Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh

by Simon Brett

  ‘Had to let them go. There is a recession on, you know,’ Truffler Mason replied, sounding a little more cheerful now he had something genuinely depressing to talk about.

  ‘Enough of a recession for you to have time to do a little investigation for me, Truffler?’

  ‘Doesn’t need to be a recession for that, Mrs Pargeter. Recession, boom-time, any time, you know you have only to ask. Anything. Honestly, when I think of all the things the late Mr Pargeter done for me—’

  ‘Yes, yes. I do appreciate your saying that, Truffler . . .’ And she did. It was just that she had heard it so many times before.

  ‘So what is it then?’ he asked, suddenly businesslike. ‘You haven’t got yourself involved in another murder, have you, Mrs Pargeter?’

  ‘No. Well, at least I’m fairly sure I haven’t. I have got myself involved in an unexplained death, though.’

  ‘Where are you calling from?’

  ‘Brotherton Hall, don’t know if you know the place. It’s a health spa.’

  ‘Oh? Unexplained death at a health spa . . . I say, that sounds as if someone’s been wasted,’ he said from the even deeper gloom which signified that he was telling a joke.

  ‘You don’t know how horribly near the truth you are, Truffler.’

  Putting the inadvertent lapse of taste behind him, he hastily asked, ‘So what can I do for you?’

  ‘I want you to find out everything you can about the dead girl. Her name was Jenny Hargreaves, she was apparently a student at Cambridge University, and there seems little doubt she died of anorexia nervosa.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Truffler Mason.

  ‘I’ve got a college address for her, but that’s all. Be enough for you to get started, will it?’

  ‘Mrs Pargeter, I’m offended you had to ask.’

  But Truffler Mason’s voice didn’t sound offended. Instead it was weighed down with that extra despondency which signified his excitement at the beginning of a new investigation.

  Chapter Eight

  For lunch that day Mrs Pargeter enjoyed a Brochette de Lotte and Mousse aux Deux Chocolats in a meaningfully symbiotic relationship with an excellent Muscadet (the new coolness between herself and Ankle-Deep Arkwright had not affected Gaston’s dedication to the challenge of impressing her), and then set out to find Kim. She needed to ascertain whether any of the other guests had been aware of the departure of a corpse from Brotherton Hall the previous evening.

  Her search ended in the gym, which, having been cleared of guests for the making of the Mind Over Fatty Matter video, was now full of less perfect bodies, losing the unequal struggle against weight-training apparatus, walking machines, and exercise bicycles.

  Kim was busting a gut on a rowing machine. Marketing had done its work and she was now wearing Mind Over Fatty Matter leotards, leggings, and exercise bra. Somehow they didn’t look as good on her as they had on Sue Fisher’s aerobic chorus-line.

  It was dreadful to see the agonies Kim was going through, scrunching her body up on each forward push and straining as the sliding seat clacked along beneath her with each pull back. Mrs Pargeter could not imagine anything more uncomfortable, and indeed could not imagine a human mind voluntarily consenting to such torture.

  But Kim’s sweat-streaked face gleamed with pleasure. In fact it was more than pleasure; her expression showed the fervour of the postulant, the convert brought to ecstasy by the mysteries of her new religion. Brotherton Hall was certainly doing what was required of it for Kim Thurrock.

  Mrs Pargeter parked herself on the seat of an adjacent exercise bicycle. ‘How’re you doing, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Kim gasped through her torments. ‘You really ought to have a go.’

  Mrs Pargeter demurred with a little shake of her head.

  ‘No, it needn’t be something as vigorous as this. They’ve got apparatus that’s much gentler. Look, those things over there are called passive exercisers. You just lie down on them and they do the exercising for you.’

  Kim nodded towards a pair of machines rather like loungers, whose arm and leg supports rose and fell rhythmically to stretch the limbs of the women who lay on them.

  ‘Those’re dead easy, Melita. The machine does the work for you. You could have a go on that, couldn’t you?’

  Though admittedly not as daunting as the other apparatus, the passive exercisers were still not for Mrs Pargeter. ‘Don’t think it’d be wise. You know, the allergy . . .’

