Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh

by Simon Brett

  ‘Which I never would,’ the uniformed chauffeur interrupted. ‘Old-fashioned it may be, but I believe a bloke should bring home enough for his missus and the nippers without her having to go out to work.’

  Others might have been surprised to hear these reactionary sentiments from such a young man, but Mrs Pargeter had long been aware of Gary’s Victorian values.

  ‘No, but if you did . . .’ she persisted, ‘what kind of work would your wife most want to keep secret from you?’

  ‘What, like what kind of work would she least want me to find out about?’ queried Gary, who liked to be in possession of all the facts before committing himself to an opinion on anything.

  ‘That’s it, yes.’

  ‘Anything illegal,’ the chauffeur pronounced, without a moment’s hesitation.

  Ah, the late Mr Pargeter had taught his protégé well. It could have been her husband himself speaking, Mrs Pargeter reflected fondly, thinking back to the punctilious care with which he had kept her innocent almost of the fact that crime existed in this wicked world. ‘What you don’t know about, my dear,’ had been one of his regular sayings, ‘you’re in no position to tell anyone else about.’

  Gary had clearly absorbed the same values. Mrs Pargeter could not help once again contemplating the wide influence her husband had exercised. All over the world were men and women, many of whom had taken a change of career direction in mid-life, who owed all their success to the training bestowed by the late Mr Pargeter.

  Gary was a good example. Her husband had discovered the boy at the age of sixteen in a young offenders’ centre, where he had been committed for joy-riding. The late Mr Pargeter had taken the boy under his wing, gently showed him the pointlessness of random car-theft, and paid for him to have driving lessons. The boy had felt ready after one, but his mentor insisted on two full courses of lessons before Gary was allowed to take his test.

  The result, Mrs Pargeter mused as the limousine slid through the Surrey countryside, was the safest driver she had ever encountered.

  The late Mr Pargeter, philanthropic as ever, had also put the boy through Advanced Motorist’s instruction, and paid for him to take courses in speed and skid-control (even going to the lengths of having him trained to cope with the additional weight-hazard of an armoured car).

  Then, when Gary was proficient, the late Mr Pargeter had been good enough to find work for him in his organization, work which tested the boy’s skill to the full. His boss’s confidence was never once shown to be misplaced. Gary’s speed and repertoire of evasive manoeuvres had frequently saved other of the late Mr Pargeter’s associates from the kind of accident that could have put them out of circulation for two or three years (or in some cases up to fifteen).

  When his boss died, Gary, after an appropriate period of mourning, had set up a driving business of his own with a more public profile than had been accorded to his previous work. Mrs Pargeter, always a great supporter of new business enterprise, had backed the venture from the start, booking Gary on every occasion that she might possibly need a driver.

  He had at first tried to refuse payment for his services, saying, ‘After all, when I think how much I owe your late husband, it’s the least I can do for his widow to—’

  But Mrs Pargeter had interrupted him firmly, insisting she always would pay for everything. ‘Neither a lender nor a borrower be,’ she had said, quoting another of the late Mr Pargeter’s regular sayings (though he may perhaps have borrowed that one from someone else).

  So it was that she had organized Gary to drive her from Brotherton Hall to King’s Cross, and to have the limousine on hand to return her after the meeting with Tom O’Brien.

  Gary, who was used to ferrying Mrs Pargeter to more elegant venues than the greasy spoon, had been far too discreet to pass any comment.

  ‘No, but give me a bit more detail,’ Mrs Pargeter insisted. ‘What kind of job would your wife least like you to know she was doing?’

  ‘Not absolutely clear what you mean, Mrs Pargeter.’

  ‘Well, for instance, would the worst thing you could find out be that . . . that she was on the game, for example?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like that much,’ Gary conceded judiciously, ‘but that wouldn’t be the worst.’

  ‘What would then?’

  ‘The worst,’ he said, ‘the absolute worst – the thing that’d really make me divorce her on the spot and never see her again – would be if . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I found she’d gone and joined the police.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well, of course.’

