looked across at the rack, from which only one key still hung. ‘Well, just be careful you don’t walk into the wrong room.’ She gave Jude a tired grin. ‘Otherwise Max or Bob Hartson’s chauffeur will think Christmas and their birthday’s come on the same day.’
Jude grinned too. ‘I’ll be careful.’ But there was something she couldn’t let go. ‘Suzy, do you mind if I have another look at the note Kerry found? Just rather intrigues me.’
‘Look away.’ The hotelier rose wearily to her feet and crossed to the row of hooks from which a range of overalls and aprons hung.
She reached her hand into the pocket of the blue-and-white-striped one. A shadow crossed her face.
‘It’s not there.’
Chapter Six
Suzy Longthorne lived in a barn conversion behind the hotel, and the staff quarters were in a converted stable block. The rooms were functional rather than luxurious, but each had its own walk-in shower and tea-making facilities.
Because her friend looked so suddenly exhausted and keen to leave, Jude said she’d lock up. She’d stood in at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel often enough to know the routine. The internal fire doors had to be checked and then the external doors locked. There was an alarm system, but it had been triggered so often by insomniac guests it was very rarely activated. If any of the residents should require anything during the night, bells rang in Suzy’s barn and the staff quarters. They were rarely sounded; it was made clear to the guests on arrival that they were staying in a country house hotel; what was being mimicked was the genteel life of the upper classes, rather than the corporate luxury of twenty-four hour room service.
As she climbed the stairs to check that the fire doors were closed, Jude was struck by how quickly the raucous camaraderie of the Pillars of Sussex had been switched off. From some rooms snores rumbled; no doubt later in the night, as ageing bladders protested against the many pints that had been poured into them, toilets would flush. But at two-thirty in the morning the overall impression was of silence.
She was on the top landing when she heard the noise. It sounded like a gurgling at first, but after a few moments she identified it as singing. Not particularly sophisticated – or indeed varied – singing. Just one little nursery rhyme phrase endlessly repeated, circling round and round.
The sound came from behind one of the fire doors. These were a legal requirement, but took no account of the architectural values. Though designed as sympathetically as possible, they still spoiled the proportions of the elegant top-floor landing.
Jude opened the fire door to reveal the source of the singing. Nigel Ackford, still in his sharp suit, was propped up, his body slack as if boneless, against the wall of the corridor. There was a silly smile on his mouth, out of which the strange, circular song still dribbled.
Jude tried to wake him up, but he was too far gone to respond properly. He was aware she was there, and tried to focus his grin on her, but the effort was too much. He was amiably, rather than aggressively, drunk, and made no objection to her rummaging in his suit pockets. Jude quickly found his key. Its number matched the room outside which he had collapsed, so he had only just failed to make it all the way to bed.
She unlocked the bedroom door, lifted the young man with difficulty, and manoeuvred him inside. His limbs were slack and powerless, and there seemed to be a disproportionate number of them; Jude’s mind formed the image of handling a drugged octopus.
Nigel Ackford had been given one of the best rooms in the hotel, presumably at the expense of his sponsor, Bob Hartson, who, from what Max Townley had said about him, could well afford such extravagance. The room was dominated by a high four-poster bed, with heavy brocade curtains gathered around the uprights by silken ropes. The windows were covered with the same brocade, and when the curtains were drawn back in daylight, they would reveal a perfect view down to the English Channel. As she manhandled the comatose guest onto the bed, Jude reflected that, when he woke up the next morning, he wouldn’t be in much of a state to appreciate the vista.
She decided to take some of his clothes off, so he wouldn’t have a creased suit to add to the embarrassment of meeting the Pillars at breakfast. Though his body was unresisting, she had difficultly extracting his limbs from the jacket. Once she’d removed his shoes, the trousers slipped off more easily. The pastel tie came off too, and she undid the top couple of buttons of his shirt, in case he twisted in the night and constricted his throat.
Jude put the suit on a hanger in the heavy dark-oak wardrobe, then turned to look at the figure on the bed. In his rumpled shirt, striped boxer shorts and socks, there was something boyish about Nigel Ackford. Despite the heavy late-night shadow on his chin, and the dark hair on his legs, the posture of his body suggested a five-year-old crumpled in sleep.
She decided he’d be more comfortable under the covers and managed to extricate the duvet and quilted bedspread from under the deadweight of his body, and flip them over him. Surprisingly, this, the gentlest of the manipulations he had undergone during the previous ten minutes, woke Nigel Ackford.
He looked around in benign confusion, and took a moment or two to register Jude’s presence. His confusion intensified.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, remembering her strange garb. ‘You’re not in some dream of being tended by an Edwardian nanny. You’re in your room at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. I’m Jude. I’ve just helped you get into bed.’
‘Ah.’ Nigel Ackford giggled, reinforcing his childlike image. ‘I’m sorry I needed helping.’
Jude let out a non-judgmental ‘Well . . .’
‘No, really sorry. I found the evening rather a strain. Very important to make the right impression with the P-Pillars of Sussex.’
‘They seemed quite impressed with you.’
‘Yes.’ He smiled beatifically. ‘Yes, I think I did all right.’ His smile grew broader. ‘Bob Hartson said he thought he might be able to put me up for membership soon.’
‘To become a full Pillar?’
As soon as she had said the words, Jude realized how ridiculous they sounded, but Nigel Ackford was unaware of any incongruity.
‘Oh yes, that’d be good. I’m quite young to be a Pillar of Sussex.’
Jude nodded, because that seemed to be the appropriate thing to do. The young man’s eyes gyrated in their sockets, and his lids flickered. He would soon be asleep.
But he overcame drowsiness for another mumbled communication. ‘Going to be a good year, this one. All my troubles are over. All sorted out. I’ve made up my mind which way I’m going. This is going to be a good year.’ His head nuzzled luxuriantly back into the soft pillow. ‘I’m going to ask Wendy to marry me. And I’m pretty confident she’ll say yes . . .’
He was asleep. Jude left the room quietly, but she needn’t have bothered. Nigel Ackford was so deeply under nothing would wake him until, presumably, the crushing agony of the morning’s hangover.
Jude was used to the routine of the staff quarters. She took the remaining key from its rack and went out into the deep blue calm of the April night. In the last light before she locked the kitchen door, she saw from her watch that it was nearly three o’clock.
There
