Bones Under The Beach Hut

Chapter Twelve

The Crab Inn was so up itself it almost came out through the top. It was a pub only in name; the interior seemed to breathe the words 'expensive restaurant'. Though there was a bar, it was not large, and the idea of someone coming in just to down a few pints seemed incongruous. The walls were painted in subtle shades of cream. The pictures hung on them mostly looked like — though probably weren't — original nineteenth-century maritime scenes. There were also some very chocolate-boxy watercolours of local views — the gentle undulations of the South Downs, Cissbury Ring, a distant prospect of Chichester Cathedral, Smalting Beach at low tide. In the bottom corners of the frames of these were cards with prices and a contact number. Clearly the work of a local artist.

The Crab Inn staff, male and female, were dressed in black trousers and black shirts with nothing so vulgar as a logo on them. A man in black behind the bar looked up at Carole and Jude's entrance. 'Good afternoon. May I help you?' His accent was French and he spoke with that kind of obsequiousness that borders on disapproval.

'Good afternoon. Do you have a table for two for lunch?' asked Jude. It wasn't how Carole would have phrased the question. She tried to avoid saying things that could be slapped down with a firm 'No'. She would have favoured some circumlocution beginning, 'I wondered if by any chance it was possible that you might. . . ?'

'I'll check the book,' replied the young man, with a scepticism that suggested they'd be lucky to find a vacant lunch table for two in this millennium. He looked almost disappointed as he was forced to admit that there was a table free. Nor was the table he pointed out to them tucked away in some unfavoured corner next to the door to the kitchen. It was actually set in one of the bay windows at the front, commanding a splendid sea view.

'If you'd like to order drinks, I will have them taken over to your table.'

'No, thank you,' said Jude to Carole's considerable surprise. 'We'll have our drinks at the bar and then go over to the table.'

'Very good, Madame.' The young man looked slightly put out as he asked what they would like to drink. Checking The Crab Inn's extensive wine menu, Carole and Jude were pleased to see that they had the same Chilean Chardonnay that Ted Crisp served in the Crown and Anchor, though The Crab charged nearly 50 per cent more for it.

While their drinks were being poured, Carole raised an interrogative eyebrow. Jude understood that an explanation was required for her insisting they should have their drinks at the bar, and nodded her head towards one of the other tables. There, sitting with a (no doubt overpriced) pint of bitter in front of him, sat Reginald Flowers.

He had yet to see them and both women were struck by the expression of desolation on his face. He looked terribly lonely. Maybe everything he cared about was in The Bridge and the police cordon that prevented him from getting there was the cause of his misery.

When they'd got their drinks and agreed with the young man in black to put them on a tab, Carole moved purposefully towards Reginald Flowers. After all, they'd come to The Crab Inn in the hope of gaining local information, and there in front of them sat the person who probably knew more about the hutters on Smalting Beach than anyone else. What's more, his having left the envelope for her at Fowey provided the perfect conversational opening.

She thanked him profusely. 'So splendid to have my first copy of The Hut Parade — not to mention my complimentary tide table.'

'Glad to welcome you to membership of the SBHA.'

'Honoured to be a member.'

'Did Dora hand over the envelope to you personally?'

'Well, no. I found it tucked into the bar of my beach hut.'

'Oh dear. Black mark, Dora.' Reginald Flowers took a small police notebook out of his blazer pocket and wrote something in it with a fountain pen. 'I've told her before she should always hand such documents over personally. If she leaves them on the beach huts, they could be taken by anyone — stolen by people who aren't even members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

Carole's instinct was to ask what ordinary member of the public might possibly be interested in the newsletter of the SBHA, but she restrained herself. There was something vulnerable about Reginald Flowers at that moment, and she didn't want to dent his fragile self-importance. Instead she said, 'Now I don't think you've met my friend Jude . . .'

'I've seen you on the beach.'

'Probably with rather fewer clothes on.' Jude grinned at him and he grinned back. Carole was once again struck by the instinct her neighbour had for putting people at their ease.

He rose and stretched out a hand. 'My name's Reginald Flowers. I'm President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

'Oh yes, Carole's mentioned you. Are you a regular here at The Crab Inn?'

