The Hanging in the Hotel

by Simon Brett

  ‘So I’m in with a chance?’ he responded with misplaced roguishness.

  ‘You’re married, Barry.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Fortunately the appearance of Mario, flourishing menus the size of billboards, cut short the predictable litany about some men really liking women, his wife being very understanding and how, given the diminishing time available to them, people of their age should live life to the full.

  The routine had been stalled once. Carole was determined not to give him another chance to run it before the end of the meal.

  Exactly as he had on their last tryst at the restaurant, Barry Stilwell made much of ordering, indulging in a lot of coy consultation with Mario as to the quality of the day’s specials. Since the owner – as he would – said that everything on the menu was wonderful, this seemed a rather pointless ritual. But it was an essential part of the Stilwell restaurant protocol.

  So was his elaborate tasting of the Italian Chardonnay he had persuaded Carole to share. ‘I enjoy my wine,’ he volunteered, as if she might be interested. ‘Never drink spirits – I don’t like the taste. But I do enjoy my wine.’

  She’d told him if he ordered a bottle he’d have to drink the bulk of it, as she was driving, but the prospect did not seem to worry him. She got the impression he drank most lunchtimes, probably in the same restaurant, to ease the tedium of an afternoon of divorces, wills and conveyancing. And she would have put money on the fact that the lunch bills were somehow claimed as legitimate expenses. She wondered how her consultation with him would be described when it was put through the firm’s books.

  About time, though, that she defined the real purpose of their meeting. ‘I always remember you saying, Barry, that your local connections were pretty good.’

  He beamed, taking this as an undiluted compliment. ‘I think I could be said to know my way around the West Sussex network, yes.’

  ‘So you know everything about your fellow solicitors here in Worthing?’

  ‘Oh yes, I certainly do. Though, Carole, I might quibble with your use of the word “fellow”. We are rivals, you know.’

  ‘Of course.’ Only so many divorces, wills and conveyancing jobs to go around. ‘The firm I want to know about is Renton and Chew. Do you know them?’

  He smiled complacently. ‘I certainly do. Knew old Harry Chew, but he’s long dead. His son Donald took over as senior partner, but he’s no chicken. Pushing seventy, must be. I know him very well.’

  ‘And are there any Rentons still around?’

  ‘No. I do know some of the junior partners, though. I could give you names if you’re interested. A couple of them are in the Rotary.’

  ‘And are any of them Pillars of Sussex?’

  A flicker of caution crossed his face. ‘No, not the junior partners. The Pillars of Sussex tend to be a bit higher up the career ladder. I’m surprised you know about them.’

  ‘It’s the kind of organization you hear about if you live down here any length of time. Pretty high-powered and exclusive, I gather?’

  The flattery worked. Barry positively preened himself as he replied, ‘You could say that. It’s a recognition of substantial achievement when you become a Pillar.’

  ‘And is it a secret society?’

  ‘That makes it sound rather sinister. I prefer the word you used earlier. “Exclusive”. Yes, that’ll do.’

  Carole continued the line of flattery. ‘I’ve heard it said that the Pillars of Sussex are the most powerful organization in the entire county. That only the really important movers and shakers get elected.’

  He was enjoying this buffing of his self-esteem. ‘I can’t deny that’s pretty accurate.’

  ‘And, needless to say, you’re one?’

  He chuckled acknowledgment of this, then looked at her with a new shrewdness. ‘So what have the Pillars of Sussex got to do with your enquiry about Renton and Chew?’

  Carole was faced by a dilemma. According to Jude’s conjecture, the Pillars of Sussex might well be co-ordinating a cover-up of what happened to Nigel Ackford. If that were the case, any mention of his death would make Barry clam up instantly. She decided to pretend ignorance of the apparent suicide at Hopwicke House.

  ‘Well, you may have answered my question already – about how easy it is to become one of the Pillars of Sussex.’

  ‘Extremely difficult.’

