Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour

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Gary the chauffeur whistled, as the spiked gates opened automatically. “Bennie Logan done all right for himself, didn’t he, Mrs Pargeter?”

“Yes,” the plump, white-haired lady in the back of the limousine agreed. “Pity he didn’t live longer to enjoy it.”

What Bennie Logan didn’t live longer to enjoy was the Elizabethan manor house up whose drive they were proceeding at an appropriately decorous pace. The exceptionally warm September afternoon showed the building at its best. Chastaigne Varleigh was a monument to elegance in discreetly mellowed red brick, punctuated here and there by fine leaded windows. It had been sympathetically restored to its earlier magnificence, and the surrounding grounds showed the same punctilious attention to cosmetic detail. No mole would have dared to break through the even green of the lawns, no weed would have had the effrontery to poke up through the valeted gravel that led to the front door of Chastaigne Varleigh.

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