from the bell-push on the counter.
Mrs Pargeter didn’t press the bell-push. Her business at Reception could be more easily accomplished without the help of a receptionist. Turning to check that there was no one watching, she slipped behind the counter.
In spite of everything Ankle-Deep Arkwright had said, she was still convinced of a link between the body removed the previous night and the anguished voice she had heard the morning before. For there to be no connection was too much of a coincidence.
The most likely scenario was that the voice had belonged to the dead girl, her prophecy ‘They’re going to kill me, and nobody can stop them’ having been horribly fulfilled.
But who ‘they’ were, and how ‘they’ were going to kill her, were questions to whose answers Mrs Pargeter had, without further research, no clues at all.
There were other questions, though, to which she might be able to find answers. Like whether Jenny Hargreaves’ registration details had been tampered with.
Because if it had been the dead girl whom Mrs Pargeter had heard speaking on the last morning of her life, then she had certainly checked in to Brotherton Hall before six-forty the previous evening, the time to which Ankle-Deep Arkwright had testified.
But computer records could easily be amended. Now she came to think of it, Mrs Pargeter was struck by the ease with which Ank had found the relevant piece of print-out.
Almost as if he had been waiting to be asked for it.
Mrs Pargeter didn’t know much about computers, but nor apparently did the reception staff at Brotherton Hall. Just in front of the keyboard, out of sight to the registering guests, a typewritten idiot’s guide to the system had been Sellotaped on to the counter.
The relevant section of these instructions read: PRESS ‘G’ FOR FULL GUEST LIST. MOVE CURSOR TO NAME AND PRESS ‘RETURN’ TO BRING INDIVIDUAL DETAILS UP ON SCREEN. FOR NEW ARRIVALS, PRESS ‘R’ TO BRING BLANK REGISTRATION FORM UP ON SCREEN.
Even a computer illiterate like Mrs Pargeter could cope with that. A single press of the ‘G’ key filled the screen with surnames, listed alphabetically. After a couple of false attempts she found the key which controlled the cursor and moved it down the left-hand side of the screen.
There was no name between ‘HADLEIGH’ and ‘HARRIS’.
So far as the Brotherton Hall computer was concerned, Jenny Hargreaves had never existed.
Mrs Pargeter was about to press ‘R’ to bring on to the screen a blank registration form — or maybe a registration form with Jenny Hargreaves’ details hastily keyed in — when she heard the click of Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s office door opening behind her and the sound of angry voices.
She abandoned the computer and moved to occupy a low armchair behind a pot of tall ferns, with an agility surprising for a woman in her late sixties.
She heard Ank’s voice first, aggrieved and whining; it was the voice of a man who knew he was losing the argument.
‘That’s unfair! We had a deal!’
The voice that answered was equally sure that its owner was winning the argument. It was a voice over which no shadow of doubt had ever dared to cast itself.
‘There are so many ways in which you’ve failed to fulfil your side of the deal that it’s hardly worth discussing, Mr Arkwright!’
It was the voice to whose televised and videoed commands millions of housewives punished their bodies daily: the voice of Sue Fisher.
‘But, Sue-’
‘ Ms Fisher to you.’
‘All right then, Ms Fisher, you definitely agreed that the Brotherton Hall logo would be featured on your video.’
‘That was when you definitely agreed to continue to assist in marketing Mind Over Fatty Matter products-’
‘I’m not arguing about that. We’re quite happy to-’
‘Which agreement includes,’ Sue Fisher continued inexorably, ‘trying out such new products as my marketing department chooses to send to you.’
‘Well, that’s where there is a problem. Nothing against the idea in principle… as you know, I’ve been happy to go along with it in the past. It’s just that… at the moment there are special circumstances. I think we should lay off the testing for a few-’
‘It is not testing, Mr Arkwright, it is trying out!’
‘Maybe, but I’m-’
‘Anyway, if you’ve suddenly gone off testing, perhaps you’ve also gone off the idea of our marketing your home-pack Brotherton Hall Dead Sea Mud treatment?’
‘No, no, obviously I’m still very keen on that.’ Ank’s voice was now plaintively conciliatory. ‘And the moment you want to try out one of our Dead Sea Mud Baths, Ms Fisher, you have only to-’
‘Shut up, Mr Arkwright!’
From Mrs Pargeter’s fern-screened perspective Sue Fisher’s next words sounded louder. She was evidently making a dramatic exit from the office.
‘The video we shot here is being edited next week. Starting Monday. If I don’t hear from you before then, agreeing to my terms exactly as I have spelled them out, I guarantee that I will cut out every shot of the Brotherton Hall logo, every exterior of the house, in fact every clue that might possibly identify your tinpot premises as the location where the shooting took place! Have you got that, Mr Arkwright?’
This last line came from further off, as Sue Fisher’s tall and splendidly tuned body stalked off up the stairs, confident as ever of its owner’s unassailable rightness.
Ankle-Deep Arkwright took out his frustration on the computer. ‘Bloody girl’s left the registration list up,’ he murmured savagely, before stabbing at a key and stumping back into his office.
Mrs Pargeter had found the exchange very interesting. For a start, it set a few hares of potential motivation running through her head.
But, perhaps more importantly, it also told her the High Priestess of Mind Over Fatty Matter was still at Brotherton Hall. And had presumably been there the previous evening.
Sue Fisher wouldn’t have been present at the Nine O’Clock Weigh-In of the guests for whom she felt such obvious contempt.
Which meant that, like Mrs Pargeter, she too might have witnessed the removal of a corpse from Brotherton Hall.
Assuming, of course, that she didn’t have any other involvement in Jenny Hargreaves’ death.
Chapter Ten
The red light on the telephone was blinking when Mrs Pargeter got back to her room. She rang through to the switchboard and received the message that a Mr Mason had called.
‘Truffler,’ she said, as soon as she got through.
‘Ah, Mrs Pargeter,’ he responded in mournful delight. ‘Thank you for getting back so promptly.’
‘So… have you managed to find some information on Jenny Hargreaves?’
‘Just a few starting points,’ he replied modestly. ‘Nineteen years old. Only child. Brought up in Portsmouth — parents pretty hard-up. Jenny did well at the local comprehensive — one of the few to make it from there through to university. In her second year at Cambridge, studying French and Spanish. Doing very well, good grades and that, until end of last term when she suddenly left a week early. This term’s only just started, but there’s been no sign of her.’
Not surprising if she’s dead, thought Mrs Pargeter. ‘As always, Truffler, your “starting points” are better than most investigators’ final reports. Found out anything about her parents?’
