by Simon Brett
‘Oh, but they have,’ said a new voice, as Carole Seddon stepped into the bar.
‘What?’ Bob Hartson’s demeanour changed completely. He looked as if he had just received a heavy punch in the stomach.
‘You should be careful,’ Carole went on, ‘when you use someone else to do your dirty work. There’s always a danger they may go freelance and start doing things off their own bat. Like attacking Karl Floyd. Like trying to attack me – and breaking down my front door!’ she added indignantly.
‘Where is he?’ Bob Hartson gasped.
‘In the kitchen. Where do you expect him to be?’ asked Carole. ‘That’s his proper place.’
‘I’ll go and get him,’ said Suzy.
A moment later, she returned through the dining room, and resumed her seat. The man who had followed her from the kitchen stood framed in the doorway, looking in amazement round the group in front of him. Finally, his eyes rested on Bob Hartson.
‘What is this? What’s going on?’ he asked.
The developer seemed to have recovered some of his composure. ‘Oh, it’s very simple. You’ve just been accused of two murders.’ He turned to Carole. ‘Or is it three? You didn’t say whether Karl Floyd was dead or alive.’
‘Alive. Badly beaten, but alive.’
Bob Hartson turned back to the man in the doorway. ‘Two murders and one GBH, I reckon it is then.’
‘But there’s no way I could have done the first one. I was fast asleep in the stable block.’
‘No,’ said Jude coolly. ‘You were supposed to be in the stable block, but when I checked the chambermaids’ check sheets for that night, it turns out you were actually in one of the rooms inside the hotel.’
‘I didn’t know anything about that,’ said Suzy.
‘No. But I think I know who organized it.’
Under the probing beam of Jude’s look, the way Kerry Hartson turned away her tear-stained face was sufficient admission of guilt.
The man in the doorway appealed to Bob Hartson. ‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it? They can’t prove anything, can they?’
The property developer smiled a hard smile. ‘I could say I saw you do Nigel Ackford.’
‘But you didn’t. You weren’t there. You’d got an alibi with Donald Chew. That was the whole point.’
‘Hm.’ Bob Hartson’s self-confidence seemed to be returning very quickly. ‘I certainly didn’t see you kill Donald Chew. And the attack on Karl Floyd – the first I heard of such a thing was when this lady mentioned it a minute ago.’
‘But I thought it was what you’d want, Bob. Suzy rang to the car while you were on site. She told me that woman Carole was going to meet Karl Floyd. I thought you’d want to stop that. I thought that was what you’d want, Bob.’ The was pathos in his repetition of the line.
The developer shook his head sagely. ‘Very risky, to try and imagine what other people might want, Geoff.’ He looked his driver straight in the eye. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling these good people that I wanted Nigel and Donald dead.’
‘But you did. You told me to get rid of them.’
‘Doesn’t sound like me.’ Bob Hartson turned to his wife. ‘Does it, Sandra?’
‘No,’ she said weakly.
‘Not my usual style at all.’ He rose from his chair and moved towards the bewildered chauffeur. ‘I think you must have got the wrong end of the stick, Geoff. And that’s a dangerous thing to do when you’ve been inside twice for GBH.’
‘But, Bob, you told me—’
‘I don’t think you’ve got any proof of that, Geoff.’
‘You bastard!’
Quick as a flash, a gun appeared in the chauffeur’s hand.
Even quicker, Bob Hartson’s hand bunched into a fist and shot up into the man’s jaw.
The bullet hit the bar-room ceiling before the gun smashed into the wall.
As his chauffeur crumpled on to the floor, Bob Hartson looked back at his guests and gatecrashers. ‘Well, say thank you. I think I saved at least one person’s life there.’
Then he looked up as Inspector Goodchild came into the room. ‘Reg, good to see you. I’d assumed Carole would call you over here.’ He pointed to the heap on the floor behind him. ‘There’s your murderer.’
