Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh

by Simon Brett

  Now there was a light of alarm in Lindy Galton’s eye. ‘What is this?’

  ‘I want to ask you about a guest registration you made at Reception a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A registration for someone called “Jenny Hargreaves”.’ The girl’s eyes told her instantly that she was on to something. ‘You see, I think that Jenny Hargreaves arrived at Brotherton Hall earlier than that registration record implies. I think you only keyed those details into the computer because Mr Arkwright told you to.’

  Lindy Galton licked a lip that seemed suddenly to have become dry. ‘Why do you want to know about this? Why’re you interested, Mrs Pargeter?’

  ‘Because I think it could have something to do with a mystery guest at Brotherton Hall. Someone who was staying in a room on the third floor . . . until a couple of nights ago.’

  However good Lindy Galton may have been at body sculpture, she had no skills in the art of deception. ‘How much do you know about it?’ she blurted out.

  ‘Well, clearly not as much as you do, Lindy. Which is why I’m asking you these questions.’ Mrs Pargeter moved closer. ‘Was the girl on the third floor Jenny Hargreaves?’

  Lindy Galton’s mouth opened to reply, but she was distracted by a slight clang from above. They both looked over the top of the cubicle wall to the ladder from which Stan the Stapler was still doing his Dynorod routine.

  The oddjob man was not looking at them, but he did seem almost too studiously preoccupied with his task. The two women exchanged glances. ‘Can’t talk now,’ Lindy Galton breathed. ‘Later in the day.’

  ‘All right. When?’

  ‘Quarter past nine. Down here. Everyone else’ll be involved in the Weigh-In.’

  Mrs Pargeter gave a quick nod, as Lindy Galton crossed to cancel the ‘Empty’ switch and say in a voice that was suddenly loud, ‘No, I’m very sorry, Mrs Pargeter, but I think it would be unwise. The salts and minerals in the mud could all too easily trigger off your allergy.’

  With appropriate expressions of annoyance and frustration at this cruel deprivation, Mrs Pargeter left the Dead Sea Mud Bath unit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was another message to ring Mr Mason when she got back to her room. Truffler, as ever, had done his stuff. He’d tracked down Tom O’Brien, Jenny Hargreaves’ boyfriend.

  ‘How did you find him – through Cambridge?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.

  ‘No,’ Truffler replied dolefully. ‘I had to track him down by . . . other routes.’

  She knew better than to enquire further. ‘Any chance of my meeting him?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve set it up. That is, if you’d be able to get out of that place for a while . . .’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Truffler. Brotherton Hall isn’t Colditz.’ Though when she came to think of it, there were similarities.

  ‘Good. Well, he said he could give us an hour at lunch time today. In London, that’d be.’

  ‘Great. Shall I book us into the Savoy Grill?’

  ‘Erm. I don’t think that’d be exactly young Mr O’Brien’s style, Mrs Pargeter.’

  Young Mr O’Brien’s style proved to be a greasy spoon café round the back of King’s Cross Station. He and Truffler were tucking into the All-Day Breakfast – bacon, egg, sausage, tomatoes, beans, fried bread, and a huge mug of tea – when Mrs Pargeter arrived. Though she turned a few heads in her scarlet linen jacket over floral silk print, she did not look out of place. Mrs Pargeter had that rare quality in any surroundings of being always conspicuous, but never out of place.

  After basic introductions, Truffler asked if he could order her anything. “Fraid they probably won’t have that much that’ll fit in with your Brotherton Hall diet.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Pargeter nobly, ‘can’t be helped.’ She looked at their plates. ‘I’ll have the same as you.’

  While Truffler vied with a couple of gas fitters for attention at the fat-smeared counter, Mrs Pargeter made a quick assessment of the boy opposite her.

  He was good-looking, black hair slicked back, and pale blue eyes, which at that moment were giving her a sullen once-over. Tom O’Brien had not a spare ounce of fat on him. He wore a shapeless navy-blue raincoat over a black T-shirt and jeans, and sat in a defensive posture that firmly stated he was there under suffrance.

