Room’ to the solarium for an after-lunch doze. The space was full of perfectly formed women, dressed in identical Mind Over Fatty Matter leotards, leggings, and, presumably, exercise bras. The participants had been shipped in for the occasion; the suggestion, tentatively offered at question-time after her lecture of the previous night, that Sue Fisher might include some of the current Brotherton Hall guests in her video, had been slapped down with instant and humiliating contempt.
In the middle of these perfect fat-free bodies was the most perfect of the lot, the one that belonged to Sue Fisher herself. When casting for her videos she followed the bridesmaid selection process of a canny bride, and always chose bodies which, though they looked perfect by average standards, were fractionally inferior to her own. This, and the contrastingly vivid design of her own Mind Over Fatty Matter leotard, leggings and exercise bra, left no doubt where the focus of attention should be.
As Mrs Pargeter passed, the goddess was taking the other bodies — and from the way she treated them that was patently how she thought of them — through their paces in an aerobic routine. Though they had been schooled to the precision of a Broadway chorus line, Sue Fisher could still find grounds for criticism on every run. She singled out individuals in the line-up with great spite and relish; she bawled out the cameraman, the lighting man, the PA, Ankle-Deep Arkwright, and anyone else who got within her range.
And yet no one answered her back. No one was even mildly perturbed by her spoilt-child behaviour. And the health spa guests seemed to feel especially blessed to be allowed to witness it.
Mrs Pargeter reflected, not for the first time, that there is within the human psyche an infinite yearning for humiliation. Without which, of course, there would be no call for places like Brotherton Hall — and no television game-shows either.
That particular yearning, however, had no place in Mrs Pargeter’s psyche, so she did not linger to watch more of Sue Fisher’s bad manners. She moved on to the solarium to enjoy the next stage of her nice day.
And it really was a nice day, a day whose tranquillity was only occasionally ruffled by the recollection of the anguished young woman’s voice Mrs Pargeter had heard at five o’clock that morning.
Chapter Six
The niceness of her day ended at ten past nine in the evening. At that time all of the other guests were locked into the obsessive self-recrimination of the Nine O’Clock Weigh-In. Mrs Pargeter was the only one at liberty on the corridors of Brotherton Hall, floating peaceably along, full of Faisan au Vin de Porto and Meringue Glacee and Barolo and Armagnac.
So she was the only one to see two burly uniformed ambulance men wheeling a trolley out of a room on the third floor.
Mrs Pargeter was just coming up the stairs to the second landing and caught a glimpse of the men above through the struts of the banisters. She froze while they negotiated the trolley through the door.
One ambulance man stopped and looked round. ‘Be easier to get her down if there was a lift,’ he growled. ‘You notice a lift?’
His colleague shook his head and gestured down the corridor. ‘Be along that way if there is one. Let’s have a butcher’s.’
They both started off, moving away from the stairs. Then the first one was stopped by a sudden thought. ‘Should we just leave the trolley here?’
‘Not going to make a lot of difference to her, is it?’
‘I don’t mean that. Suppose someone saw her or…?’
‘We still got twenty minutes. Said so long as we get her out and on the way by nine-thirty, we’d have no problems.’
Reassured, the two ambulance men turned the corner of the corridor and moved out of sight.
Mrs Pargeter, the fumes of Barolo and Armagnac instantly flushed out of her brain, hurried up the last two stairs and approached the trolley.
The body was covered by a sheet. After a quick glance to check for the ambulance men, Mrs Pargeter flicked it back.
At first sight, she thought she saw a child’s face, but closer inspection showed it to be older. A girl in her late teens, early twenties, it was hard to say. The hair was so patchy and uneven on the scalp.
And the face was so thin. So very thin, its skin waxy and white, stretched over the bones like greaseproof paper.
The deep-socketed eyes were open, frozen in an expression of terror.
And a hand, fleshless as a chicken’s foot, reached up to the neck, as if still trying to ward off some horrifying assailant.
The girl was undoubtedly dead.
But so thin. So horribly thin.
Chapter Seven
‘Anorexia,’ said Ankle-Deep Arkwright. ‘Anorexia nervosa.’ Mrs Pargeter made no response, so he went on, ‘It’s an illness when adolescent girls deliberately stop eating and-’
‘I know what it is.’
‘Yeah. Well, that’s what the hospital says it was. It’s quite common, apparently.’
‘Not common for people actually to die of it.’
‘Happens.’
He shrugged. She could sense he was ill at ease. He kept getting up and moving round his little office behind the main Reception at Brotherton Hall, and his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.
Also he’d tried to get out of the meeting. She’d searched him out before breakfast on the Tuesday morning and asked about the body, but he’d been evasive. Pleading pressures of other business, he’d said he couldn’t talk about it then; but if she came to his office at half-past eleven, he’d be free for a short while.
This was unlike the Ankle-Deep Arkwright Mrs Pargeter remembered — indeed, it was unlike the Ankle- Deep Arkwright she had seen up until that moment at Brotherton Hall. His outgoing helpfulness had vanished; he seemed shifty, preoccupied, almost afraid.
‘Look, Ank…’ she’d said, always believing in the direct approach, ‘is there something funny going on here?’
He’d jumped like a cat attacked by a water-pistol. ‘Funny? No, why should there be? I’m just busy, that’s all. Look, we’ll talk at half-past eleven. Everything’ll be a lot clearer then.’
Though whether everything would be a lot clearer for her or for him, Ankle-Deep Arkwright didn’t say.
Now that the eleven-thirty meeting had arrived, however, he didn’t seem any more relaxed or forthcoming.
‘But, Ank,’ Mrs Pargeter persisted, ‘why on earth didn’t Dr Potter spot what was wrong with the girl?’
‘’Cause he didn’t see her till after she was dead. Then of course he knew what was wrong instantly. Said he knew the hospital would come up with the same diagnosis.’
‘So did Dr Potter sign the death certificate?’
‘No. He said it would be more ethical for the hospital to do that.’
Why this sudden concern with ethics, Mrs Pargeter wondered, as Ankle-Deep Arkwright went on, ‘Look, the kid only arrived yesterday. She would have weighed in and that this morning; then obviously someone would’ve seen there was something wrong and called Dr Potter. She just didn’t give us the chance.’
‘But why was she allowed to check in in that condition?’
‘We didn’t know she was in that condition!’ Ankle-Deep Arkwright replied testily. ‘Look, someone makes a reservation on the phone, you accept it in good faith. You don’t say, “Oh, by the way, you aren’t by any chance about to die of anorexia nervosa, are you?” You just don’t do that, do you, Mrs P.?’ he concluded on a note of