  The magic word elicited the usual subdued reaction. Mrs Pargeter, to show she wasn’t going to let her allergic condition get her down, smiled pluckily. ‘Anyway, Kim, how’s it really going for you?’

  ‘Marvellous! Do you know, I’d lost four ounces at the Seven-Thirty Weigh-In this morning.’

  ‘Oh, well done.’

  ‘Thicko won’t recognize me.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. After all, he’s seen you at Visiting every week for nearly seven years.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I mean, he won’t recognize me when . . . well, you know, bed . . .’ A blush struggled through to intensify the sweaty redness of her face. ‘Anyway, I’m going to have my hair done differently before I leave here.’

  ‘How’re you going to have it done?’ Kim’s natural frizzy blonde hair, currently scraped back under a drenched sweat-band, had always struck Mrs Pargeter as one of her friend’s chief glories.

  ‘Well, probably red. Thicko always had a thing about redheads.’

  ‘Thicko always had a thing about you,’ Mrs Pargeter chided. ‘Don’t you go changing yourself too much. You don’t want your hair coloured, Kim. You’re much better off with what’s natural.’

  ‘Oh, but this would be natural. The Brotherton Hall salon only uses Mind Over Fatty Matter hair preparations’ (Dear God, was there any area of consumerism that Sue Fisher hadn’t got into?) ‘and they’re all natural products. I’ve bought a lot of them already.’ (Yes, I bet you have.) ‘You know, they’re made from herbs and barks of trees and mineral deposits and all that. And, what’s more,’ Kim added piously, ‘none of them have been tested on animals.’

  ‘Well, I’d keep them away from the poodles when you get home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’ll probably kill them.’

  But Kim Thurrock was too excited by her fitness programme to react to – or even to recognize – jokes. ‘Another thing I was thinking of having done – not immediately, but maybe in a little while – is a nip and tuck.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know, only a little bit. Empty the bags under the eyes, pick up the bottom a tidge.’

  ‘Are you talking about plastic surgery, Kim?’ asked Mrs Pargeter, appalled.

  ‘Of course I am. A lot of the other guests’ve had it done. One of them was telling me Mr Arkwright knows a very good plastic surgeon.’

  Mrs Pargeter recalled that Ankle-Deep Arkwright had also known ‘a very good plastic surgeon’ in his former career. But that character, known universally as ‘Jack the Knife’, had employed his skills in rather specialized areas. He had made a fresh start possible for a great many people whose career prospects would otherwise have been blighted. Indeed the fact that Lord Lucan continued to work without harassment as a publican in Dorking was a tribute to the expertise of Jack the Knife.

  But it was no time for reminiscence. Rather sharply, Mrs Pargeter said, ‘You just keep away from plastic surgery, Kim. You’re fine as you are.’

  ‘But I’m not. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Listen, my girl—’

  Kim Thurrock was not in the mood for a lecture. ‘Never mind that. Just tell me – how’s Brotherton Hall going for you, Melita?’ she asked, straining once again to fold her body in half.

  ‘Oh, fine, thanks.’

  ‘Enjoying all the facilities?’

  ‘Well, yes. At least,’ she conceded righteously, ‘those my “Special Treatment” allows me to.’

  ‘It is rotten luck for you,’ Kim puffed, ‘being kept
off the gym equipment.’

  ‘Heart-breaking,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed demurely.

  ‘And I hope the food you get in that “Allergy Room” isn’t too ghastly.’

  Mrs Pargeter conceded bravely that it was just about tolerable.

  ‘Do you know, Melita – I was offered a quarter of a grapefruit this morning at breakfast . . .’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘But of course I refused it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s terribly easy to get complacent. You know, when you’re feeling all good about having lost four ounces, well, that’s just the time you’re in danger of going on a binge.’

  Mrs Pargeter was about to question whether eating a quarter of a grapefruit constituted ‘going on a binge’, but there didn’t really seem much point. She knew that the vigour of Kim’s new faith would be resistant to all such heresies. So instead she asked, ‘You didn’t hear any rumours of anything odd happening yesterday evening, did you, Kim?’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Yes, odd, like . . .’ She wasn’t sure how to continue. She didn’t want to say ‘odd like a dead body being wheeled out on a trolley’. Nor did she wish to refer to the sight she had seen from the second-floor window of the same body being loaded into an ambulance by the two ambulance men and Stan the Stapler. ‘Just odd like someone being ill or something . . .?’ she concluded lamely.

