The Hanging in the Hotel

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘I’m beginning to wonder if it all is coincidence,’ said Carole grumpily. The crusading hunger she’d felt for the truth when she last spoke to Barry Stilwell seemed to have trickled away. ‘Suppose everything is exactly as it appears on the surface? Nigel Ackford committed suicide; Donald Chew fell down the cellar stairs by accident.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing you say this, Carole.’

Carole looked morosely out of the front window of Woodside Cottage, where heavy grey rain fell, matching her mood. ‘Well, we’ve tried every way to get a logical thread through recent events on the assumption that murder was involved, and we’ve failed dismally. It might make more sense if we took things at face value.’

Jude’s haystack of hair quivered as she vigorously shook her head. ‘No. There are too many inconsistencies for us to take things at face value. We’ve been treated like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking-Glass – been asked to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast! Think about it.’

‘What?’ Carole was being deliberately obtuse.

‘First, Suzy covers up – not telling the police about the threatening note.’

‘Simply to protect the reputation of her hotel.’

‘All right. Then Max lets out the fact that Rick Hendry was there that night, and suddenly we have a whole new set of cover-ups. Kerry drinking with her father and Barry Stilwell – later replaced by Donald Chew. Kerry being very happy to tell me that alibi, and the timing happening to coincide with her passing an audition to be in Pop Crop. Max comes back to me and spells out a very detailed scenario which doesn’t allow Kerry to be alone with Rick – and, goodness me, it turns out that Korfilia Productions are going to be promoting Max as a celebrity chef. Don’t you find all that a bit odd, Carole?’

‘Yes, all right. Rick Hendry was trying to divert publicity from himself, and using bribes he knew would work with Kerry and Max. But I still can’t find any connection between that and Nigel Ackford’s death. Until he heard about the body in the four-poster room, I doubt whether Rick knew of Nigel’s existence.’

‘All right.’ Jude sighed. She couldn’t decide whether Carole had genuinely stopped believing in the murder theory, was playing devil’s advocate, or was just being bloody-minded. ‘Let’s look at it from another angle. The information that Max gave me in the Crown and Anchor – which I don’t believe for a minute was true – established, as you say, that Rick could not have been alone with Kerry, so no one could accuse him of messing about with yet another young girl. But it also established the same for Bob Hartson. He couldn’t have been alone with Kerry either.’

Carole looked alarmed. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘You know what I’m suggesting. I’ve mentioned it before. Every time I’ve seen Bob Hartson with Kerry, he’s been exceptionally affectionate towards her.’ Jude rubbed a rueful hand against her cheek. ‘He wouldn’t be the first stepfather to have found his stepdaughter more attractive than his new wife.’

Carole remembered Sandra Hartson’s pained look as she had watched her husband and daughter go arm in arm into the hotel bar on Saturday night. ‘You could be right. So what you’re suggesting, Jude, is that Bob Hartson might have set up Max to give you all that guff?’

‘Possible.’

‘But if that were the case, Bob Hartson can’t have had anything to do with Nigel’s death.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, assuming that Bob Hartson is the one who’s been orchestrating the alibis – or at least he knows they are being orchestrated . . . We are assuming that, aren’t we, Jude?’

‘All right.’

‘Well then, although he’s covered himself with regard to his stepdaughter, he left himself completely without an alibi for the time when the conjectural murder might have taken place. Surely that shows he’s innocent. It never even occurred to him that he might be a suspect. If it had, he’d have covered himself.’

‘True.’ Jude nodded. ‘He was awake and inside the hotel, so he could have killed Nigel.’

‘The same goes for Donald Chew.’

‘Which brings us on to yet another cover-up. All that stuff Barry Stilwell gave you about Donald Chew being gay.’

‘I think that could actually have been true.’

‘But the idea of him and Nigel having been in a relationship. Having talked to Wendy Fullerton again, I just don’t buy that.’

‘No, Jude. Nor do I.’

Jude looked thoughtfully out into the sheeting rain. Forget April showers, this was more like another Deluge. The good people of Fethering would soon be getting out their B&Q cubit measuring tapes and building arks.

‘It’s odd,’ she said finally. ‘All these cover-ups and alibis . . . I’m sure they’re being done just for us.’

‘Sorry?’

‘For our benefit. Nobody else is being given all of this information, because nobody else is interested. Other people either genuinely don’t care, or they recognize the fact that it’s prudent not to care.’

‘Where’s this leading you, Jude?’

‘Well, we keep being offered scenarios to believe in, and we make it clear we don’t believe in them, and then we’re offered another one. Maybe if we claim to be satisfied with the latest explanation, there won’t be any more of them.’

‘So if we let it be known that we believe Nigel Ackford committed suicide because of his difficult relationship with Donald Chew, and Donald Chew topped himself for the same reason, everything’ll go quiet?’

‘Might do.’

