through everything to get so close to recognition as a brilliant chemist, to be thwarted by you. You’re in my way, Mrs Pargeter, and when there’s someone in my way, I always succeed in getting them out of my way!’
He concluded the sentence as if it were a cue — presumably a cue to squeeze the trigger of his machine- gun and blow Mrs Pargeter out of his way.
But the cue was missed. There was a sudden movement from the floor. Truffler Mason, with surprising athleticism, arched his body and brought his legs up to send the machine-gun spinning. The impact hurled Dr Potter back against the wall, where his head slammed against a low pipe. He crumpled unconscious to the floor.
‘Brilliant, Truffler!’ Mrs Pargeter gazed fondly down at her protector, who sat on the floor lugubriously rubbing his head.
Jack the Knife looked across at the two ambulance men, dispirited in the unyielding embraces of Ankle-Deep Arkwright and Stan the Stapler. Any fight there had been in the thugs was gone. ‘Tie them up,’ he ordered.
Then the surgeon moved across to focus his torchbeam on Dr Potter. He noticed something behind the man’s ear and looked closer.
‘Good heavens!’ he murmured.
‘What is it?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.
‘These scars behind his ears.’
‘What about them?’
‘Just that I recognize them.’
‘Hm?’
‘A surgeon always recognizes his own handiwork, Mrs Pargeter.’ Jack the Knife pushed Dr Potter’s head sideways and peered closely at the network of lines around his eyes. ‘Good God! Do you know who this is?’
‘No.’
‘Julian Embridge.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hell had no fury like Mrs Pargeter in pursuit of justice. Shylock was not more pertinacious in his demands than she in her determination to settle scores with Julian Embridge.
The three villains were tied up to cellar pipes as Ankle-Deep Arkwright had been. ‘Dr Potter’ was still unconscious as he was manacled and Jack the Knife inspected his body, first removing the man’s shoes.
‘Look at this.’ He pointed to the heavily built-up sole. ‘Made him a good three inches taller.’
‘Which explains why his body looked so out of proportion,’ said Mrs Pargeter. And also, she thought to herself, why he refused to take his shoes off when he removed the body of the girl he’d killed from the Dead Sea Mud Bath.
‘The hair’s dyed, obviously,’ Jack the Knife observed, ‘and he had coloured lenses over his blue eyes…’
‘Which is why they looked that strange muddy colour.’
‘Yes, Mrs Pargeter. And all that, with the work I’d done on him, was sufficient to change his basic appearance.’ The surgeon paused and looked puzzled. ‘But there’s more to it than that. I mean, Julian Embridge was a short, tubby person. This isn’t the body of a short, tubby person.’
Mrs Pargeter smiled a bleak smile. ‘I don’t think we have to look far for the explanation, Jack. Think of the drug “Dr Potter” has been trying to develop, the drug that killed that poor girl. I think he was his own first guinea pig.’
Jack the Knife slowly nodded agreement as she went on, ‘His background was as a chemist. He always had ambitions to produce something that would make him famous. The need to change his identity gave him the perfect incentive to experiment. But clearly the side-effects of whatever he developed meant that he couldn’t put it straight on to the market. He needed to test it first and maybe he had suffered so much from earlier versions that he decided to try the drug out on other guinea pigs…’
‘Hence the Private Eye small ad and all of that…’
‘Yes.’
The surgeon looked thoughtful. ‘Mind you, if he ever had developed it — a drug that could change basic body type — the slimming industry would have killed to get hold of it.’
‘Unfortunate choice of phrase in the circumstances, Jack.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘But it explains Sue Fisher’s interest.’ Mrs Pargeter pursed her lips. ‘Hm, I’d really like to get Sue Fisher too…’ But no, Ellie Fenchurch had made a deal with the creator of Mind Over Fatty Matter. Sue Fisher could not be implicated unless she broke her side of that bargain.
‘Never mind,’ Mrs Pargeter concluded easily. ‘Julian Embridge is the important one. He’s who I really want to get.’
‘And how are you going to get him?’ asked Jack the Knife.
‘He’s a criminal,’ she replied primly. ‘I’m going to turn him over to the police.’
Mrs Pargeter usually kept her dealings with the police to a minimum. She had no disrespect for the force, and was frequently heard to praise them as ‘a fine body of men’. But she never liked causing unnecessary confusion. She was often of the opinion that an excess of information could only serve to make the constabulary’s life more complicated.
And she was a model citizen in the sense that, rather than overburdening an already stretched force with problems that other people might have taken to their door, she usually sorted out such matters for herself (with the help of the late Mr Pargeter’s associates).
But there were some cases in which she recognized that the police should be involved. And Julian Embridge’s was such a case.
For one thing, the man was a public menace. People who go around illicitly testing drugs on young girls — and committing murder — deserve to be put away for a long time.
There was also a personal score to settle. It was through the offices of Julian Embridge at Streatham that the late Mr Pargeter had had a closer encounter with the British police force than he had wished for.
It was only fitting, therefore, that Julian Embridge should become a victim of the same authorities.
So, once the three villains had been secured in the cellar, with Stan the Stapler left to guard them, Mrs Pargeter and the others went upstairs to Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s office. Truffler Mason, who spent much of his time as a private investigator typing up reports for clients, was seated behind the word processer, while he and Jack the Knife searched their memories for details of Julian Embridge’s wrongdoing.
These recollections were rigorously edited by Mrs Pargeter. Nothing was allowed to appear in the text that could not be incontrovertibly proved. For example, the suspicion that Julian Embridge had taken on the identity of the doctor from Hong Kong, and might even have done away with the real Dr Potter, was not admitted. Only crimes that could be proved, and for which reliable witnesses could be quoted, were allowed to feature.
But there was still plenty of material. Enough to put Julian Embridge away for a very long time indeed.
Once the deposition had been completed, it would be faxed to the police. They would be given an untraceable fax number (a facility which Truffler Mason had developed and frequently used) to respond to if they were interested. Given the long list of crimes Truffler was keying in to the word processor, the police would quite definitely be interested. When they contacted the untraceable fax number, details of the whereabouts of Julian Embridge and his accomplices would be then faxed back to them.
Unfortunately, the two murders could not be included in the accusations. Jenny Hargreaves’ body was still missing, and Lindy Galton’s death seemed to have been passed off successfully as an accident.
‘Pity about that,’ said Mrs Pargeter, looking over Truffler Mason’s shoulder at the screen. ‘I’d really like to nail him for those.’
‘Well, we could put in that the two deaths might be worth further investigation…?’ Truffler suggested.
‘What, and leave the police to try and get to the bottom of them?’ Mrs Pargeter wrinkled her mouth sceptically. ‘I’d feel safer if we could give them a bit of specific direction for their enquiries. Police’re never that good when they have to use their own initiative.’