  Mrs Pargeter smiled at him. ‘I want to find out about Jenny.’

  ‘So do I,’ he replied, the sourness in his tone accentuating a slight Irishness. ‘That’s why I’m here. Mr Mason said you had some information.’

  This was difficult. The information Mrs Pargeter did have was the last information the boy would want to hear. Anyway, it was not information she could divulge. At that moment she couldn’t be sure that the starved body she had seen was that of Jenny Hargreaves. She had only Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s word to go on, and he was clearly lying about at least some aspects of the case.

  Seeing the hunger for news in Tom O’Brien’s face, for a moment Mrs Pargeter entertained the attractive idea that the body had not been Jenny’s, that Ank had invented a name just to cloud the water.

  But if that were the case, why had he come up with an address too? And an address which matched the name he had chosen?

  This, Mrs Pargeter realized, was not the moment to pursue such questions. ‘I don’t so much have information,’ she said gently, ‘as maybe some pointers to where Jenny’s been the last few months.’

  Tom O’Brien was instantly alert. ‘Well, that’s more than I’ve managed to get. What have you found out?’

  Truffler’s return to the table, placing a large mug of tea in front of her, gave Mrs Pargeter a moment to shape her reply. ‘It’s just I’ve heard Jenny’s name mentioned round Brotherton Hall . . . you know the place I mean?’

  The contemptuous nod showed exactly what Tom O’Brien thought of health spas – and the kind of people who frequented them.

  ‘I’ve heard rumours,’ Mrs Pargeter went on, ‘that Jenny may even have booked in there for a while.’

  The interest faded from the boy’s eyes. ‘Well, they’re crap rumours then. Even assuming Jenny would ever want to go to a place like that . . . And she wouldn’t! Just because she’s at Cambridge, don’t imagine she’s some bone-headed upper-class snob. Jenny’s got her head firmly screwed on – she’s not a class traitor like some of those social-climbing girls you meet at . . .’ He realized he was getting off the subject. ‘What I’m saying is there’s no way she could have afforded to go to somewhere like Brotherton Hall. That was Jenny’s problem, for God’s sake – she didn’t have any money.’

  ‘But, just imagining for a moment that she somehow found the money . . .’

  ‘If she’d found any money, there’s a million other things she would have spent it on.’

  ‘Or if someone had given her the stay at a health spa as a present . . .’

  The thought he might have a rival brought a haunted look into Tom’s eyes. ‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know there was someone?’

  ‘No, no, I’m just imagining. But what I really want to know is – would Jenny have had any reason to go to a health spa?’

  The boy looked confused by the question.

  ‘What Mrs Pargeter means,’ Truffler elucidated, ‘is – was Jenny fat?’

  ‘Oh. No. Well, not particularly.’ A distant hunger of recollection softened his words. ‘She was . . . well rounded and . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Certainly not thin, anyway.’

  Mrs Pargeter tried to force from her mind the skeletal body she had seen on the trolley at Brotherton Hall. ‘And she never expressed a desire to go to a health spa?’

  ‘No, no, of course she didn’t. She wouldn’t have dared.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she knew I’d disapprove of poncy places like that.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t have done anything that you disapproved of?’

  The question was casual, but Tom O’Brien was instantly aware of its subtext.
‘And I don’t mean because I was a chauvinist, Mrs Pargeter. Jenny and I talked a lot, about everything. We thought alike about the really important things.’

  ‘And what would you say are the really important things?’

  There was no hesitation about his reply. The issues were ones he had thought through in great detail and about which he was passionate. ‘The environment, obviously. That’s the most important item on the world’s agenda. If we don’t get that sorted out, then it’s all over for humankind. We’ve got to make people think differently. So long as their dominant motive remains profit and money-making, nothing’s going to get any better. There’ll be more poison pumped into the atmosphere, more forests cut down, more animal species sacrificed in the cause of consumerist experimentation. We’ve got to change the world whilst we still have a world left to change!’