'Not really. Normally I take a packed lunch down to The Br— my beach hut — but, er, given the current circumstances . . .'

'Yes, it must be wretched for you not being able to get into your place,' said Carole. 'Have the police given any indication of how long it'll be before they grant you access again?'

'No, they haven't.' And from Reginald Flowers's tone of voice this was clearly a bone of some contention.

'Mind you, I've left them in no doubt that I should be the first to be informed when they do vouchsafe us any news. I am, after all, President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.'

'Yes.'

'And, all right, I understand that when there's been a crime committed, the police have a job to do.'

'Are we sure there has been a crime committed?' asked Jude.

'I think it's a reasonable assumption. Dead bodies are not, in my experience, in the habit of burying themselves.'

Continuing to play slightly dumb, Jude asked, 'So the bones were actually buried under the beach hut? Not just stuffed in the space between the floor and the shingle? Because on the news they just said that the remains had been found under the beach hut.'

'Oh no, they were buried.' Reginald Flowers was clearly enjoying his role as the one with privileged information.

'Did the police tell you that?' asked Carole.

'I intuited it from them,' he replied rather grandly.

'And did you intuit anything else?'

'Like what?'

'Well, how long the remains had been there? Whether they were the remains of a male or a female body? What age of person they belonged to?'

Reginald Flowers wilted a little under Carole's wave of interrogation. 'They did give me some other information,' he said, saving face a little, 'but they requested that I should keep it to myself. There's quite enough gossip going round Smalting at the moment without my adding to it.'

'Of course,' said Jude gently. 'By the way, you said you normally have a packed lunch. Is that what you're doing today?'

'That's what I would be doing if I could get into my bally beach hut — pardon my French. So I've ordered the Sunday roast here.' Clearly the idea of eating a packed lunch anywhere other than inside The Bridge was not one that he could countenance. 'Regardless of their ridiculous prices,' he went on.

'We're eating too,' said Jude. 'I say, you wouldn't like to join us, would you? I mean, unless you're expecting someone . . . ?'

He wasn't expecting anyone, and he would like to join them. The alacrity with which he accepted the invitation told Carole, who knew a bit about being on her own, just how lonely he was. In subsequent conversation he revealed that he had never married and, before taking early retirement, had been a schoolteacher.

The young man in black behind the bar conceded somewhat grudgingly that he could add another chair to their table, and soon the three of them were ensconced in the bay window of The Crab Inn, consulting its lavishly produced menus. Their contents were predictable. Television chefs, thought Carole, have a lot to answer for. The Sunday roast appeared to be about the only thing on the menu that wasn't accompanied by something drizzled, wilted or glazed, and wasn't served with a jus, a confit or a coulis.

The prices were, as anticipated, extortionate, but what the hell? Now they had ensnared Reginald Flowers, Carole and Jude reckoned they could consider their lunches as legitimate investigative expenses. They didn't dwell on the fact that they didn't have an expenses budget and had never made any money out of any of their detective activities.

The young man in black was, it seemed, just the pub's greeter. Jobs as menial as taking people's orders were delegated to girls in black, who were clearly his underlings. One approached the table in the bay window. She reeled off a list of daily specials, most of which included something seared, steamed or pan-fried, but her customers weren't tempted and all opted for the Sunday roast. Carole and Reginald Flowers ordered the beef, while Jude chose pork.

Picking up the conversation, Carole reminded Reginald that he'd been talking about the gossip recent events had prompted in Smalting.

'Always the same in small villages,' he said. 'Everyone's got their own theory — and they're all rubbish.'

'And do you have a theory of your own?' asked Jude.

'Well, I wouldn't be surprised if drugs were at the bottom of it. Or immigrants. Or both,' he concluded ominously.

'In what way?'

'Look, if there's one thing everyone can agree on these days, it's that since the Second World War, this country has gone to the dogs.' Jude was not as convinced as Reginald about the universality of this view, but she didn't interrupt. 'And the reason this country has gone to the dogs is down to two things: drugs and immigrants. Young men in my day didn't have time or money to buy drugs. They were all trying to rebuild our country after the disasters of the war, they were doing national service, they were—'

'Did you do national service?' asked Carole.

