The Hanging in the Hotel (36 page)

‘And where are you getting the money to do that?’ asked Carole huffily. ‘As I recall, you told me this flat was rented.’

‘Yes,’ he replied coolly. ‘I came into some money.’

‘Where from?’

‘An aunt died.’

However much they questioned him further, the dead aunt was the story he stuck with. And in that way maybe the career of another fledgling property tycoon began.

The one unarguable fact that came out of their encounter with Karl Floyd was the sad reality that bullying – and, come to that, bribery – are often very effective.

So Bob Hartson thrived. The Pillars of Sussex and all his other local connections closed ranks around him and, as ever, by the judicious application of influence and
incentives, his profits continued to grow.

Local business continued to be conducted in the way it always had been conducted. Very little was done that was actually against the law, nobody was so indelicate as to use words like
‘bribery’, but the skills of knowing and nurturing the right people continued to work their timeless magic.

Suzy Longthorne kept on running Hopwicke Country House Hotel and gradually her hard work turned its fortunes round. Max Townley continued as her chef, and continued to complain that his talents
were under-appreciated. Rick Hendry had fulfilled the promise to help Max’s television career through Korfilia Productions, but after one screen-test had been shown to the BBC, Max was
dropped as being ‘too like all the other television chefs’. So he had to confine his tantrums and his cheery singing to the audience of his own kitchen.

Kerry Hartson didn’t fare much better in the new series of
Pop Crop
. The format had been changed so that, though a hundred hopefuls were shown in the first programme, a mere ten
went through to the next stage. Only the chosen ten were seen and heard singing on television. Kerry was not one of them. She was just in the ensemble shots, queuing for her precious audition.

But failure to achieve pop celebrity did not change Kerry’s life much. Her stepfather continued to buy her everything she announced she wanted. He was assiduous in going round virtually
every day to her Brighton flat, ‘to see that she was all right’. And Sandra Hartson continued to worry about the precise nature of her husband’s relationship with her
daughter.

Rick Hendry milked pop-wannabee television for everything it was worth, and shrewdly got out when he saw the bubble was about to burst. He retired to count his money and work out in what form he
would reincarnate himself for his sixties. He almost completely lost touch with Suzy Longthorne.

Wendy Fullerton continued to work at the building society and to put on ever-heavier make-up. She continued looking for Mr Right, though with an increasing conviction that the man she had once
lived with was probably as near as she would ever get.

Barry Stilwell, after his daring foray into the possibilities of extramarital sex, stayed at home more than ever under the thumb of Pomme. But he still got out now and then to vilify women at
Rotary and Pillars of Sussex meetings.

Brenda Chew, greatly relieved no longer to have Donald around, threw herself ever more vigorously into charitable works, for which she was never as well appreciated as she should have been. Much
of her effort was directed towards Pillars of Sussex events. Because, as its members never ceased to tell people, the primary purpose of their organization was charitable. The fact that members
might make useful business contacts at Pillars of Sussex meetings was just a serendipitous by-product of their activities.

Jude’s friendship with Suzy survived the lies. And she still received regular SOS calls from Hopwicke Country House Hotel, when yet another of the waitresses had defected.

Carole Seddon got to know her son’s fiancée. Through Gaby, she began to get to know Stephen. And increasingly she dreaded the moment when she would have to meet David again. As for
the wedding scheduled for the fourteenth of September, she viewed that prospect with trepidation, but also with a little excitement.

Carole Seddon’s son is soon to be married and as wedding plans commence Marie and Harold, parents of the bride, seem unusually desperate to keep their daughter’s
big day as low-key as possible. But the wedding soon takes a back seat when Harold’s body is found . . . in a burnt-out car in Epping Forest.

While the family try to deal with their grief, Carole discovers they are concealing secrets that can be traced back thirty years, to the murder of Marie’s best friend. What’s more,
the girl’s killer has been released from prison and is back in his old stomping ground, near Fethering . . .

Now Carole fears the bride-to-be is the killer’s new target. But can she, with the help of her friend Jude, unravel the family’s past before he makes another deadly move?

