The Hawkshead Hostage

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘None of us. I’m the hotel manager, and this is Jake Bunting, the chef. Dan’s gone to have a look around the annexe buildings. Penny – she’s the receptionist – went with him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere just standing here,’ complained Gentian’s mother. ‘I think we should call the police.’

  This is where I came in, thought Simmy. ‘I should get out of your way, then,’ she said, feeling heartless. ‘I don’t think there’s much I can usefully do. I don’t know this place at all.’

  The woman reached out and gripped her arm. Her blue eyes stared pleadingly into Simmy’s. She was of a similar age, and similar height. Her hair was mid brown, and her clothes barely smart enough for a mid-range English hotel. ‘You seem so sensible,’ she said. ‘Please don’t go.’

  With an effort, Simmy tolerated the appeal without shaking the woman off. I’ve lost a daughter too, she wanted to say. Mine was born dead. You’ve had six years with yours. Think yourself lucky. ‘Let’s go in separate directions and call her, then,’ she suggested.

  As if only waiting for a voice of authority, the group dispersed and seconds later voices of all tones and types were shouting ‘Gentian!’ across the grass and gravel of the hotel’s rear. Simmy saw the manager’s face as it dawned on him that other guests would be disturbed in a most undesirable fashion. This, she supposed, was the main reason why so little had been done to instigate a proper search thus far. Hotel managers were likely to be paralysed by any hint of trouble that might reflect badly on their establishment.

  His fears were quickly realised. Three more people materialised from the back door, their expressions betraying a readiness to manifest annoyance and complaint at the disruption. There were two men and a woman, the men in their sixties or thereabouts, the woman slightly younger. One of the men was tall, lightly bearded, wearing a yellow straw hat and carrying a newspaper. He showed every sign of having wandered outside in search of fresh Lakeland air, only incidentally finding himself embroiled in a crisis of some sort. The others were clearly a couple, the woman glancing repeatedly at the man with little nervous jerks, as if to check that she retained his approval at every turn. ‘Is there something wrong?’ asked the husband.

  ‘We’re looking for a little girl,’ said Simmy. ‘She seems to have gone missing.’

  Gentian’s mother had vanished towards the shrubbery; the chambermaids were also no longer in sight. The manager was standing on a patch of grass, his head stretched upwards as he scanned his domain with an exaggerated alertness.

  ‘She’s sure to turn up,’ said the tall man confidently. ‘Always getting into mischief, children. I had some myself.’ He sounded slightly puzzled, as if his own offspring had been mislaid for the past few decades without causing him undue concern.

  The child’s name continued to resound, the calling slowly moving further off. Then two more people came down the corridor and all was resolved. ‘Here she is!’ called Simmy, without thinking. How did she know this was the child in question? The answer quickly came to her. Who else would Melanie be holding so firmly by the shoulder, with such a look of triumph? Who else but Melanie, when it came to it, would be the one to find the brat?

  Only the manager heard Simmy’s cry. He turned and came trotting back, arms outstretched. ‘Thank heavens!’ he panted. ‘Miss Todd – where did you find her?’

  ‘She was under the table in the lounge,’ said Melanie, giving the child a little shake. ‘Enjoying all the fuss, the little beast.’

  Most of the brownie points that Melanie had just earned for herself fell away at this lack of proper disquiet at all the might-have-beens. The child, by definition, was an innocent little angel, potential victim to the evil that lurked behind every wall and hedge. It could not possibly be a little beast.

  But it was. Simmy could see this right away. A sly satisfaction sat on the young face. It was a very prepossessing little person, with thick black hair, dark skin and startlingly blue eyes. Gentian blue, thought Simmy. ‘Your mother’s going frantic,’ she said crossly.

  ‘I was all right. She always makes such a fuss.’ She glared at Melanie in defiance. ‘And I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘Why? Do you do this often?’ asked Melanie.

  Gentian shrugged. ‘Not really. I just like to be by myself, and she won’t let me.’