'Well, no, I didn't actually, as it happens, but that doesn't change my point. We still had some concept of service in the those days, the idea that we owed something to the generations before us, to the generations that followed us, that we owed something to our country, for God's sake. Patriotism wasn't a dirty word when I was growing up, you know. We were proud of being British and yes, we were jolly grateful to the chaps from other countries who helped us in the war, but that didn't mean we wanted to have our country overrun by them. Now I'm the last person in the world who could be accused of having any racial prejudice . . .'

And, in the manner of everyone who begins a sentence, 'Now I'm the last person in the world to . . .' Reginald Flowers went on to demonstrate just how much racial prejudice he did have. Living on the South Coast for as long as they had, Carole and Jude had heard it all before.

Reginald Flowers was still in full ranting mode when their food arrived and he continued while they were eating. The food was actually pretty good though loyally neither Carole nor Jude reckoned it matched the quality available at the Crown and Anchor. Only when they came to order their afters did the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association mercifully run out of political steam. The dessert menu was an intriguing mix of the exotic: clafoutis, panna cottas and syllabubs, and English nursery puddings — bread and butter, Eton mess, spotted dick and custard. Once they had given their orders — plain fruit salad for Carole, spotted dick and custard for Jude and Reginald — they did finally manage to get him back on to the subject of the police investigation on Smalting Beach.

But when they did, all he could offer was rather meagre pickings. Apart from the one unknown that he'd already revealed to them — the fact that the remains had been buried under Quiet Harbour rather than just lying there — he had no other new information. The police were evidently as unwilling to share their findings with the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association as they were with other mere mortals. So Carole decided to change tack and to pick his brains about the regular users of the Smalting beach huts.

It wasn't difficult to get him on to the subject. Since his retirement from teaching it was clear that his whole life now revolved around The Bridge and the Smalting Beach Hut Association. And perhaps being temporarily barred from the centre of his world, he was prepared to be less discreet than he might have been on his home turf.

Carole asked him first about the elderly couple she'd twice seen in front of the hut called Mistral. Ah yes, Lionel and Joyce Oliver,' said Reginald Flowers.

'They're there practically every day. He must be in his eighties now, long retired.'

Carole remembered the expression of bleak misery she had seen on the man's face, as she asked, 'What did he do?'

'He was an undertaker. Family firm in Fedborough. Took the business over from his father, and I think his grandfather had been in the trade as well. Lionel got bought out, though, when he retired. The firm's now owned by one of the big chains, I think.'

'And his wife?'

Reginald Flowers shrugged. 'Wife and mother. Never done much else of anything I don't think. Always there on the beach, though, with her magazines. No, the Olivers are friendly enough, but they don't really mix.'

'What do you mean?'

'They don't support the SBHA social activities as much as one might wish.'

'I didn't know the SBHA had social activities,' said Carole with some trepidation.

'Oh yes, always trying to get people involved, you know. We've got a quiz night coming up next week.'

'Have you?' Carole was already marshalling her excuses to get out of that.

'On the Thursday. We used to do them here in The Crab Inn, but what they charge for their function rooms is now totally exorbitant. So it'll be in the St Mary's Church Hall. Dora's booked that for us. Do you know where it is? Just off the High Street.'

'Oh.'

'Still, I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You will've seen the details in your copy of The Hut Parade.'

'Of course.' Carole wasn't about to admit that she hadn't yet had a chance to open the pages of that esteemed periodical. It was entirely characteristic of Reginald Flowers, though, that he would assume everyone's first action on receiving a copy of his newsletter would be to read it from cover to cover.

Carole got the conversation back on track. 'But you were saying the Olivers tend to keep themselves to themselves?'

'Yes, I think they were probably more outgoing before . . . but things change. People get older.'

'Why, what happened?' asked Jude, alert to the slight hesitation in his voice.

'What do you mean — what happened?'

'You said the Olivers were more outgoing before, which suggests to me that something happened to make them less outgoing.'

