The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut tfm-12

by Simon Brett

  “Are you up for a return visit?”

  Shaking herself out of her reverie, Jude said, “What? Tomorrow? Saturday? No, sorry, I’m committed to a Past Life Regression Workshop in Brighton.”

  A lot of knee-jerk responses sprang to Carole’s lips, but she restricted herself to a rather acid, “Are you? Well,” she continued, “I’ll see if I can get a chance to talk to Reginald Flowers.”

  ∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧

  Thirty-Two

  The bronchitis must have cleared up. Carole exactly repeated her timescale of the previous morning: a seven-thirty walk with Gulliver on Smalting Beach. Sure enough, even at that hour, as she and the dog passed, Reginald Flowers was sitting in his bolt-upright chair at the doors of his museum of naval memorabilia.

  There was no problem about selecting her opening conversational gambit. “Very good do the other night. Jude and I really enjoyed the quiz.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Thank you very much. It must have taken a lot of organization.”

  “Oh, I’m used to it,” he said in heroic self-deprecation. “Anyway, I must thank you too. Without your prompt action, Carole, we wouldn’t have had a venue, would we?”

  “I can always get round Ted Crisp,” she said with uncharacteristic winsomeness.

  “He was the one with the beard behind the bar?”

  “Yes.”

  An expression of irritation crossed Reginald Flowers’s face. “I always think if a man is going to have a beard, he should keep it in good order. At least he had a full beard, rather than one of those goatees or other forms of contemporary topiary.” Instinctively his hand stroked his George V number. “But I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go around looking like a cross between a Viking and a hippy. It certainly made that landlord look very surly. Positively forbidding. And he wasn’t particularly forthcoming when he opened his mouth either. Downright rude, if you ask me.”

  “That’s just his manner. Ted Crisp really does have a heart of gold.”

  “Well, I’ll have to take your word for that. Anyway, many thanks for making the arrangement, Carole.”

  “No problem at all.”

  Reginald Flowers was silent for a moment, looking back inside The Bridge. Then he said, “Look, I’ve got the kettle on. Was about to make a cup of tea. Would you care to join me?”

  Carole was struck by the nervousness with which he made this offer, almost as though it were something much more momentous, like asking her out on a date. She was also aware again of his deep loneliness. The Thursday night in the Crown and Anchor she’d recognized it too. Reginald Flowers had been at the centre of everything, he’d known everyone there, but he still seemed separate, outside any community spirit there had been in the function room. The only person he’d connected with – and that had been at a level of guilt and reproach – had been Dora Pinchbeck.

  “Yes, I’d love a cup of tea,” Carole replied. “Do you mind if I tie the dog up to that hook?”

  “Be my guest.” Reginald Flowers went into his shrine to fetch another chair for her, and then to busy himself with the tea making.

  The early morning sun was pleasantly warm and had already burned off any residual mist from the night before. Carole looked out over the sea and found herself recalling the image that Lionel Oliver had told her about – of a young man disappointed in love walking straight out to his death. The scene before her suddenly seemed less idyllic.

  She looked across to Gulliver, now amiably reconciled to having his walk truncated and being tied up. He snuffled at the shingle in the shadow of the beach hut, searching out delicious-smelling morsels of seaweed.

  “Do you take milk and sugar?” came the call from inside the hut.

  “Just milk, thank you.”

  Before Reginald Flowers emerged with the cups, Carole forced herself into a moment of intense concentration. Amidst all the pleasantry with the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, she mustn’t forget her purpose in being in front of The Bridge that morning. She had an investigation to pursue.

  When they were both seated with their cups of tea, she reverted to the quiz night. “I was wondering about the range of questions you managed to come up with, Reginald.”

  “Please call me ‘Reg’.”

  “Very well, Reg. But, as I say, I was impressed by the variety. Did you research all the questions yourself?”

  “Some I did. Some I got from other reference sources.”