  Somehow Mrs Pargeter didn’t think she was going to get much stimulus to her thinking about Jenny Hargreaves’ job from Gary.

  On her return to Brotherton Hall, she bumped into an ecstatic Kim Thurrock – or it might be more accurate to say an ecstatic Kim Thurrock bumped into her. Kim was rushing from the gym, where she’d spent an hour increasing her weight-training circuits and repetitions, to the swimming-pool, where she still had thirty lengths to complete.

  The cause of her ecstasy was quickly revealed. ‘I didn’t see you this morning. Do you know, Melita, at the Seven-Thirty Weigh-In, I’d lost another ounce and a half!’

  Mrs Pargeter uttered suitable expressions of amazement.

  ‘I mean, I really do feel thinner. Don’t you reckon I look thinner?’

  Kim stood sideways, holding her tummy in, for her friend’s appraisal.

  Mrs Pargeter found it difficult to come up with an opinion. She’d never given much thought to Kim Thurrock’s figure – it had always seemed perfectly all right to her – so she had difficulty judging to what extent (if any) it had changed.

  And Kim’s now-permanent uniform of Mind Over Fatty Matter leotard and leggings (oh yes, and presumably exercise bra) didn’t make assessment any easier. The patterns on the garments looked wonderful on Sue Fisher herself, and on her team of aerobic robots, but then presumably they had the kind of bodies that would look good in bin-liners. On ordinary bodies, like Kim Thurrock’s, however, the pattern seemed to have a different effect; almost at if it had been expressly designed to accentuate any minor bulges.

  As she learned more about the Mind Over Fatty Matter approach to marketing, Mrs Pargeter found this conjecture increasingly plausible. It would be in character for Sue Fisher to promote garments which actually made people look fatter. They would preserve that all-important distance between the ideal and the reality, encourage her punters’ basic dislike of their own bodies, and ensure that they bought even more Mind Over Fatty Matter products to make up for their shortcomings.

  ‘You look very nice, Kim love,’ said Mrs Pargeter comfortingly.

  ‘Nice?’ Kim Thurrock echoed. ‘But do I look thin?’

  What did the truth matter under such circumstances? ‘Very thin, love,’ Mrs Pargeter reassured her.

  ‘Oh, good.’ But Kim still looked uncertain.

  ‘Really terrific. I bet you’re learning to love that body of yours now, aren’t you, love?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! I’m still such a mess. There’s still so much to do.’

  So the Mind Over Fatty Matter programme of stimulating feelings of inadequacy was still doing its stuff.

  ‘But do you know the other wonderful thing that happened today?’ Kim asked.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Pargeter, who didn’t.

  ‘I bought a prepublication copy of the Mind Over Fatty Matter Book of Warm Salads . . .’

  ‘Well, well . . .’

  ‘And do you know what?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Pargeter, who didn’t.

  ‘Sue Fisher actually signed it for me!’

  ‘I didn’t know she was still here.’

  ‘Well, she certainly was this morning. And she’s so generous. She signed books for practically everyone.’

  After they’d paid for them, Mrs Pargeter thought cynically. Curious, she asked, ‘What did she write in yours?’

  ‘“Keep trying, Kim!”’ her friend re
plied proudly.

  Clever. Never write ‘Well done’. Never imply the process is complete. Because, of course, a slimmer who’s achieved her goal is going to stop buying Mind Over Fatty Matter products, isn’t she?

  ‘Anyway, I must dash. I’ve still got these thirty lengths to do.’ Kim stopped, suddenly solicitous. ‘And how’s your programme going, Melita?’

  ‘Programme?’

  ‘Yes. Fitness, slimming, you know . . .’

  ‘Ah. Well, I’m doing as much as the allergy allows me to,’ she replied in a bravely martyred tone.

  ‘Oh, you do have rotten luck,’ Kim sympathized.

  ‘I know, but . . . well . . .’

  ‘C’est la vie,’ Kim supplied, drawing once again on her evening classes.

  ‘Exactly. Still, I live in hope,’ Mrs Pargeter continued with spirit. ‘Only ate half my portion at lunchtime today.’

