another closed door was identified as the ‘Karma Room’. A framed painting of some Indian guru was fixed to the wall and in the stairwell hung a circle of metal tubes with a suspended wooden clapper in the middle. But these were the only concessions to the house’s New Age incarnation. Otherwise the furniture and decor were solid and respectable, the kind passed from generation to generation of gentleman farmers. A redoubtable mahogany staircase dominated the space. Through an open door – in contrast to the promise of the sign reading ‘Chakra Room’ – large chintzy sofas and swagged brocade curtains could be seen. The impression was as far from the shabby mysticism of Soul Nourishment as could be imagined.
But for the bonus of a little light therapy thrown in, Sandalls Manor was like any other country house hotel, and this was borne out by the ‘literature’ that Jude had been given. As in the brochure she had read in the taxi, all the fliers and photocopies of magazine articles emphasized the level of comfort offered by ‘the Sandalls Manor experience’.
One of them identified the ‘award-winning chef as Anne Hilton herself. Jude got the feeling that Anne was the dynamo behind the operation. She enjoyed running an upmarket hotel. Had she married the sort of man her parents had wanted for her, Sandalls Manor would have offered activities such as horse-riding and clay-pigeon-shooting. It was only because she had fallen in love with Charles Hilton that soul journeys were on the agenda.
A muffled scream interrupted Jude’s thoughts, and reminded her that a soul journey was taking place at that very moment. But a scream at Sandalls Manor was not a cause for anxiety. Indeed, Charles Hilton would regard screaming and hysterics as a validation of what he was trying to achieve. Inside the Karma Room the participants were getting in touch with their inner children, and if those confrontations undammed some repressed emotions, then the therapy was working.
Jude looked round the hall, quickly to be rewarded by the sight she was expecting. A box of tissues stood on a highly polished dresser. A new sheet was fanned out in readiness for the next participant to be overcome by tears.
Jude felt sure that the Karma Room and the Chakra Room would be equipped with similar boxes. In therapeutic processes like those conducted by Charles Hilton, tissues were always a discreet presence.
There was a clatter at the door. Jude turned to see a little cataract of letters tumble from the letter-box slit. Mostly completed booking forms, she reckoned. More exhausted city dwellers applying to sit out the rat race for a few days at Sandalls Manor.
Curiosity gnawed at her. She looked across at the kitchen and the Karma Room. Both doors remained resolutely shut.
Jude was always obedient to strong instincts and something told her she was in a significant moment. She moved swiftly to the front door. With her foot, she spread the uneven pile of letters. Most of them were, as expected, bookings sent in reply-paid envelopes.
But one of them wasn’t. She looked at it closely to double-check, then crossed back to sit on her hard settle.
A few minutes later, the door to the Karma Room opened. The first session of the morning had ended. Only Charles Hilton stood in the doorway, so Jude deduced that there must be another way out to the room where the participants had their coffee. Also to the toilets. She knew that intense soul-baring frequently had an effect on the participants’ bladders.
Charles looked exactly as she remembered him, a little below average height with a low centre of gravity. Olive skin, the thinning hair on his head very black, and liquid eyes the colour of horse chestnuts. He wore jeans and a loosely hanging grey knitted cardigan.
He also wore an expression of anxiety, that very traditional and distinctive anxiety assumed by a married man who fears his wife is about to find out something she shouldn’t.
“Jude. Why have you come here? You haven’t said anything to Anne, have you?”
She thought it was rather funny to see the state he was in. Here was a man with an international reputation for helping people find serenity in their relationships, and he was scared witless that his wife was about to be told he’d once groped another woman. The guru reduced to a gibbering guilty husband from a bedroom farce.
“What are you worried I might say to Anne?” asked Jude, extending his discomfort. She wasn’t by nature vindictive, but Charles Hilton’s double standards got up her nose.
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” he replied petulantly. “Why have you come here?”
“I thought you might have some idea where lamsin Lutteridge is.”
“Tamsin Lutteridge?”
“You remember her. Girl with ME. Silver in Soul Nourishment said she’d got in touch with you.”
“Yes, I remember her. We did have a consultation. She thought I might be able to help with her condition.”
“And did you think you could?”
Her tone had not been sceptical, but Charles Hilton’s professional pride was still stung. “I’ve had a lot of successes in the chronic fatigue area!”
“I’m sure you have. I’m asking whether you had any success with Tamsin Lutteridge.”
His face assumed a complacent mask. “Jude, you know I can’t possibly talk about an individual patient. Medical ethics. Confidentiality.”
“All right. I’m not asking whether you’ve managed to cure her. I’m asking whether you know where she is at this moment.”
He shook his head, his expression still complacent. “Sorry, Jude. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Look, if you do hear anything…let me know. Her parents are very worried about her.” Well, no, they’re not, actually, thought Jude. Her father’s very worried ahout her.
“Of course I’ll let you know.”
“Do you have my new address? I’m living in Fethering now.”
“Really? Almost neighbours.” He smiled. Now he knew she wasn’t about to blow the whistle to Anne about him, Charles Hilton’s customary cockiness had returned. He moved straight into chatting-up mode. “Maybe we could meet for a meal or something one of these days…” Jude gave his proposition no encouragement. “Give me your number.”
She did so.
“I must get back,” he said. “Just done a really good session. Don’t want the participants to lose their concentration.”
“No. Can’t risk that.” Jude grinned. “How’s this lot going?”
“Good group. Getting through to them. Really stirring the soup, we are.
He took her hand and held it just that little bit too long, fixing her eyes in a penetrating gaze. Why is it, thought Jude, that certain men – in the teeth of the evidence – think they’re irresistible to women? Maybe Charles Hilton believed that his almost shamanistic powers gave him an added magnetism. And maybe, on some women, he did have that effect. Not on her, however.
It was too cold to wait outside for her taxi, but the car arrived dead on time. Anne Hilton came out of the kitchen to answer the driver’s ring at the doorbell. She shuffled up the post and bade farewell to Jude with the minimum civility her upbringing allowed.
In the cab, Jude tuned out the driver’s views on alternative medicine and black magic, two concepts that his mind seemed unable to separate. All she could think about was what she’d seen on the doormat of Sandalls Manor.
Among the returned booking forms had been a letter addressed to Tamsin Lutteridge.
Jude would have challenged Charles Hilton with that fact, if she had not recognized the writing on the envelope. The letter had been sent by Tamsin’s mother.
? Death on the Downs ?
Fourteen
Detective Sergeant Baylis sat comfortably in front of Carole’s log-effect gas fire. Gulliver, with that immediate trust of strangers that made him such an ineffectual guard dog, fawned around the policeman,