  ‘No. Nothing odd like that,’ Kim replied between grunts. ‘Good heavens, you can’t imagine anything unpleasant happening to anyone at Brotherton Hall, can you?’

  But Mrs Pargeter could, all too easily.

  Chapter Nine

  She decided to go back to the solarium, where she was planning to snooze out the afternoon, via Reception. Although Ankle-Deep Arkwright had said it was Lindy Galton’s day off, he might have been lying, and there was a long chance that the girl would once again be on reception duty.

  As it turned out, there was no one behind the counter in the foyer. That was not unusual. Brotherton Hall had two busy times for registration. Day guests arrived before ten, and most of those who were staying longer would check in between four and six, in time for the delights of their first cottage cheese evening meal. For the rest of the day, whoever was on reception duty was often busy elsewhere, returning to the foyer at a summons from the bell-push on the counter.

  Mrs Pargeter didn’t press the bell-push. Her business at Reception could be more easily accomplished without the help of a receptionist. Turning to check that there was no one watching, she slipped behind the counter.

  In spite of everything Ankle-Deep Arkwright had said, she was still convinced of a link between the body removed the previous night and the anguished voice she had heard the morning before. For there to be no connection was too much of a coincidence.

  The most likely scenario was that the voice had belonged to the dead girl, her prophecy ‘They’re going to kill me, and nobody can stop them’ having been horribly fulfilled.

  But who ‘they’ were, and how ‘they’ were going to kill her, were questions to whose answers Mrs Pargeter had, without further research, no clues at all.

  There were other questions, though, to which she might be able to find answers. Like whether Jenny Hargreaves’ registration details had been tampered with.

  Because if it had been the dead girl whom Mrs Pargeter had heard speaking on the last morning of her life, then she had certainly checked in to Brotherton Hall before six-forty the previous evening, the time to which Ankle-Deep Arkwright had testified.

  But computer records could easily be amended. Now she came to think of it, Mrs Pargeter was struck by the ease with which Ank had found the relevant piece of print-out.

  Almost as if he had been waiting to be asked for it.

  Mrs Pargeter didn’t know much about computers, but nor apparently did the reception staff at Brotherton Hall. Just in front of the keyboard, out of sight to the registering guests, a typewritten idiot’s guide to the system had been Sellotaped on to the counter.

  The relevant section of these instructions read:

  PRESS ‘G’ FOR FULL GUEST LIST. MOVE CURSOR TO NAME AND PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO BRING INDIVIDUAL DETAILS UP ON SCREEN. FOR NEW ARRIVALS, PRESS ‘R’ TO BRING BLANK REGISTRATION FORM UP ON SCREEN.

  Even a computer illiterate like Mrs Pargeter could cope with that. A single press of the ‘G’ key filled the screen with surnames, listed alphabetically. After a couple of false attempts she found the key which controlled the cursor and moved it down the left-hand side of the screen.

  There was no name between ‘HADLEIGH’ and ‘HARRIS’.

  So far as the Brotherton Hall computer was concerned, Jenny Hargreaves had never existed.

  Mrs Pargeter was about to press ‘R’ to bring on to the screen a blank registration form – or maybe a registration form with Jenny Hargreaves’ details hastily keyed in – when she heard the click of Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s office door opening behind her and the sound of angry voices.

  She abandoned the computer and moved to occupy a low armchair behind a pot of tall ferns, with an agility surprising for a woman in her late sixties.

  She heard Ank’s voice first, aggrieved and whining; it was the voice of a man who knew he was losing the argument.

  ‘That’s unfair! We had a deal!’

  The voice that answered was equally sure that its owner was winning the argument. It was a voice over which no shadow of doubt had ever dared to cast itself.

  ‘There are so many ways in which you’ve failed to fulfil your side of the deal that it’s hardly worth discussing, Mr Arkwright!’

