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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 8
    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 Over Fatty Matter leotards, leggings, and exercise bra. Somehow they didn't look as good on her as they had on Sue Fisher's aerobic chorus-line.
    It was dreadful to see the agonies Kim was going through, scrunching her body up on each forward push and straining as the sliding seat clacked along beneath her with each pull back. Mrs Pargeter could not imagine anything more uncomfortable, and indeed could not imagine a human mind voluntarily consenting to such torture.
    But Kim's sweat-streaked face gleamed with pleasure. In fact it was more than pleasure; her expression showed the fervour of the postulant, the convert brought to ecstasy by the mysteries of her new religion. Brotherton Hall was certainly doing what was required of it for Kim Thurrock.
    Mrs Pargeter parked herself on the seat of an adjacent exercise bicycle. 'How're you doing, love?' she asked.
    'Wonderful,' Kim gasped through her torments. 'You really ought to have a go.'
    Mrs Pargeter demurred with a little shake of her head.
    'No, it needn't be something as vigorous as this. They've got apparatus that's much gentler. Look, those things over there are called passive exercisers. You just lie down on them and they do the exercising for you.'
    Kim nodded towards a pair of machines rather like loungers, whose arm and leg supports rose and fell rhythmically to stretch the limbs of the women who lay on them.
    'Those're dead easy, Melita. The machine does the work for you. You could have a go on that, couldn't you?'
    Though admittedly not as daunting as the other apparatus, the passive exercisers were still not for Mrs Pargeter. 'Don't think it'd be wise. You know, the allergy . . .'
    The magic word elicited the usual subdued reaction. Mrs Pargeter, to show she wasn't going to let her allergic condition get her down, smiled pluckily. 'Anyway, Kim, how's it really going for you?'
    'Marvellous! Do you know, I'd lost four ounces at the Seven-Thirty Weigh-in this morning.'
    'Oh, well done.'
    'Thicko won't recognize me.'
    'I'm sure he will. After all, he's seen you at Visiting every week for nearly seven years.'
    'Yes, I know. I mean, he won't recognize me when . . . well, you know, bed . . .' A blush struggled through to intensify the sweaty redness of her face. 'Anyway, I'm going to have my hair done differently before I leave here.'
    'How're you going to have it done?' Kim's natural frizzy blonde hair, currently scraped back under a drenched sweat-band, had always struck Mrs Pargeter