The Hanging in the Hotel (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  Jude doubted whether Kerry was up to any meal preparation that involved more than picking up the phone for a takeaway. If she was, the girl had shown no signs of it in her work at Hopwicke Country House Hotel.

  “Presumably, Mr. Hartson,” said Jude, “you know why I’m here this morning?”

  He raised his eyebrows in what she knew to be false ignorance.

  “Because of Nigel Ackford’s death,” she prompted. “Kerry asked me to come here, so that she could tell me what her movements were that particular night.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right.” He spoke as if he were pulling the recollection from the deepest recesses of his memory.

  “Of course, it must have been very upsetting for you, Mr. Hartson . . .”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you must have known Nigel Ackford well. He was your guest, after all, wasn’t he? At the dinner?”

  “That’s right. He was my guest, but . . . he was more an acquaintance than a friend. I invited him along to the Pillars as a kind of favour to his boss, actually . . . who’s been a friend of mine for a long time.”

  “Why didn’t Donald Chew take Nigel Ackford along as his own guest?”

  Bob Hartson showed the tiniest of reactions to the fact that she knew the name, then shook his head indulgently. “There’s protocol involved in being a Pillar of Sussex. I could explain it to you, but . . . how long have you got? Just take it from me, it wouldn’t have done for Donald to take along one of his own staff as a guest.”

  Before Jude could ask for further elucidation, he went on, “Tragic business, I agree, young Nigel. I read in the paper recently that more young men than ever are committing suicide. Most of them have probably got a better lifestyle than any previous generation . . . and yet they keep topping themselves. Never understand it . . .”

  He moved across to the window, seeming to blot out a disproportionate amount of the view, and spoke more softly. “So many lovely things in the world . . . and yet some people just can’t see it. Look out there. Sea . . . beautiful spring day . . . who’d want to give up on all that, eh?

  He laughed lightly. “Do you know, Jude, this is one of the few views in West Sussex where you can’t see anything that belongs to me.” Another little laugh. “Well, except for Geoff down there in the Jaguar. What I mean is that from here you can’t see one of my developments . . . and that’s because all this flat looks out on is the sea. Of course, if you were out there in a boat, you could definitely see one of my developments.”

  “This block?”

  “That’s right. Derelict when I bought the place. Bedsits. Totally run-down. And look at it now. People say a lot of harsh things about developers. I like to think we do a lot to bring new life to old buildings.”

  Since she hadn’t accused him of anything, Jude was finding this self-justification rather odd. He went on, “Like most successful ventures, the development business is all about timing . . . and spotting potential. You have to be able to see what you can do with a site . . . be bold, imaginative. Look ahead. There are places that ‘informed opinion’ says will never get planning permission. Don’t believe them. Governments change. Policies change. Priorities change. Everything becomes possible sooner or later.”

  Having delivered himself of this property developer’s credo while looking out over the sea, he turned. Backlit against the window, his expression was invisible to Jude, but she could hear the new force in his voice. “Listen . . . I know you’re upset by what happened to that boy. We’re all upset. . . . Me, Kerry, the other Pillars . . . It’s the kind of thing nobody wants to happen. But it was suicide. In spite of any details that might suggest an alternative scenario. Even that threatening letter Kerry found . . . I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation for that.”

  His voice became soothing, but did not lose its strength. “Jude . . . the police seem convinced it was suicide. I would imagine the coroner will think the same. So I don’t really think it’s a good idea to go around stirring things up. I’m sure we all love the thought of playing detectives, of proving wrongdoing . . . all dramatic stuff. But not in this case. Here what you see is what you get. And what everyone sees—and I think you should see too, Jude—is the tragic case of a young man’s suicide.”

  There was nothing equivocal about Bob Hartson’s manner. She was being warned off. And, for that very reason, she couldn’t let it rest there.

  “Mr. Hartson, could you just confirm what Kerry told me about where she was that night . . . ?”

  Even though she still couldn’t see his face, she observed the spasm of anger that passed through his body. But by the time he replied, he had regained control, and his voice was silky smooth. “I don’t know what Kerry’s just told you. I can only give you my version of what happened, and if my daughter told you different, then she’s lying. . . .”

  Jude felt a surge of excitement, which quickly dissipated as he went on, “After everyone left the bar, Kerry came up to my room with me and a friend. We all drank some whisky, then Kerry left us, my friend and I had a final noggin and he went off to his room about two o’clock, I suppose.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Hartson.”

  He stepped away from the window and sat down, before looking smugly at his stepdaughter. “So what did Kerry tell you? I’ve no idea.”

  “I told her the same, Dad.”

  “The truth. Good girl.” He turned back to focus the patronising beam of his smile on Jude. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes, please . . .”

  There was a twitch of annoyance at the corner of the developer’s mouth. “What?”

  “Who was the friend . . . the other Pillar of Sussex . . . who came back to drink with you in your room?”

  “His name,” Bob Hartson replied with suppressed annoyance, “was Barry Stilwell.”

  17

  “BUT THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” said Carole as they drove back through the bungaloid sprawl that separated Brighton from Fethering. “Barry doesn’t drink whisky.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He told me he never touched spirits. Doesn’t like the taste.”

