pleading.
She wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily. ‘Surely whoever checked her in at Reception must’ve thought she looked odd?’
He gave another of his shifty shrugs. ‘If a girl arrives in a big baggy coat, and she’s got a hat on so you can’t see her hair’s falling out… come on, who’s to notice. It’s not our business to be nosy.’ His voice took on a note of piety. ‘Here at Brotherton Hall we pride ourselves on respecting our guests’ privacy, you know.’
Mrs Pargeter snorted. ‘There’s a difference between respecting your guests’ privacy and letting them die for lack of medical attention.’
He was angry now. ‘Look, I told you — the girl only arrived yesterday!’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Mrs Pargeter asked gently. She could not remove from her memory the words she had heard at five o’clock the previous morning; nor could she help feeling they were linked to the girl’s death.
‘Of course I’m bloody sure!’
‘So who checked her in yesterday?’
He was momentarily confused. ‘Well, I can’t remember who was on duty… There are rosters and things that we could have a look at.. Oh, just a minute, though… Yes, it was Lindy Galton. Lindy Galton was on Reception four to eight yesterday afternoon.’
‘Oh well, I could check it out with her then,’ said Mrs Pargeter casually.
‘You could, yes. But not today. Lindy’s day off.’
‘That’s a pity…’
‘Yes.’ But he didn’t seem to think it was as much of a pity as she did.
‘… because Kim and me’re off tomorrow.’
He shrugged in satisfied helplessness, then changed tack and tried an appeal for sympathy. ‘Look, you must realize, Mrs P., that this, er
… incident is extremely embarrassing. I mean, particularly embarrassing given the nature of the business I’m running here. A death from anorexia at a health spa — just think what kind of a meal the tabloids could make of that one.’
Mrs Pargeter did not give an inch, and stayed silent.
‘Surprising, I suppose, that it doesn’t happen more often,’ Ankle-Deep Arkwright floundered on. ‘Presumably for an anorexic girl, there is a kind of logic about it. You’re obsessed with losing weight, so you book into a health spa to lose more.’
‘I’m not sure that that’s how it’d work. Anorexics rarely draw attention to their condition. It’s something very private for them, something whose existence a lot of them won’t even admit.’
‘Well… Well…’ He looked lost. ‘Clearly in this case the girl’s mind worked differently. Listen, Mrs P.’ — pleading had now been replaced by begging — ‘it’s very important that we keep what’s happened to ourselves. I mean, it could be absolutely disastrous for business if-’
Mrs Pargeter cut through all this. ‘What’s the girl’s name?’
‘Jenny Hargreaves. Well, that was the name on the things I found in her room. I went up there this morning to check the place out.’ He hastily remembered something else. ‘And Jenny Hargreaves was of course what she registered under, so I can only assume it was her real name.’
‘You’re positive it was only yesterday that she did register?’
‘Of course I am! Really, Mrs P. — don’t you trust me or something?’ He thought better of giving her time to answer the question. ‘I can show you the records. Our registration system is all computerized.’
He went through to the reception area and returned almost immediately with a couple of sheets torn off a computer print-out. These he thrust towards her. ‘Look, Mrs P., there you are — Jenny Hargreaves checked in at six-forty yesterday evening.’
The details were undeniably printed out. ‘Why is the credit-card reference blank?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.
There was an infinitesimal pause before Ankle-Deep Arkwright replied, ‘Not everyone pays by credit card. We accept cheques — or even old-fashioned cash,’ he added with an unsuccessful attempt at humour.
‘Hmm…’ Mrs Pargeter still looked at the print-out in front of her. ‘Her address is a college in Cambridge.’
‘So…?’
‘I’d’ve thought Brotherton Hall was rather an expensive place for a student, wouldn’t you?’
Once again, Ankle-Deep Arkwright just shrugged.
‘Mason de Vere Detective Agency.’
The voice was terminally lugubrious and immediately recognizable.
‘Truffler. It’s Mrs Pargeter.’
‘Oh, how wonderful to hear you,’ he said, in the tones of a man who’d just received a ransom demand for his only daughter. Truffler Mason’s manner had been gloomy back in his days of working for the late Mr Pargeter, and when, following his beloved boss’s death, he moved into a more publicly acceptable area of private investigation, the gloom had gone with him.
‘What’s with all this answering your own phone, Truffler? Haven’t you got any staff?’
‘Had to let them go. There is a recession on, you know,’ Truffler Mason replied, sounding a little more cheerful now he had something genuinely depressing to talk about.
‘Enough of a recession for you to have time to do a little investigation for me, Truffler?’
‘Doesn’t need to be a recession for that, Mrs Pargeter. Recession, boom-time, any time, you know you have only to ask. Anything. Honestly, when I think of all the things the late Mr Pargeter done for me-’
‘Yes, yes. I do appreciate your saying that, Truffler…’ And she did. It was just that she had heard it so many times before.
‘So what is it then?’ he asked, suddenly businesslike. ‘You haven’t got yourself involved in another murder, have you, Mrs Pargeter?’
‘No. Well, at least I’m fairly sure I haven’t. I have got myself involved in an unexplained death, though.’
‘Where are you calling from?’
‘Brotherton Hall, don’t know if you know the place. It’s a health spa.’
‘Oh? Unexplained death at a health spa… I say, that sounds as if someone’s been wasted,’ he said from the even deeper gloom which signified that he was telling a joke.
‘You don’t know how horribly near the truth you are, Truffler.’
Putting the inadvertent lapse of taste behind him, he hastily asked, ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘I want you to find out everything you can about the dead girl. Her name was Jenny Hargreaves, she was apparently a student at Cambridge University, and there seems little doubt she died of anorexia nervosa.’
‘Oh,’ said Truffler Mason.
‘I’ve got a college address for her, but that’s all. Be enough for you to get started, will it?’
‘Mrs Pargeter, I’m offended you had to ask.’
But Truffler Mason’s voice didn’t sound offended. Instead it was weighed down with that extra despondency which signified his excitement at the beginning of a new investigation.
Chapter Eight
For lunch that day Mrs Pargeter enjoyed a Brochette de Lotte and Mousse aux Deux Chocolats in a meaningfully symbiotic relationship with an excellent Muscadet (the new coolness between herself and Ankle-Deep Arkwright had not affected Gaston’s dedication to the challenge of impressing her), and then set out to find Kim. She needed to ascertain whether any of the other guests had been aware of the departure of a corpse from Brotherton Hall the previous evening.
Her search ended in the gym, which, having been cleared of guests for the making of the Mind Over Fatty Matter video, was now full of less perfect bodies, losing the unequal struggle against weight-training apparatus, walking machines, and exercise bicycles.
Kim was busting a gut on a rowing machine. Marketing had done its work and she was now wearing Mind