Chapter Forty-Two
The pub was full, but Carole and Jude felt a distinct atmosphere of disappointment around the Crown and Anchor when the news came through that Bob Hart-son’s chauffeur Geoffrey Gardner had been charged on two counts of murder and one of grievous bodily harm. The police knew they’d get him on the last count, because Karl Floyd had identified Gardner as the man who attacked him, but they were surprised when the driver admitted to the murders of Nigel Ackford and Donald Chew.
The accused kept insisting that he had done the killings under the express instructions of his boss, Bob Hartson, but could produce no proof to back up his assertions. Since Geoffrey Gardner had a prison record for violent crime and Bob Hartson had never been charged with anything, the police were inclined to the view that Gardner was simply trying to shift the blame. And since Bob Hartson would certainly engage the best lawyers money could buy, the police view was unlikely to change.
As Carole and Jude sat over their Chilean Chardonnay in the bar that evening they tried for the umpteenth time to think of a single scrap of evidence against Bob Hartson. ‘There must be something we’ve forgotten,’ Jude insisted. ‘Something that hasn’t been explained.’
Carole removed her rimless glasses and polished them thoughtfully with a handkerchief. ‘Well, I suppose the only thing that hasn’t been explained is what happened to the note Donald Chew left in Nigel Ackford’s bedroom.’
‘That’s true.’ Jude perked up instantly. ‘Yes. Kerry found it, and gave it to Suzy. She showed it to me, and then later in the evening it had disappeared from her apron pocket.’
‘There’s probably some perfectly simple—’
But before Carole had time to defuse the idea, Jude had her mobile phone out and was moving excitedly towards the pub door. ‘I’m going to ring Suzy. Too noisy in here.’ And she was gone.
‘You look like a cat that’s had its mouse taken away.’
At the sound, Carole looked up to register that Ted Crisp had joined her.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, I . . . Jude’s just finding something out for me.’
‘Oh yeah? Well, if you’re trying to nail Bob Hartson, you have my full support.’
Carole looked puzzled. Ted nodded his head towards the old milk depot behind the pub. ‘Work starts on that site Monday week.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘And it’s one of Bob Hartson’s companies that’ll be doing it.’
The landlord’s news did nothing to improve Carole’s mood.
But at that moment, Jude came rushing back into the pub, and her bubbling manner suggested that maybe all hope was not completely lost.
‘I talked to Suzy. She knows what happened to the missing note!’
‘Really!’
Ted Crisp hadn’t a clue what was going on, but he wasn’t about to interrupt their euphoria by seeking explanations.
‘Yes. Kerry talked to her about it some time last week. It was Kerry who removed the note from the apron!’
‘Why?’
‘This is the good bit . . .’ Excitement sparkled in Jude’s brown eyes. ‘Kerry mentioned to her father she’d found the note, when she saw him at the dinner, and Bob Hartson insisted she should take the note back and destroy it. Well, don’t you see what that means?’
‘What?’ asked Carole, confused, but beginning to catch her friend’s childlike elation.
‘Bob Hartson didn’t want anything suspicious connected with Nigel Ackford’s room! That apparently threatening note was bound to alert the police to something funny going on. The fact that he asked Kerry to destroy the note means Bob Hartson knew that the murder was going to take place!’
‘Yes,’ Carole sighed with satisfaction.
‘Yes,’ Jude echoed.
‘Erm . . .’ Ted Crisp broke into their microclimate of mutual bliss, ‘I don’t fully know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to put a damper on proceedings or anything but are you saying you’ve now actually got proof against Bob Hartson?’
‘Yes.’
‘Proof that would stand up in court?’
‘Well . . .’ But Jude was in no mood to have her enthusiasm dented. ‘Yes, we have. If the police only use their imagination and —’
‘Inspector Goodchild use his imagination?’ asked Carole, beginning to absorb the moisture from Ted’s wet blanket.
