Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh (13 page)

CHAPTER 27

Chloe was the first to speak. 'Yes. Yes, she did.'

'Tom O'Brien,' Mrs Pargeter prompted.

'Huh.' The monosyllable left no doubt about Candida's contempt for the young man in question. 'I mean, honestly, you'd think someone like Jenny'd realize that coming to Cambridge was, like, an opportunity for her to meet some men out of her kind of . . . well, some different sort of people, right . . . and she ends up with someone like Tom.'

'What's wrong with him?'

'Well, he's . . . I mean, he comes from a comprehensive . . . he's, like, the kind of person Jenny might have met if she'd never even gone to university – any university, let alone Cambridge.'

'Maybe that was part of his appeal. Maybe that was why she felt relaxed with him.'

'Well, maybe, but what a waste.'

Chloe elucidated, not without vindictiveness. 'I think what Candida's saying is that Tom is a bit . . . common.'

'No, I'm not! I wouldn't use the word "common", anyway.' Candida fell back on a long-held article of faith, certainly learned at her mother's knee. 'Only common people use the word "common", as it happens.'

'Listen, Candida, if you're saying I'm common, you'd better –'

'All I happen to be saying, Chloe, is –'

Mrs Pargeter broke discreetly into this unseemly squabble. 'Girls, please . . .'

Perhaps this phrase brought back to Chloe and Candida the remonstrance of some half-remembered house mistress; certainly it had the effect of silencing them. They turned demurely to Mrs Pargeter.

'What I'd like to know,' she asked, 'Is what – apart from his class – you find objectionable about Tom O'Brien?'

'Well, he's got all these ideas . . .' Chloe replied.

'All these notions . . .' Candida agreed.

'All these principles . . .' said Chris with distaste.

'Anything wrong with principles?' asked Mrs Pargeter innocently.

'No, obviously not,' Chris replied. 'Not in their proper place. And not if they're the right principles.'

'What would you say are the right principles?'

Chris's answer dispelled Mrs Pargeter's last illusion of student dissidence. 'Well, keeping things as they are. Protecting property. Law and order. I mean, those are principles worth standing up for.'

'But they're not the ones that Tom stands up for?'

'No. His principles are little short of terrorism.'

'I thought he was into ecology . . . you know, ways of saving the planet . . .'

'Yes, but the methods he reckons are legitimate to actually save the planet' – Chris shook her head in disapproval – 'well, they're absolutely terrifying.'

'Perhaps he believes that extreme problems require extreme solutions.'

'Oh yes, right. I can see the thinking, but they don't have to be
that
extreme. I mean, it's all very well imagining that you can do things to help the Third World, all that stuff, absolutely fine, nothing against it, but you've got to get your priorities sorted out.'

'So what are the proper priorities?' Mrs Pargeter suggested ironically. 'You make the odd gesture to the Third World every now and then, but never forget that charity really begins and ends at home?'

'Exactly,' said Chris, and her two friends nodded agreement, reassured that, in spite of her rather common accent, deep down Mrs Pargeter was their sort of person.

She took advantage of the hiatus to move the investigation on. 'You don't think Tom had anything to do with Jenny's absence, do you?'

'In what way?' asked Chloe.

'Well, that they might have run off together . . . ?' Although she knew that that wasn't what had happened, Mrs Pargeter still wanted to find out what the girls thought.

'Oh, no,' Chris and Candida replied in unison.

'No,' Chloe agreed. 'No, we're fairly certain that Jenny went off to work . . . you know, make some money after she lost the pub job.'

'But why would she do that before the end of term?'

'Because that's when the job came up, we assume. And we reckon it must have been something so well paid that, to her mind, it justified the risk of missing a week of term.'

'And do you know any more about what kind of work Jenny might have been doing?'

Chloe and Candida looked interrogatively at Chris, who took up her cue with relish. 'I actually think I've got a pretty good idea of what it was – well, not absolutely what it was, but how she got on to it, know what I mean?'

Mrs Pargeter waited, letting the girl time her own revelation.

