Bones Under The Beach Hut

Chapter Seventeen

Philly had clearly wanted them to leave. She needed to be alone to assess the full import of the new suspicion that Carole and Jude had planted in her mind, and they reckoned they would do more harm than good by staying with her.

It was around twelve when they emerged from Seashell Cottage. 'Lunch?' suggested Jude hopefully.

Carole's face disapproved. 'It's a bit early,' she said, 'and I've got the remains of a chicken in the fridge back at High Tor.'

'Oh, go on,' said Jude.

'No.' Carole was very firm. 'There's something else I want to do first.' And she led her friend along the Smalting promenade to a small former bakery, over whose shop windows was a silver-lettered sign reading 'Zentner Gallery'.

As she pushed the door open a bell tinkled, but the room they entered was empty. Its small space was inventively used. By the counter stood rotating stands of postcards and greetings cards. On the wall behind it hung framed prints of the predictably popular — Van Gogh's Starry Night, Jack Vettriano's Singing

Butler, Warhol's Marilyns, and so on. Sample posters and standard-sized frames were stacked upright in boxes to be riffled through. On the counter itself were grouped a selection of bookmarks, paperweights, decorative pencils and other knick-knacks. These items presumably kept the tills ticking over and were bought mostly by browsers who'd come into the shop with no intention of buying any original artwork.

But there was quite a lot of that on display in the rest of the gallery. On a central table stood bronze sculptures, mostly hares running and salmon leaping. Some colourful abstracts decorated the back wall, out of reach of the sun. On the side opposite the counter was a display of works by three artists. Nearest the window were some predominantly blue fantasy scenes — long-haired blue maidens peering through blue ferns at blue Arthurian boats on blue lakes with brooding blue Tolkien mountains in the background. Further back were a selection of splashy pictures of racehorses, all looking exactly the same, except presumably to their owners. And between the two was an array of Gray Czesky's bland seascapes and South Downs-scapes. Carole moved forward to look at them.

'Can I help you?' A small woman in her early fifties with short black hair appeared from the back of the shop, rubbing her hands on a J-cloth. 'Sorry, just been doing some framing. The glue gets all over the place.'

'Good morning,' said Carole. 'I was interested in these.'

'They're by Gray Czesky.'

'From the subject matter it looks like he's a local.'

'Could hardly be more local. Lives just four houses along from here. By the way, I'm Sonja Zentner.'

'Carole Seddon.'

'And I'm Jude. So you own the gallery?'

'Yes. Fulfilling a long-held dream. I spent twenty years teaching art to uninterested teenagers, and always promised myself I'd retire early and do this.'

'Good. And how's it going?'

Sonja Zentner twiddled her hands in a 'so-so' gesture. 'Comes and goes. Better in the summer, obviously. And the framing keeps things ticking over. Anyway, Carole, you like the Gray Czeskys, do you?'

'Yes,' Carole lied.

'But how much do you like them?' Sonja Zentner grinned. 'Enough to want to buy one? Here are the prices.' She handed across a printed sheet.

Carole's immediate reaction was that Gray Czesky's watercolours seemed very expensive. The cheapest was five hundred pounds and the prices ranged up to over a thousand. 'Oh well, I don't think—'

'Does he take commissions?' Jude interrupted.

The gallery owner laughed. 'Show me the artist who doesn't take commissions. Of course he does.'

'Because you see, we live in Fethering and Carole was only saying the other day that she'd really like a decent watercolour of Fethering Beach to hang in her sitting room.' Jude carefully avoided the look of suppressed fury in her neighbour's eyes. 'And she'd really like to talk to Gray Czesky about it.'

'No problem. I can call him now, if you like. He's usually at home. He might well see you straight away.'

While Sonja Zentner made the call Jude looked demurely out of the window at Smalting Beach, confident that Carole wouldn't make a fuss until they were alone together.

The gallery owner put the phone down. 'Yes, that's perfect. Gray's there and would be delighted to talk to you about a potential commission. As I say, he's just four doors along. The house is called "Sanditon".'

'Thank you, that's so kind,' said Jude graciously. Then looking down towards the white tent surrounding Quiet Harbour, she continued, 'Terrible, that business over there, wasn't it?'

'Oh yes. And, needless to say in a place like Smalting, all kinds of theories are being put forward about what actually happened.'

'Any theories that sound believable?'

'Most of them are pretty fanciful, to be quite honest. And I think they'll stay that way until we get a bit more information. The police haven't said anything more about what was actually found under the beach hut. Just "human remains". Once we know the age and gender of the poor unfortunate, I think that'll put paid to some of the sillier conjectures.'

'So what's the latest you've heard, Sonja?'

'There was someone in only this morning who was convinced she knew who'd hidden the remains under the hut.'

'Oh?'

'Yes, she reads rather a lot of crime fiction, I'm afraid, and she said that the police frequently ignore the most obvious solution. She said the first suspect should always be the person who discovers the body.'

'But in this case that was the Fether District Council-approved contractor who was about to repair the fire damage.'

