The Hanging in the Hotel (Fethering Mysteries)

by Brett, Simon

  It was only in the car park, when a leering Barry Stilwell actually dangled the keys to the offices in front of her, that Carole’s rather slow perception caught up with his meaning. He had no interest in her views on the suitability of the premises for a solicitor’s office; he saw it simply as a means of being alone with her. The excellent amenities, he spelled out, included a bed.

  At this point, in the traditional style of the investigative journalist, Carole Seddon made her excuses and left.

  Barry Stilwell, having seen her previous performance in the role, thought she was just once again being coy. And he determined to follow the old axiom of Robert the Bruce watching that extremely pertinacious spider: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” She’d come round. Of course she would. There was no possibility that she didn’t find him attractive.

  18

  THE CROWN & ANCHOR had seats and tables at the front, looking across to where the River Fether ran out into the sea, but there was also an overgrown garden at the back, which Ted Crisp kept saying he was going to get tidied up and open for customers. But all that seemed to happen was that the garden, like his beard and his hair, just got more matted and messy.

  “Hardly worth doing,” he said to Carole and Jude, as they looked through the window on to the patch that Monday evening. “Soon be next door to a building site, anyway.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Carole.

  The landlord pointed to the crumbling wall of a long, low structure the other side of the pub garden. “Old milk depot, that was. Used to be full of tankers and floats. Been empty for five years now. Soon be a nice shooshed-up residential estate, though.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen the plans. Go on, have a guess how many houses they’re going to fit on to that site.”

  “Eight?” Jude hazarded.

  He gave a derisory laugh. “If only. The answer is twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four? On that space? Is there a lot of land the other side of the depot?” asked Carole.

  “No. What you see is what you get. Within the perimeter of that existing building they are going to fit twenty-four residences. Starter homes, I think they call them. Two bedrooms, and a pocket handkerchief of garden each.”

  “Garages?”

  “No. Won’t be room for that.”

  “So where are they going to park?” Carole instinctively asked the question any local would ask. “Fethering High Street’s already jammed solid. If High Tor didn’t have a garage, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “This is quite funny, actually,” said Ted, as he led them gloomily back across to the bar. “Or at least it would be funny, if it weren’t so bloody insane.” He took a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay out of the fridge. “Come on, let me top you up. On the house.”

  “You’re pouring away all your profits,” Jude reprimanded, as he filled the glasses.

  “No way. Don’t do this for everyone, you know. Only special customers.” He guffawed. “And don’t worry, I overcharge the rest, so it all evens up in the end.”

  “You were talking about these starter homes,” Carole reminded him.

  “Right. Okay, well, what I’m about to tell you is government policy—if that’s not a contradiction in terms with this lot in charge. One of the local architects comes to drink in here, he was telling me about it. You’ve probably heard that there’s a housing shortage in the South East . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, various possible solutions to that. Build new towns; extend the outskirts of existing towns and villages; start nibbling away at the Green Belt . . . No. What the government, in its wisdom, has decided to do is not extend the area of existing housing, but to develop brown field sites . . .”

  “Like the old milk depot?”

  “Exactly, Carole. And on these sites they want greater density of housing.”

  “More people living per square metre?”

  “That’s the idea, yes. But, of course, if you’re going to do that, then you’ve got to keep the footprint of each house pretty damned small. No room for fripperies like garages.”

  “Mind you,” Jude pointed out, “it’s not all bad, from your point of view. If you’ve got twenty-four new houses right behind you, that’s not going to do any harm to your business, is it?”

  Ted didn’t seem to be persuaded. “Maybe, maybe not. It’ll certainly mean complaints about noise, kids thieving from my premises, cars clogging access to my car park . . .”

  “Yes,” Carole, the proud Renault-owner, insisted. “Where are the new residents supposed to put their cars?”