  “I was totally stumped by a lot of them – certainly the sport and pop music ones. I mean, I’ve just about heard of Beyonce, but I certainly couldn’t name a song by her.”

  “Oh, nor me. But I thought, to be fair, I should have questions for a broad age range, for the younger people like…” He was hard put to it to come up with any names of younger members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. “Anyway, those kind of subjects I got off the internet. There are whole websites devoted to pub quizzes, you know.”

  “Really?” Carole was surprised to hear that Reginald Flowers was an internet user. His age, his manner, his old-fashioned way of dictating letters to Dora – and indeed the amateur printing of The Hut Parade – had marked him down in her book as someone whose acquaintance with computers was minimal.

  What she was thinking must have coloured her response, because Reginald said, “I use the internet quite a lot, you know.” He gestured back into The Bridge. “For my collection. You’d be surprised how much naval stuff – some of it very good naval stuff – comes up on eBay. Particularly badges, buckles, that kind of thing.”

  Looking at the display behind her, Carole observed that he didn’t have much room for new additions.

  “Oh, this isn’t all I have. Only a selection. I change around what I put on show here. I’ve got about ten times this amount at home.”

  This was the first time he’d mentioned a home, so Carole asked him where it was.

  “Littlehampton. Rented flat in Littlehampton,” he grunted. It was clearly not something that he wanted to discuss further. “And to save you asking, I live on my own.”

  There was a waspishness in his reply, so Carole moved on to less controversial ground. “How long ago did you start the collection?”

  “Really started when I was a boy. As I may have mentioned, a good number of my family were in the navy.”

  “Yes. Given your interest, it’s surprising that you didn’t follow in their footsteps.”

  “Perhaps.” He looked uncomfortable at the direction the conversation was taking. “The fact is, I did try to join up. My parents wanted me to train at Dartmouth, but I…I didn’t get in.”

  Alert to the awkwardness in his hesitation, Carole prompted him with an, “Oh?”

  “I was rejected on medical grounds.”

  “Ah.” Carole tried to work out the timescale. If, as she assumed, Reginald Flowers was now in his seventies, then it would have been over fifty years ago when he’d applied for Dartmouth. And back then it was quite possible that rejection ‘on medical grounds’ might well have covered sexual deviancy.

  But she was getting ahead of herself. She needed more information before she could form any conclusions about Reginald Flowers’s guilt or innocence. “So you went into teaching, I gather?”

  “Yes. It was always second best for me, but I derived some satisfaction from the profession. I was teaching English History, which of course, because we are an island nation, involved a lot of research about the navy. Yes…” He smiled without much humour, “…the only thing wrong with teaching I found was the wretched pupils.”

  “Did you not get on with them?”

  “Some I got on with. The ones who had some sense of motivation, the ones who actually saw the point of learning. They were few and far between, though. I’m afraid to say they were not encouraged by the ethos of the place. The school I taught at put much higher value on prowess in the sports field than it did on academic achievement.”

  “Ah. And you didn’t
teach sport as well?”

  “Good heavens, no,” he replied peevishly. “There were plenty of bone-headed former Blues on the staff to do that.”

  Carole took a deep breath. She’d been given the cue, and now she had to pick it up, whatever the consequences. “The place you taught was called Edgington Manor School, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He looked at her sharply. “Did you know that before Thursday night?”

  “No.”

  “I rather hoped no one had noticed the mention of the school in all the shouting and excitement of the quiz.”

  “Well, I heard what Curt Holderness said. I also saw the way you reacted to it.”

  “Yes. It was a shock. I thought I’d got away from all that. I didn’t realize that anyone down here knew of my connection with…that place.”

  “The school?” He nodded. “Edgington Manor School. I gather you had to leave there before you’d got to retirement age.”

  “I did.” The expression he turned on her was one of disappointed fury. “So are you one of them too, Carole?”

  “One of what?”

  “One of the people who’s out to blackmail me?”