'No, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean anything. Just that they've got older.'

'Right.' Carole and Jude exchanged looks. They both knew that Reginald Flowers was holding something back. Equally they both knew that they wouldn't get it out of him at that moment. But in time they would try to find out more about the Olivers.

Carole moved the conversation on. 'Then there's that grandmother, the one in the beach hut called Seagull's Nest.'

'Ah yes.' Reginald Flowers spoke without enthusiasm. 'Her name's Deborah Wrigley. Lives in one of those big houses on the Shorelands Estate, you know, over in Fethering.' The two women nodded. They knew all about the exclusively gated Shorelands Estate. People there were even more up themselves than the inhabitants of Smalting.

'Anyway, Deborah Wrigley's husband was something big in the City. Banker I think. Died maybe six years ago, very soon after retirement, probably the poor bastard succumbed to the effects of twenty-four hour nagging when he was at home all the time. Left his wife as rich as Croesus, and she now devotes her life to bitchy bridge parties, that is when she's not playing her children off against each other about their potential inheritances . . . oh, and bullying her grandchildren.'

Carole awarded herself an inward nod of satisfaction. Her initial assessment of Deborah Wrigley's character seemed to have been 100 per cent accurate.

'She's extremely put out at the moment,' Reginald Flowers continued with relish. 'Seagull's Nest is in the row that's still cordoned off by the police. Like The Bridge . . .' But he only allowed himself a brief moment of wistfulness. 'Deborah Wrigley's been bending the ear of that jumped-up little jack-in-office Kelvin Southwest about the situation. But of course he can't do anything. He just has to wait till the police decide the huts can be opened again. Like the rest of us. So the lovely Deborah must be continuing to antagonize her family somewhere else at the moment.'

Carole and Jude didn't reckon they were going to get much more out of him on Deborah Wrigley, but Jude made a mental note to check whether Philly Rose had had anything to do with the grandmother from hell. After all, Seagull's Nest was directly next door to Quiet Harbour.

Carole had meanwhile moved on to the subject of the SBHA's security officer. 'You haven't had any insights from him, have you, Reginald, you know, about what happened at Quiet Harbour?'

'No. And I don't expect any.' Curt Holderness was clearly another on the list of people disapproved of by Reginald Flowers. 'I regret that his powers of vigilance leave a lot to be desired. Not very punctilious in the discharge of his duties, I'm afraid. But then Kelvin Southwest had a considerable influence on the appointment.'

Carole immediately picked up the subtext of this. 'A bit of mutual backscratching involved — is that what you're saying?'

'It's exactly what I'm saying, yes.'

Interesting how whenever Kelvin Southwest's name came up, it brought with it the slight whiff of minor corruption.

There was a hiatus while their sweets were delivered, but after a brief discussion about the enduring appeal of nursery foods like spotted dick, Carole resumed her fact-finding mission. 'Actually, Reginald, there's another hut user I—'

'Not "hut user", Carole, "hutter".'

'Hutter,' she repeated, unconvinced that the word would ever trip naturally off her tongue. 'Anyway, there was another one I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if you'll know who I mean . . .'

'I think, Carole,' he said with quiet complacency, 'you will find that, as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, I know about the people in all of the huts.'

'Yes, well, the hut I'm interested in is called Shrimphaven.' Slight annoyance crossed his face at the name. 'It's right next door to Fowey, the one I'm currently using. There's a young woman in it.'

'Yes, I know the one you mean. Sits there all day and half the night with one of those laptops.'

'Do you know what she's doing there?'

'No. I've asked her on more than one occasion and she won't tell me.' It clearly irked him that he couldn't provide a more complete answer. 'I think I may have to take my enquiries further. You know, as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. I may even have to involve Kelvin Southwest.' He spoke the name with distaste. 'I mean, there are regulations about the proper uses of these beach huts. If we were to discover that someone was running a business from one of them . . . well, action would have to be taken.'

'What kind of action would there—?' But Carole's question was interrupted by the sound from the bar of a glass smashing.

Reginald Flowers looked across to the source of the noise, shook his head knowingly and said, 'Oh dear, here comes trouble.'