MRS PARGETER'S PAST

Not all of Mrs. Melita Pargeter’s storied past, mind you, but a single incident that plays a pivotal role in determining the course of her present.

“Short Head” Shimmings, accountant to the late Lionel Pargeter and a compulsive gambler, has fallen £500,000 into debt to the Batinga Brothers, whose professional code forbids them from forgiving a penny or extending their deadline. Naturally Short Head appeals to Mrs. Pargeter for help, and naturally she insists that her staff set up a face-to-face meeting with Damone Batinga (a genteel loan shark) and his brother, Como (a psychopath). The arrangements are complicated by two factors: Mrs. Pargeter’s general ignorance of the extensive criminal dealings that made her beloved husband, and by implication herself, a force to be reckoned with—a defining feature of this slyly sunny franchise—and her particular ignorance of the fact that 30 years ago, when a hyperextended Act 2 flashback shows that she was abducted and threatened with torture by opponents of Lionel’s latest felonious enterprise, her kidnappers, the Smith Brothers, were actually the Batinga Brothers, using a pseudonym that deceived no one but her. Mrs. Pargeter makes her way through the usual crowd of zanies, who this time range from Athena Shimmings, Short Head’s ultracontrolling mother, to “Canary” Wolfe, the financier scheduled to yield his position as master of The Worshipful Company of Cozeners and Usurers to Damone Batinga, who looks forward eagerly to meeting Mrs. Pargeter at his investiture because, unlike his brother, he still has a crush on the woman he kidnapped so long ago.

It’s a mark of the heroine’s distinctive appeal that she emerges from this adventure both triumphant and clueless as ever.