  Mrs Pargeter, though never an activist herself for any cause, could respect such fervour in others. And there was no doubting the boy’s sincerity.

  ‘So, in order to change the world, do you reckon you can use any methods?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Any methods? I mean, even violence and terrorism?’

  Tom O’Brien’s lips set in a hard line. ‘Particularly violence and terrorism.’

  ‘You think the end justifies the means?’

  ‘It must do! If you stop and think of the violence that man’s committed against the natural world, then a bit of necessary violence against man to restore the balance . . . well, it’s a small price to pay.’

  ‘And what kind of violence are you talking about? Sabotage? Bombings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Killing people?’

  ‘Oh yes. When it’s necessary,’ Tom O’Brien replied with the quiet righteousness of the fanatic.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The boy’s pale blue eyes suddenly darted sideways. Hope and yearning glowed in his face.

  Mrs Pargeter followed his gaze through the café’s steamed-up window to the street outside. Three girls passed by, tantalizingly slowly. Their strutting movements and the shortness of their skirts identified them as practitioners of the art for which King’s Cross has become famous.

  The hope had gone from Tom O’Brien’s face as he looked back. Odd, was Mrs Pargeter’s initial thought; why should a boy as good-looking as Tom waste his time gazing at prostitutes? Then light dawned.

  ‘Going back to Jenny . . .’ she began delicately. ‘I want to know more about her.’

  The interrogation was interrupted by the arrival of her steaming mound of All-Day Breakfast, swimming in enough fat to light the average Anglo-Saxon mead-hall for a decade. Mrs Pargeter looked at the plate with relish, sliced off a triangle of fried bread, which she loaded with tomato and beans and ate, before repeating, ‘Yes, I want to know more about Jenny . . .’

  Tom O’Brien looked truculent and suspicious. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re both trying to find her. If we pool our information, the chances of succeeding’ll be that much better.’

  He thought about this for a moment, before deciding in favour of co-operation. ‘OK. What do you want to know?’

  ‘You haven’t seen her since the last week of last term?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you didn’t have a row about anything just before she left?’

  ‘Certainly not. We were very close.’

  ‘No arguments at all?’

  ‘No. Not what you’d call arguments.’

  ‘What would you call them then?’ asked Truffler bluntly. Mrs Pargeter took the opportunity of his interposition to load up and despatch another triangle of fried bread.

  ‘Well . . .’ Tom considered Truffler’s question. ‘Well, I suppose you’d call them disagreements. Disagreements about priorities.’

  Mrs Pargeter continued her softer approach. ‘What kind of priorities?’

  ‘Money, mostly. How we should spend any money we’d got. Not that we had any, of course.’

  ‘In what way did you disagree about that?’

  ‘Well, I thought we should devote anything we had to the cause . . .’

  ‘The environment?’

  He nodded, but Mrs Pargeter had to prompt him to continue. ‘And what did Jenny want to spend the money on?’

  ‘She was . . . sort of . . .’ He swallowed before the shamefaced confession. ‘Deep down Jenny’s a very conventional person, and I suppose, because she’s grown up with her parents always being hard-up and that, she’s a great believer in . . .’ He could hardly bring himself to shape the alien word. ‘Saving.’

  ‘Ah. What did she want to save for?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Sort of . . . you know . . . traditional things . . .’

  ‘Like . . . getting married?’ Mrs Pargeter suggested lightly.

  His blush told her that she had scored a direct hit. ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe not, but . . .’ His words petered out. Mrs Pargeter could sympathize with his problem. To have a girlfriend of such mundane ambitions must have been a serious threat to the street credibility of a self-appointed anarchist like Tom O’Brien.

  Time to move the enquiry on. Reluctantly deferring another mouthful of her All-Day Breakfast, Mrs Pargeter asked, ‘And since that last week of term you haven’t seen Jenny or heard from her?’

  ‘Not directly, no.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I did ring her parents once. Her old man managed to stay civil long enough to tell me she’d phoned them a couple of days before. But since then . . .’

