‘Huh.’
‘Still, at least she will have another event to organize – where once again she can complain that nobody else pulls their weight.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Donald’s funeral.’
‘Thanks, Carole. Very tasteful.’
Their glasses had mysteriously become empty. Jude refilled them in silence. Then she said, ‘I’m assuming we don’t accept the accident verdict?’
Carole was more cautious. ‘Well, it is possible.’
‘Come on.’
‘Oh, very well. No, we don’t.’
‘And, putting the suicide verdict on one side for the moment – if it was murder, who could have done it?’
‘You mean who wasn’t in the dining room during the dinner?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Obviously the hotel staff were in and out. I hadn’t seen any of the waitresses before.’
‘Let’s forget them then – concentrate on the people who were also in the hotel on the night of the first death.’
‘All right. Well, your friend Suzy Longthorne was in and out of the dining room all evening, Max was presumably in the kitchen – Ooh, and I noticed when I left to go to the loo, just before I found the body, Rick Hendry wasn’t in his seat either.’
‘But Bob Hartson was?’
‘Yes, definitely.’ As Carole pictured the scene, another recollection came back to her. ‘Though Kerry wasn’t.’
‘Any idea where she was?’
‘No. Maybe she was in the Ladies’, but I didn’t see her come out. I mean, as soon as I’d looked down in the cellar and seen the body, I went and found Suzy in the kitchen. Then she told Inspector Goodchild. Quite honestly, from that point everything got chaotic. Kerry and Rick Hendry both reappeared, but I haven’t a clue where they came from.’
Jude circled a thoughtful finger around the top of her wineglass. ‘I’m sorry Bob Hartson isn’t in the frame. I’d been moving towards casting him in the role of murderer.’
‘He could have murdered Nigel Ackford. There’s no way he had anything to do with Donald Chew.’
‘Pity.’
‘I suppose it’s possible that the two deaths are unconnected?’
This tentative suggestion was immediately blown away. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘No,’ Carole admitted. ‘They’re connected.’
She was offered a rather surprising connection between the deaths the following morning.
Her phone rang and a voice of anguished embarrassment whispered, ‘It’s all right. Pomme’s at her mother’s.’
‘Ah,’ said Carole, then, mischievously, ‘It was a great pleasure to meet her last night. Though unfortunate, of course, that the evening ended as it did.’
‘A tragedy,’ said Barry Stilwell. ‘A terrible tragedy. Awful when anyone dies, but when it’s a fellow solicitor . . .’
‘Doubly awful,’ suggested Carole, who was having serious difficulty in not giggling.
‘I have to confess,’ he said, with an audible gulp of nervousness, ‘that I did find yesterday evening rather difficult.’
‘I think being present when someone dies is always difficult.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant earlier in the evening – when I actually saw you and Pomme face to face.’
‘Ah.’
‘It did make me think a bit about . . . what we’re doing.’
Speak for yourself, sunshine. I’m not doing anything.
‘And I did rather think that . . . Well, Pomme is sometimes a— can be jealous at times, and she keeps getting it into her head that I might be . . . chatting up other women.’ With justification, thought Carole. But she stayed silent and let him blunder on. ‘So I thought we might cool it for a bit – if that’s all right with you.’
Perfectly all right with me, since from my point of view no heat has ever been involved. ‘Yes, fine, Barry. Do what you think’s best.’
‘Yes, well, er . . . Just for the time being.’
‘Mm.’
‘And then, in a little while, when Pomme has, as it were, calmed down we might be able to, er, pick up and – who knows?’
I do, thought Carole firmly. She wondered why he had rung. Nothing had happened the night before to prompt suspicion in the substantial bosom of Pomme. Unless she was one of those wives who is irrationally jealous of every woman her husband even looks at, Carole got the feeling Barry’s call had another agenda. She was aware of him edging towards it.
‘As I say, tragic about poor old Donald.’
‘Tragic.’
‘Terrible how these accidents happen . . . don’t you agree?’
‘Oh yes.’ Carole now knew the direction in which Barry was worming his way. He had once again been set up by someone powerful in the Pillars of Sussex to check out what she and Jude were thinking, whether they had accepted the accidental explanation of Donald Chew’s death. She waited.
‘Erm . . . well . . .’ Barry Stilwell wasn’t finding his appointed task easy. Eventually, bluntly, he asked, ‘You’re convinced it was an accident, Donald’s death, aren’t you?’
‘What’s the alternative?’ She wasn’t going to make it any easier for him.
‘Well, erm . . . Do I gather you are convinced it was an accident?’
‘No,’ said Carole. Let him sweat a bit.
‘Ah. Right.’ Her response seemed to have confirmed his worst fears. ‘Take your point. I suppose there could be a view that it was suicide.’
‘And why would Donald Chew want to commit suicide?’
‘Well, being in the hotel again – it must have brought it all back to him.’
‘Brought all what back to him?’
‘Hopwicke House was where his young colleague, Nigel Ackford, died.’
‘I’m well aware of that, Barry.’
‘And, um, well . . . don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, of course, but did you know about Donald?’
‘Did I know what about Donald?’
‘Well, that – I mean it wasn’t much of a secret among the Pillars of Sussex. He – I know he was married but . . .’ Barry Stilwell cleared his throat, ‘Donald Chew was homosexual.’
‘Oh,’ said Carole, at one level unsurprised. There had always been something slightly unreal about the solicitor, as though he were playing a part, as though he had something to hide. What Barry had just said could explain that.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there was a feeling around his office, I gather, that Donald was very attracted to the young man.’
‘Was the attraction mutual?’
‘That I wouldn’t know. But the suggestion was that Nigel Ackford’s suicide might be in some way related to his relationship with his boss.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Apparently Donald Chew arrived at the hotel early that Tuesday evening, and there was some suggestion that he was hoping to . . . er, meet up with the young man before the dinner . . .’
Who was making all these suggestions? Carole wondered.
‘And maybe Nigel resisted his advances, or said that their relationship had to end and maybe Donald was so upset that . . .’
The implication was left dangling in the air. Rather as Nigel Ackford had been.
‘So the thinking is,’ Barry Stilwell continued with new energy, ‘that if Donald’s death wasn’t accidental – and of course it may well have been accidental – but, if it wasn’t, that being back in the hotel affected him emotionally and . . .’
This time Carole helped him out. ‘And Donald Chew committed suicide in remorse for having murdered Nigel Ackford?’