  “He wasn’t just saying that? Maybe he tells his wife—the sainted Pom-Pom—that he doesn’t touch whisky, but when he’s back with the boys . . . ?”

  “I don’t think so. He volunteered the information to me when we had lunch at Mario’s last week. Pomme wasn’t there. He had no reason to feel pressured about it.”

  “True. That’s very interesting, Carole. I do hope you’ll be seeing Barry Stilwell again soon.”

  “Well . . .” In spite of herself, Carole blushed. “I am supposed to be meeting him again for lunch tomorrow, but I’m not sure that I really should.”

  “Of course you should. It’s your duty, Carole. In the cause of truth.”

  The spark in Jude’s eye sent up the pomposity of her announcement, but there was a core of seriousness in what she said. Carole knew she had no choice but to continue betraying her sisterhood with Pomme.

  “I wondered what your verdict was,” said Stephen.

  “What?” Carole couldn’t imagine what her son was talking about. She was still getting over the surprise of his ringing on a Sunday evening. Their relationship was not on a relaxed enough footing to take that kind of event in its stride.

  “Your verdict on the hotel. You said you were going to have a look at Hopwicke Country House Hotel for us.”

  “Oh yes, of course.” So caught up had she been in what Jude would have described as “the murder investigation” that she had completely forgotten the real purpose of her visit.

  “Well, the hotel’s delightful. Lovely position, very nice rooms, wonderful menus. Of course, it is pretty pricey.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot. But if you stay two nights including a Saturday, there is a special deal for—”

  “Gaby and I can only stay for the one night. How much would that cost?”

  Carole told him the prices Suzy ha
d quoted her.

  “That’s fine,” he said, without a moment’s reflection. “We’ll go for that four-poster room.” Carole couldn’t get used to the image of her son as a big spender. Maybe he’d always had it in him. Or was it just the influence—and income—of Gaby that had moved him up to another level of expenditure? Carole felt the familiar guilt at how little she really knew Stephen.

  “Do you have the number there to hand, Mother? Save me the cost of a call to Directory Enquiries.” So down at the bottom end of the financial scale he was still capable of penny-pinching.

  “Oh, by the way . . . did you ask about availability for the weekend? I don’t want to waste a call if they’re fully booked.” Once again the instinct for parsimony asserted itself.

  “They certainly had rooms free when I was there. And I didn’t get the impression they were expecting a sudden rush of bookings.”

  “Fine. Okay. Gaby and I will see you at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel for lunch on Sunday. Arrive twelve-thirty.”

  And thus Carole was dismissed. As she put the phone down, she realised she should have said something about being very excited at the prospect of meeting Gaby. But the moment had passed.

  Slightly mischievously, she wondered how her son would react to the news that the next day his mother would be having an illicit lunch with a married would-be lover.

  “This is very soon after our last meeting,” Carole pointed out, after Mario had oozed them into their seats. This time he’d put them at a table for two in a little alcove at the back of the restaurant. Was this maybe the table where he always put couples who shouldn’t be together? Indeed, had he put Barry here before with other female companions? The concept did not upset Carole; rather, it amused her. To imagine Barry Stilwell as a serial Lothario was so incongruous.

  What was it with men, she reflected. Some of them seemed to be armoured in a self-esteem absolutely impermeable to logic, common sense or experience. Barry Stilwell’s previous encounters with her should have made it clear that, not only did she not have any mildly romantic feelings toward him, she did not even wish to spend time with him. She found his company irksome. And yet here he was, surreptitiously squiring her at Mario’s, apparently in the belief that they would end up having an affair. Carole found herself baffled.

  But his obtuseness did give her a kind of comfort. She would have felt bad stringing along someone less thick-skinned. Barry Stilwell, though, was fair game.

  She indulged these thoughts while he went through his ordering and wine-tasting routines, and had to actually drag herself out of abstraction to concentrate on what he was saying.

  Barry was talking about the success of his firm. Clearly things had been busy on the soliciting front. A booming housing market must have meant an increase in people requiring conveyancing services; the cold snaps of the winter had satisfyingly decimated the geriatric population of the Worthing area, leading to more probate work; and of course the rise in the divorce rate could always be relied upon. It was, as ever, a good time to be working as a lawyer in a system devised by lawyers.

  So good was business that, Carole gathered when she focused on Barry’s words, he was about to set up a second office along the coast in Shoreham. There were some empty premises that he was going to inspect that very afternoon. Maybe Carole would like to come and cast her expert eye over them . . . ?

  “In what way do I have an expert eye?”

  “Well, you spent all those years working for the Home Office.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Carole knew she should be more conciliatory, soften Barry Stilwell up to extract information from him, but he got on her nerves so much that she couldn’t help the occasional sharp retort.

  “So you must have seen a good few offices in your time . . .”

  “Yes,” she conceded.

  “So you do have an expert eye when it comes to the business of selecting an office.” At this triumph of logic the thin lips curled into a smile.

  “But, Barry, I have no particular expertise in solicitor’s offices. You’d have a much better idea of what you need.”

  “Yes . . .” he cajoled. “But always good to have a second opinion, isn’t it?”