‘Of course,’ Jude brazened on. ‘Then if we can get Kerry to stand up in court and repeat what she told Suzy . . .’
‘And what’s the likelihood of that happening?’ Carole’s question was bleak. ‘Kerry shopping her own father, after all this?’
The sudden flare of excitement had fizzled out. The atmosphere of disappointment reasserted itself. All three of them found themselves looking out through the pub window to the old milk depot.
Seeing the site of Bob Hartson’s next highly profitable project served only to turn the knife in their wounds. There had to be some way they could nail him.
Karl Floyd was out of hospital when Carole and Jude went to visit him, but he moved with difficulty, his arm was still in plaster, and the healing scabs on his face would leave him scarred for life.
He hadn’t been keen on the idea of a meeting, and pretty soon after their arrival he made clear why. As soon as Carole mentioned the names Bob Hartson and Geoffrey Gardner, Karl stopped her. ‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with that.’
‘What? But come on, I thought it was your ambition to be a crusading journalist?’
‘Yes, it was. It’s not now.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Jude.
The young man made a painful, open-armed gesture, as if his broken body was answer enough.
Carole tried to bring him back to a proper sense of duty. ‘You’ve got all that information. All that stuff on your computer about Renton and Chew, about the Pillars of Sussex and—’
‘I’ve wiped it.’
‘All?’
‘Yes. I’m giving up journalism.’
‘What does your father think about that?’ asked Carole. ‘I thought you were named after Carl Bernstein.’
‘My father doesn’t know yet.’
‘But, Karl,’ Carole insisted, ‘you’ve got nothing to be frightened of. The man who beat you up is in prison, and will be staying there for a long, long time.’
The boy looked at her sardonically. ‘And you think Bob Hartson isn’t capable of finding another heavy?’
There was disbelief in Carole’s voice as she asked, ‘Are you actually saying the beating you received has frightened you off?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
There was a silence before Jude spoke. ‘What are you going to do instead of journalism?’
‘Nothing for a while.’ Karl Floyd spoke with new confidence. ‘I’m going to buy a couple of flats – live in one, get rent from the other – and spend a bit of time working out the next stage of my career.’
‘And where are you getting the money to do that?’ asked Carole huffily. ‘As I recall, you told me this flat was rented.’
‘Yes,’ he replied coolly. ‘I came into some money.’
‘Where from?’
‘An aunt died.’
However much they questioned him further, the dead aunt was the story he stuck with. And in that way maybe the career of another fledgling property tycoon began.
The one unarguable fact that came out of their encounter with Karl Floyd was the sad reality that bullying – and, come to that, bribery – are often very effective.
So Bob Hartson thrived. The Pillars of Sussex and all his other local connections closed ranks around him and, as ever, by the judicious application of influence and incentives, his profits continued to grow.
Local business continued to be conducted in the way it always had been conducted. Very little was done that was actually against the law, nobody was so indelicate as to use words like ‘bribery’, but the skills of knowing and nurturing the right people continued to work their timeless magic.
Suzy Longthorne kept on running Hopwicke Country House Hotel and gradually her hard work turned its fortunes round. Max Townley continued as her chef, and continued to complain that his talents were under-appreciated. Rick Hendry had fulfilled the promise to help Max’s television career through Korfilia Productions, but after one screen-test had been shown to the BBC, Max was dropped as being ‘too like all the other television chefs’. So he had to confine his tantrums and his cheery singing to the audience of his own kitchen.
Kerry Hartson didn’t fare much better in the new series of Pop Crop. The format had been changed so that, though a hundred hopefuls were shown in the first programme, a mere ten went through to the next stage. Only the chosen ten were seen and heard singing on television. Kerry was not one of them. She was just in the ensemble shots, queuing for her precious audition.
But failure to achieve pop celebrity did not change Kerry’s life much. Her stepfather continued to buy her everything she announced she wanted. He was assiduous in going round virtually every day to her Brighton flat, ‘to see that she was all right’. And Sandra Hartson continued to worry about the precise nature of her husband’s relationship with her daughter.