‘Oh, I didn’t tell you there’s a history of murder in my fiancée’s family, did I?’

The speaker was Stephen, Carole Seddon’s son, and as soon as he’d said the words, she wished he hadn’t. Everything had been going well up until that point. Carole was
entertaining Stephen and Gaby on her own ground, over lunch in the Crown and Anchor pub in Fethering, and discussion of the wedding arrangements had been harmonious, even at times exciting.

But Gaby hadn’t liked the mention of murder. The bubbliness of her personality had been instantly punctured, and she looked pained as she turned to her fiancé and said,
‘You’re exaggerating. I don’t think local gossip qualifies as a “history of murder”.’

To give him his due, he did back off very quickly, aware that he had crossed a threshold into forbidden territory. Carole was again surprised by her son’s sensitivity. In Gaby’s
company Stephen displayed sides of his personality whose existence his mother had never suspected . . . or, Carole thought ruefully, had never taken the trouble to explore. She still didn’t
ever feel quite at ease with her son, still a little guilty for her lack of instinctive maternal feelings, for her part in the break-up of the marriage to his father David.

And as she looked across at him, she was again struck by how like Stephen was to a distorted image from her own mirror. He had the same earnest and potentially cold pale blue eyes, which peered
through similar rimless glasses. Though not yet as uniformly grey as her own, his hair had a patina of silver over it. His relationship with Gaby had considerably lightened his personality, but
there had always been hanging about Stephen an aura of the middle-aged. Though only in his early thirties, he looked older.

‘More drinks,’ Carole announced, mainly to break the mood. Stephen demurred; he was driving and he’d had the half of bitter he’d rationed himself. This proper caution
only served to reinforce his middle-aged image. But Gaby said she’d join Carole in another glass of Chilean Chardonnay.

The moment she moved to the bar, Carole was aware of the two heads in the alcove behind her drawing closer, of the whispered remonstrance from Gaby to Stephen. She must have been berating him
further for mentioning the subject of murder. Carole felt intrigued, but knew that this was not the moment to probe further. An opportunity might arise to find out more, or it might not. Carole
wouldn’t be that bothered either way. With Gaby Martin about to become a fixture in her life, there would be plenty of time to find out about her family background.

She ordered two glasses of wine from Ted Crisp, the Crown and Anchor’s landlord, scruffy of beard and matted of hair. He was an ex-stand-up comedian and – perhaps more unlikely
– one of Carole’s very few ex-lovers. The mutual consent by which the relationship had ended seemed now to have developed into a mutual agreement that no mention should ever be made of
the incident by either of its participants.

‘Nice day, isn’t it?’ Carole observed.

Ted did not take issue with this uncontroversial assertion. ‘Yes, really get the smell of the sea with the windows open.’

‘Have you still never been on the beach, Ted?’

He shook his shaggy head in mock-fear. ‘Ooh, no. Not my element, the sea. I’m a city bloke, really.’

‘Yes, but you have been living on the South Coast for some years now and the beach is less than a hundred yards away.’

‘No, not for me. I find it easier to pretend the sea’s not there.’ He leant forward conspiratorially over the bar. ‘That way I’m not at risk from
mermaids.’

‘What?’

‘They’re well known for luring men to their deaths.’

‘I thought those were sirens.’

‘Mermaids do it too. I should know. Had a girlfriend who was a mermaid once. Beautiful. Her vital statistics were thirty-eight – twenty-four – and a large cod.’

Carole winced. ‘What a loss you were to the stand-up circuit, Ted.’

He chuckled, then nodded across to the well-rounded, bubble-haired figure leaning in towards Stephen. ‘That’s the famous fiancée, is it?’ He had not been behind the bar
when they arrived, so no introductions had been made.

Carole confirmed that it was indeed the famous fiancée.

‘Looks as if she’s a good thing for Stephen,’ Ted observed.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen you having lunch in here with him a few times over the years. Conversation seems to be flowing a bit more freely with the fiancée around.’

