Richard Hughes-Webb leant across the table at dinner that evening and in a barely audible voice lambasted his wife. ‘You bitch, you filthy little bitch.’ With that he calmly stood up from the table, removed his white linen napkin from its position wedged above his bow tie and walked out of the restaurant. His wife, Yvie, a diminutive but striking woman who worked tirelessly on her appearance to belie her middle age, remained at the table triumphant as their children, Suzie and Tony, looked aghast.
A dramatic event earlier in the day had triggered this. Richard’s first wife, Estelle, had paid an unexpected visit to the hotel. Theirs had been a short marriage, no more than five years, but the damage they did to each other would last until death parted them. While Richard had moved on, remarried and become master of his universe, both personally and professionally, Estelle very definitely had not, and she loathed Richard all the more for his apparent success and happiness.
After the divorce she had taken a young lover, a sculptor, who persuaded her to move west to Cornwall. It wasn’t long before she caught him with someone closer to his own age, and her hatred for her ex-husband took centre stage in her life once more. She knew he went to Cornwall each August and at which hotel the family stayed; she had learnt this from a mutual friend. One day she hired a driver to take her from her home in St Mawes near Falmouth to the hotel, having ascertained Richard’s presence there from a call to the switchboard. She arrived around six-thirty in the evening after drinking all day.
She told the driver to wait and staggered through the entrance of the hotel. She made it to the reception desk, where she immediately went on the offensive. ‘Anyone seen that bastard ex-husband of mine? What’s his name – Rickety Humphrey-Bumfrey.’ With that she collapsed in a heap.
Richard was not best pleased to be called down to reception as he was running his pre-dinner bath. A man of routine, he always dressed formally in black tie for dinner, and he and Yvie were always in the bar at seven on the dot to place their order from the day’s menu before being shown to their table at seven-forty-five. Yvie would match his elegance with her hair in a bird’s-nest bun, stiff with hairspray, wearing a floor-length floral-print maxi gown with flowing sleeves that concealed her high platform shoes, chosen to buy her a few more inches. Her deep plunging neckline indicated a woman very much aware of her charms and prepared to display them. Their marriage had its tempestuous moments, but it was Estelle who seized the headlines that day.
Angered by the rude interruption to his cherished routine, the abhorrent vision of his former wife – an inebriated wreck of a human being – lying at his feet provoked an angry roar that could be heard throughout the hotel. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’
‘Don’t be cross with me, Richie. I only want a little love and affection.’
At this point he picked his ex-wife off the floor and threw her over his shoulder, aided by Arnie Charnley, who then helped steer them out of the hotel. The two men saw the parked car in the drive, and Arnie hurried to open a back door through which Richard dumped the hapless Estelle. He gave the driver £10 and told him to take her home and never to let her darken his doors again. As she was driven away Estelle, barely conscious, her face smeared in rouge and crimson lipstick, cast a desperate glance at her former husband that was simultaneously pitiful and furious.
Richard walked calmly back inside the hotel, checked himself in the hallway mirror, adjusted his bow tie and proceeded to the bar to order a scotch on the rocks. By the time Yvie had joined him the story of Estelle’s brief appearance was already well known.
His mood was not improved at dinner by Yvie goading him on another subject. ‘So, Richard, what have you been doing in Zennor today?’ she inquired, knowing this grenade would explode the moment it was delivered.
He decided to surprise his antagonistic spouse by ignoring the question and continuing to consume his cream of cauliflower soup, slurping louder than usual.
‘Oh, come on, don’t pretend to Suzie and Tony you haven’t spent the day …’
With that he cursed angrily and left the dining-room. He wasn’t prepared to enter into controversial dialogue with his second wife any more than he was with his first. He knew Yvie was intent on humiliating him about a relationship she was convinced he was conducting at his cottage in Zennor.
But he had other reasons for not wishing to discuss the subject. He knew that earlier in the day the police had made a discovery in an outhouse in the garden of the cottage. They had found parasite worm eggs containing infected larvae. Richard, upon being questioned, revealed that he had taken these from a London teaching hospital for use in experiments carried out on animals for the advancement of research into heart disease. The police had referred the discovery to their forensic team, who considered that worm eggs could be placed inconspicuously in food, as a result of which an intended victim could suffer life-threatening ascariasis infection. Richard had assured them that a human would need to eat extraordinarily large quantities for the toxin to have any serious adverse effects on his or her health. However, he was well aware that he was being monitored by the police, a thought that did not sit comfortably with him. So when Estelle made such an unwelcome intrusion back into his life and then Yvie decided to bait him he lost control.
The scene in the restaurant that night would have probably been quickly forgotten but for the fact that it was witnessed by the Vernon family at the next table. The son, Robert, wasted little time in telling his teenage friends at the hotel, ‘We often see them argue, but this was really heavy.’
