framed Scottie. ‘Great. And no one would ever know there was a Rubens under that piece of . . .' Discretion intervened and his words trailed away.

‘Under that piece of what?' asked VVO suspiciously.

‘Under that piece of very fine modern painting,' said Mrs Pargeter, ever the conciliator. ‘I think is what Palings was about to say, isn't that right?'

‘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.

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.'

That's it. Wilkinson seized on the idea with delight. Poetry doesn't have to rhyme! He looked down again at the notebook for a moment, but his glee was short-lived. The second line still didn't leap out at him. He couldn't think of a single thing he wanted to say.

God, he thought, this poetry lark's bloody difficult. There must be easier ways in which I can make my mark. Maybe I should have a go at exotic sandwich-making or serial adultery instead . . .?

‘What's that then?' Wilkinson was so abstracted by his thoughts that a curious Sergeant Hughes was in the driver's seat beside him before he'd noticed.

‘Oh, nothing. I was just, er, pulling together some of the threads of the case.' The Inspector hastened to shove the notebook back in his pocket.

But he hadn't been quick enough. Hughes had caught sight of a word. ‘What's “curvaceous” got to do with the case then, sir?'

‘Mind your own business, Sergeant. A good copper frequently takes an oblique approach to a subject. It rarely pays to go for the obvious. Lateral thinking is what you need in our line of work.' Then, in a tone of professional grumpiness, he asked, ‘Anyway, what kept you? You were due here half an hour ago.'

‘Sorry, sir.'

‘You haven't answered my question. I asked what kept you. What have you been doing, Hughes? Where have you been?'

‘I was just doing a bit more research, sir.'

‘Research, eh? Into what?'

‘Into this case, sir. The case we're working on.'

Wilkinson's eyes narrowed with distaste. ‘I thought I'd warned you about going out on a limb, Hughes. Never forget who's in charge of this case. I am.'

‘I'm well aware of that, sir, but I just thought, you know, two heads are better than one.'

‘A very dangerous supposition, Hughes. And one that certainly does not always prove to be correct. It depends entirely on the quality of the heads involved.'

‘Listen, sir. I've just been going through the old files again.'

‘Looking for what?'

‘Connections, sir.'

‘What kind of connections?'

‘Connections between some of the names involved in the case. You know, seeing who reports to who, who's worked with who, looking for links, piecing together the network. Do you understand the kind of thing I mean, sir?'

Wilkinson let out a long, weary sigh. He had spent most of his professional career going through exactly the process Sergeant Hughes had just described. ‘And have you reached any conclusions?' he asked in a pained voice.

‘Well, assuming we're right about the stolen paintings having been at Chastaigne Varleigh, then that immediately means that Bennie Logan has to have been involved. Now, amongst people he'd worked with in the past was an art thief called Fritzi the Finger, who works out of Salzburg.'

‘And?' asked Wilkinson, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. It had taken him three years to work out the connection between Bennie Logan and Fritzi the Finger; Hughes appeared to have done it in as many days.

‘
And
, sir, both of them had occasional connections with a certain criminal mastermind.'