A Death at Dinner: An amateur sleuth murder mystery (A Mary Blake Mystery Book 2)

by AG Barnett

  “How do you mean?” Pea asked as they came to a stop outside the doors of the hotel.

  “Well you know the reputation chefs have, all swearing and bossing people about and things, but Anna doesn’t seem like that at all. In fact, it was like Ruth was a concerned parent or something.”

  Pea sighed and looked up at the hotel next to them. “This also explains why breakfast was not up to scratch.”

  “Not that it seemed to slow you down any,” Dot said, raising an eyebrow at him. “So what’s the plan now?”

  “This has got to be centred on the kitchen,” Mary said. “That’s where Thomas worked, that’s where he was planning to quit and leave them high and dry, and it’s also where he was killed. The answer has to be there somewhere.”

  “Right,” Pea said, clapping his hands together, “I’m about ready to eat again, so the restaurant works for me!”

  Dot and Mary rolled their eyes simultaneously as the three of them headed inside.

  As soon as they had climbed the short steps and entered through the wide, old doors of the Rudolph Hotel, Mary heard her name being called from across the high-ceilinged lobby.

  “Mary! Just the lady I wanted to talk to!” She turned to her right, where Roderick Sutton was halfway through the door to the bar area when he had clearly turned and spotted her entering.

  Mary looked at the others, who had halted on the smooth wood floor. “You two go on and I’ll catch you up.”

  Dot frowned but turned away towards the direction of the restaurant after Pea, who had already set off at pace.

  “Roderick,” Mary said, forcing a smile to her face. “How can I help?”

  “Come on through,” Roderick said, holding the bar door open. “We’ll have to serve our own drinks, I’m afraid, as everything’s shut, but I pour better measures in any case.” He gave her a wink as she passed while he held the door open, and she felt a small quiver of repulsion.

  Roderick Sutton wasn’t an ugly man. Despite his rather large Roman nose, which stuck out of his narrow face like a shark fin, his high cheekbones and dark eyes had a certain handsomeness to them. For Mary, though, there was something inherently unlikeable about the man, something creepy. She had thought so on first being introduced to him and now, having heard how Spencer talked of him, the feeling had only hardened. He had the look of a smooth operator, or more accurately, someone who thought they were. He was in his late thirties but had a kind of boyish nature that made even these modest years seem too many. His loose quiff of dark hair flopped around on his headband and required constant pulling back into place with his long fingers, something that seemed to Mary almost an unconscious habit.

  He moved swiftly behind the bar and began making gin and tonics for both of them.

  “I know you like a G&T, saw you have one the other day. I’m quite partial myself.”

  Mary took a seat on one of the padded barstools. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked, keen to get to the point so she could extradite herself from here and get to the restaurant.

  “What do you make of Parchester?” Roderick asked, completely ignoring her.

  “It seems like a pretty little town,” Mary answered. Now she thought about it, she had barely given any thought to her surroundings since she had arrived. She made a mental note to correct this in future. Who knew what information you might glean from observing a place closely?

  She surprised herself by suddenly feeling guilty and ashamed at the realisation she was trying to think like a detective. Was there some part of her brain that was planning to take on future cases?

  “It’s pretty enough,” Roderick said as he slid her G&T across the bar to her, “but it suffers from a lack of ambition.”

  “Can a town have ambition?”

  “Well it should have if it knows what's good for it.” Roderick laughed as he leaned forward and planted his elbows on the polished wood of the bar next to her. “These places are always little bustling things full of small businesses and gossip until the corporations turn up. Once there’s a big new shopping centre on the outskirts of town, things will look pretty different here.”

  “Maybe not for the better,” Mary said, eyebrows raised.

  Roderick laughed again. “Of course it will be for the better! More jobs, more money sloshing around the place. Instead of the young people of the town leaving for the city to find work, they can stay here, enjoy the scenery and still earn decent money.”

  Mary sensed there was something else at play here, that Roderick was merely laying the groundwork before getting to the reason he had wanted to speak to her. “You're talking about this as if it’s going to happen?” she asked innocently.

  His eyes sparkled as one corner of his mouth rose in a smile. “You’re an intelligent woman, Miss Blake. Yes, I have been privy to plans that might change things around here.”

  “And let me guess,” Mary said, the penny finally dropping, “somehow this is tied up with you wanting to sell the hotel?”

  He smiled, looked down at his drink and swirled it, making the ice cubes clink. “Spencer is a bit of an old romantic,” he said. “He gets attached to things and it means he can’t see things clearly.”

  “How did you and he end up partners in this?” Mary asked, it only just occurring to her what odd bedfellows they were.

  “He’s an old friend of the family,” Roderick answered lightly. He looked at her with a grin. “As you’ll know with your background, people from ‘old money’ stick together.”

  “So your family encouraged Spencer to work with you?”

  “No family left,” he said in a hollow voice, the smile vanishing from his lips. “Just me with the small amount of money left in the coffers after my father drank most of it and my mother faded away like a ghost.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary said.

  “Oh, don’t be,” Roderick said with a wave of his glass, the smile returning. “I’ve had more than most in life, but I don’t plan to sit around and turn into Spencer, rattling around in some dusty old house while pining for some unrequited love.”

