Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (39 page)

Max Townley, Jude knew, saw himself as a ‘personality chef’. He was good at his job and, so long as Hopwicke House attracted high-profile guests, he had enjoyed mingling, and identifying himself, with celebrity. Since the downturn of the previous year, Max had been less at ease, and Suzy knew that each ‘ordinary’ restaurant booking she took made him more unsettled. The fact that fear of drink–driving convictions would guarantee most of the hotel’s rooms were booked for the night carried little weight with the chef. From Max’s point of view, as clientele for a restaurant where he was cooking, the Pillars of Sussex were about as bad as it could get.

‘Are you worried about him not turning up?’ asked Jude.

‘No, he’ll be here. Max is enough of a professional to do that. But he’ll make his point by being late . . . and resentful.’ Her voice took on the chef’s petulant timbre. ‘A load of bloody stuffed shirts who wouldn’t recognize good food if it came up and bit them on the leg, and who will have blunted any taste buds they have left with too much beer before dinner, and then be allowed to smoke all the way through the meal.’

‘Really?’ asked Jude, amazed. One of the strictest rules of the Hopwicke House restaurant had always been its non-smoking policy. Mega-celebrities of the music and film business had succumbed meekly to the stricture, and retired to the bar for their cigarettes and cigars. The fact that the prohibition was being relaxed for a group as undistinguished as the Pillars of Sussex showed, more forcibly than any other indicator, the levels to which Suzy Longthorne’s aspirations had descended.

But it didn’t need saying. Jude leant across the kitchen table and took her friend’s hand, still soft from its years of expensive lotioning.

‘Things really bad, are they, Suzy?’

There was a nod, and for a moment tears threatened the famous hazel eyes.

‘Everything rather a mess, I’m afraid,’ the ‘Face of the Sixties’ admitted.

‘Anything you can talk about? Want to talk about?’

‘Some things, maybe. Certainly this.’

From a pocket in her apron, Suzy extracted an envelope. It bore the Hopwicke House crest, but no name, address or stamp. The back had not been sealed, just tucked in, and the envelope was slightly bent from its sojourn in the apron.

‘Kerry found it in one of the rooms she was checking. She said she opened it because she thought there might be a tip inside . . . though I think she was just being nosy.’

Jude picked up the envelope. ‘May I?’

Her friend gave a defeated nod.

There was only one sheet of paper inside. Of the same quality as the envelope, again it bore the Hopwicke House crest. Centred on the page were three lines of printed text.