‘Mrs Pargeter, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘If you’d like to come through to Cubicle Four, the bath should just about be full now.’
Mrs Pargeter stood inside the doorway, dressed as instructed in only her Brotherton Hall towelling gown over swimwear, and looked down at the contents of the bath as the last strainings plopped in from the lion’s head sluice.
The mud could have been said to look like liquid milk chocolate, with a consistency like that of Bolognese sauce — though it has to be confessed that the similes which sprang instinctively to Mrs Pargeter’s mind were rather less elegant.
There was a silence as the two of them looked down at the sluggish sludge. ‘Well,’ Lindy Galton prompted eventually, ‘aren’t you going to get in?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ said Mrs Pargeter. ‘What on earth do you take me for?’
‘Then why are you here?’ The girl looked confused rather than alarmed.
Before answering, Mrs Pargeter moved forward to a console of switches on the wall and pressed the one marked ‘Empty’. The room was filling with the kind of sounds that can be the consequence of an ill-considered curry.
Lindy Galton stepped towards the console, her face sharp with anger. ‘What are you doing? The bath’s only just been filled.’
‘I’m paying for the Dead Sea Mud Bath treatment,’ Mrs Pargeter replied coolly. ‘Whether I choose to have it or not I’d have thought was up to me.’
‘But why are you emptying it away? Someone else could have the mud.’
‘Why, do you want it?’ asked Mrs Pargeter, deliberately frivolous.
The reaction — and the distaste — were instinctive. ‘No, thank you!’
‘Oh, you know where it’s come from then, do you?’
The girl seemed about to agree, then remembered her professional role and replied frostily, ‘I can’t personally go into the mud because of an allergy. I’ve tried the treatment and I’m afraid it brings me out in a rash.’ She gave her client a beady look. ‘You still haven’t explained why you’re emptying the bath.’
‘I’ve started that for the noise… so’s we can’t be overheard,’ said Mrs Pargeter in an even whisper.
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 cafe 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