Rick Hendry milked pop-wannabee television for everything it was worth, and shrewdly got out when he saw the bubble was about to burst. He retired to count his money and work out in what form he would reincarnate himself for his sixties. He almost completely lost touch with Suzy Longthorne.
Wendy Fullerton continued to work at the building society and to put on ever-heavier make-up. She continued looking for Mr Right, though with an increasing conviction that the man she had once lived with was probably as near as she would ever get.
Barry Stilwell, after his daring foray into the possibilities of extramarital sex, stayed at home more than ever under the thumb of Pomme. But he still got out now and then to vilify women at Rotary and Pillars of Sussex meetings.
Brenda Chew, greatly relieved no longer to have Donald around, threw herself ever more vigorously into charitable works, for which she was never as well appreciated as she should have been. Much of her effort was directed towards Pillars of Sussex events. Because, as its members never ceased to tell people, the primary purpose of their organization was charitable. The fact that members might make useful business contacts at Pillars of Sussex meetings was just a serendipitous by-product of their activities.
Jude’s friendship with Suzy survived the lies. And she still received regular SOS calls from Hopwicke Country House Hotel, when yet another of the waitresses had defected.
Carole Seddon got to know her son’s fiancée. Through Gaby, she began to get to know Stephen. And increasingly she dreaded the moment when she would have to meet David again. As for the wedding scheduled for the fourteenth of September, she viewed that prospect with trepidation, but also with a little excitement.
THE WITNESS AT THE WEDDING
Carole Seddon’s son is soon to be married and as wedding plans commence Marie and Harold, parents of the bride, seem unusually desperate to keep their daughter’s big day as low-key as possible. But the wedding soon takes a back seat when Harold’s body is found . . . in a burnt-out car in Epping Forest.
While the family try to deal with their grief, Carole discovers they are concealing secrets that can be traced back thirty years, to the murder of Marie’s best friend. What’s more, the girl’s killer has been released from prison and is back in his old stomping ground, near Fethering . . .
Now Carole fears the bride-to-be is the killer’s new target. But can she, with the help of her friend Jude, unravel the family’s past before he makes another deadly move?
‘One of the exceptional detective story-writers around’
Dail
y Mail
The Witness at the Wedding, the sixth novel in the Fethering Mysteries series, is published by Pan Books.
The opening scenes follow here.
Chapter One
‘Oh, I didn’t tell you there’s a history of murder in my fiancée’s family, did I?’
The speaker was Stephen, Carole Seddon’s son, and as soon as he’d said the words, she wished he hadn’t. Everything had been going well up until that point. Carole was entertaining Stephen and Gaby on her own ground, over lunch in the Crown and Anchor pub in Fethering, and discussion of the wedding arrangements had been harmonious, even at times exciting.
But Gaby hadn’t liked the mention of murder. The bubbliness of her personality had been instantly punctured, and she looked pained as she turned to her fiancé and said, ‘You’re exaggerating. I don’t think local gossip qualifies as a “history of murder”.’
To give him his due, he did back off very quickly, aware that he had crossed a threshold into forbidden territory. Carole was again surprised by her son’s sensitivity. In Gaby’s company Stephen displayed sides of his personality whose existence his mother had never suspected . . . or, Carole thought ruefully, had never taken the trouble to explore. She still didn’t ever feel quite at ease with her son, still a little guilty for her lack of instinctive maternal feelings, for her part in the break-up of the marriage to his father David.
And as she looked across at him, she was again struck by how like Stephen was to a distorted image from her own mirror. He had the same earnest and potentially cold pale blue eyes, which peered through similar rimless glasses. Though not yet as uniformly grey as her own, his hair had a patina of silver over it. His relationship with Gaby had considerably lightened his personality, but there had always been hanging about Stephen an aura of the middle-aged. Though only in his early thirties, he looked older.