  Word had been passed across the grounds, and now the little girl’s mother came scrambling along and grabbed her offspring. She was an awkward person, Simmy observed, wearing high-heeled shoes, at odds with the baggy top and cut-off slacks. Nobody would have ever guessed her to be related to the beautiful child clutched to her breast. Perhaps it had been an adoption, Simmy thought idly.

  ‘I was all right,’ Gentian repeated loudly. ‘Get off me.’

  She was dropped like a kitten turned hostile. ‘Oh, darling, don’t be beastly.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s you. There’s nothing to do here. Why can’t we go on a boat or something? There’s just a lot of old people here.’ She swept the group with a critical eye. ‘Except her. She’s all right.’ She indicated Simmy.

  ‘I’m not old,’ said Melanie.

  ‘You don’t count,’ said Simmy with a laugh. ‘She’ll never forgive you for finding her.’

  Melanie came from a large family and had no illusions about innocent little angels. She grinned in agreement and changed the subject. ‘You came, then,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and find Dan.’

  ‘He must be the only person I haven’t met in the past twenty minutes.’ But that wasn’t true at all, she corrected herself. There had to be numerous guests as well as some additional staff she hadn’t yet encountered. The place was full of people – or would be at the end of the day.

  ‘He said he was going to look for the kid round the stable block, but I think he’s having a quick fag somewhere. He’s as bad as young Gentian, if you ask me – hiding away so’s to get a bit of peace.’ She spoke in a whisper, with a glance at the manager. ‘He’ll get a bollocking from old Bodgett if he’s not careful.’

  ‘The receptionist went with him, apparently.’

  ‘What? Penny? Not likely. They loathe each other. She’ll have gone for a fag as well – or whatever her thing is. Wait till you see her.’

  The kid was being hauled away by an increasingly irate and embarrassed mother. ‘I was going to call the police,’ she said in a loud hiss.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ argued Gentian. ‘I was perfectly all right.’

  ‘Well, if you do it again, I’m going to keep you shut in the room for the rest of the week. Just you see if I don’t.’

  ‘He’s not really called Bodgett, is he?’ asked Simmy.

  The manager had gone back inside, leaving Simmy and Melanie alone under the grey skies. A foolish little drama had come to an end with no harm done. The relief was still reverberating somewhere inside Simmy. She had almost forgotten what she had come for.

  ‘Boddington-hyphen-Webster, would you believe? What is it with people and their double barrels these days? They all think they’re descended from earls or something.’

  ‘I know.’ Simmy recalled a recent rant from young Ben Harkness on the subject. Computers, it seemed, disliked long hyphenated surnames, with ticket bookings and online registrations choking on them. ‘It’s all very silly.’

  ‘Anyway, come with me and we’ll find Dan. He must be around here somewhere. Oh – did you see Jake? He’s the only normal person here. Funny, that. Usually the chef is the most bonkers of them all in a place like this. But he’s all right, is Jake. Never gets in a tizz. Loves his work.’ She sighed.

  ‘Good-looking, as well,’ Simmy observed.

  ‘Yeah, and the rest. But he ticks one of the boxes for the stereotype.’ She sighed again. ‘Seems such a waste, though I know I’m not meant to say that. Don’t tell him I said so, but really, it’s very unfair.’

  ‘What?’ Simmy was still thinking slowly.

  ‘He’s gay, of course. Wouldn�
�t you know it? Lives with a chap from Belgium or somewhere, in the village.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And here’s the last one in the set. Look at her.’

  Simmy looked. A very thin woman was coming towards them, wiping her nose with a tissue and feeling the back of her neck with the other hand. She appeared to be around fifty, with careful make-up and smart clothes that looked rather warm for the season. Her hair was a glossy artificial black, which highlighted the pallor of her skin. Her midsection was actually concave, reminding Simmy of the runner Paula Radcliffe, whose body had always caused her great fascination. How did all those organs and countless yards of intestine fit in there, she wondered.

  ‘Hi, Penny,’ said Melanie. ‘They found the missing kid.’

  ‘Right. Where was she?’ The woman’s voice was high and forced. Every move she made appeared to take an almost insuperable effort.

  ‘In the lounge. Panic over.’

