Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honour Read Free Page A

‘I don’t want to hear any more criminal maxims, thank you, Mother.’
    That really caught her on the raw. The gloves were very definitely off, as she snapped at him, ‘Don’t try and disclaim your own father, Toby! He worked harder than you’ve ever worked to provide us with all this.’
    â€˜Hard work is not the point at issue,’ Toby snapped back. ‘It’s the nature of his work that was so shameful.’
    His words only served to incense his mother further. ‘Shameful? Your own father? Bennie did all that work so that you would be able to take the legitimate route through life. Eton, Cambridge, the accountancy training. He gave you everything you now possess, Toby.’
    â€˜That is your view, Mother.’ The flash of anger had given way to his customary controlled urbanity. ‘As you know, I don’t share it. I think my current position in life is due at least as much to my own intelligence and application as to anything my father gave me.’
    â€˜I see,’ said his mother, still seething. ‘So you despise the things your father gave you?’
    Toby tried to make his tone conciliatory, but he couldn’t keep out a little tinge of the patronizing. ‘I didn’t say that, Mother. It’s just . . . well, we both know what my father was . . . but there doesn’t seem to me any need to dwell on it.’
    â€˜As you wish.’ Veronica Chastaigne sighed, aligned her knife and fork on her plate and pushed the hardly touched remains of her meal towards the centre of the table.
    Toby smiled a self-satisfied smile, as though his point had been taken and he had won the round. Leaning forward to fork up another mound of salmon, potatoes and mayonnaise, he could not see the expression on his mother’s face. Had he registered its mix of distaste, shrewd calculation and sheer bloodymindedness, he would have realized that the round was far from won.
    In fact, Veronica Chastaigne’s face showed a determination to escalate the conflict with her son into all-out war. And it was not a war that she contemplated the possibility of losing.

Chapter Three
    The offices of the Mason De Vere Detective Agency, situated above a betting shop in South London, would have got a very high rating from the Society for the Preservation of Dust. Other organizations – like the Society for the Maintenance of Tidiness, the Association for Efficient Filing or the Commission for the Removal of Encrusted Coffee Cups – might have marked it rather lower. In fact, they would have given it no marks at all.
    But, though unlikely to impress potential clients, the office was arranged exactly the way Truffler Mason liked it. Since he was the sole proprietor – the ‘De Vere’ being merely a fiction to look impressive on a letterhead – he could please himself in such matters. And, though his office might have the musty air of an attic which had lain undisturbed for half a century, inside it he knew exactly where everything was. Every shoebox, fluffy with dust; every overfull and spilling cardboard folder; every pile of frayed brown envelopes, cinched by perished rubber bands; every crumpled clump of yellowed cuttings pinned to the wall; they all meant something to Truffler Mason. Whatever the reference that was required, within seconds and in a minor tornado of dust, he would have the relevant paper in his hand.
    Mrs Pargeter had known her late husband’s former associate too long to pass comment on – or even to notice – the squalor in which he worked. Anyway, she was not a woman who set much store by outward appearances. She judged people by instinct; on first meeting she saw into their souls and instantly assessed them. Only on a few, painful occasions had her judgement been proved to be at fault.
    And one select band of people she approved of even before she met them. These were the group honoured by inclusion in Mrs