THE HEIR OF HARTWELL

Chapter 5

The board meeting was in the hotel's first-floor conference room, around a table that seated twelve. Thomas Webb had assembled them with commendable speed: heads of operations, marketing, finance, facilities, and guest services, plus two external board members who had called in remotely and whose faces appeared on a screen at the far end of the room with the slightly suspicious expressions of people who have been told something unexpected is happening.

Bernard sat against the wall, not at the table, there as a kind of anchor so that Alexander would not be entirely surrounded by strangers.

Alexander stood at the head of the table. He had not prepared remarks, which the board members could apparently sense, because several of them exchanged the glances of people who feel a presentation coming that will not have slides.

"Good afternoon," he said. "I will be direct, because I think you will find it more useful than diplomacy. I have spent the last two hours with five years of this hotel's financials, and the story they tell is one of a hotel that has been very good for a very long time, coasting on that goodness, and is now paying for it."

No one moved.

"The occupancy decline is recoverable. The restaurant losses are recoverable. The staff turnover is a symptom of something cultural that is also recoverable, though it will take longer." He looked around the room. "I am not here to assign blame. I am not interested in whoever made what decision three years ago. I am interested in what we do from today."

A woman at the middle of the table, fifties, good suit, the slightly combative posture of someone who has survived multiple regimes, said: "And who exactly are you, if you do not mind my asking?"

"Eleanor Marsh," Thomas Webb said quickly, "Head of Marketing—"

"I know who she is," Alexander said. He looked at Eleanor Marsh. "My name is Alexander Calloway. Edmund Hartwell is my father. As of this morning I am assuming operational management of this hotel, and will be taking full ownership of Hartwell Group on completion of the legal process, which will take approximately three weeks. You are not required to trust me. You are required to do your jobs, and I will do mine, which at this moment means getting this hotel back to where it should be."

Eleanor Marsh held his gaze for a moment. Then she leaned back slightly. "Fair enough," she said.

He spent the next ninety minutes in the room. He asked everyone to report on their area's three biggest current challenges and three most underused assets. He wrote nothing down because he did not need to. He asked follow-up questions. He pushed back once, firmly and without heat, when the finance director began attributing problems to external market forces that Alexander could see from the data were internal. The finance director blinked. Then he admitted Alexander was right.

By the end of the meeting the room had the atmosphere of somewhere that has been, slightly unexpectedly, cleaned.

"Thomas," Alexander said, as people gathered their things. "The restaurant. I want to meet Ms. Renaud this evening. Can you arrange it?"

"Of course, sir. She usually does a final kitchen check around seven."

"Seven, then."

* * *

He found her in the kitchen as promised, tasting from a spoon and making a face that was not entirely negative.

She heard him come in and turned without apparent surprise. Up close her face had the particular quality of someone who is thinking several things at once and has decided which of them to share.

"Mr. Calloway," she said. Not a question.

"Ms. Renaud."

"Thomas told me to expect you. He told me you were the new owner." She said it without inflection, neither deferential nor aggressive, which Alexander found refreshing. "He also told me you spent this morning looking at the financials, which means you know this restaurant is losing approximately twelve thousand pounds a month."

"Eleven-eight," he said. "But yes."

She regarded him. "The menu is wrong. The concept is wrong. The food itself is competent, your current chef is competent, but it is a hotel restaurant menu from fifteen years ago. The guests have changed. The menu has not."

"What would you change?"

She set down the spoon. She picked up a menu from the pass and handed it to him. It was printed on heavy cream card in an elegant serif. She had annotated it in pencil: crossed out phrases, circled prices, drawn arrows.

"I have been working on a proposal for three weeks," she said. "I was going to present it to Bernard Ashford, because I did not know there was an actual owner to present it to. Shall I present it to you instead?"

"Please."

She presented it. It took twenty-five minutes and she did not use notes. It was one of the clearest, most considered arguments Alexander had heard in a professional context. She had thought about the hotel's existing guests and the guests it was failing to attract, about price points and positioning, about the particular kind of dining experience a Mayfair hotel should be offering in this decade rather than the last one. She proposed a complete menu redesign centred on modern British cooking with French technique: clean, ingredient-led, not fussy.

When she finished he was quiet for a moment.

"When can you start?" he said.

She almost smiled. "I have already started. I have been here six weeks."

"I mean properly. With authority. Not consulting. Leading."

She looked at him with an expression he could not entirely read. "I have my own restaurant."

"I know. This would need to be structured so it does not compromise that. We can work out the details." He handed back the annotated menu. "The proposal is good. The food philosophy is right. I do not want to lose this."

She took the menu. She considered him for a moment in the way he was beginning to understand was characteristic of her: unhurried, direct, giving the impression that she was deciding whether the person in front of her was worth her time, and reserving judgment.

"All right," she said. "Let us talk details."