  ‘Yes. I’m asking this for a friend.’ That much at least was true. ‘For reasons of her own, she wanted to find out something about the Pillars of Sussex.’

  ‘I’d better warn you. There are a lot of details about the association’s affairs that I’m not allowed to divulge.’

  Though of course it’s still not a secret society. Carole had the thought, but didn’t voice it. ‘Just . . . this friend of mine . . . well, there’s someone she’s having business dealings with . . .’ this was where the lies began. ‘And this person told her that he was about to become a Pillar of Sussex.’ That bit almost went back to being truthful. ‘And she was just wondering whether that was a likely possibility . . . or whether – this person – was just lying to impress her.’

  ‘It would depend very much who the person we are talking about is, what kind of status he has.’

  ‘He works for Renton and Chew. That’s where that connection comes in.’

  Carole wouldn’t have thought it possible for Barry Stilwell’s lips to get thinner, but they did, as he drew in a sceptical breath. ‘The only person at Renton and Chew who is a member of the Pillars of Sussex is Donald himself. As I said, nobody below senior partner level would stand a prayer.’

  ‘Oh. Well, it sounds like my friend may have been spun a line.’

  ‘I’d say so. Can you give me the name of the man who’s been having her on?’

  ‘Nigel Ackford.’

  Confirmation of Jude’s suspicion couldn’t have come in more convincing form. Barry Stilwell’s face closed over completely, and a moment passed before he had fully recovered himself.

  ‘Nigel Ackford?’ he repeated, doing a bad impression of someone who’d never heard the name before.

  ‘Yes,’ Carole lied blithely on. ‘He told my friend he was about to become a Pillar of Sussex. I think the expression he used was “a shoo-in”.’

  ‘He couldn’t have been more wrong. Nigel Ackford was – is – a very junior solicitor.’ The correction was a complete giveaway. Carole had offered no indication of knowing the young man was dead, and Barry Stilwell was not about to tell her. ‘He’s not even, I believe, a very good solicitor, so I would have thought the chances of his ever becoming a Pillar of Sussex are as likely as mine are of going to bed with Nicole Kidman.’

  The leer with which he accompanied this suggested that the loss was all Nicole Kidman’s.

  ‘Is it possible for bad solicitors to get jobs these days?’ asked Carole, all innocence.

  ‘Not a lot changes in the world,’ Barry replied sagely. ‘As ever, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. With the right contacts, even bad solicitors can still get taken on.’

  ‘So did Nigel Ackford know Donald Chew? Is that how it happened?’

  ‘No.’ The solicitor looked uncomfortable, but was saved from further explanation by the arrival of the starters. Or rather, of his starter. Carole, always a light luncher, had, in spite of her host’s blandishments, insisted that all she required was pasta con vongole as a main course.

  As she watched the familiarity with which Barry tucked into his tonno e fagioli, she was even more convinced that he knew the whole menu intimately. She waited till he had chomped his first mouthful before asking, ‘So, is there anything else you can tell me about Nigel Ackford?’

  ‘No. Just know the name. Never met him.’

  ‘But I thought you both attended the Pillars of Sussex dinner at Hopwicke Country House Hotel earlier this week.’

  The shock effect was very rewarding. Two beans and an arc of onion shot out onto Barry’s plate as he reached for his napkin. He wipe
d his mouth, and tried to curb his agitation, as he asked, ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Got a friend who was working there.’ Carole was enjoying juxtaposing the occasional truth with her lies.

  ‘Yes. Well, we were both there, but I didn’t meet Mr Ackford.’

  ‘There were only twenty of you. And I gathered he had to introduce himself formally to the whole group.’

  ‘Maybe. But I didn’t actually talk to him personally. Not on a one-to-one basis.’

  She let the silence run, and he looked relieved, hoping she was about to change the subject. Dashing his hopes, she revealed she knew about Nigel Ackford’s death in the hotel. ‘Were you aware at the time of what had happened, Barry?’

  He squirmed. ‘No. I had an early breakfast and left. Had to get into the office. I heard the news later.’