  ‘Good. Better get back to my post, then.’ She laughed, but Simmy could detect no hint of a joke. ‘Who’s this?’ Penny asked, as an afterthought.

  ‘Persimmon Brown, the florist,’ Melanie said.

  Simmy realised that Melanie was being extremely careful with Penny-the-receptionist. Making no claims for herself, adding no embellishing information, answering questions with the shortest of sentences – all decidedly out of character.

  ‘Right. Fine.’ Penny glanced at a small sparkly watch. ‘Only another hour to go, thank God.’

  They watched her go back into the foyer, and then Melanie led the way along a gravel path towards the annexe, past an arrangement of ornamental trees in large pots on one side, and a row of windows on the other.

  ‘Is she ill?’ Simmy asked, thinking about Penny.

  ‘Physically or mentally?’ Melanie laughed. ‘Actually, I think she might have some sort of health issue. She works short days. Lord knows how she ever got this job. She knocks off at four o’clock, and the manager’s wife does evenings and weekends, including Fridays. But I think Penny’s tougher than she looks. And she’s good with the guests, amazingly. Smiles and simpers at the men, sympathises with the women. She’s a great actor. All the staff leave her alone as much as they can.’

  ‘She’s scary, then?’

  Melanie paused. ‘There’s just something about her. Like a time bomb. You get the feeling if you crossed her, she’d explode all over you. Or else drop down dead in front of you. She goes to the gym a lot. It’s obviously killing her.’

  Simmy snorted agreement, while thinking there might be rather more to the odd creature she had just met than an addiction to weight training or whatever else people did in a gym.

  ‘That’s the dining room in there,’ Melanie pointed out, continuing her tour. ‘Then there’s the kitchen, look. It’s all very well organised. Dan lives in. He’s got a couple of rooms round the corner. Bodgett’s in residence as well, of course. They share the old servants’ quarters. He’s the butler and Dan’s the housekeeper. Funny, eh?’

  ‘It’s a whole little world,’ said Simmy, thinking there was a sort of magic to hotel life. The core of permanent staff on one hand and the constantly shifting procession of guests on the other. ‘I presume there’s a gardener and kitchen hands and waiters as well.’

  ‘Pretty much. The dining room staff are mostly foreign, same as the cleaners.’

  ‘And you’re always full, right? Twenty-five people to look after, day and night. Very weird, when you think about it.’

  ‘Hospitality,’ said Melanie. ‘One of the oldest professions.’

  Simmy thought again of her father. ‘I suppose so. If my dad was here, he’d talk about pilgrimages and ancient customs, or Victorian dosshouses with four to a bed.’

  Melanie laughed. ‘He would, too. Now come on. I’m meant to be working. Before all this nonsense with the lost kid blew up, I was trying to track down a missing pillowcase. I mean – people steal towels, but you don’t often lose a pillowcase.’

  ‘Makes a useful extra bag, I suppose.’

  ‘Right,’ said Melanie inattentively. ‘There’s Dan, look. Now, make sure you give me proper credit for putting you in touch with him. I need to keep on his right side.’ She indicated a figure still too far off to hear what they were saying.

  Simmy gave her a surprised look. ‘You sound scared of him, same as you are of Penny.’

  ‘No, I’m not a bit scared of him. But Dan’s the real power here. Does just what he likes and nobody dares challenge him. It pays to stay on the right side of him.’ Again, she flushed, as she’d done that morning. ‘But he’s perfectly nice.’ It sounded defensive to Simmy.

  She watched the man approaching them. He walked with a loose easy gait, unselfconscious and unhurried. Aged about thirty-five, she guessed, with dark colouring. His hair had been cut carefully, to capitalise on its thickness and slight wave. In another age, he might have been mistaken for Clark Gable without the moustache and with an additional three inches of height. ‘He should grow a moustache,’ she murmured to Melanie. ‘Then he’d be perfect.’

  Melanie snickered, quickly putting a hand over her mouth. ‘Shut up – he’ll hear you.’

  And that, Simmy suspected, would be a very bad thing.

