by Emma Jackson
‘Cannabis?’ Stephen supplied loudly.
I cast a quick look around the room to see if anyone had heard him and was listening in now, thinking I was offering guests illegal substances. No, police officer, we are not selling drugs. I just need more sleep and practice memorising our beverages.
‘Stephen.’ Nick’s voice was low with admonishment.
‘What? You were the one who almost choked laughing at her.’
An uncomfortable silence descended and Nick cast an apologetic look at me. I wanted to tell him not to worry – it was Stephen who was taking up the role of rude brother today – but that would have only made matters worse. This was why you didn’t go on dates with guests. I forced myself to break the hush. ‘Anyway, tea, Dorie?’
‘Normal tea, thank you,’ she said graciously, and I gave her a little nod and tucked my pencil and pad away in my apron because even I could remember that order. Just as I was about to turn away, she spoke again. ‘Oh, one other thing I meant to ask you – the Mince Pie Evening tonight – is that still on?’
I blinked twice. Sometimes my mum was not content with the challenge of keeping a hotel full of guests happy with normal meals and a stocked-up bar – sometimes she felt the need to host ‘Evenings’. It sounded like there was one planned for tonight, which was just fabulous.
‘Yes.’ I had no idea what I was confirming but it didn’t sound too complex. Definitely not as complex as explaining why we couldn’t still host it. ‘Yes, of course. Right. One pot of tea, one pot of coffee and a bacon sandwich coming up.’ And then I escaped into the kitchen.
‘Henry?’ I called out as soon as I was through the door. I was determined to do this quickly and pretend that it wasn’t a big deal that I had no idea what was going on in the hotel that I’d boasted to him I was running.
He was nowhere to be seen but I heard a clatter in the walk-in fridge and he came out, with a scowl on his face.
‘What? I thought breakfast would be done with by now. I’ve got things to be getting on with.’
‘One more bacon sandwich and that should be the last of the hot food orders. Oh…and what’s this mince pie thing that’s happening tonight?’ I asked as I got on with filling a teapot with hot water and tea and grabbing a cafetière of coffee.
‘I thought you were in charge, Princess? Don’t you know?’
‘I am in charge but hey, you think the Prime Minister knows everything that’s going on at No. 10 without being told by his assistants?’
‘I am not your assistant.’
‘No kidding. I’m not the Prime Minister either – it was an analogy. Can you just answer the question please, before we both die of old age?’ I put two cups, on their saucers, on a tray and added a small jug of fresh milk.
‘There’s going to be a cold buffet on instead of dinner, followed by drinks and nibbles in the bar.’
I paused as I thought it over, hands ready on the sides of the tray. ‘So, dinner starts at normal time but it’s a self-service thing and then at, what? Half-eight/nine-o’clock, you crack out the mince pies and booze?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know the timings. I’m just getting the food ready, and then I’ll be gone by eight, since I’m not meant to be here anyway…’ His sentence petered away into a grumble as he disappeared back into the fridge.
‘Great. Thanks. That was really illuminating,’ I called after him.
Walking back through the dining room I caught snatches of conversation; almost all of it about the snow, though half the guests were excited at the prospect of a white Christmas and half were lamenting the cold. As I approached Nick and Stephen’s table, I did my best to tune my ears out by running through the piano chords to Three Little Birds in my head. I didn’t want to hear what they were talking about. It was none of my business and any little snippets I might catch would only inflame my curiosity.
Once I’d served them their drinks and stolen a glance at Nick’s choice of cereal – a mountain of cornflakes of the sweet variety; the big, adorable kid, gagh – I collected some dirty dishes and cups on the tray I’d come in with and headed back towards the kitchen to pick up Stephen’s bacon sandwich.
After two silent minutes, Henry slid it wordlessly across the counter towards me. Today was going to be so much fun.
I struggled not to salivate all over the plate as I ferried the sandwich back in. Stephen should count himself lucky I was far too nice a person to spit on it after his snarky remarks this morning. The bacon smelt amazing, crisped to perfection on soft doorstep-cut bread. If that didn’t put his hangover to rights, I didn’t know what would, but I didn’t wait around to find out.