‘And if they think we’ve accepted the explanation,’ said Carole excitedly, ‘they’ll relax, and we’ll be able to continue our investigation without so much interference?’

‘What is this investigation?’ asked Jude ingenuously. ‘I didn’t think there was any investigation to be pursued. I thought your view was that it was all coincidence.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Carole.

Jude’s phone rang just after Carole had gone back to High Tor. It was Suzy with another emergency. A big lunch party and two of her regular waitresses had flu. Would Jude mind . . .?

As she phoned for a taxi, Jude felt good. At least that particular bridge had been rebuilt. She’d never doubted it would happen in time, but was reassured to know that she and Suzy were back on their old footing.

In spite of the bullish note on which her conversation with Jude had ended, Carole still felt restless and short-tempered. The weather didn’t help. Nor did the plaintive padding around of Gulliver. His early morning walk had been postponed because of the rain – Carole had just taken him onto the waste ground behind the house to do his business – and he felt aggrieved by the omission. Gulliver didn’t mind walks in the rain; he enjoyed sploshing about and rolling in puddles; it was only his wet blanket of an owner who was put off by the thought of washing and drying him after they got back. So he was as grumpy as she was.

Carole made herself a cup of coffee she didn’t really want and sat in her front room, trying not to listen to the incessant dribbling of rain down a piece of guttering that needed mending. The noise offended her sense of rightness. Carole Seddon prided herself on keeping High Tor in immaculate repair, and the water in the broken gutter sounded a constant reproach.

She tried to think if there was anyone she could phone up. There were Fethering people who would be perfectly happy to exchange social niceties, but she had no real reason, apart from boredom, to call them.

She supposed she could ring Stephen. The afterglow of their lunch at Hopwicke House had faded a little, and it was down to her to maintain contact. Her conversation with the wedding-organizing couple at the auction of promises had made her realize how ignorant she was of the basics of Stephen and Gaby’s plans. She should really ring up to show an interest. But that’d have to be later. A call from his mother while he was at work was so unprecedented, Stephen would probably assume she was ringing to announce the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease.

There was a novel by her bed that Carole was quite enjoying, but the effort of going upstairs to fetch it seemed insuperable. She looked out of the window. The rain had to stop soon, then she could take Gulliver on to Fethering beach and blow the grumpiness out of both of them.

Carole found she was hearing the gurgling from the broken gutter again and to block it out, picked up a copy of the Fethering Observer. It was the previous week’s; the next one wasn’t due out till Thursday. She wondered how much coverage would be afforded then to the demise of Donald Chew.

Without much optimism, she flicked through the pages in search of something to divert her. The report of a recent spate of dustbin fires didn’t promise to do the trick. Nor did news of Fethering’s plans to twin with a seaside town in Belgium. And though a headline about a pensioner being found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to rabbits intrigued, the subsequent story disappointed.

What stopped her was an article about Fethering town council’s successful application for a licence to hold civil weddings in the town hall. Carole did not have any plans to remarry. Nor did she think the grey-fronted civic rectangle opposite Fethering parish church would be a sufficiently glamorous venue for Stephen and Gaby. What interested her about the article was the name of its reporter.

She remembered sitting in Donald Chew’s office when his receptionist announced a call from ‘Mr Floyd from the Fethering Observer.’

The by-line on the town hall article was ‘Karl Floyd’.

Carole Seddon had no aptitude for subterfuge. She didn’t possess the skills to take on another identity or disguise her voice, but she knew a lie was necessary. While she was in his office, Donald Chew had said that he would fix a meeting with ‘Mr Floyd from the Fethering Observer.’ As she waited for the phone to be answered, Carole just prayed that the receptionist would not recognize her voice.

‘Renton and Chew,’ the enhanced vowels announced.

Too late Carole wished she’d gone out to a public phone box. The invention of the 1471 last caller identification service must have wreaked havoc with the world of espionage.

She plunged in, hoping – rightly, as it transpired – that no attempt would be made to trace her call. ‘Good morning. I’m calling on behalf of Karl Floyd at the Fethering Observer. I believe he has a meeting with Mr Donald Chew scheduled for this week.’

‘Well, yes, he did, but—’

‘I just wanted to confirm the time of that meeting.’

The enhanced vowels at the end of the line sounded bewildered. ‘It was for Monday.’

‘Yesterday?’

‘Yes. And since Mr Floyd didn’t come here, I assumed he’d got my message.’

Carole thought on her feet. ‘Oh yes, he must’ve done. Sorry, he’s out of the office today. I just found something about the meeting on a Post-it note on Mr Floyd’s computer, and thought it needed action. Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘No problem,’ said the enhanced vowels, perhaps relieved at not having to spell out again the circumstances of her boss’s death.

Carole ended the call. Then, having just claimed to be ringing from the Fethering Observer, she rang the real Fethering Observer.