  Ted Crisp grinned sardonically. “Ah, now this is the clever bit. This is where the government suddenly does a little nod to the Green lobby.” He pronounced his next words as though imparting the secret of life. “The fact that the new residents have nowhere to park will encourage them to make greater use of public transport!”

  “But public transport round here’s dreadful,” Jude objected.

  “Yes,” Ted agreed. “That is the small miscalculation the government has made. You’d have thought they’d realise they’d got the whole thing arse-about-face. Sensible plan, a naïf person might imagine, would be first to get good public transport, then build houses without garages to attract people without cars. But no, that’s not the way this government does things.” He ran an exasperated hand through his beard. “Don’t get me started on this government.”

  “No, no, fine,” said Jude hastily. Ted Crisp had suffered a lot since the election of New Labour. A lifelong socialist, faced with a government of decidedly Tory tendencies, he had nobody left to vote for. Jude, herself without politics of any colour, could nonetheless sympathise with his frustration.

  “Still,” he went on savagely, “all be good news for the developers, won’t it? They’ll get a very cushy ride indeed—as ever. Nothing like a nice housing boom to boost the building trade, is there? Lots of profit for the developers, and the builders, and the decorators, and the plumbers, and the electricians, and their attendant army of local planners, and solicitors, and accountants and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. God, don’t get me started . . .”

  Though he kept asking to be stopped, Ted Crisp was clearly about to get started. “When I think I grew up believing the Labour Party was the party of equality, that its principles encouraged the distribution of wealth to the less privileged members of—”

  It was, in many ways, fortunate that at that point a large party of customers entered the Crown & Anchor. Once Ted did start on one of his diatribes, his listeners could be transfixed for a long, long time. With some relief, Carole and Jude crept away to one of the alcove tables. After that day’s lunch with Barry Stilwell, Carole had become more aware of the significance of alcoves. She wondered how many illicit couples had exploited the privacy of the one where they now sat in the Crown & Anchor.

  Jude was quickly brought up to date with what had been said during the lunch at Mario’s. “I’m certain,” Carole concluded, “that he was just making it up. That dreadful male solidarity thing. Bob Hartson, a fellow Pillar of Sussex, had used Barry’s name to establish an alibi, and Barry wasn’t going to let another chap down. I’m sure he wasn’t in that bedroom with Bob. Apart from the contradiction about drinking whisky, he didn’t know that Kerry was supposed to be there with them.”

  “Perhaps,” said Jude thoughtfully, “he did know that Kerry was there . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Carole looked across, and the expression on Jude’s face told her exactly what her friend meant. “That Kerry was alone in the bedroom with her stepfather . . . that . . . oh, surely not?”

  Jude shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to a stepdaughter. She’s a pretty girl. She greeted him very affectionately when he came round to her flat yesterday morning.”

  The idea was still too extreme for Carole Seddon’s hide-bound mind. “Surely not . . . ?” she repeated.

  “Maybe not,” Jude co
nceded. “But it’s a possibility. Another idea to throw into the mix. What we now know for sure, though, is that there have been cover-ups about that night at the hotel. And I’m still intrigued about Bob Hartson’s driver.”

  “What?”

  “You know, he’s called Geoff. And he’s supposed to have spent the relevant night in the stable block, as I did. But I wonder . . . when I asked about that at Kerry’s flat, she could have been about to say something different when her father interrupted her.”

  “Oh?”

  “So perhaps we should check Geoff out.” Jude let an exasperated stream of air hiss through her teeth. “The one thing that’s clear is that somebody had something to hide. Either Kerry . . . or her stepfather . . .”

  “Or possibly Barry Stilwell,” Carole added.

  “How? Sorry, not with you.”

  “Well, alibis work both ways. Suppose Bob Hartson knew that Barry was up to something that night? Then he might have volunteered the alibi to save suspicion pointing at his fellow Pillar of Sussex.”

  “It’s possible.” Jude sounded sceptical, but Carole was quite excited. The thought of Barry Stilwell as a potential murderer did at least make him a little bit more interesting.