  “No, I’m certainly not!” There was a silence before she continued, “You asked whether I was one of them too. Does that suggest that Curt Holderness and Kelvin Southwest have already been in touch with you?”

  “Curt Holderness has been. I haven’t heard anything from that little pervert Southwest.”

  “And Curt’s trying to blackmail you?” She asked only for confirmation of what she had heard the other night.

  “Yes. He was first in touch about a month ago. He said he’d found out something about the circumstances under which I had left Edgington Manor School and would I mind if he made it public? Well, of course I minded, so I agreed to pay him some money. I thought he was talking about just a one-off payment, but then a couple of weeks later he asked for more.”

  The classic experience of the blackmail victim, thought Carole.

  “I said I couldn’t afford it – well, I can’t, I’m only on a pension. But he said I could afford it if I sold some of my collection.” The horror of the idea spread across his face. “Well, of course I couldn’t do that, could I? So I still haven’t paid him. But Thursday night was like a warning to me. Curt Holderness knew nobody at the quiz night would pick up the reference in what he shouted out – nobody except me, of course. He was saying: look, I’m quite capable of talking about this business in public and, if you don’t pay up, I’ll do it more vocally. Well, I can’t risk that, can I? I’ll have to somehow find the money and pay him. This time. But I’m afraid this won’t be the last time. There’s no reason why his demands should ever stop, is there?” he concluded miserably.

  “Do you think Curt might go to the police with what he knows?”

  “Why should he do that? It’s not a police matter. I paid my dues for my crime. I served my sentence. Why on earth should it have anything to do with the police?”

  “I meant in the light of…” Carole nodded discreetly towards Quiet Harbour “…recent discoveries.”

  Reginald Flowers stared at her in bewilderment. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Well, the boy, Robin Cutter, was supposed to be the victim of a paedophile and I –”

  “Are you suggesting that I ever had anything to do with paedophilia?” He sounded appalled at the idea.

  “Well, you did leave Edgington Manor School under a cloud.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t because I was fiddling with the children. For God’s sake, Carole! If you’re looking for a pervert on Smalting Beach, you’d do much better concentrating on Kelvin Southwest. Ask him about those afternoons when he goes into one of the empty beach huts with his binoculars and spies on the nippers changing. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to hear that that’s only the beginning of what he gets up to. But don’t you dare accuse me of anything like that!”

  “Then, if it wasn’t for that reason, why did you leave the school?” asked Carole evenly.

  He sighed, shook his head and looked shamefaced. “I stole something.”

  “Stole something? What?”

  “Edgington Manor School was founded quite a long time ago. Late eighteenth century. And one of its first old boys was an admiral in Nelson’s navy. Admiral Henryson. Not very well known, but like Nelson he was killed at Trafalgar. And his widow presented his dress uniform to the school. It stood in a glass case in the Lower Hall. I passed it half a dozen times a day, and each time I passed it I was more determined that it should be mine, that I should add it to my collection. At first the idea was just an idle fancy, but it became an obsession.

  “So I worked out how I’d steal it. During the school holidays. Make it look as though vandals had broken into the school. I’d got it all worked out, all justified in my own mind. Edgington Manor School had never done me any favours, the place owed me something. I was two years off retirement and I was determined that there was one final favour the place was going to do me.

  “Plan all went fine. I had keys to certain doors in the school, I knew how to switch off the burglar alarm. I took Admiral Henryson’s uniform. Nobody in the school ever looked at it, none of those sports-obsessed spotty boys gave a damn about the thing. It was right that it should belong to someone who appreciated its full value. I felt no guilt. I still don’t feel any guilt.”

  “But you didn’t get away with it, did you, Reg?”

  He shook his head wearily. “No. I’d been seen breaking into the school by some officious young housemaster. Out in the grounds pushing his bloody infant in a buggy or whatever they call those things. By the time I got out of the building, the police were waiting for me.”

  “And you were charged with theft?”

