The Hanging in the Hotel (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  Jude was just rolling up her mat when the phone rang. It was Max Townley. And he sounded ill at ease. He wanted to talk. Jude suggested lunch at the Crown & Anchor.

  “Your death’s made it to the Fethering Observer,” said Ted Crisp.

  “What?” said Jude, spluttering in her Chilean Chardonnay. “But I haven’t even been ill.”

  “Listen, I do the jokes. Actually, I was talking about that solicitor you mentioned up at Hopwicke House.”

  “Really?”

  “Look.” The landlord thrust over the counter a copy of the local paper, folded to an inside page. There, amidst two-inch reports of thefts from cars in Littlehampton car parks, monies raised by a sponsored cycle ride, and the appointment of a new primary school head, was a snippet that read:

  HOTEL DEATH—Worthing solicitor Nigel Ackford was found dead in his room at a local hotel. The cause of death is as yet unknown. Ackford’s employer, Donald Chew, Senior Partner of the long-established firm Renton & Chew, said, “Nigel Ackford was a very promising young man. He will be sorely missed.”

  “How do they do it?” asked Jude in disbelief.

  “Do what?”

  “Keep all the facts out. Look, no mention of the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. No mention of the Pillars of Sussex.”

  “I think your last four words have answered your own question, Jude. The Pillars of Sussex have got fingers in most of the local pies. If they want to control what gets printed, I’m sure they can lean on someone at the Fethering Observer.”

  “But that’s illegal, isn’t it?” Jude protested. “Leaning on people?”

  “Good heavens, no.” Ted Crisp adopted a mock-posh accent as he went on, “The Pillars of Sussex only lean in the most elegant and discreet way. They don’t send round the heavies with nail-studded baseball bats . . . nothing crude like that. Oh no. But they might offer someone fast-track entry to the exclusive local golf club . . . or smooth the granting of planning permission for a new extension . . . or issue an invitation for an all-expenses-paid week in a Spanish villa. None of it’s actually illegal, it’s just the way business has always been conducted in this country. And to think all that’s continuing under a so-called Labour government.” Ted Crisp’s beard shook with fury. “Don’t get me started.”

  “No,” said Jude hastily. “No, I don’t want to.”

  “I mean, the thing is . . .” Apparently he hadn’t heard her. “The thing is, the Labour Party was founded to look after the working people of this country, to challenge the kind of unfair system of privilege by which a tiny percentage of the people controlled a huge percentage of . . .”

  Jude was quite relieved that Max Townley chose that moment to enter the Crown & Anchor. He was in his black leathers—no doubt the precious Ducati was parked outside—and he looked distinctly nervous.

  Jude introduced him to Ted, whose flow he had so mercifully interrupted. “What would you like to drink?”

  “No, I should do this, Jude.”

  “Come on.”

  “All right. Don’t normally drink at lunchtime, but I’ll have a half of Guinness.”

  “I’m going to eat something. What about you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s only pub food, but—”

  She knew she’d said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out. “Only pub food?” Ted Crisp repeated. “Only pub food? What is this?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that”—this was going to make things sound even worse—“Max is a chef.”

  Framed by beard, the landlord’s mouth opened and closed in soundless affront. Fortunately, before he could say anything, Max Townley eased the situation. “Yes, I’m a chef, but I’ve served my time working in pubs, and that’s where I’ve come across some of the best food I’ve ever encountered.”

  “Too right,” said Ted Crisp, somewhat mollified.

  “So what do you recommend today?” asked Max, continuing the fence-mending.

  “You won’t go wrong with the pork chops Normandie.”

  “Done with apple, calvados and cream in the sauce?”

  “Exactly.”

  Max nodded. “I’ll go for that.”

  Ted Crisp grinned with satisfaction and looked at Jude. “And for Madam?”

  “I suppose I’d better go for the same.” But she was bewildered. “Doesn’t sound like your usual menu, Ted. I was expecting fisherman’s pie and sausage and mash.”