'Thing is, being in the room next door to someone, you do live pretty close to them and you know most of what they're up to. I mean, I suppose I tended to go out more than Jenny – you know, like socially – but I still did see quite a lot of her . . .'

'Yes?' Mrs Pargeter prompted patiently.

'And I mean, I know after she lost the barmaid job, she was going through all kinds of newspapers and magazines to, like, look out for other things.'

'And you think you know which magazine she got the job from?'

Chris refused to be hurried. 'Let's say I reckon I've narrowed it down.'

'Ah.'

'Jenny did tend to read some fairly yucky sort of magazines.'

'Oh?'

Chris's face settled into a moue of distaste. 'I mean, some fairly subversive stuff . . . like, say
Private Eye
. . .'

Mrs Pargeter made no comment, but her mind was reeling. The idea that twenty-year-olds in the nineteen-nineties could regard the superannuated
enfant terriblisme
of
Private Eye
as subversive was totally incongruous. What had happened to these girls? Had they sprung middle-aged and blue-rinsed from their mothers' wombs?

'Not that we're wholly against
Private Eye
,' interposed Chloe, perhaps trying to bring a tinge of liberalism into the discussion. 'I mean, some of the covers are sort of quite funny . . . and the odd cartoon . . .'

'But it is all so negative,' Chris argued. 'Knocking things down all the time, not trying to build anything up. I mean, like, you do have to be more positive about things. The government is really trying, doing its best to get this country back on its feet, and I don't think the kind of sniping
Private Eye
does is anything but completely destructive.'

Fascinating though it was to witness this reactionary display. Mrs Pargeter, aware of her time limit, felt she had to move the conversation on. 'So you reckon Jenny went after a job advertised in
Private Eye
, do you?'

'Well, I think so. They do have a lot of small ads, you know.'

'Yes,' Chloe agreed, 'though these days most of the job ones are for people looking for work rather than offering it . . . you know, "Graduate seeks five thousand pounds to change the world, anything considered", that kind of stuff . . .'

'And then of course there are the personal ads . . . the contact ones, know what I mean?' Candida blushed. 'Some of those are pretty . . . well, pretty explicit.'

Given more time, Mrs Pargeter would have loved to pursue this theme and find out if the three young ladies' attitudes to sex were as reactionary as their views on everything else, but it wasn't the moment. 'So, Chris, do you think you know the actual ad that Jenny considered?'

The girl smiled smugly, 'got a pretty good idea.' She reached into her handbag and produced a tattered copy of a recent
Private Eye
. 'I know she was looking at this just a few days before she went off, and one of the ads is marked.'

She opened the magazine at the relevant page and handed it across. Mrs Pargeter looked at the
Eye Earn
column. In the middle of the usual encomia for foolproof betting systems, 'amazing opportunities', and 'superb home businesses', a few words had been ringed in red ballpoint.

a5000 FOR FOUR WEEKS' WORK. NO TRAINING REQUIRED. DETAILS BOX 20335.

'And you're sure that Jenny was the one who put the ring round it?'

'Of course I am,' Chris replied. 'Saw her do it.' A funny thought struck her. 'Why? You don't imagine
I'd
have done it, do you? Or Chloe or Candida? Good heavens, can you imagine any of
us
stooping to that kind of thing?'

She let out a quack of laughter, in which her two friends joined. It was the best joke Chris had come up with for some time.

Mrs Pargeter once again felt massive sympathy for the life Jenny Hargreaves must have spent in Cambridge.

CHAPTER 28

Mrs Pargeter reported her progress to Truffler Mason on the earphone as Gary's limousine sped her smoothly back to Greene's Hotel. 'I mean, I know box numbers are supposed to be a kind of security device, but . . .'

'Mrs Pargeter . . .' Truffler's voice was once again edged with a hint of reproach.

'Yes, I'm sorry. Of course I know you'll be able to find out. Well, needless to say, any connection you can get with Brotherton Hall's going to be terrific. And the sooner the better, obviously . . .'

'Goes without saying, Mrs Pargeter. Incidentally, on the other things you asked me to check out . . .'

'Ank and Dr Potter?'

