Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh

by Simon Brett

  The oddjob man looked at her in bewilderment.

  ‘Jenny Hargreaves,’ Ank explained. ‘You know, the girl whose body was taken out on the trolley by Embridge’s heavies. She’d died of the drug. Jenny Hargreaves.’

  Stan still looked blank, so Ankle-Deep Arkwright continued, ‘You must remember. Look, I didn’t know she was here. Dr Potter kept all that stuff to himself. But after Mrs Pargeter told me about seeing the body, I went up to the room and checked, and found all these belongings with the name “Jenny Hargreaves” on them.’

  ‘And then you falsified her registration details,’ Mrs Pargeter observed coolly.

  The manager coloured. ‘Yes, look, I’m sorry. I did a lot of stuff I regret. I’m not proud of any of it, but I was just basically scared of Dr Potter. He’d got all this dirt on my criminal record – of course, now I know who he really is, I can see how he got it, but I still—’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘We need to find out if Stan knows anything about Jenny Hargreaves’ death.’

  Ankle-Deep Arkwright was relieved to turn his attention back to the oddjob man. ‘Look, you must know something about it, Stan. Mrs Pargeter saw you helping those two thugs put the body in the ambulance.’

  Stan the Stapler shook his head and gurgled excitedly.

  ‘What’s he trying to say, Ank?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s beckoning us to go with him,’ said Truffler.

  They followed the man back down to the cellars. He was almost running in his excitement, and the others exchanged puzzled looks as they hurried after him.

  Once in the cellars, Stan the Stapler ignored the room where the three villains were imprisoned and hurried on to the end of the passage. He stopped outside a locked door and produced a key from his pocket. The door opened. He switched on the light and stepped aside to let Mrs Pargeter enter.

  The room was clean but meagrely furnished. From a bed against the far wall a girl looked up blearily, her sleep broken by the sudden light.

  She was very thin, but very much alive. Her hair could have done with a wash, but was not falling out.

  Mrs Pargeter felt a warm glow spreading inside her as she asked, ‘Are you Jenny Hargreaves?’

  Puzzled, the girl nodded.

  Chapter Forty

  It was a time of happy reunions.

  Mrs Pargeter effected the first at Greene’s Hotel. Jenny Hargreaves, remarkably unscathed by her incarceration, was seated over a large tea with lots of cream cakes when Truffler Mason, who had once again tracked down the young man, introduced Tom O’Brien.

  Mrs Pargeter was deeply moved to see how they fell into each other’s arms, and little surprised later when she heard that the young couple had impulsively married and would complete their degrees as man and wife. It gave her an inward smile to think how much Chloe, Candida and Chris would disapprove, and a bigger smile to know how wrong their disapproval would be.

  Tom, having once entertained the thought of losing Jenny, was now determined to cling on to her for ever. First things first – changing the world could wait. And in time, no doubt, her parents would come round to the idea of him.

  The discovery of Jenny alive did of course raise the question of whose body Mrs Pargeter had seen removed from Brotherton Hall in the small hours, and she had to wait until Julian Embridge’s trial to find the answer to that question.

  It was answered, though, in meticulous detail, because the two ambulance men, desperate to save as much of their own skins as they could, testified against their employer. They provided chapter and verse on the death of a girl, as well as where her body was hidden, and they furnished details of many more offences by Julian Embridge than Mrs Pargeter’s deposition had managed to muster.

  The dead girl had been another student, recruited in the same way as Jenny Hargreaves. Mrs Pargeter felt appropriate sympathy for the girl’s parents, but the death touched her only in the generalized way of a tragedy reported in a newspaper. Whereas with Jenny, although she only met the girl at the end of the ordeal, she had felt personally involved.

  The ambulance men also shopped their employer for the murder of Lindy Galton, thus saving Stan the Stapler the potential embarrassment of standing up in court.

  The outcome of the trial was very satisfactory all round, and the chances of Julian Embridge ever leaving prison alive were extremely remote.

  His betrayal of the late Mr Pargeter was avenged. Mrs Pargeter had her pound of flesh.

  The fact that justice, though blind, can sometimes be unerringly accurate was also demonstrated in the case of Sue Fisher.

  Ellie Fenchurch was true to their agreement and breathed not a word of what she knew about Mind Over Fatty Matter. Until the day she heard that Sue Fisher had actually tried to persuade Lord Barsleigh to sack his controversial interviewer.

  The deal was broken, the gloves were off, and Ellie Fenchurch published an interview so scalding that it made all her previous character-assassinations seem benign by comparison.