  ‘Oh. Well done,’ said Kim Thurrock.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mrs Pargeter ate her full portion of dinner in the ‘Allergy Room’ that evening. Though still anxious about the news she was expecting from Truffler Mason, she could see no point in spoiling two meals in a row.

  Anyway, she owed it to Gaston to do justice to his Entrecôte à la Bordelaise and Crêpe à la Mode d’Orléans. It seemed a pity to let any of the Crozes Hermitage go to waste either. And since Gaston had cooked some petits fours specially to go with her coffee, it would have been churlish not to try them.

  In spite of her forebodings, she was in a state of excitement. At last her investigation seemed to be getting somewhere. Truffler would soon be able to tell her whether the body she had seen was that of Jenny Hargreaves.

  And then of course she was due to find out more from Lindy Galton in the Dead Sea Mud Bath unit at nine-fifteen.

  She lingered over her last petit four, checking her watch in a desultory way and waiting till she heard the nervous giggling of guests scuttling to the gym to experience their day’s final humiliation at the Nine O’Clock Weigh-In.

  The sounds subsided, and Brotherton Hall was filled with a silence thick as fog, while Mrs Pargeter made her way to the Dead Sea Mud Bath unit.

  Down there, too, all was nearly silent. Only the soft swish of the rotor blade in its tank of mud provided a rhythm that gave texture to the silence.

  The lights were on, but there was no sign of anyone in the central area surrounded by the four cubicles.

  All the doors were shut. Mrs Pargeter opened one and looked in. The cubicle contained nothing but its spotlessly gleaming bath.

  The contents of the second were identical.

  The third cubicle, however, was full of Dead Sea Mud.

  It wasn’t just the bath that was full. The outline of that had been lost in the brown sludge which lay thickly over the floor and oozed through the opened doorway to Mrs Pargeter’s neatly shod feet.

  She moved back from the encroaching tide and looked towards the control console on the wall. The ‘Fill’ switch was in its ‘Off position. From the sluice at the bath’s head a single stalactite of mud depended.

  Mrs Pargeter was about to turn away to check the last cubicle when she realized that there was something half-submerged in the mud.

  It took a moment to work out what it was. A small archipelago of rounded, mud-slimed promontaries broke the surface. And there, against what was presumably the side of the bath, protruded something like a bedraggled marsh plant.

  A catch of horror clasped at her throat as she took in what it really was.

  A muddy hand!

  Mrs Pargeter removed her shoes and stepped forward as quickly as she dared over the treacherous surface. She felt voracious mud close over her feet, instantly penetrating her tights and squeezing obscenely between her toes. Clutching a rail and testing each footstep to keep her from plunging into the bath itself, she edged forward.

  Bracing herself with one arm against the rail she reached for the body and tried to pull it upwards. But she could get no purchase on the slimy limbs, which kept slopping back into the mud.

  At last she contrived a grip under the neck and raised the head above the surface. Mud slipped glutinously back off the features and clogged hair.

  But not enough mud slipped off to make an identification.

  Mrs Pargeter had to wipe at the filthy slime with a towel before she could recognize the face.

  Lindy Galton.

  The girl’s mouth gaped open. Inside, it was full of the Dead Sea Mud that had asphyxiated her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There was a house phone in the central area with a sheet of internal numbers stuck on the wall beside it. Mrs Pargeter rang Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s extension, but there was no reply.

  She got through to Reception and announced, with considerable self-restraint, that there had been ‘an accident’ in the Dead Sea Mud Bath unit. The receptionist, using those perky upward inflections with which girls at reception school are trained to greet pools wins and pogroms alike, assured her that ‘Someone will be down as soon as possible, madam.’

  Mrs Pargeter had no thought of leaving the unit. There was mud all over her, but cleaning-up would have to wait. A series of mountingly unpleasant conjectures about the causes of Lindy Galton’s death built up in her head.

  She had made one more attempt to get the corpse out of the bath, to give it a little dignity in death, but then given up. Probably better to leave things as they were, anyway, for the inevitable police enquiry.