  It was the voice to whose televised and videoed commands millions of housewives punished their bodies daily: the voice of Sue Fisher.

  ‘But, Sue—’

  ‘Ms Fisher to you.’

  ‘All right then, Ms Fisher, you definitely agreed that the Brotherton Hall logo would be featured on your video.’

  ‘That was when you definitely agreed to continue to assist in marketing Mind Over Fatty Matter products—’

  ‘I’m not arguing about that. We’re quite happy to—’

  ‘Which agreement includes,’ Sue Fisher continued inexorably, ‘trying out such new products as my marketing department chooses to send to you.’

  ‘Well, that’s where there is a problem. Nothing against the idea in principle . . . as you know, I’ve been happy to go along with it in the past. It’s just that . . . at the moment there are special circumstances. I think we should lay off the testing for a few—’

  ‘It is not testing, Mr Arkwright, it is trying out!’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m—’

  ‘Anyway, if you’ve suddenly gone off testing, perhaps you’ve also gone off the idea of our marketing your home-pack Brotherton Hall Dead Sea Mud treatment?’

  ‘No, no, obviously I’m still very keen on that.’ Ank’s voice was now plaintively conciliatory. ‘And the moment you want to try out one of our Dead Sea Mud Baths, Ms Fisher, you have only to—’

  ‘Shut up, Mr Arkwright!’

  From Mrs Pargeter’s fern-screened perspective Sue Fisher’s next words sounded louder. She was evidently making a dramatic exit from the office.

  ‘The video we shot here is being edited next week. Starting Monday. If I don’t hear from you before then, agreeing to my terms exactly as I have spelled them out, I guarantee that I will cut out every shot of the Brotherton Hall logo, every exterior of the house, in fact every clue that might possibly identify your tinpot premises as the location where the shooting took place! Have you got that, Mr Arkwright?’

  This last line came from further off, as Sue Fisher’s tall and splendidly tuned body stalked off up the stairs, confident as ever of its owner’s unassailable rightness.

  Ankle-Deep Arkwright took out his frustration on the computer. ‘Bloody girl’s left the registration list up,’ he murmured savagely, before stabbing at a key and stumping back into his office.

  Mrs Pargeter had found the exch
ange very interesting. For a start, it set a few hares of potential motivation running through her head.

  But, perhaps more importantly, it also told her the High Priestess of Mind Over Fatty Matter was still at Brotherton Hall. And had presumably been there the previous evening.

  Sue Fisher wouldn’t have been present at the Nine O’Clock Weigh-In of the guests for whom she felt such obvious contempt.

  Which meant that, like Mrs Pargeter, she too might have witnessed the removal of a corpse from Brotherton Hall.

  Assuming, of course, that she didn’t have any other involvement in Jenny Hargreaves’ death.

  Chapter Ten

  The red light on the telephone was blinking when Mrs Pargeter got back to her room. She rang through to the switchboard and received the message that a Mr Mason had called.

  ‘Truffler,’ she said, as soon as she got through.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Pargeter,’ he responded in mournful delight. ‘Thank you for getting back so promptly.’

  ‘So . . . have you managed to find some information on Jenny Hargreaves?’

  ‘Just a few starting points,’ he replied modestly. ‘Nineteen years old. Only child. Brought up in Portsmouth – parents pretty hard-up. Jenny did well at the local comprehensive – one of the few to make it from there through to university. In her second year at Cambridge, studying French and Spanish. Doing very well, good grades and that, until end of last term when she suddenly left a week early. This term’s only just started, but there’s been no sign of her.’

  Not surprising if she’s dead, thought Mrs Pargeter. ‘As always, Truffler, your “starting points” are better than most investigators’ final reports. Found out anything about her parents?’

  ‘Of course.’ He was a little aggrieved that she’d felt the need to ask the question. ‘Nice couple. Both retired, must’ve been quite old when Jenny was born. Living on the state pension – no spare cash for anything.’

  ‘So Jenny’d be on a full grant at Cambridge?’

  ‘Guess so. Not, from all accounts,’ he added lugubriously, ‘that that goes far these days.’