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.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The lunch at Hopwicke House was part of a day-long seminar given by one of the few companies that still realized the value of lavish corporate entertaining. They were an up-market accountancy firm, whose invitation list had only included people the capture of whose business would justify the outlay. A surprising number of these had agreed to turn up; they hadn’t made their fortunes by failing to recognize the value of a free lunch. Each one of them had arrived determined to make no change to their existing accountancy arrangements. But they were all duly appreciative of Max Townley’s cooking, and listened with apparent interest to the blandishments of the accountants who were trying to ensnare their business.
Because of the tight timetable to which the seminar had been planned, lunch was a relatively short break. Some wine was drunk, but not a great deal. The dining room was clear by two-fifteen; tidying and re-laying for dinner would be complete by quarter to three.
Jude had to go to the first-floor linen room to fetch clean tablecloths. The mobile laundry service delivered everything up there – bedding, towels and table drapery.
The linen room was also the base for the chambermaids and, when the hotel had had one, the housekeeper. (As profit margins tightened, Suzy had cut the full-time post, and the housekeeper’s duties were thereafter shared between the chambermaids or added to Suzy’s already excessive workload.) As well as stocks of linen, the room’s shelves were filled with individual packets of soap, shampoo, shower-gel, shower-caps, teabags, instant-coffee granules, sweetener, long-life milk and cream, shoe-cleaning wipes, sewing kits and all the other impedimenta which form an obligatory part of the twenty-first-century hotel experience – even in a country house hotel.
There was a clipboard on the wall of the linen room for the daily bedroom sheets. On these forms were three columns: for the room numbers, for guests’ names to show whether or not the room was occupied, and for the ticks the chambermaids had to put in when the room had been cleaned and tidied ready for the next guest. A form of shorthand was used to show when beds needed new sheets rather than just remaking, when breakages had occurred, and when maintenance work – like replacing light bulbs, retuning television sets or unblocking sinks – was required.
The clipboard gave Jude an idea. There was no fixed schedule for removing its old sheets. Often they wouldn’t be cleared until their mass became too great for the new one to be clipped in, which was the case on this occasion. Jude flicked through and found the sheet for the Wednesday in the small hours of which Nigel Ackford had died. The ticking of the form that morning had been erratic. With a police investigation on the premises, the chambermaids’ re-tidying of the bedrooms had had a low priority. But the names showing which rooms had been occupied were all in place.
Pushing at the release clip, Jude slid out the relevant sheet. She folded it and put it in her pocket, with a view to checking the rooms against the Pillars of Sussex guest list at Woodside Cottage.
Downstairs, the accountants were leading their prey to the next sales pitch in the conference suite. ‘Wish they were all like this,’ Suzy confided to Jude, as the last guest left the dining room. ‘One of the big downturns of the hotel industry is watching customers lingering over their meals, while all you want to do is move in and clear up.’
‘Are they here for dinner?’
‘No, thank God. Tea and biscuits at five, then they’re off – the company people to plan their follow-up phone calls, and the potential clients to forget they’ve ever been here.’
‘Does that mean you’ve got an evening off?’
‘No, but it’s not stressful. Just a private party.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kerry Hartson’s sixteenth.’
‘Amazing to think she’s that young.’
‘I know. She’s been fifteen going on twenty-five for a long time.’
‘So is it going to be a wild teenage rave here tonight?’
‘Good heavens, no. Just an elegant family dinner party. No doubt she’ll go clubbing with her mates on some other occasion.’ Suzy’s shoulders rose in an involuntary shudder. ‘Anyway, thank God I no longer have to deal with Kerry.’
‘Why did you take her on, Suzy?’
‘Oh, she wanted to learn the hotel business. As ever, I needed another pair of hands.’
An inadequate answer, but Jude let it pass.
They were in the kitchen. The other waitresses had knocked off, and Max had gone to do whatever it is that chefs do in the afternoon – in his case, possibly practising television celebrity faces in front of a mirror.
‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ asked Suzy.
‘Please.’
‘Come back to my place.’
Jude had been into the barn before, but was once again struck by the elegance of its decoration. As with her wardrobe, Suzy had used only the best designers; everything in the barn conversion was minimalist and perfect.
In the kitchen she produced a couple of cappuccinos from the Italian coffee-maker, and sat down at the long wooden table. The rain had stopped ; the weather was warm enough now for the French windows to be opened, and for the two women to look out to the rolling green curves of the South Downs, cleansed by their recent drenching.
Suzy let out a long sigh. ‘I hope things settle down a bit now. I think I’ve had more than my share of bad luck in the last two weeks.’
‘Two deaths in the hotel,’ said Jude.
‘Exactly. Two too many.’
‘And is it your view that there was a connection between them?’
Another, even longer, sigh. ‘I honestly don’t know. And I’m afraid I don’t really care. Sounds callous, but maybe I am. You have to develop a strong core of selfishness if you run your own business. When the first death happened, I was afraid it threatened the hotel. Now . . .’ The sculpted shoulders shrugged.
‘You think the danger’s gone away?’