put him up in her spare bedroom. But if he was coming with a fiancée . . . The spare room only had a single bed. Oh dear, would she have to arrange for a double to be brought in? Worse than that . . . would she actually have to ask Stephen what sleeping arrangements he and Gaby favoured? The potential embarrassment loomed large enough to cloud Carole’s entire horizon.
Seriously shaken, she wanted to talk to Jude. But even though the April evenings were drawing out, it still went against Carole’s nature to knock on the front door of Woodside Cottage.
She telephoned instead. Jude was out.
Chapter Three
The outside door of the kitchen clattered open and, as Max Townley entered, Suzy slipped the sheet of paper and envelope back into her apron. The chef was dressed in black leathers; he’d parked his worshipped motor bike outside. He had once tried to impress Jude with the fact that this was a Ducati, but her patent lack of interest hadn’t allowed him to get far. As he came into the kitchen, he removed a crash helmet, revealing short bluish-black hair. He was as lithe and jumpy as a Grecian cat, his eyes piercingly pale blue, and his thin mouth permanently tight with discontent.
He nodded acknowledgement to the two women, and focused sneeringly on Suzy’s Piaget watch. ‘It’s all right. They’ll get their precious dinner in time. Fat lot they’ll notice, though.’ He moved angrily across to a butcher’s block, on which stood a box of vegetables and flicked through it. ‘Still no celeriac.’
‘They hadn’t got any celeriac,’ said Suzy evenly.
‘I know they hadn’t this morning. You said you’d ring them.’
‘I did ring them, and they still didn’t have any celeriac.’
‘Well then, get a bloody different supplier! How am I supposed to produce a celeriac remoulade without bloody celeriac?’
‘You’ll have to do something else.’
‘I thought you’d agreed a menu with the guests.’
‘They won’t notice.’
The chef’s head snapped back and he faced his employer, but the retort on his lips died in her stare. He returned to the vegetables, mumbling, ‘No, hardly matters what I give them, does it? Might as well nip down and get them takeaways from Macdonald’s. Bloody peasants’d probably prefer that.’
Morosely, unzipping his leathers, he went through into the pantry to change into his freshly laundered white jacket, black-checked trousers and clogs.
Jude knew she had just witnessed a battle of wills, and also knew Suzy had won it beyond doubt. The triumph might simply be a credit to strength of personality, or maybe there was some other source of power. There had been rumours of an affair between the chatelaine of Hopwicke House and her chef, but Jude doubted their veracity. Such rumours clung around Suzy and every attractive man she met, but she was too shrewd an operator to put her business at risk by an unprofessional liaison.
Kitted out in his chef’s gear, Max slipped a couple of heavy-bladed knives out of their slots, like a cowboy drawing his six-shooters, and started to chop fresh carrots on the butcher’s block. His movements were slick from experience, and flamboyant by choice. He was a chef who, when he was working, welcomed – and played up to – an audience. Jude recalled some talk of his being considered for a television series, of a pilot programme about to be made, but she’d never heard the outcome. She could imagine Max successful in the role. His sulky good looks, his showmanship and waspish tongue might be just what a television scheduler wanted in the ever-more-desperate search for new ways of dressing up images of food.
Wearily, Suzy stretched out her long, perfect body till it was a straight line between chair seat and back. Then she snapped upwards to her feet. ‘Must get on. They’ll be coming soon. Kerry’s supposed to be laying the tables. She should be finished by now.’
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Thanks, Jude. Yes, give me a hand with a bit of set-dressing.’
Max Townley was now singing to himself. Quite a tuneful version of ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’. Maybe that was another part of his sales pitch for the television moguls. The Singing Chef. God knows, thought Jude, as she followed Suzy out into the hall, they’ve tried every other kind.
Some of the tables in the restaurant had been locked together to make a twenty-seater for the Pillars of Sussex. The basic laying-up had been started, but apparently abandoned. The table settings were certainly not yet ready for those final touches which Suzy alone could provide. Of Kerry, the table-layer, there was no sign. Suzy and Jude exchanged a puzzled look.
Alerted by a clink of glass, Suzy led the way through to the darkened bar area. In the dim light behind the bar, Jude could see a slight blonde girl in a black-and-white waitress’s uniform, standing guiltily with a balloon of brandy in her hand.
‘What the hell are you doing, Kerry?’ Suzy snapped. ‘I’ve told you before, you’re not to drink on duty!’
‘I h-had to,’ the girl stuttered. ‘I was so shocked.’
She pointed across to an armchair where the substantial figure of a balding elderly man was slumped.
‘I’ve never seen a dead body before.’
Chapter Four
Suzy appeared unfazed and reached for a light switch. As she did so, the crumpled figure in the armchair stirred blearily.
‘Dead body, Kerry?’
The girl shuffled awkwardly and put down her glass. ‘It was dark. I just thought . . . He looked dead. I’ll go and help Max.’ Seizing the excuse like a lifeline, she rushed out of the room.
Suzy’s beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘Little liar,’ she murmured. ‘Mind you, that was a new excuse.’
Then why do you keep her on? Jude was about to ask, but the man in the armchair had risen to his feet, embarrassed at having been caught – literally – napping. He swept his hand across his forehead as if to straighten the hair that was long gone.
‘I’m so sorry, ladies. Arrived early. Must’ve nodded off.’ His voice aspired to, but didn’t quite achieve, a patrician bonhomie.
He was in his sixties, dressed in a striped three-piece suit of an earlier generation, and wore a tie with red, blue and white striations, which didn’t quite manage to look regimental. The watch-chain bridging his waistcoat pockets established him as something of a poseur. In his lapel buttonhole gleamed the dull gold of a badge which neither woman recognized as the prized insignia of the Pillars of Sussex.
‘I’m Suzy Longthorne. And this is Jude.’
Fastidiously, he took the hotelier’s hand. Unlike most men she met, he didn’t add that extra pressure that beautiful women learn to live with. ‘Donald Chew. We spoke on the phone. I’m outgoing president.’ He left a gap for an impressed reaction. Receiving none, he went on, ‘And of course we have met here before, haven’t we?’
Suzy smiled polite acknowledgment of this, though she didn’t look as though their previous encounter had made much impression on