Richard’s grey day was soon to become his black night. Upon leaving his family mid-meal he walked down the long hotel drive to the Office, which was situated a hundred yards on the right along the road leading to Carbis Bay. There he waited for an hour or so, knocking back several whiskies on his own. Eventually he was joined by a female companion, Grant’s mother, Rose Morrison, who drove with him to his cottage at Zennor. The assignation went largely unnoticed except by Hector Wallace, the hotel’s Olympian imbiber, who had already taken his customary place on his stool at the bar.
Later that evening, at around eleven, Richard walked unsteadily back up the drive towards the hotel, supported by Rose, who was both sober and alert. However, after twenty yards they were accosted by a shadowy figure emerging from a bush after a call of nature; they swiftly recognized him as Hector.
‘Bloody hell,’ bellowed Richard. ‘You drunken old fool! You gave us a helluva shock.’
‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t be here together doing whatever you’re doing.’
‘Stop that nonsense,’ Richard barked. ‘You’re so paralytic you can’t even see straight.’
‘I’ve seen enough.’
This prompted Richard to poke Hector repeatedly in the chest.
They were caught in car headlights by Tom Youlen, who was driving up the lane for his night shift and who pulled up sharply and rushed from his vehicle. ‘Cut that out, sirs.’
Rose removed her high heels and hurried away. Hector calmly asked Tom for a lift up the drive, while Richard walked slowly back to the hotel, his mood now very dark indeed.
Later, at about two in the morning, Richard appeared in reception resembling a defeated boxer who couldn’t sleep owing partly to injury but also to high adrenalin levels. It had been a truly grim day. He demanded that Tom get him a large scotch. The night porter refused, saying he had drunk enough and that the bar was locked anyway. He quoted from the Hotel Proprietors Act 1956.
Richard, not for the first time that night, became aggressive. ‘Get me a drink, or I’ll get you sacked in the morning.’
Tom called the manager, Mr Simpkins, who emerged from his flat adjoining the hotel and helped Tom bundle Richard out of the drawing-room and escort him to his bedroom.
The next day the episode seemed forgotten – but not by young Grant. He was extremely concerned by Robert Vernon’s account of the scene in the dining-room and by Hector’s tale of his mother joining Richard in the local pub before they then disappeared together. He persuaded his friend Danny Galvin to drive him to Zennor. As luck would have it, they spotted Richard heading for his Bentley and followed him out of the car park and down the drive. Danny tried to hold back, staying some three or four cars behind. When, ten or so minutes later, Richard pulled up at a modest cottage in Zennor, who should open the front door but Tom. As Danny and Grant parked in a nearby side street they immediately realized their cover had been blown. Marching towards them was a burly man with a red face and a huge neck. It was Bill, the other night porter from the hotel.
‘He knows you’ve followed him, and Tom knows you saw him open the door. Now I’ve got news for you, young Mr Galvin. You and your friend Granted here are heading off in your motor, and you’ve seen nothing here today, have you, lads?’
The last remark lingered in the hinterland between statement and question, delivered in a strong West Country burr that left the recipients in no doubt of the answer that was expected.
‘Oh yes we have,’ replied Grant. ‘You can’t gag us. And the name is Grant,’ he added.
Bill looked thunderously at the audacious teenager, and for a moment Grant thought the porter was going to punch him.
‘Now look here, laddies. Either you head off or I make a phone call to the constabulary. Do I make myself plain?’
‘OK,’ said Danny. ‘We’ll go.’
‘That be better. We don’t want your folks up at the hotel hearing about sonny boys getting into trouble. And you have no idea what trouble you might find yourselves in,’ concluded Bill, pleased with himself for achieving a stand-down.
On their return to the hotel the two boys bumped into Caroline Jessops as she walked through the car park, wearing a brown bikini with a hotel towel draped around her neck, fresh from a swim at the pool below.
‘What have you two been up to?’ she inquired, with a twinkle in her eye.
‘Oh, just checking out the local golf course at Lelant,’ Grant lied.
Caroline was amused at the response, not believing it but not sufficiently interested to challenge him.
‘Why don’t you play golf here?’ she challenged, referring to the nine-hole pitch-and-putt course. ‘I could caddy for you,’ she added coquettishly.
Grant smiled, their eyes connecting, as if owning to a chemistry that was developing between him and this brown-eyed girl in a bikini. ‘Great, let’s play at four today.’
Danny put in, ‘You can leave me out. Can’t stand the game.’ This provoked a wry smile from Grant, as he had to acknowledge defeat in their game of subterfuge, while Caroline broke into a broad involuntary grin.
As Grant and Caroline ambled around the nine-hole course later that day she probed him as to how he was feeling. ‘You’ve been a bit weird lately.’
Grant admitted his upset at hearing of his mother’s involvement with Richard Hughes-Webb. He revealed what Hector had told him, but she didn’t register surprise; she already knew about the row at dinner, as Robert Vernon had been telling the world. At any rate it turned out she knew quite a lot about the Hughes-Webb family, as she and Suzie had become pretty close over the years.
‘Did you know about her father and my mother?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, trying not to sound too wounding.
‘Well, what do you know?’
Before Caroline could reply, Suzie came rushing up towards them, brandishing a five-iron and a putter. ‘Can I join in?’ she asked breezily.