  “Yes. Some schools would have hushed it up. They wouldn’t have wanted the adverse publicity. But that wasn’t the way my sanctimonious bloody headmaster thought. He said Edgington Manor School was trying to make its pupils into honest citizens and they should therefore be made aware of the penalties for dishonesty. We’d always hated each other, and suddenly he saw the perfect opportunity to make an example of me. So yes, I went through the courts, which let me tell you was pretty bloody humiliating. I subsequently spent six months at Her Majesty’s pleasure…which wasn’t much fun either. However many times I told them the truth of what I was in for, the other prisoners assumed…schoolteacher, kicked out at my age, must have been for…” He shuddered. “Anyway, somehow I survived that, but obviously when I was released, my career was finished.

  “So after a time I moved down here, where I thought, where I hoped, that no one would ever know about that episode in my past. I still don’t know how Curt Holderness did find out about it.”

  “Through a policeman he’d met who’d worked up near Edgington Manor School.”

  “Ah. Right.” Reginald Flowers looked very weary. His long confession had taken its toll.

  “One thing I can’t quite understand,” Carole began, “is why it matters so much to you. I mean, you did wrong, but most people would not think that you did anything very seriously wrong. Given all the stuff you’ve got here in the beach hut, you could almost laugh it off, as an example of the single-mindedness of the obsessive collector. I mean, if Curt Holderness did go public about what you did, who do you think would actually be that worried? You’re only successful as a blackmailer if your victim has got a lot to lose. And I don’t really see that you have a lot to lose.”

  “What!” demanded Reginald Flowers in amazement. “How can you say that? It’d be a total disaster. Are you suggesting that, if it was known I had a criminal record, I would be allowed to remain as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association?”

  ∨ Bones Under The Beach Hut ∧

  Thirty-Three

  Smalting Beach was considerably busier when Carole left The Bridge and continued Gulliver’s interrupted walk. They covered half a mile in the Fethering direction, and though the dog
would much rather not have been on a lead, he still patently enjoyed himself.

  With a slight shock, Carole realized that she was only a day away from the arrival of Gaby and Lily. The mysteries of Mark Dennis and Robin Cutter had been preoccupying her. One of them was solved. She wondered what the chances were of the second being elucidated before she had to go into full-on grandmother mode. The odds weren’t promising. She tried to close her mind to the case and concentrate on her imminent visitors. She wasn’t successful.

  On their way back to Fowey, Carole and Gulliver’s route took them along the line of the other beach huts, of which more had been opened up during their walk. Outside Cape of Good Hope sat Dora Pinchbeck with a piled-high cornet of pistachio ice cream and a Daily Mail. In her personal domain, in front of her beach hut, she looked very much more in control of life than on the previous occasions Carole had met her. It seemed that, when she wasn’t being diminished and patronized by Reginald Flowers, the woman did actually have an identity of her own.

  She greeted Carole warmly and glowed when congratulated on the success of the quiz night. “Yes, it all seemed to go very well,” she agreed. “In spite of the snafu over the booking of the venue.”

  Carole was surprised at Dora’s use of the military slang expression ‘snafu’. Easier to imagine it coming from Reginald Flowers’s lips. And she wondered whether Dora was actually quoting her ‘boss’.

  “Oh well, everyone makes mistakes,” she said soothingly.

  “I agree. Some of us just don’t admit to them, though.” Carole’s look asked for an explanation, so Dora nodded towards The Bridge. “Lord High and Mighty over there never admits to having made a mistake.”

  “Oh?”

  “Did he tell you that I’d screwed up the booking at St Mary’s Church Hall?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Typical. That’s how control freaks always come unstuck. Incapable of delegating, on the rare occasions when they do make mistakes, they always have to find someone else to blame. And in Reg’s case it’s nearly always Little Me.”

  She spoke with remarkable lack of rancour, given the way her ‘boss’ treated her. Carole began to wonder if the efficient master/incompetent secretary routine was some kind of game they played, and whether their relationship was in fact rather closer than it appeared on the outside.