The dining room was emptying out now, so I began collecting glasses. It was going to be busy today. Fewer people were going to go out because of the weather. I could probably manage until lunch but once the bar needed to be opened up this afternoon, if I still had no extra staff, I didn’t know how I was going to handle it all.
‘Psst. Psst. Beth.’
I looked up from stacking teacups and worrying, to see Noelle beckoning to me from behind her menu, which was standing up in the centre of her table. I straightened and blinked. Making sure the stack of teacups was able to hold its own weight, I abandoned my clear-up attempt and went over to her.
‘Morning. Everything okay?’ I peered warily over the menu and was relieved to see all she had there was a glass of juice, a plate with some pastry crumbs and her notebook.
‘Yeah, I’m great. You gotta minute to sit with me?’
‘Uh, sure.’ I didn’t. Of course I didn’t have a minute but when my prospects for the morning included clearing up the dining room, laundry, helping clean the rooms and dealing with Henry, I figured some time chatting to someone who actually seemed to like me would be worth carving out.
I moved around the table and took the chair next to her so that I was behind her menu partition too.
‘I’ve been doing some sleuthing for you.’ She tapped her notepad and picked up the glittery gel pen beside it. Her handwriting was the large, rounded and neat kind, so I could very easily make out the names of about a dozen guests listed next to two columns, labelled ‘For’ and ‘Against’. ‘I’ve sketched out some rudimentary details that I’ve been able to pick up from conversation, but I need to know the full list of suspects, otherwise there’s no point me narrowing it down any further.’
‘This is about the blogger?’ I cringed again about my slip-up with the tea blends and Stephen virtually yelling ‘cannabis’ to the whole room. ‘You’re trying to figure out who it is?’
She nodded. ‘I couldn’t resist.’ Her hair was in two long plaits today and she flicked one over her shoulder. ‘And now I need you to fill me in on who the rest of the guests are.’ She stretched her neck, checking over the top of the menu, no doubt scoping out the other guests to see if anyone was listening.
I looked down again at her notepad. ‘Why is your name on the list?’
‘Oh, you know, just in case you thought I was trying to misdirect you. Classic Keyser Söze move.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘So? Why shouldn’t I believe it’s you? You are a writer.’
‘Precisely. As my editor will tell you, I do not have time for writing a travel blog as well as the novel I’m contracted and probably gonna miss the deadline for.’
I was guessing it’d be rude to point out that she probably didn’t have time to conduct self-funded private-eye investigations either.
‘Plus,’ she added. ‘I don’t have the opportunity. I go away maybe twice a year. Frequent travellers are your most likely suspects.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘Exactly. Like your boy Nick, right?’ She underscored his name a couple of times. ‘He flies to different countries constantly. Must stay overnight in lots of different hotels. He’d have some downtime too. Perfect to fill with writing reviews on a blog.’
All of which was very plausible, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered it, but inst
ead of agreeing I simply blurted out: ‘He’s not my boy.’
She leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen as she considered me. A slow grin crept up on her face. ‘It was a figure of speech.’
‘Right, of course it was.’ I cleared my throat and shuffled my chair closer to the table, not meeting her bright grey eyes, which were twinkling with mischief. She moved her chair in a little too and nudged my shoulder gently with hers.
‘It’s cool. If you like him, you can tell me, I’ll keep it a secret,’ she whispered.
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Oh, that is so blatantly not true, but I’ll drop it if you want. I’ve got some intel on them though if you’re interested: the Brothers Cartwright.’ She licked her finger and dabbed it into the pastry crumbs, waggling her eyebrows.
‘What kind of intel?’ I asked before I realised that I was not supposed to be interested.
‘Backstory of the messy, conflicted and heartstring-tugging variety. I was in the pub last night when they were having their dinner.’
I thought I’d seen her in there. ‘Noelle, were you spying on them?’