  Jude was up at the bar getting refills when she saw yet another photograph of Suzy Longthorne. In an open copy of the Daily Mail which either Ted had provided for his customers or one of them had left behind, was another picture dating back to the time of Suzy’s marriage to Rick Hendry. The pair of them, in suitably glamorous garb, were snapped going into the Odeon Leicester Square for the preview of some long-forgotten film.

  Suzy wouldn’t have thanked the Daily Mail for the caption: “Rick Hendry with ex-wife, former beauty Suzy Longthorne.” For someone whose entire career had been predicated on glamour, to be called a former beauty must, Jude estimated, be pretty hurtful.

  But even more striking than the caption was the headline. “TV’S MR. NASTY DENIES UNDERAGE SEX ALLEGATIONS.”

  Avidly Jude read what followed: “Yesterday Rick Hendry, the Hannibal Lecter of Pop, angrily rejected the suggestion that he had taken advantage of young girls auditioning for ITV’s successful Pop Crop series. The girls, who are too young to be named, claimed the ageing rocker ‘touched them up’ in their dressing rooms before they sang for the judges in Norwich. Rick, busy in Brighton with more auditions for the new series, was unavailable for comment, but a statement issued by his agent said, ‘These claims are totally false. The world is full of publicity-seeking teenagers, who want their thirty seconds of fame. It’s one of the downsides of celebrity that anyone can make allegations like this and get away with it. If any more of this nonsense is put about, Mr. Hendry’s lawyers are more than ready to prove his innocence in court.’ ”

  Jude took the paper across to show Carole, who read it and said rather sniffily, “Huh. Can’t get away from your friend Suzy, can we?”

  When Jude got back to Woodside Cottage, there was a message on the answering machine. A male voice asked her to ring him back and gave a mobile number.

  Intrigued, she replayed the message and tried to analyse the voice. Very laid-back, slightly mid-Atlantic, slightly arrogant, but with an undertow of charm. The voice of a man who was used to getting his own way. And distantly familiar.

  She rang the number. The same voice answered straightaway, with a cautious “Hi.”

  “My name’s Jude. You left a message.”

  “Oh, Jude, right. Thanks for getting back to me.” There was a silence, as if he was selecting an approach for the next stage of his conversation. “Listen, my name’s Rick Hendry.”

  He left a pause for her to react. He was used to being recognised. Jude had known who he was as soon as he answered the phone, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of sounding impressed.

  “Yes, we met when you were married to Suzy.”

  “Right.” He didn’t sound as though he remembered. He had always been media- and celebrity-obsessed. Meeting one of his wife’s friends who had no national profile wouldn’t have registered in his long-term memory.

  “It’s about Suzy I was ringing,” he went on. “And about what happened at the hotel last Tuesday.”

  “Do you mean the death of that solicitor?”

  “Right.” Again he seemed to consider his options for a moment. “Listen, Suze told me you were around the place that night.”

  “I didn’t know you two were still in touch.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said soothingly. “We never lost touch. Very civilised divorce.”

  Not in the version Suzy gave me, thought Jude. But then again, she didn’t know of a single parted couple where both participants would give the same account of their split. So she let Rick Hendry go on.

  “Suze is worried.”

  “About what?”

  “About you, to be honest.”

  Jude was angry. “Then why doesn’t she tell me herself? We’re friends. If she’s got something to say to me, she can say it direct.”

  “Hey, cool it, cool it,” he said. His voice had a caressing quality, which he clearly thought was sexy. And, although she was annoyed, Jude was not totally immune to its charms. Rick Hendry had a way with women.

  “Yes, okay, Suze could say it to you direct, but I don’t think she will. She feels bad about getting at you because, like you said, you’re her friend. It’s not that she’s set me up to do this. I just know she’s worried, and she wants you to back off.”

  “Back off from what?” asked Jude, deliberately obtuse.

