The Hanging in the Hotel

Chapter Thirty

The revised will was on Donald Chew’s desk when Carole was ushered into his office. She reflected rather sourly that the document could have been on his desk by the end of their previous meeting. A few sentences added to a standard form and the job was done. The inventions of word-processing, faxes and email must have reduced the workload of solicitors enormously. But respect for ‘the law’s delay’ was one of the foundations of their professional principles – and certainly of their fee structure. So, in a provincial practice like Renton and Chew, everything had to take a long time, and all communications be sent by post.

After another bonhomous Dickensian welcome and an accepted offer of coffee, Donald Chew asked her to ‘run her eye’ over the will and check it was now in the form she wished. (If it wasn’t, the document would no doubt be removed for the lengthy changing of a couple of words and another appointment be made for a further meeting.)

Having scrutinized the insertions and then, as a double-check, read through the whole will, Carole agreed that the changes had been made according to her instructions. Since that was the moment her coffee arrived, Donald Chew suggested that, if she were happy about the arrangement, Carole’s signature could be witnessed straight away by himself and his receptionist.

Their business was done. Carole could think of no pretext on which she could extend the encounter, but she did not need to. Donald Chew seemed happy – even keen – to talk further. This could have been part of his usual professional manner, but she had a feeling he had an agenda to elicit information from her, or to impart some to her. So she was content to let his pleasantries unroll.

‘Delighted you got in touch with Brenda,’ he began. ‘She’s always so pleased to have extra helpers’ – he chuckled – ‘though often she has to end up doing a lot of things herself.’ Decades of marriage had taught Donald Chew the party line on his wife’s perpetual martyrdom.

‘Well, anything I can do to help. It’s in a good cause.’

‘Oh yes. And Brenda was very grateful for the promise you organized. What was it . . . callanetics?’

‘Kinesiology.’

‘Ah,’ he said with a masculine chuckle. ‘Something for the ladies, anyway.’

‘No. In fact, kinesiology is a highly respected natural health care system.’ What on earth was happening? Carole Seddon defending alternative therapies?

‘I’m sure. Anyway, very grateful to you for organizing it. And will you be at the auction of promises itself, Mrs Seddon?’

Carole hadn’t entirely decided about this, but she thought she probably should be. A hundred and fifty pounds was a huge amount to shell out for what would most likely be an uncongenial evening, but contact with Hopwicke Country House Hotel remained important. And if, as it seemed, Jude was temporarily persona non grata there . . .

‘Yes, I would like to. The trouble is, I don’t know anyone—’

‘Nonsense. You know Brenda. Have a word with her. She’ll see you’re put on our table.’ He decided this was perhaps more than he could promise on his wife’s behalf. ‘Or at least on a table with a nice bunch of people.’

‘I’ll give her a call about it.’

‘Good. Good.’ He looked out at the sea through his office window. ‘Never tire of that view, you know. Lovely, isn’t it? The sea. Never still, always changing.’

This moment of poetry from the solicitor was unexpected, until Carole realized he was just playing for time. Donald Chew was tense. There was something he needed to say to her, and he was having difficulty getting round to it.

She agreed the view was lovely, and waited.

‘You remember last time you were here, Mrs Seddon . . . we discussed the young man who used to work here. Nigel Ackford, you know, who was up at the hotel.’

‘Oh yes,’ Carole recalled, as if she hadn’t heard the name since Donald Chew last mentioned it.

‘There was an announcement of his death in the Fethering Observer.’

‘Really? I haven’t seen it yet.’

‘No mention of the cause of death.’

‘Presumably there’ll be an inquest?’

‘There has been a preliminary one; adjourned until there’s more evidence,’ said the solicitor, confirming what Jude had heard from Inspector Goodchild. ‘Postmortems, that kind of thing I suppose.’

‘Yes.’

Donald Chew sighed wearily. ‘I feel rather bad about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, because I was actually at the hotel the night he died. You know, you always have the feeling perhaps there was something you could have done. Probably not true, but . . . And those Pillars of Sussex dinners can get a bit rowdy and I’m afraid too much gets drunk and . . . I don’t know. Always a tendency to feel guilty after someone’s died. I’m sure I’ll get over it.’

Carole felt certain he had not yet unburdened himself of everything he needed to, and sure enough, after a silence, Donald Chew continued, his eyes still fixed on the sea. ‘I suppose I feel guilty because I’d drunk more than I intended that evening. In fact, I’d intended to drink virtually nothing, but . . . the road to hell and all that.’

Carole let him run on. ‘I even went on drinking after we’d left the bar. Bob Hartson offered to share a bottle of whisky with me up in his room, and I’m afraid I succumbed to that temptation too. Must have been up there for an hour, drinking with Bob – and his daughter Kerry. Goodness, for a child of her age, can she put the drink away?’ He chuckled, but still hadn’t finished what he had to say. ‘So, do you know, it was about quarter past three by the time I actually fell into my bed. Bob and I staggered downstairs to say goodnight to Kerry. She had a room in the stable block out the back, staff quarters, same place the chef and Bob’s chauffeur spent the night. And then I tottered off to bed.’

He shook his head; his eyes were full of self-loathing. ‘Dear oh dear. Don’t we ever learn? Why is alcohol so seductive while we’re drinking the stuff, and why does it make us feel so – uncomfortable afterwards.’ He had nearly let out a stronger adjective, but bowdlerized for Carole’s benefit.

From that point the conversation moved away from Nigel Ackford. Donald Chew talked further about the auction of promises. Carole said how much she was looking forward to it. Their meeting ended with great apparent cordiality.

And it left Carole feeling exactly as Jude had felt after her conversation with Max Townley in the Crown and Anchor. Someone was very deliberately orchestrating the alibis of the people present at Hopwicke House on the night Nigel Ackford died.

That afternoon Carole and Jude went for a stroll on Fethering beach. It was such a beautiful day – April coyly demonstrating how lovely an English spring can be – that Gulliver got the bonus of a second walk among the infinitely intriguing smells of seaweed, salt and tar.

‘Rick Hendry’s got to be behind it,’ Jude announced. ‘He’s the only one who benefits from this new scenario that’s been spoon-fed to us. And the alibis he’s set up have nothing to do with the murder. They’re just to cover any time he might possibly have been alone with Kerry.’

‘Suggesting that he did spend some time alone with Kerry that night?’

‘I’d say almost definitely, yes. And if news of that got out, with the current interest in Rick and underage girls, the tabloids’d go into a feeding frenzy.’

‘Yes, Jude, but what if Kerry herself talks?’

‘She’s been very effectively bribed to maintain her silence. Coincidence of timing, don’t you think, that she suddenly passes an audition to be on Pop Crop?’

‘Rick Hendry using his media power?’

‘Exactly. Just as he did with Max Townley. Amazing what people will do for the promise of television fame.’

‘But how did he persuade Donald Chew to fall in line?’

‘No idea, but he did somehow. The coincidence is too great for it to be above board. Just think of the unnecessary detail Donald gave you. He was fulfilling his part of an agreement to back up what Max told me.’

Carole nodded and looked thoughtfully out over the sea. ‘Yes, it all makes sense. But I’m sure Bob Hartson’s involved somewhere.’

‘Not in this alibi business. Rick, Suzy, Kerry and Max are in the clear, but Bob Hartson – and Donald Chew – are left wandering around the hotel just at the time when Nigel Ackford was most likely killed. Neither one of them has any alibi at all.’