Carole neither confirmed nor denied this, but she knew it was true. The days when Stephen had come down to Fethering and picked up his mother from her house, High Tor, for dutiful lunches had
never been particularly relaxing for either of them. He had always taken refuge in talking about his work, which made Carole feel guilty because she had so little understanding of what he did, and
could feign so little interest in it. Gaby’s appearance on the scene had certainly freed up the conversational logjam. Even without the reliable stand-by of the wedding, there never seemed to
be a lack of topics for discussion when Gaby was present.

Murmuring some all-purpose response to Ted Crisp, Carole crossed back to the table. The momentary dissension between the engaged couple had evidently been smoothed over, but the firmness with
which Stephen embarked on a new topic of conversation showed that Gaby’s family history was not about to be probed further.

‘We’ve absolutely decided that we’re going to get married down here.’

‘Down here?’

‘Yes, Mother. In Fethering.’

Carole still winced inwardly at the formality of that ‘Mother’ – particularly as she couldn’t forget that Stephen called his father ‘Dad’.

‘But surely Gaby’s parents – I mean, it is traditional for the bride to be married where she grew up.’ Carole looked at Gaby, who shrugged.

‘Well, I wasn’t brought up in Harlow, which is where they live now. And in fact I do have a West Sussex connection.’

‘Oh?’

‘My mother went to school in Worthing. I wasn’t born down here, but I think she’d only just moved out of the area. I don’t know. Mum’s always a bit vague about that
period of her life.’

‘Fine. So it’ll be Worthing rather than Harlow.’ Carole hoped the relief didn’t show in her voice. Her middle-class sensibilities would have been troubled by the idea of
her son being married in Essex. Hard to disguise that kind of thing. People viewing the wedding photographs would be bound to ask where the event had happened. And, of course, it’d be on the
marriage certificate for perpetuity. The genteel folk of West Sussex did not hold the county of Essex in the highest esteem.

‘Yes. Besides . . .’ Gaby paused, as though uncertain whether she should proceed with the sentence. She made up her mind and went on, ‘The fact is, Carole, that my parents
aren’t really . . . Well, it’s going to be easier all round if Stephen and I make most of the arrangements.’

Carole didn’t say anything, but her disquiet communicated itself, so Gaby hastened to correct any false impression. ‘It’s not that they aren’t happy about Stephen and me
getting married. They’re absolutely delighted. It’s just . . . well, the fact is that my mother is a terrible worrier. Organizing a wedding would be like a nightmare for her.
She’s just not good at that stuff. The only way she’s going to enjoy the event is if she has nothing at all to do with the arrangements.’

Carole took a rather dim view of this. She hadn’t got a daughter, so the situation would never arise for her, but she liked to think that in the same circumstances she would have done her
duty. She might not enjoy organizing a wedding, but she knew it was part of the complex package of agreements every parent of a daughter signed up to. Still, maybe those rules didn’t apply to
people who lived in Essex. She tried to keep the disapproval out of her face, but clearly failed.

‘I know you think that’s wrong, Carole, but believe me, if my mother was in charge, a) the wedding wouldn’t be at all well organized, and b) being responsible for it would
probably give her a nervous breakdown.’

‘Well, you know best. That sounds fine.’ But Carole wasn’t convinced it was fine. Also the mention of a ‘nervous breakdown’ raised the disturbing possibility of
instability in the family of her future daughter-in-law. Carole Seddon was very old-fashioned about the concept of mental illness. She liked to think that she kept her emotions so firmly under
control that she herself was in no danger of such a lapse, and tended to be judgemental towards those who did succumb. A psychologist might have reckoned that this attitude reflected her fear of
losing control of her own mind, but then Carole Seddon was not a psychologist – nor indeed had she ever consulted one.

‘There’s also the matter of money,’ said Stephen. ‘Gaby’s mum and dad would do anything for her, but the fact is that they haven’t really got a bean . .
.’

‘Afraid not,’ his fiancée concurred. ‘They’ve only got Dad’s pension.’

‘. . . whereas we’re fortunate enough to be quite well-heeled at the moment. So it was always going to be us who were going to pay for everything.’