  “From what you’re doing. Snooping around. I know that Suze would feel a lot happier if you . . . let sleeping solicitors lie. Listen, the guy committed suicide. That’s what the police think. That’s what everyone else thinks. So can you just leave it at that?”

  “I’m not sure that I can. I want to know what really happened.”

  “Why?”

  The direct question was hard to answer. The only formula of words Jude could come up with sounded impossibly righteous—phrases about truth and justice and resolution—which, if she voiced them, would only have seemed priggish. So she kept her silence.

  “Listen, Jude.” Rick Hendry let his voice deepen, as he focused the full beam of his charm on her. “I still care about Suze. She’s built that hotel up from nothing. She’s done it all, it’s her baby. And the whole setup’s pretty dodgy at the moment, from the financial point of view. Bad publicity she doesn’t need. I’m not asking this for myself, Jude. I’m asking it for Suze. And I’m asking you, as her friend, just to let this thing rest, okay? Now, Jude, will you promise me you’ll do that?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  She thought about a lot after she had put the phone down, but not about giving up her quest to find Nigel Ackford’s murderer. If anything, the call to Rick Hendry had strengthened her resolve.

  The list of people who wanted to cover up the truth of that night at Hopwicke House was getting longer by the minute. And why was Rick Hendry suddenly so solicitous for the ex-wife from whom he’d parted with such acrimony? He said Suzy hadn’t needed bad publicity, but he needed it even less—particularly at a time when the Sun was running damaging stories about him. What was Rick Hendry’s connection with Hopwicke Country House Hotel? Or with the young man who had died there?

  The fact that she’d had the call from Rick so soon after reading about him neither troubled Jude nor surprised her. She had never had a problem believing in synchronicity.

  19

  THE CALL CAME through to High Tor in the middle of the Tuesday morning. “It’s all right. I’m calling from the office.”

  Which meant that Barry was out of earshot of the threatening Pomme. But why did he still have to whisper?

  “It was very lovely to see you at lunchtime yesterday.”

  Carole couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate the sentiment, but she did manage to thank him for the meal.

  “And I’m sorry you didn’t feel ready to . . . come and see the
new office with me.” He made the words sound like a euphemism for something really disgusting.

  “It wasn’t a matter of ‘feeling ready’ or not; it was a matter of not wanting to,” she snapped. Jude would disapprove of her threatening the continuance of Barry Stilwell as a contact within the Pillars of Sussex, but Carole had had enough of his sly insinuations. And she thought she’d probably exhausted his stock of relevant information, anyway.

  He seemed impervious to her put-downs. “Don’t worry, Carole, I’m prepared to wait . . . for as long as it takes . . .” How about till hell freezes over and they hold the Winter Olympics there? “You’ll come round,” Barry went on. “You know there’s something between us.”

  Loathing, on my side, thought Carole. Whatever Jude’s views, the situation could not be tolerated much longer. The moment was fast coming when Barry Stilwell must be given a massive, unequivocal brush-off.

  But he didn’t let her get to that moment yet. “There was one thing I thought I ought to make clear, Carole darling . . .” Darling—yeuk! “ . . . about yesterday. I may have given you the wrong impression.”

  No, I think the impression you gave me was exactly the one you intended to. The wrong impression was the one you seemed to take away of my reactions to your advances.

  “It was my own fault. None of us are entirely responsible in our cups.”

  “Oh, come on, you didn’t have that much to drink.”

  “I wasn’t talking about yesterday. I was talking about the week before, after the Pillars of Sussex dinner at Hopwicke Country House Hotel.”

  “Ah.”

  “As I say, it’s my own fault. I like whisky, but it doesn’t like me. And I’m afraid it was the whisky that rather blurred my recollections of the end of the evening.” He paused, but Carole didn’t give him any help. “The fact is, I think I told you that I was up in Bob Hartson’s room drinking whisky, and there were just the two of us.”