  “New chef,” the landlord confided with a conspiratorial wink. “At catering college in Chichester, but moonlighting here a couple of days a week.”

  Max approved. “That’s the time to get them. I did some of my best stuff while I was training. I’ll look forward to my pork chops Normandie. Wish the chef luck from Max Townley. Ooh, and let me pay for the food.”

  This assertion of his own fame and the chat with Ted Crisp seemed to have relaxed the chef, but once he was seated in a booth opposite Jude, his nervousness returned. “Suzy sent her love,” he said.

  “Oh. So she knew you were meeting me?”

  He shrugged. “I just mentioned it.”

  Jude had a feeling a lot of things were being “just mentioned” on the grapevine between Hopwicke Country House Hotel and the Pillars of Sussex.

  “I haven’t had my usual emergency calls from Suzy to go and help out.”

  “No, well, we just haven’t been busy.”

  Jude knew from Carole that the dining room had been crammed full for Sunday lunch. So Max was lying about that. How much else would he lie about?

  He took a sip from his Guinness and became more serious. “Listen, I owe you an explanation, Jude.”

  “Oh?”

  “When we last talked . . . you know, in that coffee place . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I wasn’t entirely truthful in what I said.”

  She didn’t respond, just waited for him to continue.

  “I said I hit the vodka and just passed out for the night.”

  “Yes. So you didn’t see anything of what other people in the hotel were doing.”

  “That’s right. That’s what I said, but—” He ran his fingers through his short black hair. This wasn’t coming easily to him. “—in fact, I did see some people that night.”

  Jude let the silence expand between them.

  “The thing is . . . I told you about Rick Hendry being there, at Suzy’s place . . . and . . . I said that I’d thought of going to talk to him, you know, about my possibilities in television . . . through Korfilia Productions.”

  “You mentioned that, yes.”

  “Well . . . In fact, I did. I didn’t just think about going to see Rick. I did go to talk to him. I mean, knowing he was there so close . . . I was just in the staff quarters; he was at Suzy’s. When would I get a better opportunity? And I was in such a bad state, having heard that afternoon about the failure of my other television pitch, and yes, I was a bit pissed . . . so I thought I’d really go for it.”

  Just like Kerry, thought Jude. Clearly the recipe for television success was to “really go for it.”

  “So you went and asked Rick Hendry whether he would help launch your career as a television chef?”

  “Yes.”

  Max’s confession was interrupted by the arrival of their pork chops Normandie. He sniffed the sauce appraisingly and poked at the dish of vegetables to assess their texture.

  “Sorry, Jude. Occupational hazard.”

  “Can’t you ever forget your work and just enjoy a meal?”

  “Oh, sure. I eat all kinds of rubbish and don’t notice. But when I’m sitting down to a meal where I know the chef’s trying . . .”

  “And this one is?”

  “You bet.” He dabbed his knife into the sauce and tasted it off the point. “He’s succeeding too, I’d say.”

  They started eating the food, which was indeed excellent, and Jude waited. This time she knew she wouldn’t need to prompt Max. They were working to his agenda; sooner or later he’d get b
ack into his confession.

  Sooner, as it turned out. “So, anyway, that night I did go and see Rick at Suzy’s place.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And did he say he’d take you on, get Korfilia Productions to nurture your television career?”

  He seemed surprised by the question. “No, he said that wasn’t really their kind of show. But he was okay about it. Generous. You know, he listened to me while we had a few drinks.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I suppose I went over about quarter past twelve . . .”

  Jude did the calculations. At that time the Pillars of Sussex had still been carousing in the bar.

  “And I stayed till Suzy came back from the hotel.”

  Half-past two, quarter to three.

  “So that was it? You didn’t see anyone else, apart from Suzy and Rick?”

  Max Townley cut off a small cube of pork, put it in his mouth and chewed. When he’d finished, he looked Jude straight in the eyes. “Yes, I did see some other people.”