‘Well, sure.’ She cocked her head to the side innocently as though it was obvious and completely acceptable.
I leaned my elbow on the table and rested my forehead on my hand, shaking my head a little, whilst also fighting back laughter. This woman was too much.
‘So, I’ve got the gist of what’s causing the tension between them. Other than your good self obviously. You wanna hear?’ She popped her finger, matted with choux pastry, into her mouth.
‘Yes. I mean no. Nooo, it’s none of my business.’ The laughter I was fighting back burst out. ‘You are a bad influence on me. I need to keep it professional. It was a mistake going on that date with Stephen.’
‘Definitely. Because you—’ she pressed the tips of her thumbs and index fingers together in the shape of a heart ‘—Nick.’
‘No. Because they’re guests here. I’m not ready to date anyone. And they’ll be leaving soon.’
‘Okay, I hear you… Although, you do realise you moved from talking about why you shouldn’t have gone on a date with Stephen to why you shouldn’t date either of them. My only question is, why shouldn’t you?’
‘I’m not sure if I can trust myself,’ I admitted. ‘My judgement was way off with my ex – right from the beginning. He was very charming and sexy, and I let myself be completely seduced.’
Noelle gave me a grim, understanding smile. ‘Been there. Still, there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun is there?’
‘Isn’t that how it always starts though? Right before all the lies.’ I brought my other elbow up to the table and hid behind both my hands briefly. It was warm and dark in there. I took a deep breath and when I dropped my hands and pushed back my shoulders, there was even more sympathy in her gaze.
‘Right. I’ll shut up about them now. But if you change your mind, I’ve got notes. So, how about those other guests?’
‘I can’t give you their names. Data protection et cetera.’
‘Oh. I guess I’ll just have to do some more spying.’ She shrugged, not particularly put out by the prospect.
‘Well, there’s the perfect opportunity tonight. We’re having a mince pie and mulled wine evening in the bar. With the weather like this, I expect it’ll be a full house.’
‘Oh fantastic.’ She flipped her notebook shut and hooked her pen into the cover. ‘That’s classic Agatha Christie territory. A house party. Everyone snowed in. I’ll have this blogger ferreted out by the end of tonight, I’ll bet.’
‘Thank you, Noelle. I do appreciate your help.’
‘No problem.’ She stood up and winked at me. ‘I’m going to find my cocktail dress and my Dictaphone.’
Chapter Eight
As soon as the last diner left, I finished collecting the dirty cutlery and plates and leftover platters, folded the tablecloths, took them to the laundry, collected fresh ones and reset the room for lunch. I could hear the guests in the lounge and the library, clumping about upstairs and going in and out from the gardens but not a single soul crossed my path and it was bliss. I’m not an unsociable creature generally but living in a hotel made me appreciate the moments of peace. I even left my phone in my pocket.
I could have answered the texts from Lisa once I had finished up and lingered for five minutes in the quiet, drinking leftover lukewarm coffee poured from Stephen’s half-full cafetière, but I was flummoxed as to how to answer her.
Who was I dancing with?
Nick is a guest; Nick is a gorgeous pilot; Nick is a grumpy man-child who struggles to be civil when he’s tired, eats kids cereal and looks like he shops for his clothes at a jumble sale; Nick is a man who seems to have no idea he is smoking hot and when he blushes I want to kiss the living daylights out of him.
I almost choked on my cold coffee at the thought and put down my cup.
No. It was bad enough that Noelle had realised I was crushing hard. I didn’t need Lisa texting me every couple of hours trying to convince me to ask him out. Lovely to see you happy again, Lisa had said. And I appreciated the sentiment. I had been happy. We had talked and laughed and danced but now we were back to staff and guest and that was how it needed to stay. Like Noelle said, he was a very likely candidate for the Hotel Hopper and free kisses under the mistletoe were not something my mum probably wanted her hotel to be renowned for. That was straying into Amsterdam territory again.
