Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh Read Free

don't know what come over me – calling you an "old lady" and that. Very sorry.'
    Mrs Pargeter's sudden frost was not only caused by her habitual desire to know as little as possible about her late husband's business affairs (a desire, incidentally, that he had enthusiastically encouraged), but also by the mention of Streatham.
    The late Mr Pargeter's involvement with Streatham had not been one of his most successful business enterprises. Indeed the venture had gone so badly wrong that its aftermath had kept him absent from the conjugal home for some three years.
    Mrs Pargeter had felt this enforced separation keenly. Partly, this was because of the close and loving relationship which she and her husband shared, which meant that she had missed him rotten. But her pain had been aggravated by the fact that she knew he had been betrayed in Streatham by one of his closest associates.
    Though she kept knowledge of her husband's business affairs to a minimum, the conversation of the men he delegated to 'keep an eye on her' during his involuntary absence did not allow her to be completely unaware of what had happened.
    The villain had been Julian Embridge, an unsuccessful research chemist whose fortunes had changed remarkably when he had been taken under her husband's ever-philanthropic wing. The late Mr Pargeter found employment for many varied talents in his spreading empire, and at that time had decided (from a purely altruistic love of knowledge and respect for the sciences) that he wished to direct some of his resources towards chemical research into the comparative efficacy of different explosives.
    The disaffected Julian Embridge, then currently embarrassed by misplaced suspicions about the disappearance of valuable drugs from the laboratory that employed him, had been delighted to become the recipient of the late Mr Pargeter's patronage. Their relationship blossomed and – a rare occurrence – Embridge was even introduced socially to his employer's beloved wife, Melita.
    She had enjoyed the company of this short, chubby, straw-haired chemist, though she had always felt some reservations about his ultimate reliability. Occasionally into his blue eyes came too uncompromising a light of avarice.
    But her husband was delighted with the new recruit, and gave him ever-increasing responsibility and prominence in his business organization. If the late Mr Pargeter could have been described as a captain of industry, then Julian Embridge was the nearest he ever came to appointing a lieutenant. The relationship grew closer and closer.
    Until Streatham.
    The precise details of what happened were never clear to Mrs Pargeter, but the outcome was not in doubt. Basically, Julian Embridge had confided all of the late Mr Pargeter's punctiliously laid plans to the very authorities from whom they should most religiously have been kept hidden. The result was that at what should have been the climax in Streatham, the happy resolution of all his preparations, the late Mr Pargeter had found himself confronted by those authorities. And the consequence of that unhappy confrontation had been the separation which still so rankled with Mrs Pargeter.
    What rankled even more was the knowledge that Julian Embridge had escaped with all of the Streatham profits (a sum well into seven figures) and then, so far as anyone could tell, vanished off the face of the earth.
    Mrs Pargeter was not a vengeful person, but she had made a vow that, if ever the opportunity arose, she would arrange a rendezvous between Julian Embridge and justice.
    She was so carried away in these painful recollections that it took another subservient 'Sorry' from Ankle-Deep Arkwright to bring her back to the present.
    His apology was accepted with a gracious inclination of her head and he went on, 'Yeah, well, old "Nitty" . . . after Milton Keynes, he'd got a little stash and he decided he wanted out of the business. Always desperate to be a chef, apparently, but his parents'd pushed him