  “Who?”

  He dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I went back to my room, full of Rick’s vodka—well, Suzy’s vodka—but I didn’t pass out straightaway. I was quite wakeful, actually, so I thought, to put me off to sleep, I’d . . . You know that thing, when you’ve been drinking a lot, you want just one more drink? The final nightcap?”

  Jude nodded.

  “That’s how it was with me. So I went back into the hotel to raid the bar.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Quarter past three, I suppose. Something like that.”

  “I was already in bed by then. I’d locked the kitchen door.”

  “I wondered who’d done that. But—” He produced a big bunch on a chain from his pocket. “—I have my own keys. So I let myself in and, while I was in the bar, I heard some people coming downstairs. It was Kerry, and her stepfather, and that old guy . . . you know, one of the Pillocks. Bald, red-faced . . . the one who arrived early to check the details for the dinner.”

  “Donald Chew?”

  “That’s right. Anyway, they were chatting—sounded like they’d had a few drinks—and I heard them saying good-night to Kerry, and she went out through the kitchen to her room. Then I came out of the bar, and the old bloke was just going up the stairs to bed, but Kerry’s Dad saw me, and he asked if I could find him a bottle of Scotch and put it on his bill. So I did. He went upstairs to bed, and I went back out through the kitchen to my room, locking the door behind me.”

  Max finished on a note of barely disguised triumph. He had told her everything he had to tell her.

  And Jude didn’t believe a word of it.

  His duty discharged, as soon as he’d mopped up the last of his Normandie sauce with a piece of bread, Max announced that he had to get back to the hotel. There was a special lobster dish that needed preparing for that night’s dinner.

  Before he left, he asked permission from Ted Crisp and went through to have a quick word with the chef. When he returned, he took Jude’s hand in his, focused his blue eyes on her brown ones and said, “I’m sorry about all the confusion, Jude, but I really do feel better for having made a clean breast of it. Better late than never, eh?”

  And Max Townley was gone.

  As she quietly sipped her way through another Chardonnay, Jude sorted out the implications of what Max had told her. Rick Hendry and Suzy Longthorne now seemed to be in the clear. Max Townley had been with Rick for the first hours, and presumably Suzy could vouch for him for the rest of the night.

  And, assuming there hadn’t been a conspiracy between Bob Hartson, his stepdaughter and Donald Chew, no suspicion could attach to Kerry. She’d been drinking with her father and his solicitor until Max had seen her leave the hotel for the stable block. The kitchen door had subsequently been locked and, though the chef possessed keys, Kerry didn’t. So she couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder.

  There were many reasons why Jude felt sure Max had been lying to her. He had betrayed himself by the suddenness of his approach, the command he’d shown over details of timing, the unnecessary production of his hotel keys as a visual aid. Everything was too convenient, too pat, to be spontaneous.

  That being the case, the question then arose: Who had set him up? Who had wanted him to lie, and what inducements had they used to persuade him to do so?

  Jude analysed the benefits to individuals of the new set of circumstances, as detailed by Max, and soon decided that the significant figure in the scenario was Kerry. At the time of Nigel Ackford’s death, the girl was safely outside the hotel, actually locked outside the hotel.

  But very little suspicion had ever been attached to Kerry. The spelling-out of her movements was not to clear her of implication in the murder. It must have been for another reason.

  Suddenly Jude understood. Max Townley had not been leant on by Bob Hartson. Indeed, his new version of events did not help Bob Hartson at all. It left Kerry’s father and Donald Chew both on the loose in the hotel at the relevant time. They had no alibis.

  One detail was needed to confirm that she was right. With a hurried explanation to the bewildered Ted Crisp, Jude went into the pub kitchen. There she confronted the equally bewildered and very young student chef responsible for their excellent pork chops Normandie.

  Yes, he’d been well pleased that Max Townley had liked his cooking. Of course he’d heard of the chef up at Hopwicke House. And yes, Max Townley had asked him for his contact numbers.