  ‘Someone phoned you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As no doubt they phoned round all the Pillars of Sussex?’

  ‘Presumably.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Just that the poor young man had been found dead; so we would know the news before it came on to the radio or television.’

  ‘It hasn’t yet come on to either the radio or the television, has it?’

  ‘Has it not? I don’t know.’

  ‘No. Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unexpected death in a public place like a hotel. You’d have thought the media’d be on to it by now.’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  ‘Unless of course someone was deliberately trying to suppress the news.’

  He shrugged, suggesting that her conjecture was possibly true, but that he had far more important things in his life to worry about.

  ‘Who rang you?’ asked Carole. ‘Was it someone from the Pillars of Sussex who told you to keep quiet about the death?’

  ‘I really can’t remember. And I was just given the information, told about what had happened. I wasn’t told to keep quiet.’

  ‘But who was it who rang?’ Carole persisted. Her slight inhibition about being directly rude to the solicitor had long since vanished. She didn’t like the man. She’d never liked him. She didn’t care what he thought of her.

  Barry Stilwell, however, was not to be drawn. For the next part of the lunch there was a distinct froideur between them. As he tucked into his saltimbocca à la Romana, he talked impersonally about local topics: the state of the beach at Worthing, the problem of vagrancy in Brighton, the prospects for the long-awaited by-pass at Arundel. And he resisted Carole’s every attempt to return the conversation to the subject of Nigel Ackford.

  She thought at least she’d dampened his romantic ardour, but he reverted to flirtatious mode as he pressed her – unsuccessfully – to have a dessert and ordered tiramisu with cream for himself. (Did he eat like this every day? Why on earth didn’t he put on weight? Carole decided that Barry Stilwell had a metabolic thinness of spirit that denied his body the comfort of fat.)

  She’d incautiously left her hand on the table again, and he picked it up as they waited for Mario to bring the coffee. ‘It really means a lot to me, seeing you again,’ he simpered. ‘You know I’ve always had a thing about you.’

  Carole found this hard to believe. She was a thin, grey-haired woman in her mid-fifties. Even at her supposed peak, she had had little of the sultry temptress about her. Still, there was no accounting for tastes. Maybe Barry was just desperate. She found herself wondering what Pomme was like, and what kind of married life they shared. The speculation was distasteful, but it wouldn’t go away.

  His hand was wrapped around hers like a slice of smoked salmon, but since she could not get free without overt rudeness, they stayed linked.

  ‘I’d like to think,’ Barry went on, ‘that there’s not such a gap before the next one.’

  ‘The next what?’

  ‘Meeting. Lunch. Whatever. I think it’s very sad we lost touch last time.’

  ‘Not that sad. You went off and got married.’ Which was a huge relief to me, she might have added.

  ‘Yes.’ He brought a boyish hangdog expression into his eyes. It didn’t suit him. ‘Who knows whether I’d have done that if I hadn’t lost touch with you?’

  Oh, no. This was getting beyond a joke.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll ring you. We must meet again.’ The smoked salmon tightened around her hand.

  ‘Are you talking about another lunch?’

  ‘Some evenings are also possible,’ he said cautiously. ‘Pomme does line-dancing on Thursdays. And I’ve got the Rotary on Tuesday evenings.’

  ‘But you couldn’t take me to the Rotary. I thought that was an all-male organization.’

  ‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘Except for our ladies’ nights.’ Then, with a shameless wink, he went on, ‘I do, however, have some very good friends in the Rotary. They wouldn’t rat on a chap if he didn’t turn up to the odd meeting.’

  Carole was flabbergasted. Their last encounter should have left Barry Stilwell in no doubt that she couldn’t stand him. Yet here he was coming on to her, unambiguously proposing they should have an affair. An affair whose logistics he seemed to have worked out in considerable detail.

  Fortunately, Mario’s arrival with the coffee got her hand unwrapped from the smoked salmon. For the rest of their lunch she contrived to avoid making an illicit assignation with her host. At the end, she managed to escape with only the lightest brush of face-cloth across her cheek.