  “You mean Anna Crosby?”

  His face jerked back slightly in surprise. “You do pay attention, don’t you? Yes, Spencer’s besotted with the woman, lord knows why though—she’s as timid as a mouse.”

  Mary took a long sip of her drink, her brain working overtime as it sifted through these bits of information. Well, this was no time to pussyfoot around. “What do you make of Anna’s cooking skills?”

  Roderick laughed, his head leaning back and his great nose pointing to the ceiling. “You know,” he said when he had calmed slightly, “you’re far more like your on-screen character than I ever thought! So you know the hotel’s dirty little secret, do you? Anna Crosby can’t cook to save her life. Truth be told, I’m not exactly sure what Anna can do.”

  “And yet you hired her to be head chef in the hotel kitchen?”

  “Well, Spencer did obviously. I only found out this morning when Edward told me. He's in a flap because without Thomas the restaurant might as well pack up now.”

  “Even if you didn't know at the time, you must have known it was a big risk making his receptionist your head chef?”

  “Look,” he said, draining the last of his drink, “this place was only meant to be a short-term investment—Spencer knew that. When we bought it the place was already failing. We got it cheap so the previous owners could clear off their debts in a hurry.”

  “And the plan was to sell it on to developers?” Mary asked.

  “Exactly, but they weren’t quite ready to play ball, building permits, etc.” He waved his hand dismissively. “So we decided to keep the place running in the hope we could at least cover our loan payments on the place. Spencer brought Anna in and by some miracle, or curse, it worked. Now I find out it's because we ended up with Thomas Mosley.”

  “Why a curse? You lucked out with Thomas, didn't you? The restaurant is making money.”

  “Well, that’s ju
st the problem, isn’t it? When Spencer told me he wanted to hire Anna to run the place, someone with no experience, I couldn’t see the harm. We’d make a few quid just because of the lack of competition in town, if nothing else. When the place started to get rave reviews and was booked out for weeks on end, I couldn’t believe it; that was when I discovered it was Thomas running the kitchen. Half the time Anna just sat in the back with a bottle of wine.”

  “Still, that would only make the place more valuable, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not to investors. They don’t care about the restaurant or the hotel, they want to rip the guts of it out and turn it into flats. The problem was the local planning committee. They were starting to get cold feet about giving permission for the change of use.” He stood up and took a deep breath. “Look, this place has had it. Either we sell up, or Spencer is going to lose a lot of money as well as me. He called you down here for the opening—he must trust you. Maybe you could talk to him?”

  Mary gave a small laugh. So now they had reached the reason why he had really wanted to talk to her.

  “You want me to pressure Spencer into selling the hotel?”

  “Not pressure,” he shrugged, “just talk it through with him.”

  Mary finished her own drink. “It occurs to me that you would have had a very good reason for getting Thomas Mosley out of the way.”

  Roderick’s calm and somewhat arrogant composure seemed to vanish instantly. His face paled. “What are you talking about? I wouldn’t have wanted that to happen, no matter what! Thomas was a good chap!”

  “Still, it’s convenient for you that the restaurant will now be on the slide, isn't it?”

  “I don’t understand your point,” he said, his poise and features now recovered and looking angrier by the second. “Thomas had a heart condition, it was just one of those things.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Mary said, standing, “but I’m going to find out.” She turned and left without looking back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mary wasn’t sure what Roderick would make of their brief conversation, but she had learnt something from dealing with the press for all of those years. Often it was better to leave something hanging and walk away than to get down into the nitty-gritty of it. If you’d used a juicy enough worm, the bait would be taken in due course.

  As she opened the door to the restaurant, she could tell she had missed something interesting. Dot and Pea sat at one of the tables to her right with Anna Crosby. The three of them had looked up at her as she entered as though a gunshot rang out. Anna’s eyes were wide and wet with tears.

  “It’s OK,” Dot said, patting Anna’s hand which she held in hers across the table. “It’s just Mary.”

  Mary made her way over and sat down as Anna’s eyes sank to the white tablecloth. She looked at Pea, who made a face that she recognised from her childhood as the same one he made when her parents were arguing. It roughly translated as, “Blimey, someone here may be unhinged.”

  “How are you, Anna?” she said, turning to her. After a moment’s pause, Dot replied for the chef instead.

  “Anna’s just been telling us about what’s been going on in the restaurant since she came here.” She turned to the downcast eyes of the chef. “Why don’t you go over it again, Anna? It will help to get it all out, won't it?”

  Anna gave an unsure smile but began talking in a quiet voice.

  “I’d always wanted to be a cook,” she began, “and then when Spencer said there was a restaurant here that they wanted to revamp, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought this would be my chance to get into it all, start learning the trade.”

  Mary shot a glance at Dot and Pea. Learning the trade?!

  “When Spencer said I was going to be head chef, I… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to let him down, but I didn’t have a clue what I was doing! Thank goodness Thomas came along.” She paused, a flash of pain crossing her face as she picked up the already wet tissue in front of her and blew her nose loudly.

  “Tell me about Thomas,” Mary continued in a soothing voice.