I left the dining room and went up to help Elise, the one cleaner who had thankfully made it in again. All the guest suites were large enough to provide – in addition to their beds and bathrooms – a small seating area with a television, tea- and coffee-making facilities and the larger ones also had a desk and bookcase too, so plenty of room for the guests to hang around when they couldn’t get out because of the weather. As a consequence, some of the rooms would have to be visited again once their occupants had buzzed off.
When I reached Julius Mundey’s room – identifiable by the neat row of moccasins and collection of allergy medication on the bathroom counter – I remembered him moaning about the lunch menu not being on the door to the dining room yesterday. I decided to give myself a break from the tedium of toilet brushes and go visit Henry in the kitchen to get the lunch selection typed up.
The normal heat of the kitchen was emptying out the back door and the sides were only half cleared after breakfast. Slacker. There were muffled voices from the side of the hotel, which made me assume Henry was dealing with a delivery, even though it usually came a lot earlier than that. It’d probably been delayed because of the snow.
I popped into the utility room to unload the linen from the washing machine and transfer it to the tumble dryer. So far so good. Despite the utter lack of staff, I was managing. Maybe I could just about hold things together until my mum made it back.
I’d made it up a couple of the stairs when the thud of Henry’s big boots in the kitchen carried out to me. I swiftly retraced my steps and just made it around the door into the kitchen to see him disappearing out of the back door again, with a massive shoulder of pork cradled in his arms.
Okay. Weird. I may not have been the smartest cookie in the packet, but I was pretty sure when food was delivered, it came into the kitchen, not out of it. Unless he’d decided to build one of those trash-can bins to smoke a ham or whatever it was people did, I couldn’t really understand why he’d be taking it out there.
So, I followed him.
If I’d thought the kitchen was cold, it was nothing to stepping outside. The air was a flurry of flakes, making anything more than a couple of metres away a blur. Cursing, I wrapped my arms around my body and stepped down into the thick covering of snow hiding the concrete. My court shoes sank and my feet were instantly soaked but I ploughed after the smudge of Henry’s retreating figure.
At the corner of the building was a large estate car and I was only halfway there when I saw Henry dump the pork
into its open boot and turn back towards me. The sight of me made him stop.
‘What are you doing out here, Beth? You’ll catch your death.’
It was the first time in weeks he’d called me by my name or expressed any kind of concern for my welfare. The realisation of that was sad enough but it also sent an alarm bell ringing. I frowned at him and carried on over towards the car. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’ He plunged after me and caught my arm. ‘Just a problem with the delivery, got to send some stuff back.’
‘Back to the butcher’s?’ I stopped and watched him as he nodded and let go of my arm. It would explain why this was happening so late in the day but… ‘This isn’t the butcher’s van.’
‘No.’ He glanced back at it and tugged his hat further down over his ears. ‘No. It can’t get up the hill with the snow, so they sent this guy instead with the Audi. It’s got four-wheel drive. And it’s cold enough it doesn’t matter it hasn’t got a freezer in the back,’ he joked.
I nodded slowly, studying his face, the tight smile directed towards me as he waited for my reaction. I wanted to believe him, but unfortunately for him, I’d spent a lot of time in the not-so-distant past listening to a liar giving me far more details than necessary to cover his tracks.
I pulled the cuffs of my blouse over my hands and wiped snowflakes from my eyes, taking another look at the car. Its engine was running and there was a man I didn’t recognise behind the steering wheel. The boot was half full. ‘What does the butcher want with a sack of potatoes?’
Henry frowned at me and then checked the boot. ‘I dunno. They were in there when he got here. Maybe he was doing his shopping, I’m not a mind reader.’ There was the irritation I’d grown used to.
Before I could respond, he leaned over, pushing the boot lid down with a slam and knocked on the back window. The wheels spun in the snow for a split second and then the car was moving away. There was a chill in the bottom of my stomach, and it had nothing to do with the snow.
He started walking back to the kitchen.
‘Henry,’ I called out to him. ‘Henry.’
