Simon Brett - Mrs. Pargeter's pound of flesh

The one with the gun gestured the three of them to back against the wall, then looked down at the unconscious Truffler Mason.

‘Better sort out this one first,’ he growled and brought the snout of his weapon down against Truffler’s unprotected temple.

‘Stop!’ Mrs Pargeter prepared to scream, but was amazed to hear the word spoken before she had even drawn breath.

The sound came from the doorway where, armed with a machine-gun, stood Dr Potter.

The frame of the doorway emphasized the disproportion of Dr Potter’s body. His thin legs looked too long, his thin arms too short, his head somehow shrunken above bony shoulders.

But, his appearance notwithstanding, there was no doubting his authority. The two bulky ambulance men positively cowered away from him.

‘Throw the gun on to the floor,’ he snapped, and the order was instantly obeyed. ‘God, what kind of animals are you, if you imagine shooting people in cold blood is going to achieve anything? There is enough mindless violence in the world already without adding to it.’

Mrs Pargeter was surprised to hear these sentiments coming from a man to whom she had taken such instant dislike, but they were none the less welcome. She had realized when the gun was at Truffler Mason’s temple how much she loved him — how much indeed she loved all her friends, and how little she wanted to be separated from them, either by their death or her own. At this latest reprieve, the joy of living, the sheer delight of being alive, surged through her.

First things first, she rushed forward to the recumbent Truffler. He was unconscious, but the evenness of his breathing offered hope of no permanent damage. She looked up at their saviour.

‘Dr Potter!’ she cried. ‘Thank you. That was a very close shave.’

‘I agree,’ he said without emotion. ‘It’s dreadful to think how much destruction these two ruffians could have caused.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Pargeter agreed enthusiastically. ‘And, Ank, isn’t it terrific that…?’

But something she saw in the Brotherton Hall manager’s eye dried up the words on her tongue. She looked quickly at Dr Potter, then back to Ankle-Deep Arkwright.

He nodded grimly. ‘Dr Potter’s the one who imprisoned me down here. The two goons are paid heavies. They just do as they’re told.’

‘But…’ Mrs Pargeter looked up in bewilderment.

The doctor, very coolly and efficiently, explained it to her. ‘Yes. A lot of people just do as they’re told. It’s wonderful what most people can be persuaded to do when you’ve got a bit of dirt on them.’

Mrs Pargeter, whose investigative methods had frequently borne out the truth of this statement, nodded.

‘And I have a lot of dirt on a lot of people,’ Dr Potter continued. ‘A surprising amount of dirt. I had enough on Mr Arkwright when I returned from Hong Kong to ensure that he would give me the job here, and allow me all of Brotherton Hall’s resources for my work. I had enough on Stan and’ — he gestured contemptuously towards the ambulance men — ‘ these two to command their unquestioning obedience. And, if I chose to use it, I’d have enough to get Truffler Mason put away for a very long time.’

‘You haven’t got anything on me,’ said Mrs Pargeter defiantly.

‘No, but then I don’t need anything on you. You’re just a nuisance, a minor irritation. There’s nothing you can do to help me in my work.’

‘And what is that work?’

The thin face crackled into a thin smile and the mud-coloured eyes produced what in any other eyes would have been a twinkle. ‘I am a research scientist, Mrs Pargeter. Rather a good one, as it happens. The trouble is, the kind of research I do might not be sanctioned in a traditional pharmaceutical company. Such institutions tend to be very old-fashioned — though I can guarantee that, once my current product has reached its final form, all the drug companies will instantly copy it.’

‘What is the product?’

‘Ah, Mrs Pargeter, ever ready with the direct question. My product is something on which I have been working for many years. I first developed it for… well, I don’t think that’s really relevant at the moment. Suffice it to say that the product is very nearly in its final form. And when it has reached that form, it will make me a very rich man indeed.’

‘It’s for slimming, isn’t it? To change a body’s basic metabolism, to turn a naturally fat person into an unnaturally thin person?’

He nodded acknowledgement of her investigative expertise. ‘Very good, Mrs Pargeter. That is exactly what it is.’

‘And when you get it right, you’re going to market it through Sue Fisher’s Mind Over Fatty Matter outlets.’

‘I am indeed. When you have the best product in the world, you go for the best distribution system. Sue Fisher is very excited about the drug.’

‘Even though it has been tested on student guinea pigs and caused the death of at least one of them?’

Dr Potter shrugged. ‘The advances of science have never been achieved without casualties, Mrs Pargeter.’

Suddenly in her head were the words she had overheard on her first night at Brotherton Hall. ‘But there’s nothing you can do about it. They’re going to kill me, and nobody can stop them.’

The girl had not been talking about people going to kill her — not directly at least. She had been talking about the drugs she had been paid to take, drugs whose deleterious effects were by then too far advanced to be halted.

Mrs Pargeter looked contemptuously at Dr Potter. ‘You just don’t care, do you? You don’t care about the girl who died.’

He shrugged again. ‘She took a risk. She knew she was taking a risk. And she was extremely well paid for the risk she took.’

‘But what about her parents?’

‘She said she had no parents. I was extremely careful only to take on applicants who had no close family.’

‘So that if anything went wrong, no one would come looking for them?’

‘Exactly.’

‘The girl did have parents.’

‘If she lied to me, that’s hardly my concern. Come on, she was being well paid for her trouble. How many students get to earn five thousand pounds for four weeks’ work?’

‘That five thousand pounds is a fat lot of good to her now.’

Dr Potter’s face distorted into another smile as he said, ‘I apologize for having to correct you, Mrs Pargeter, but might I suggest that “a thin lot of good” is a more appropriate expression?’

He laughed drily, demonstrating the huge gulf between his sensibilities and those of normal human beings.

‘How much did anyone else know of what you were doing, Dr Potter?’

‘Very little. Mr Arkwright didn’t want to know any details. He thought they might distress him… which indeed they might well have done. He just did what I asked of him without asking any questions.’

‘Yes,’ Ank agreed bitterly, ‘and I feel pretty dreadful about the whole business now that-’

‘Be quiet!’ If Dr Potter had been looking for a demonstration of his power over Ankle-Deep Arkwright, nothing could have been more effective than the way those two little words brought instant silence. ‘Of course, there were drawbacks to his complete ignorance. If Mr Arkwright had known more about my experiments, he wouldn’t have investigated the dead girl’s room and so inconveniently supplied you with the name of a real person, Mrs Pargeter.

‘Still, couldn’t be helped. Generally speaking — until the last few days when I’ve been forced to keep him out of the way down here, Mr Arkwright has been very biddable. As I said, remarkable how ready people are to do as you wish, when you know enough about their criminal background. Though, as you pointed out, Mrs Pargeter… I don’t have any dirt on you.’