'Oh no, Jude, she didn't mean him. She meant the one who discovered the fire damage. She was convinced that the murderer must be the woman who took over the hut rental from Philly Rose/

'Oh, was she?' said a very tight-lipped Carole.

'Jude, will you stop giggling!' They were walking along the promenade towards Sanditon. 'It is not funny. It is not funny that I've just been identified as a murderer. And it's even less funny that you have set up a meeting with an artist who's expecting me to commission him to paint a watercolour of Fethering Beach.'

'It's an introduction. How else were we going to get to talk to Gray Czesky?'

'But I don't want to commission a watercolour from him. Certainly not at those prices. Anyway, I loathe watercolours. I just find them so insipid.'

'Look, you're only discussing the possibility of commissioning the painting. Obviously you don't go through with it.'

'But I can't raise this man's expectations about—'

'Carole, it's a commercial transaction. He's offering a service that you can accept or refuse. You're just checking out the possibilities. It's quite plausible that you could subsequently find another artist prepared to do you a watercolour of Fethering Beach at a much more reasonable price.'

'But I don't want a watercolour of Fethering Beach!' wailed Carole.

'It'll be fine.'

'It won't. Jude, you've put me in a very difficult position. I have to lie to this man about wanting a painting painted, and then I'll have to lie to him again about not wanting a painting painted.'

'As I say, it'll be fine. Trust me.'

'Huh,' Carole snorted.

Gray Czesky's studio was on the first floor of Sanditon, a large front bedroom commandeered for the cause of art. Carole and Jude could see why he had chosen it. A bay of huge picture windows meant that the light was excellent. The scene it illuminated, however, was one of total chaos.

Though the rest of the house, the hall into which the artist's wife Helga admitted them, the staircase and landing they were led through, was almost excessively neat, the studio was grotesquely untidy. Its bare boards and walls were deeply encrusted with spilled paint, the floor was a refuse dump of paint pots, broken brushes and soiled rags.

So total was the disarray that there was an air of parody about it, as though the artist had modelled his working space on images of Francis Bacon's studio. But here were no visceral canvases of tortured souls and twisted bodies. Instead, Gray Czesky's neat chocolate-box watercolours struck a discordant note in the surrounding squalor.

The artist himself also seemed a parody. His long, greying hair and paint-spattered clothing presented an image of someone who didn't care about his appearance, but a lot of effort had gone into creating that effect. It was in marked contrast to his wife's hausfrau look, her neat blue skirt and a pink blouse fussy with ruffles.

'If you'd like coffee — or a drink maybe — Helga'll get you some.'

Carole and Jude both refused the offer and Helga left the room, her husband hardly having acknowledged her presence. He reached for a whisky bottle fingerprinted with paint, and poured a good measure into a filthy glass. After a long swig, he gestured to a spattered sofa on to which Carole and Jude sat gingerly. Gray Czesky perched on a tall paint-covered stool.

'Alcohol is a good antidote to thought,' he observed lackadaisically. 'I find I often need to curb my thoughts. Otherwise they overpower me. My mind is so ceaselessly active. I suppose that is one of the penalties of the artistic temperament.'

To Carole's mind instantly came a quotation from G.K. Chesterton that one of her former colleagues at the Home Office had been fond of: 'The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.' But she didn't say anything, just let the self-appointed genius maunder on.

'There's a common misconception that, if one has a talent to produce work quickly, that must mean that it comes easily. But no, art is never easy. Art is a very hard taskmaster — or taskmistress is perhaps more accurate.' He gestured across the explosion in a paint factory to his own tidy little creations. 'Each one of those watercolours is torn from my soul, you know.'

This time Carole felt she had to say something. 'Well, they look very nice.'

'"Nice"? "Nice"!' Gray Czesky flung a hand up to clutch at his forehead. '"Nice" is the accolade of the bourgeoisie. And of course the aim of the artist is to épater le bourgeois. Call my work anything you wish — challenging, controversial, incompetent even — but never condemn it to the mediocrity of "nice"'.'

'All right, I won't say it again,' said Carole through tightened lips.

Wishing to move the conversation into less hazardous waters, Jude observed that the studio had a splendid view.

'Yes. Though of course I never look at it. An artist does not look outside himself. The art is inside. The art has to be quarried out from within, like a rich seam of ore.'

'But surely,' said Jude, reasonably enough, 'when you're painting a landscape you have to look at it, don't you?'

'I don't look while I'm painting. I look before I paint. I memorize, I store the image within my mental gallery. For me the act of composition is always an act of recollection.'

Carole hadn't liked the lie that had brought them into Gray Czesky's studio, but she reckoned it was time to play along with the subterfuge. 'So have you ever memorized Fethering Beach?'

'No. Why should I have done?'

'Oh, of course Sonja Zentner didn't mention the subject of the commission I'm thinking of. I'm looking for someone to do me a watercolour of Fethering Beach.'

'Ah. Well, no, I haven't memorized Fethering Beach, but it would be a matter of moments for me to do so. I could go along with my camera any day.'

'Oh, so you take photographs of the views you're going to paint and work from them? Is that what you mean by "memorizing"?' asked Jude.

This did rather dilute the magic of the creative process that the artist had described, and Gray Czesky seemed to acknowledge that he'd lost ground as he mumbled a yes.