  “Why?” asked Jude.

  “Because there’s a good chance he’s going to be doing a telly series. Going to be a different format from all the other TV cookery programmes—include lots of new young chefs.” The young man beamed. “That’s why Max Townley was interested in me. He’s going to make a pilot programme soon, and he’s looking for young chefs for that.”

  Jude had been right. The incentive for Max to lie had been the backing of Korfilia Productions in the realisation of his television dreams. And the offer had been made by Rick Hendry.

  And the important part of the lie was that it established Kerry was still with her stepfather when Suzy returned to join her ex-husband. In other words, there was no time at which Rick Hendry and Kerry Hartson could have been alone together.

  Which, for a television personality being hounded by the tabloids over his interest in young girls, could be a very significant point of self-protection.

  30

  THE REVISED WILL was on Donald Chew’s desk when Carole was ushered into his office. She reflected rather sourly that the document could have been on his desk by the end of their previous meeting. A few sentences added to a standard form and the job was done. The inventions of word-processing, faxes and e-mail must have reduced the workload of solicitors enormously. But respect for “the law’s delay” was one of the foundations of their professional principles—and certainly of their fee structure. So in a provincial practice like Renton & Chew, everything had to take a long time, and all communications be sent by post.

  After another bonhomous Dickensian welcome and an accepted offer of coffee, Donald Chew asked her to “run her eye” over the will and check that it was now in the form that she wished. If it wasn’t, the document would no doubt be removed for the lengthy changing of a couple of words and another appointment be made for a further meeting.

  Having scrutinised the insertions and then, as a double-check, read through the whole will, Carole agreed that the changes had been made according to her instructions. Since that was the moment her coffee arrived, Donald Chew suggested that, if she were happy about the arrangement, Carole’s signature could be witnessed straightaway by himself and his receptionist.

  Their business was done. Carole could think of no pretext on which she could extend the encounter, but she did not need to. Donald Chew seemed happy—even keen—to talk further. This could have been part of his usual professional manner, but she had a feeling he had an agenda to
elicit information from her, or to impart some to her. So she was content to let his pleasantries unroll.

  “Delighted you got in touch with Brenda,” he began. “She’s always so pleased to have extra helpers”—he chuckled—“though often she ends up having to do a lot of things herself.” Decades of marriage had taught Donald Chew the party line on his wife’s perpetual martyrdom.

  “Well, anything I can do to help. It’s in a good cause.”

  “Oh yes. And Brenda was very grateful for the Promise you organised. What was it? Callanetics?”

  “Kinesiology.”

  “Ah,” he said with a masculine chuckle. “Something for the ladies, anyway.”

  “No. In fact, kinesiology is a highly respected natural health care system.” What on earth was happening? Carole Seddon defending alternative therapies?

  “I’m sure. Anyway, very grateful to you for organising it. And will you be at the Auction of Promises itself, Mrs. Seddon?”

  Carole hadn’t entirely decided about this, but she thought she probably should be. A hundred and fifty pounds was a huge amount to shell out for what would probably be an uncongenial evening, but contact with Hopwicke Country House Hotel remained important. And if, as it seemed, Jude was temporarily persona non grata there.

  “Yes, I would like to. The trouble is, I don’t know anyone . . .”

  “Nonsense. You know Brenda. Have a word with her. She’ll see you’re put on our table.” He decided that this was perhaps more than he could promise on his wife’s behalf. “Or at least on a table with a nice bunch of people.”

  “I’ll give her a call about it.”

  “Good. Good.” He looked out at the sea through his office window. “Never tire of that view, you know. Lovely, isn’t it? The sea. Never still, always changing.”

  This moment of poetry from the solicitor was unexpected, until Carole realised that he was just playing for time. Donald Chew was tense. There was something he needed to say to her, and he was having difficulty getting round to it.

  She agreed that the view was lovely, and waited.