  So, while increasingly disturbing thoughts erupted in her mind, Mrs Pargeter sat on a bench and waited to see who would be ‘down as soon as possible’.

  It was Dr Potter.

  He was as dapper as ever. A double-breasted suit in Prince of Wales check over his angular frame, suede shoes whose distinctive shape proclaimed them to be hand-made.

  He took in Mrs Pargeter’s presence before he looked at Cubicle Three, from which mud was still inexorably advancing over the immaculate tiles.

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ he asked. (Presumably doctors are so conditioned to using that question that they have difficulty in framing others.) ‘Reception said there had been some kind of accident.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mrs Pargeter pointed to the open cubicle door and the mud-spattered area beyond.

  Dr Potter looked across and his thin face pursed with annoyance. ‘If there’s something wrong with the sluices, that would appear to be a job for a plumber rather than a doctor.’

  ‘It’s not just the sluices. There’s a body in the mud.’

  ‘What?’ He turned his silt-coloured eyes on her in amazement.

  ‘Lindy Galton. She’s under that lot – drowned.’

  Dr Potter tutted, like a bureaucrat who’s found a form incorrectly filled in. ‘Oh really! This kind of thing happens far too often at Brotherton Hall, you know.’

  ‘What – people getting killed?’ Mrs Pargeter asked eagerly, thinking she really was on to something this time.

  Dr Potter quickly disabused her. ‘No. Staff using the facilities without permission. It happens in the gym, in the swimming-pool, everywhere. And the trouble is, they do it at times when the facilities aren’t properly supervised, which raises terrible problems with insurance. It’s been inevitable that something like this would happen one day.’ He tutted again, then added as an afterthought, ‘You’re sure she is dead?’

  ‘Well, she looked dead to me, but then I’m not an expert.’

  ‘No.’

  Mrs Pargeter waited in vain for him to pick up the prompt, so continued, ‘Whereas you are. I’d have thought the first thing a doctor should have done would be to pull the body out and try to revive her.’

  ‘Don’t you start telling me what I should have done, Mrs Pargeter!’ But her words had had some effect. ‘Yes, I suppose I’d better take a look at her,’ he conceded reluctantly. After a moment’s hesitation, he removed his jacket, folded it neatly on to a bench and started towards the cubicle.

  ‘Surely you’re goin
g to take your shoes off?’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘That stuff’ll ruin them.’

  ‘Whether I choose to ruin my shoes or not is, I would have thought, my decision, Mrs Pargeter,’ he said, placing a suede-clad foot firmly into the mud, which rose to cover it.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  Oblivious to the splashes on his clothes, Dr Potter took hold of the rail and reached down to grab the body. With surprising strength, he dragged Lindy Galton out of the bath in one movement, then slid her along to the central area. The manhandling scraped enough mud off to show that the girl had been naked when she got into the bath.

  Dr Potter bent over the body. No pulse-listening or breath-checking. Not even the thought of resuscitation.

  Just a quick look, and he turned to the wall telephone.

  He got an outside line and barked instructions about collecting the body to whoever answered him.

  ‘Was that the police?’ Mrs Pargeter asked as he put the receiver down.

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we call the police?’

  ‘After an accident like this it is usual to call the hospital first. They may be able to do something.’

  ‘Something you couldn’t do?’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Mrs Pargeter.’ The dull eyes flickered a cold look at her.

  ‘Well, look, you’re a doctor. Either she’s dead . . . or there’s something that can be done for her. If there’s something that can be done, it would stand more chance of succeeding if you did it here – now.’

  He moved closer to her and lowered his voice. ‘I don’t think you quite realize what is at stake here, Mrs Pargeter. Brotherton Hall is a substantial business, and one whose reputation could be seriously affected by something like this. I can assure you we are not going to let an accident caused by one of the staff abusing her position here jeopardize the company’s future.’

  ‘So you think it’d be simpler to have Lindy Galton registered “Dead on Arrival” at the hospital, rather than having the police in here inspecting the scene where she actually died?’

  ‘Exactly, Mrs Pargeter. You show a very acute understanding of the situation.’