'Well, I've seen examples of your work, which I like a lot,' Carole lied, 'so the question really is: how much would I have to pay to commission you?'

Now it came to money, Gray Czesky was suddenly a lot less airy-fairy. He reeled out a list of prices which seemed to vary according to the size of the picture required. And the smallest option would cost over two thousand pounds.

Carole disguised her real feelings — that if she had a spare two thousand pounds she could think of many things she'd rather spend it on — and said she'd have to mull over her next move. 'I will be checking out the rates of some other artists.'

'Other artists? Other so-called artists, I think you mean. I know the work of most of the so-called artists in the area, and there are few who aspire to being above competent draughtsmen. If you are looking for a mere wallcovering, you would do better to buy a poster or a reproduction than one of their efforts. If you want your wall to have a work of art hanging on it, then you need to commission Gray Czesky.'

Jude saw an opportunity to move the conversation in the direction of their investigation. 'You say you know all the local artists. Do you know Mark Dennis?'

'Yes, of course I do. Good bloke, Mark. Not much talent as an artist, I'm afraid, but still a good bloke. He didn't buy into all the bourgeois crap you get in a place like Smalting any more than I do.'

'I gather he's left Smalting,' said Carole.

An expression of crafty caution came into Gray Czesky's face as he responded, 'Yes, I'd heard that.'

'We know Philly, his girlfriend,' said Jude. 'She's terribly cut up about Mark leaving.'

The artist shrugged. 'Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Can't be tied down by bourgeois morality if you're an artist.'

Carole bit back her instinctive response to that remark, instead asking, 'I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?'

Gray Czesky grinned roguishly. 'There is a kind of freemasonry among men, you know. We support our mates, but we don't get involved in their love lives. If a bloke splits up with a girlfriend, not our problem. Doesn't matter whether we like the girl or not, we know where our duty lies. We'll support him, go out for a few drinks, help him forget, but we won't offer advice or comment. He's done what he wants to do, he no doubt had good reasons for doing it, it's his business.'

'You're saying you don't know why Mark walked out on Philly?'

Another shrug. 'Presumably he didn't want to stay with her any more.'

'You don't know if he'd met someone else ... or gone back to someone?' asked Jude.

'No. And if I did know I wouldn't tell you. As I say, there's a freemasonry among blokes about that kind of thing. We leave the Mills and Boon stuff to the gentler sex. Me and Mark were just good drinking mates. We got healthily smashed from time to time and we didn't talk about relationships.' He put a heavy, doom-laden emphasis on the word.

'And you haven't seen Mark Dennis since he left Smalting?'

'That's another of those things where if I had I wouldn't tell you.'

It didn't seem as though their information gathering was going to progress much further. Carole rose to her feet and said, 'Thank you very much for your time, Mr Czesky. I'll make my decision about the commission very soon and get back to you either way. Do you have a card with your phone number on it?'

'Helga's got some downstairs.'

'I'll ask her as we go out.'

'Don't worry, I'll see you down. Don't feel ready to go straight back to the coalface of my art.' This was so melodramatically pronounced that Jude looked to see if Gray Czesky was actually sending himself up. But there was no gleam of humour in his eye. When it came to the subject of himself, he was a man incapable of irony.

He led the two women out on to the landing, and once again they were struck by the contrast between the manufactured squalor of the artist's workplace and the middle-class neatness of the rest of the house. Just as Jude started down the stairs, Carole suddenly said, 'Oh, will you excuse me? I just want to have one more look at one of the watercolours — to help me make up my mind,' and slipped back into the studio.

Gray Czesky shrugged and followed Jude down to the hall. He called to his wife as though she were a servant, asking her to bring one of his cards. Moments later Carole joined them.

'Thank you again, Mr Czesky.' She smiled at Helga. 'And Mrs Czesky.'

'No point in thanking her,' said the woman's gracious husband. 'She didn't do anything. Never do much, do you, Hel? Except get under my feet and stop me concentrating on my art.'

Carole and Jude waited for the explosion they reckoned those words must have detonated in any twenty-first-century woman, but none came. Instead, Helga Czesky giggled. And then her husband giggled too. Clearly his insulting of her was some kind of love ritual that seemed to turn them both on.

Helga was the first to recover her powers of speech. She grinned mischievously at the two women and said, 'I am very lucky, aren't I, to be married to a genius — no?'

No, thought Carole and Jude in unison.

Outside Sanditon, Carole became very mysterious, hurrying back to where she had parked the Renault. Jude kept asking what was happening, but she got no reply till they were both inside the car.

Then, milking the drama from her revelation, Carole announced, 'When I went back into the studio just now, it wasn't to take another look at the water-colours.'

'Oh?'

'It was to pick up this.'

'What?' asked Jude, playing along with her neighbour's narrative style.

Carole unclasped the handbag on her lap and produced from it a paint-spattered scrap of cloth. Jude's close inspection revealed it to be a strip of an old tea towel with a design of ponies on it.

'This,' Carole declared, 'is an exact match to one of the pieces of cloth that was used to set fire to Quiet Harbour.'