  Sue Fisher immediately mustered her lawyers, but the coincident start of the Julian Embridge trial made their task well-nigh impossible. The connection between the experiments of ‘Dr Potter’ and Mind Over Fatty Matter was quickly public knowledge, and Sue Fisher’s empire began to crumble.

  This collapse probably would have happened even without the scandal. Food and fitness fads have brief lives and, even before Ellie Fenchurch’s revelations, the latest Mind Over Fatty Matter book had been pipped to the top of the bestsellers’ lists by a new slimming sensation, The Wrist and Ankle Diet.

  The author of this volume was quick to capitalize on her success (homing in, exactly as Sue Fisher had done, on the communal guilt of women about the state of their bodies). She set up a chain of Wrist and Ankle Exercise Clinics all over the country. She marketed videos of herself flexing her wrists and ankles; and entered into merchandizing deals, first for designer Wrist and Ankle weights, but very quickly thereafter for Wrist and Ankle leotards, leggings and exercise bras. Wrist and Ankle Cuisine was not far behind, and an infinite vista stretched ahead of Wrist and Ankle fabrics, furniture, domestic appliances and lawnmowers.

  Mind Over Fatty Matter leisurewear began to be sold at discounted prices in street markets, and given as birthday presents to teenage girls by elderly aunts. The writing was on the wall for Sue Fisher.

  Her fall was as swift as her rise. Because she had made no friends on the way up, none stepped forward to slow her downward trajectory.

  She rescued enough money from the wreckage to buy a villa in Majorca, where she retired alone. She developed a taste for Bailey’s Irish Cream, and grew fat.

  Ankle-Deep Arkwright, anticipating the end of the fitness boom, converted Brotherton Hall into a Gastronomic Centre, where he ran a series of horrendously expensive theme Weekend Breaks (‘The Taste of France’, ‘The Taste of Spain’, ‘The Taste of Italy’, etc.). The chef Gaston reverted to his real name of ‘Nitty’ Wilson and was in seventh heaven.

  The Weekend Breaks became very popular amongst food snobs, who relished the exclusivity of Brotherton Hall. Competition developed amongst them to see who could be first to extract a single word from the Gastronomic Centre’s incredibly standoffish maître d’hôtel. This contest continued for years without anybody realizing that Stan the Stapler was dumb.

  Ankle-Deep Arkwright was very insistent that Mrs Pargeter should come regularly to Brotherton Hall and try out each new theme and, when other commitments permitted, she was happy to oblige.

  Jack the Knife also offered her the full range of his professional services, but these, with her customary charm, she declined.

  The Friday after the unmasking of Julian Embridge, Mrs Pargeter witnessed another happy reunion.

  The little house in Catford was full of Kim and small girls and poodles and Mrs Moore and all the cream cakes that Mrs Moore had made for the great homecoming, but it was even fuller of Thicko Thurrock.

&nb
sp; Mrs Pargeter had forgotten how huge he was, and indeed how much the little house had missed the reassurance of his bulk. As one of the girls ushered her in, Thicko grinned from his armchair, where he sat with his arms round Kim.

  ‘Sorry not to get up, Mrs P. Got a lot of cuddling to catch up on.’

  And he grinned at his wife with such devotion that Mrs Pargeter’s heart gave a little sob. ‘Looking great, isn’t she?’ he said proudly as his hands wandered over Kim’s familiar contours. ‘T’riffic. Needs to put a bit of weight on, mind. Been pining for me, hasn’t she? Still, soon fatten her up, won’t we, eh? Come on, Mother, you give Mrs P. a glass of the old bubbly. And a bit of that cake, eh?’

  ‘Nice to be home then, Thicko?’ asked Mrs Pargeter as she subsided into a chair, quickly to be engulfed by small girls and poodles.

  ‘I’ll say. Nice to see everyone.’ He gave his wife a hug. ‘Ooh, I missed ya, Kim.’ His hand traced the curve of her bottom. ‘You know, it’s really nice having a wife with the best bum in the business.’

  Kim Thurrock giggled with delight and coyly avoided Mrs Pargeter’s eye.

  Later, as the champagne flowed, Mrs Pargeter needed to go up to the bathroom. On the floor were Kim’s scales.

  With a grin at her reflection in the mirror, Mrs Pargeter kicked off her shoes and stepped on to the platform. She looked at the dial.

  Eleven stone four pounds.

  ‘Yes, that’s about right,’ said Mrs Pargeter comfortably.