  “Oh.” Anna gave a small laugh and shook her head. “He was so amazing. He came in for an interview and instead of persuading us to give him a chance, he just cooked us the most incredible breakfast. I hired him right there on the spot, and Ruth the next day. They were such a good team. Ruth is so enthusiastic, always wearing a smile. She did all the grunt work while Thomas organised the menus and ordered the ingredients and things. It was only a couple of weeks until I realised I wasn’t needed any more. I chopped the veg, prepped some things, and Thomas taught me things along the way.” She looked down suddenly and sobbed.

  “What is it?” Mary asked, sensing there was something more than just the death of her young colleague there.

  “I took all the glory,” she said in a sob. “I was the one getting my picture in the paper, I was the one getting the praise for a Michelin star. I wanted to tell everyone, but I knew that if I did it would all be over and I would be letting Spencer down. He’d trusted me, put himself on the line to give me this chance.” Her voice faded as the tissue fought a losing battle against the streaming tears and nose.

  “And you knew Thomas was going to leave?” Mary asked.

  Anna nodded. “Yes, he’d told Ruth and me. I couldn’t blame him, who would want to stay on here in this situation?” She waved her hand around to gesture at the restaurant.

  Mary frowned. None of this was quite what she had been expecting. In her mind, Anna had been the one who had stood to lose the most with Thomas leaving. The sham of her reputation would be exposed, her career would effectively be over. She would have let Spencer down as the restaurant began to lose the reputation it had built. Yet the woman before them, looking meekly down at the table and snuffling into a tissue, didn’t seem capable of raising her voice in anger, let alone murder.

  “How did Ruth react to the news that Thomas was leaving?”

  “Oh, nothing ever seems to bother Ruth very much. She always seems to have some other plan to bounce her back.”

  As if her words had conjured her remaining colleague from thin air, Ruth Faulkner appeared from the kitchen door carrying a tray that contained two large coffee pots, a number of cups, and a plate full of mints that were clearly designed to be given out with a bill.

  “Do I hear my ears burning?” Ruth said with a slight smile.

  “I was just saying how you’re always so positive,” Anna said, squeezing the young woman’s hand affectionately as she laid down the tray.

  “Oh, there’s no point in letting things drag you down,” Ruth said as she began passing out cups.

  “Not even if a colleague dies suddenly?” Mary asked.

  Ruth paused, her hand halfway to delivering a cup to Pea. “Oh, well obviously there are some things you can't help but be affected by,” she answered in a quiet voice. There was a period where the only sound in the high-ceilinged restaurant was the clink of spoons on grocery and quietly muttered “thank yous” for passing the milk.

  “Were you and Thomas close?” Mary said, blowing across the top of her steaming mug.

  “Thomas was a good bloke,” Ruth answered, in what Mary thought was a side-step of her question. “But he was very focused on his work. He didn’t have much time for anything else, really.”

  There was a moment of silence as the occupants of the table reflected on the death of the young cook.

  “Do you both plan to stay on here?” Pea said, attempting to move the conversation on.

  Anna gave a humourless laugh. “I think my days of playing chef are over,” she said with a sigh. “Ruth here is going to write a book though, aren’t you, Ruth?”

  “Um, yes,” Ruth said in what seemed to be a rare instance of shyness.

  “Oh!” Pea said with a broad smile. “What’s it going to be about?”

  “It’s a recipe book actually,” Ruth answered.

  “Oh right, well that’s great, well done.” Pea nodded back at
her, beaming.

  “Thank you.” Ruth smiled sweetly. “I’d better be getting home,” she said, rising. “I’ll call you later, Anna?” She squeezed her boss’s shoulder and Anna patted her hand.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Ruth gave a quick goodbye to everyone, turned on her heels and left the restaurant.

  “Was it something I said?” Pea said, joking at her quick exit.

  Something in the phrase struck a chord with Mary, though.

  “Ruth’s cookbook,” she said, turning to Anna, “is she using some of Thomas’s recipes, do you know?”

  Anna looked startled. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure Ruth has come up with her own, though.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Mary said thoughtfully. “Did you know that there were plans to sell the hotel?”

  “Oh yes, I remember Daisy being quite upset about it. Her father worked here for years, you know? I think she sees it as her home.”

  “And you weren’t worried?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “No, Spencer told me he wasn’t going to sell the place. He loves it here.” She gave a small laugh. “He really is very sweet.”

  Mary sat back in her seat as Anna, Pea and Dot continued the conversation without her. Ruth’s cookbook had intrigued her. If Thomas really had been the genius cook they all thought he was, then his recipes could be worth something. Had Ruth decided to profit from her colleague’s work? If so, maybe Thomas had found out and Ruth had decided to silence him. It sounded far-fetched even as she ran it through her own mind, but then nothing about the death of the young chef seemed real or justifiable at the moment. The contorted vision of his face seemed to flash in front of her as it had done a number of times since his death.

  “Don't you think so, Mary?”

  She looked up in confusion to the three faces around the table staring back at her.

  “I'm sorry, what?”

  “I said,” Dot continued, “don't you think it's interesting that Thomas had had an argument with James Donovan?”