  But, as she drove the Renault back to High Tor, Carole found herself shuddering with disbelief at what had just happened. The idea of being attractive to a man was not totally repellent to her. But being attractive to Barry Stilwell . . .

  Yuk.

  Chapter Twelve

  As she sat sipping her cappuccino and waiting for Wendy Fullerton, Jude reflected on the coffee-shop boom and how one clever idea could suddenly take over the world. People had drunk coffee for many centuries, but it was only in the late twentieth that they had started drinking overpriced and variegated coffees on sofas in chains of identical cafes. And so, many millions of pounds were made. But it couldn’t last, the boom must be nearing its end. The fact that there was such a coffee shop in Worthing seemed to prove her point. By the time trendy outlets start to open in dowdy venues, the smart money has already moved on.

  The girl was only a little late. She wore a blue suit over a patterned blue-and-red shirt. Though better tailored than building society uniforms used to be, the ensemble still expressed little personality. Short dark hair with a reddish colouring and heavy make-up, which should have made her stand out, somehow seemed to have the opposite effect. They provided a mask, a perverse kind of anonymity.

  Wendy Fullerton recognized Jude from the description given over the phone. All she wanted to drink was still mineral water. She sat impassively by while Jude fetched a bottle and glass from the counter. There was no expression behind the mascara or the perfectly outlined metallic claret lips. Wendy’s hands, nails varnished in the same colour as the lips, lay still on her lap. She was giving nothing away; any effort would have to be made by Jude.

  After another sip of cappuccino, Jude embarked on her mission. ‘As I said, I was working up at Hopwicke House the night Nigel Ackford died.’

  ‘Doing what?’ asked Wendy Fullerton.

  ‘Waitressing.’

  The girl nodded, as if this were significant information.

  Quickly, and without sounding judgmental, Jude told her how she had found Nigel drunk in the corridor in the small hours.

  ‘He always drank a lot when he was nervous,’ Wendy volunteered, almost as if this were a justification. ‘And he was very worried about that Pillars of Sussex meeting.’

  ‘You imply you knew he was going to it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had heard your relationship ended four months ago.’

  ‘We stopped living together then. It just didn’t work, so he went back to his p
lace.’

  ‘How long did you live together?’

  Jude’s questions were so gentle that it didn’t feel like an interrogation. The girl answered fluently, ‘Only about nine weeks.’

  ‘But you’d known each other for some time?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’d been knocking around together for four years – longer – on and off.’

  ‘And then he moved in?’

  ‘Mm. But like I say, it didn’t work. Nigel was too intense, too moody for me.’

  ‘So was that the complete end, when he moved out?’

  ‘No. We stayed in touch. Lots of phone calls, texting each other. Met for the odd meal, but it wasn’t really working.’

  ‘Because of his moods?’

  The doll-like head nodded. ‘Yes. And I was sort of thinking, time’s moving on. I’m twenty-eight next birthday, and Nigel was, like, drifting. Still living in a rented flat. He wasn’t looking ahead. He didn’t really have any ambition.’

  Jude could see it all. Perhaps too young to be worrying about her biological clock, Wendy was worried about her aspirational clock. No doubt she had contemporaries who were getting married, contemporaries with impressive boyfriends carving out careers for themselves. Nigel Ackford wasn’t providing her with that kind of prospect. Her work probably didn’t help either. Building societies are magnets for young couples, full of plans to set up home together, to get their stake in the booming property market, to mortgage their lives away. Wendy would be dealing with people like that every day. And Nigel was still living in a rented flat. If the relationship wasn’t going to go the distance to the destination of fitted kitchens, integral garages and babies, then Wendy had thrown away four years of her life, and had better move on quickly to find an alternative prospective partner.

  ‘But Nigel was doing well, wasn’t he?’ Jude suggested.

  Before the girl could answer, she was interrupted by the trill of a mobile phone. She took it out of her pocket, checked the number calling and pressed a button.