Simon Brett [Simon Brett] - Mrs. Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh

MRS., PARGETERS
POUND OF FLESH

A Mrs. Pargeter Mystery

Simon Brett

First published in Great Britain in 1992

by Macmillan London Ltd

eBook edition first published in 2011 by Severn Select an imprint

of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright 1992 Simon Brett.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

A CIP catalogue record for this title

is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0017-4 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being

described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

The Mrs. Pargeter Mystery Series

A NICE CLASS OF CORPSE

MRS., PRESUMED DEAD

MRS. PARGETERS PACKAGE

MRS. PARGETERS POUND OF FLESH

MRS. PARGETERS PLOT

MRS. PARGETERS POINT OF HONOUR

To Penny and Anthony

Chapter One

Eleven stone three pounds. There was only a hint of intonation in the girls voice as the digital display of the weighing machine settled. It was an intonation that could have inspired guilt and the resolve to slim in a susceptible person.

Mrs Pargeter was not such a person. Yes, thats about right, she said comfortably in her cockney-tinged accent as she stepped off the platform.

There are a few other measurements we take for all new arrivals at Brotherton Hall, the white-uniformed girl, whose plastic name-badge identified her as Lindy Galton, recited from a much-repeated script. Bust, waist, hips, obviously, and height...

Why, you havent got any treatment that can change peoples height, have you? asked Mrs Pargeter curiously.

The girl coloured. Well, no...

Good. Because the only ones Ive heard of to do that are decapitation and the rack, and I dont think either is a recommended health spa practice, is it?

Lindy Galton looked at the older woman uncertainly. She wasnt used to such behaviour from new arrivals. Plenty of them made nervous jokes about their outlines or proportions as they mounted the scales, but few demonstrated this kind of comfortable good humour. And few, come to that, accepted with such equanimity the confirmation that they were overweight. By definition, most arrivals at a health spa are dissatisfied with their bodies; yet this new woman, this plump and white-haired Mrs Pargeter, seemed to inhabit hers with tranquillity and even delight.

The friend, though, a frizzy natural blonde in her late forties, who was even now stripping off her Brotherton Hall towelling gown to step on to the scales, reacted in a much more traditional way. Im afraid theres rather a lot of me, she giggled as she shook off her flip-flops. Mrs Cellulite, my oldest daughter calls me.

This woman, Kim Thurrock according to the details on Lindy Galtons clipboard, had a much less serious weight problem than her friend, but it worried her a lot more. Abstractedly, Lindy noted a roll of fat above the knicker line, some flabbiness in the thighs and upper arms, but no worse than on the average female body that has survived forty-eight years and borne three children. Lindy spent her working life looking at such bodies and had never been judgemental about them, even though few compared to her own finely tuned and finely toned instrument.

The health spa latest incarnation of many for the splendid eighteenth-century Brotherton Hall only accepted female guests. And the owner of Brotherton Hall, Mr Arkwright, insisted that all his female staff had perfect bodies. This was not for his own benefit Mr Arkwright was punctiliously correct in such matters, never guilty of the mildest verbal sexism or ambiguous pat on a passing buttock it was simply a marketing ploy.

Mr Arkwright knew he ran a business founded on guilt and envy; and he knew that the perfect physical condition of his female staff was bound to stimulate both in his customers, leading them to spend more time and money in pursuit of comparable excellence. Mr Arkwright had been called many things in his varied career, but never a fool.

Mrs Pargeter looked at her friend, giggling self-consciously on the platform. Even though nearly twenty years her senior, Mrs Pargeter had always felt a great affinity to Kim. The younger womans husband, known universally as Thicko Thurrock, had been an associate of the late Mr Pargeter, and the two women had met frequently at functions connected with the business.

Mrs Pargeter spent a lot of time at the Thurrocks tiny house in Catford. Contentedly childless herself, she had taken great interest in the arrival and development of the Thurrocks three daughters, and was always enthusiastically welcomed at the house by the familys poodles. She had found Kims company and sympathy invaluable when Mr Pargeter died.

There had always been a bond of willing obligation between the two women, and so when Kim Thurrock let slip the fact that she was worried about her weight, Mrs Pargeter had been only too happy to fix up the three days at Brotherton Hall.

She had also been fully prepared to fund the visit. The late Mr Pargeter had left his widow lavishly provided for, and she was always happy to help out a friend in less comfortable circumstances.

As it transpired, however, payment at Brotherton Hall was not required. Mr Arkwright (known at earlier stages of his career as Ankle-Deep Arkwright from the habit of dipping his toe into a great variety of endeavours) was another associate of the late Mr Pargeter and, once he had recovered from his delight at hearing from his former bosss widow and understood her request, would not hear of indeed, was deeply offended by the suggestion of any money changing hands.

After all your husband done for me, Mrs P, (in moments of emotion the manicured syntax with which he greeted visitors to Brotherton Hall might occasionally lapse), its the very least I could do for you. Stay a week, stay a fortnight, stay a month, bring all the friends youve got! Be my pleasure to look after you.

So once again Mrs Pargeter had had reason to be grateful for the late Mr Pargeters most precious legacy his address-book, a compendium of contacts which could procure a surprising range of unconventional services.

She was particularly glad to be able to help Kim, because of the younger womans unfortunate circumstances. These were only in part financial. Her husband, Thicko Thurrock, was a man of great warmth and gentleness, but it was not for nothing that he had earned his nickname. While benefiting from the wise tutelage of the late Mr Pargeter he had been well protected, but, with the death of his mentor, soon found himself mixing in less savoury areas of business and with less savoury associates.

It was from then only a matter of time before something went wrong. Something did, outside a branch of the Halifax Building Society in Clerkenwell, and Thicko Thurrock was invited to spend seven years as a guest of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second (though not at Buckingham Palace and the invitations RSVP had not offered the option of refusal).