  Chapter Three

  Men who worked in hotels ought to be handsome, as a general rule. It endeared them to the guests and made complaints less frequent. Dan fitted the bill in a way, but the veneer of insincerity was almost palpable. ‘I’m Persimmon Brown,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I came to talk to you about flowers. I gather Melanie told you about me.’

  ‘Oh, right. Pleased to meet you. Dan Yates.’ He smiled at a point some inches from her left ear and added, ‘Thank you, Melanie. I think I can take it from here.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ said the girl, using her uncanny skill at conveying insolence, scepticism or plain disapproval in words that nobody could find objectionable.

  ‘Let’s go to my office, then. Follow me.’ He set off briskly in the direction of the converted stables, Simmy following like a schoolgirl. Power politics of some kind, she judged. She could easily have walked by his side. She had never worked in an environment where such games were played; all she knew of them came from TV sitcoms and stories told by her former husband. She was aware that there were plenty of people in the outside world who enjoyed throwing their weight around, using tricks like this. And yet Melanie had said he was ‘okay’, so she should probably give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was basically insecure or merely amusing himself by toying with her to make life more interesting. Perhaps he had no idea what he was doing and just wanted them to get on as quickly as possible.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘They gave me the tack room.’ He opened the door into a small boxy addition to the main stable block. An earlier door into the horses’ living quarters had apparently been sealed off, and the resulting new wall used for a floor-to-ceiling set of shelves. Simmy looked around, trying to work out the details of the conversion, with a faint idea of describing it all to her father at some point. He took considerable interest in such things.

  ‘Sit down,’ Dan Yates invited. ‘And tell me what you think of Melanie’s ideas.’

  ‘Well … I’m not sure how much she’s discussed with you. We should probably start from scratch, to be sure it’s all clear.’

  ‘Quite right. As it happens, the manager and I had been thinking we needed something decorative, something distinctive, but subtle – to improve the atmosphere. It’s all about perception, you see. We want people to remember us as having just that extra hint of luxury. The food is our main appeal at the moment, and the views.’

  ‘Right,’ said Simmy. ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes, but we need another dimension. We’re acutely aware of the history here. There have been serious failures in the past. There’s a fragility, a vulnerability, to the whole industry these days. We want to consolidate what we have, build on it slowly, without making too many mistakes.’

 
; Simmy nodded. So far, she did at least understand the words he used. He hadn’t said ‘iterative’ or ‘quantum’ or ‘logistics’, which was a relief, if only because she might have laughed at the wrong moment if he had.

  ‘So we would like you to supply enough flowers for displays in the main ground-floor rooms and in the solar upstairs. That would be four positions. We’d like scented blooms, nothing too flamboyant. Perhaps you could share any ideas you have at this point?’

  ‘Well … I did have a few thoughts about your reception area and the lounge. I haven’t seen the other places. That big bay window in the lounge – an arrangement just to one side of it, with a lot of greens, would have the effect of bringing the view right into the room. For the reception, I thought lilies and foliage in the blue or mauve spectrum, with some scent, as you say. Nothing that would intimidate or distract, but be welcoming, like coming into someone’s house.’

  ‘Perfect,’ he approved with a wide smile.

  Again, Simmy found herself wishing he had a moustache. His upper lip looked weak and naked without one. She liked facial hair, reminding her as it did of a grandfather who had sported a full beard. She had loved to play with it as a child, and ever after associated beards with warmth and humour and manly strength. Her father had taken to going unshaven at times, but never allowed it to develop as nature ordained.

  ‘Is this just for the summer season?’ she asked.

  ‘Initially, perhaps. We’ll see how it goes, shall we? We are open all the year round, except for the middle of January. We close for two weeks then and give the whole staff a well-earned holiday. Now, then, we need to discuss money. What do you think?’

  She took a breath. Her price lists didn’t extend to such a large and regular commission, and every time during the day that she’d tried to work it out, the answer came out different. ‘Are you thinking two visits a week? Perhaps Mondays and Fridays? I don’t think it could be less than that. Some flowers do fade and droop after three or four days, although there are lots that would last a week if the water was topped up and the temperature wasn’t too hot.’