'Right.' There was a pause before the uncharacteristic admission. 'I'm afraid I haven't made much headway there.'

'Oh dear.'

'It's not for want of trying.' Truffler Mason's voice was drowning under an excess of apology.

'Never occurred to me that it was.'

'No, but . . . Well, I just feel bad. Like I was letting you down.'

'Of course you're not. So what have you got on Ank?'

'Well, really nothing so far – that's what's so bloody annoying. Nothing except the Brotherton Hall party line. "Mr Arkwright is away for a few days." "Do you know where he's gone?" "No, I'm afraid not, sir." "Do you know precisely when he's likely to be back?" "No, I'm afraid not, sir." Right slap up against a brick wall, I am.'

'Sounds like he's deliberately lying low.'

'Yes. Unless he's been laid low,' said Truffler chillingly.

'Hm. What about Stan the Stapler?'

'Same story. "No, I'm afraid Mr Bristow is away for a few days – and no, I'm afraid I don't know when he's likely to be back." Bloody frustrating. I can tell you. I'm not used to not getting a result.'

'Sounds like someone's deliberately stopping you from getting a result.'

'Yeah. That doesn't make it any less frustrating. I'll find a way, don't worry.' But the gloom in Truffler's voice was terminal.

'How about Dr Potter? Anything on him?'

'Well, yes . . .' There was still no hint of satisfaction in his tone. 'Don't like it, though.'

'Nasty secrets, do you mean?'

'No –
no
nasty secrets, that's what I don't like about it. Kind of model history for a medical man. Did all the right training, worked as a GP in England for ten years, then out to Hong Kong. Twelve years out there – good doctor, highly respected professionally, well liked personally – then comes back here and gets the job at Brotherton Hall. I don't like it,' he repeated sepulchrally.

'Why?'

'Because it doesn't seem to tie in with the way he's behaving now, does it? From your encounters with him, you'd hardly call Dr Potter a good doctor, would you? Not one you'd recommend to your friends for his bedside manner?'

'No.'

'Anyway, I'm still pursuing it. Got feelers out with my contacts in Hong Kong – may be able to get some dirt.'

He didn't sound optimistic. But then, come to that, Truffler Mason never
did
sound optimistic.

'Don't worry,' Mrs Pargeter comforted. 'At least now with this box number you've got something positive to investigate.'

'Yes. Yes, that's true.'

Only someone who knew Truffler extremely well would have recognized from his tone that this reminder had actually cheered him up.

Perhaps from the frustration at the blocking of his other enquiries or from a need to prove himself (completely unnecessary so far as Mrs Pargeter was concerned), Truffler Mason was back to his brilliant best in investigating the
Private Eye
box number. Indeed, she had just arrived back at Greene's and was only half-way through Hedgeclipper Clinton's fulsome welcome when the girl on Reception announced that a Mr Mason was on the line asking for her.

Mrs Pargeter took the call right there in the foyer.

'I've tracked it down!' Truffler announced with mournful glee. 'Tracked him down, I should say.'

'Brilliant!' said Mrs Pargeter, with a little extra effusiveness to reassure Truffler she attached no blame to him for the blanks he had drawn on his other enquiries. 'Who is he?'

'Would you believe an estate agent?'

'What – so it was an estate agent who was offering the job?'

'Well, yes, but not on his own account, of course. When do estate agents ever do anything on their own account – except present bills? No, he was doing it on behalf of a client.'

'Do you know who the client is?'

'Not yet, but we can get it from him,' Truffler replied with grim confidence.

'And have you found out whether Jenny Hargreaves did actually apply for the job?'

'Not exactly. But the speed with which the geezer clammed up when I mentioned her name makes me pretty certain I'm on to something.'

'Good work, Truffler. What's the next move?'

'I've fixed an appointment to go and see the gentleman tomorrow morning.'

'Me too?'

'You bet, Mrs Pargeter. You can help me nail the bastard.'

'Why, have you got some dirt on him?'

'Not yet,' came the sardonic reply, 'but give me time. You can always get dirt on an estate agent.'