Mrs, Presumed Dead Read Free

rush her furniture-shifting. Though in remarkably good condition for her age, Mrs Pargeter recognised that now she had to husband her energy. So she worked in short bursts, with plenty of tea-and biscuit-filled intervals.
    She had bought the Cottons' kitchen appliances, as well as their thick-pile carpets and Dralon curtains, all brand new a mere eighteen months before. Though they did not coincide exactly with her own taste, she could live with them. The time to make changes would be when her self-imposed six months' probation was over. If then she had decided that Smithy's Loam was for her, she would invest in decorations more expressive of her own personality. No point in splashing out all at once. In spite of her considerable wealth, Mrs Pargeter was not careless with money. It was one of the many qualities in her which the late Mr Pargeter had admired.
    As she worked in the house that first day, and on her one necessary expedition down to the Shopping Parade (conveniently adjacent, a fact of which the original brochure for the development had made much), Mrs Pargeter absorbed the atmosphere of Smithy's Loam. She was a woman of unusual perception and, though people were rarely aware of her scrutiny, little was missed by those mild blue eyes.
    The main quality of the development which struck her was its neatness, its decorum, almost its formality. Though the houses were all of different designs and their plots of different shapes (indeed, that had been one of their chief selling points when first built), they had about them a uniformity.
    Each lawn was punctiliously mowed and, though the clocks had already gone back to denote the end of Summer Time, the plants in the front gardens defiantly resisted the raggedness of autumn.
    Each house was beautifully maintained. On each the paintwork and windows gleamed. So did the Volvos, Peugeots and Renault hatchbacks that stood in the drives, and so, when seen at the weekend, would the BMWs, Rovers and Mercedes that the husbands brought home.
    The absence of men was another striking impression that Mrs Pargeter received from Smithy's Loam. By the time she had woken on that first day, all of the husbands had left for work, and the early darkness ensured that the only evidence she would see of their homecomings would be the sweep of powerful headlights. All were of the aspirant classes; all worked long, ambitious hours to maintain the acquisitive executive standards of Smithy's Loam.
    As a result of this, Mrs Pargeter wondered whether she had moved into another kind of ghetto, a ghetto of women rather than of the old. Behind each immaculate, anonymous house front lay a female intelligence, with its own secrets, desires and ambitions. She was glad she had accepted the invitation for the Friday coffee morning. Already she was intrigued to meet the women, to find out how they spent their gender-segregated hours of daylight.
    Darkness had fallen by half-past six when Mrs Pargeter decided to call it a day. She was satisfied by what she had achieved. Already the careful disposition of her furniture had drawn attention away from the Cottons' carpets and curtains. Already the sitting-room at least bore a distinct Pargeter imprint. She felt she deserved a drink before she cooked her steak.
    It was comforting to see bottles back in the glass-fronted corner cupboard which had been delivered to their Chigwell home one night at three a.m. after another of the late Mr Pargeter's more spectacular business coups. She opened the doors, took out a glass and poured in generous measures of vodka and Campari. Then she went to the kitchen for ice and lemon.
    It was there that she became aware of how cold the house had become. She went to the cupboard under the stairs, where the central heating controls were, to remedy the situation.
    She switched the heating to 'Constant'. No indicator lights came on, but she gave the system the benefit of the doubt. It had worked perfectly to give her a hot bath that