  “Surely it’d be better to get a second opinion from Pomme rather than from me?”

  This had been the wrong thing to say. The thin lips straightened. “Pomme’s not a lawyer.”

  “Nor am I. That’s the point I was making.”

  He moved off the subject of his new offices. “So what’s happening in your life, Carole?”

  She didn’t want to talk about her life. What she really wanted to do was to get Barry’s conversation back to the night of Nigel Ackford’s death. But certain civilities had to be maintained. He had asked her a straight question. It was her duty to come up with an answer. She tried to think what, if anything, had been happening in her life.

  “Well, I’m meeting my son for lunch on Sunday.”

  “I’d forgotten you had a son.”

  “Yes. He’s going to introduce me to his fiancée.”

  “And I find it very hard to believe that you have a son old enough to be contemplating marriage.”

  She gave this arch automatic compliment a minimal smile, and moved on. She’d seen a useful way of redirecting the conversation.

  “In fact, they’re going to be staying at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. I’m going to have lunch with them there.”

  “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Excellent food.”

  “Oh yes.” She behaved as if a completely new idea had just come to her. “Of course you were there for that Pillars of Sussex Dinner, weren’t you? We talked about it last time we met.”

  “That’s right.”

  He didn’t sound suspicious yet, so she pressed on. “I get the impression those dinners are quite riotous occasions.”

  “Well . . . I like to think decorum is always maintained.”

  “Yes, but quite a lot of drinking goes on, doesn’t it?”

  Barry Stilwell smiled a bit-of-a-lad smile, and went into the elaborate circumlocution with which his type of man usually speaks about alcohol. “Well, the occasional libation is certainly consumed. The odd noggin or tincture might pass the lips, yes.”

  “More than ‘occasional’ or ‘odd,’ from what I’ve heard. Drinks before dinner, copious wine during, sessions in the bar afterward.”

  The solicitor shrugged magnanimously, as if he were being complimented. “A certain amount of that goes on, I suppose, yes. But,” he continued piously, “everyone stays overnight at the venue, so there’s no danger of drink driving.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. I gather, though, with some of the Pillars, the drinking doesn’t stop in the bar. It goes on up in their rooms.”

  This prompted an indulgent smile of masculine complicity. “I dare say that happens with some of the chaps.”

  “Don’t be so coy, Barry. It happens with you too.”

  He looked surprised at this and said primly, “I’m not one for excess, Carole. I know my limit. A couple of drinks in the bar, and then straight off to bed—that’s me.”

  Coyness was not a mode that came naturally to Carole, but she tried it this time. “Ooh, Barry . . . you big fibber . . .”

  He looked genuinely puzzled.

  “A friend of mine met Bob Hartson yesterday . . .”

  “Yes?” A caution came into his eyes at the mention of the name.

  “He was telling her about the great night you all had at Hopwicke House last week.”

  “Oh right, we did have a good time,” he agreed heartily, before a sober recollection. “Except, of course, for the tragic end to the event . . . which we didn’t know about till the following day.”

  “Anyway, according to Bob Hartson, you had quite a boozy session with him.”

  This again was taken as a compliment. “I suppose a few sherberts did go down the old gargle-chute in the bar, yes.”

  “Not just in the bar,” said Caro
le, with another stab at coyness.

  She felt sure the bafflement with which he greeted this was genuine, but went on, “According to Bob Hartson, you were up in his room sharing a bottle of whisky with him . . .” Barry Stilwell was silent. “Which I thought was rather odd . . . because you told me you never drank whisky.”

  There was an almost imperceptible moment of thought before his smile became even more sheepish. “My little secret is out, I’m afraid. Not something I advertise, because Pomme doesn’t approve of my drinking whisky. She’s of the view it gets me too drunk too quickly. But yes, I can’t deny I do enjoy the odd snifter of the old Highland nectar.”

  “And that’s what you had with Bob Hartson that night in his room?”

  He held his hands out, as if offering to be handcuffed. “Can’t deny it. If that’s what Bob Hartson says I was doing, then that’s what I was doing.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Now that was intriguing.

  “You’re sure Kerry wasn’t with you? Bob Hartson’s stepdaughter?”

  “No,” Barry Stilwell replied with surprising vehemence. “She certainly wasn’t.”

  Carole didn’t reckon she was going to get much more relevant information, but what she had was good enough. Either Bob Hartson or Barry Stilwell was lying. Maybe they both were. Bob Hartson had possibly plucked Barry Stilwell’s name out of the air to support his alibi, not knowing that Jude had a friend with a connection to the solicitor. Barry’s reactions had suggested he knew nothing about the story he was supposed to be backing up, but had supported it out of solidarity to another Pillar of Sussex. Maybe he would soon get a phone call from Bob Hartson spelling out the party line on the events of that evening.

  So, as Carole nibbled at her insalata di frutti di mare and Barry worked his way through his bresaola, vitello alla Genovese and tartufi di cioccolota, the conversation became more general, though the solicitor did constantly revert to his potential offices in Shoreham. He kept saying how pleasant and quiet they were, detailing the excellent amenities they offered, and emphasising that they offered vacant possession.