  ‘In fact,’ said Truffler Mason, who could be surprisingly sensitive at times, ‘I happen to know she’s kept in touch with her parents right through. They last heard from her just before the university term started.’

  Tom O’Brien seemed relieved by the news. Mrs Pargeter felt terrible about the other news that the young man might shortly have to hear.

  ‘She didn’t give any indication of where she was?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘No. They got the impression she was doing some kind of holiday job, but they didn’t know what or where.’

  ‘That would be in character,’ Tom mused.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.

  ‘Jenny’s very proud. Neither of us had got any money, so it would have been in character for her to go off and get a job. No way would she ever ask for anything from anyone else – least of all from her parents. She knew how little they’d got. I’d hear her on the phone telling them how easily she was managing on her grant – which was a load of crap. She didn’t want them to be worried. I think she sometimes even sent them money that she certainly couldn’t afford.’

  ‘What’s odd about the situation,’ Mrs Pargeter ruminated, ‘is not that Jenny should have got a job . . . but that she shouldn’t have told you that she was getting one . . .’ The boy nodded in downcast agreement. ‘Can you think of any reasons why she might not have told you?’

  His reply was drawn out of him reluctantly. ‘Only the one.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That she didn’t think I’d approve of the work she was doing.’

  Mrs Pargeter understood immediately. She looked out of the window at a miniskirted girl brazenly chatting up a tourist in an anorak. ‘That’s why you’re here, Tom, isn’t it? You’re afraid Jenny might have come down here to make money?’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything else,’ he mumbled. ‘I had to look for her. I had to start somewhere.’

  ‘So you’ve been round here, watching the girls come and go, for how long . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . Two weeks . . . three weeks?’ The confession had released some tension in him. He looked suddenly haggard with exhaustion.

  ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘Sleeping on someone’s floor.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  She only got a shrug by way of answer.

  ‘And that’s why you haven’t gone back
to Cambridge?’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t go back till I find Jenny.’ He looked suddenly very young and vulnerable.

  ‘But you mustn’t ruin your life and your education for—’

  Mrs Pargeter never got the chance to finish her sentence. Tom O’Brien’s attention had been caught by another group of miniskirted girls hurrying past the café window. ‘I must go!’ he blurted. Then, showing his good upbringing, he added from the door, ‘Are you sure you don’t mind paying for the lunch?’

  Truffler gestured acquiescence and the boy was gone. ‘Shall I go after him, Mrs Pargeter?’

  She shook her head and speared a sausage. ‘No point. I think we’ve got all we can from him. And, anyway, Truffler, if you’ve found him once, I’m sure you can . . .’

  The detective’s nod of confidence made the rest of her sentence redundant.

  Mrs Pargeter finished her mouthful of sausage in reflective mood. ‘Poor kid. He’s clearly deeply in love with her.’

  ‘Hm . . .’

  ‘Or was deeply in love with her. You know what we’ve got to do next, don’t you, Truffler?’

  He probably did, but was polite enough to respect the rhetorical nature of her question.

  ‘We’ve got to make certain that the dead girl I saw really was Jenny Hargreaves.’

  Truffler Mason nodded, his conjecture proved correct.

  ‘What about the parents?’ asked Mrs Pargeter suddenly. ‘Surely the hospital must have been in touch with them by now?’

  ‘No, that’s the odd thing,’ said Truffler. ‘I was going to tell you. Mr and Mrs Hargreaves still haven’t heard anything.’

  ‘Oh dear. Truffler, get in touch with all the hospitals in the Brotherton Hall area! As quickly as possible!’

  Mrs Pargeter had suddenly turned very pale. And after Truffler had rushed off to follow her instructions, she didn’t even feel up to finishing her All-Day Breakfast.

  Which may be taken as a measure of how upset she was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Gary . . .’ said Mrs Pargeter thoughtfully, as the limousine sped through the outer suburbs, ‘if you discovered that your wife was doing a job—’