The Body on the Beach

Seven

The pub door clattered open, making both of the women look up. The newcomer was a short man of about seventy. The dark-blue reefer jacket and neat corduroy cap bestowed a deliberately naval air. A wispy white beard on the point of his chin gave his head the shape of some root vegetable newly plucked from the soil.

“Evening, mine host,” he said as he strode towards the bar.

Carole recognized Bill Chilcott, another High Street resident. He hadn’t noticed her as he came in. She wouldn’t have minded if things stayed that way. Since Carole Seddon wasn’t a ‘pub person’, she didn’t want the impression to get round that she was. Anything observed by Bill Chilcott would immediately be passed on to his wife, Sandra, and soon all Fethering would know.

“Evening, Bill.” Ted Crisp reached for the pump handle. “Your customary half?”

“Yes, thank you. And my customary half-hour away from the little woman. Actually, Sandra’s deep into some programme about neighbours redecorating each other’s front rooms, so she’s as happy as a pig in…in its element.” He chuckled at his careful euphemism, then noticed the other man at the bar. “Rory. How’re you doing?”

“Been better,” the dentist grunted.

“Still, at least you didn’t get breathalyzed, eh?”

“No, no.” His face twisted ironically before he said, “Thank you for that.”

Ted Crisp handed Bill Chilcott his customary half. “What’s all this about the dreaded breathalyzer then?”

“The Bill was staking out Seaview Road last night. Stopped Sandra and me on our way back from line–dancing. I was fine, hadn’t had a drop, but on the way home I saw Rory’s car coming towards me, so I flashed him down to warn him there was a trap ahead. Of course,” Bill Chilcott went on innocently, “I had no idea whether you’d been drinking or not…”

“No.”

“So what did you do, actually?”

“Parked the car by the Yacht Club and walked home. Last thing I need at the moment is trouble with the police.”

“Last thing any of us need.” Bill Chilcott shook his head ruefully. “I think it’s a bit much, the police breathalyzing right down here in Fethering. Up on the main road, that’s fine, but here…Nanny state gone mad, eh? Mind you, if you want my opinion…the police shouldn’t be wasting their time harassing respectable motorists. They should be concentrating on the young people round here. There’s so much vandalism. I hear there’ve been more break-ins at the Yacht Club.”

“Have there?” Rory Turnbull looked shocked.

“Who’d you hear that from?” asked Ted. “The Vice-Commodore?” He said it teasingly, deliberately prompting a predictable reaction.

It came. Bill Chilcott’s tuber face turned purple with anger. “You know I don’t give the time of day to that old idiot! No, it was something Sandra heard along the grapevine, from one of our regular swimming group at the Leisure Centre. So no doubt the police’ll soon be inspecting down the Yacht Club…too late. As ever, shutting the stable door after the horse has gone. If you want my opinion…”

But on this occasion the Crown and Anchor was spared another of Bill Chilcott’s opinions. Rory Turn-bull’s stool had clattered against the counter as he rose to leave. “Better be off,” he announced brusquely.

“Back to the lovely Barbara, eh?” said Ted Crisp.

“Yes, back to the lovely Barbara,” the dentist echoed in a doom-laden voice.

“See you soon, eh?”

“Oh yes. I’ll be back.” He made it sound like a death sentence as he fumbled to get his arms into the sleeves of his padded coat.

Carole looked down at their wine glasses. Unaccountably, they’d both become empty.

“Think we need another of those,” declared Jude, rising to her feet.

Carole was out of practice with pub etiquette. “No, I’ll get them,” she said, a little late, following Jude to the bar.

The outer door clattered shut behind Rory Turnbull.

“Wouldn’t like to be his first appointment in the morning,” led Crisp observed.

“Why? What’s he do?” asked Jude.

“Dentist.”

“Oh.” She turned towards the closed door. “I should’ve talked to him. I need to register with a dentist down here.”

“If you take my advice, go for one with a steadier hand. I’m afraid friend Rory’s been knocking it back a bit the last few months.” Ted Crisp chuckled. “I’d say you saved his bacon with that warning about the breathalyzer, Bill. Rory seems well marinated in the Scotch these days.”

“Fraid so.”

“Sorry, Bill, should have introduced you. You know Carole, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

Was she being hypersensitive to detect a slight raising of one white eyebrow? Oh dear. Her presence in the Crown and Anchor would be all round Feth-ering the next morning.

“And this is Jude, who’s just moved in to the High Street too.”

“Oh, hello. Bill Chilcott.” He flashed her a row of too-perfect dentures. “You must be in Woodside Cottage.”

“That’s right.”

“Needs a lot of work, doesn’t it?”

“In time. No rush.”

Carole empathized with the old–fashioned reaction he gave to this laxity.

“Poor old Rory, though,” Ted Crisp went on. “Mind you, don’t blame him. Must be a bloody depressing business, looking at rotten molars and breathing in everyone’s halitosis all day.”

“Presumably the money’s some compensation,” Carole observed drily. “You don’t see many poor dentists, do you?”

The landlord shook his head, bunching his lips in a silent whistle of disagreement. “Don’t you believe it. Living from hand to mouth, the lot of them.”

“They’re certainly not. They’re – ”

But the sound of Jude and Bill Chilcott’s laughter stopped Carole.

“‘Hand to mouth’. Dentist joke,” Ted Crisp explained.

Carole said nothing. She’d never been very good at recognizing jokes.

“Anyway, from the amount he’s been putting back in here recently, I’d say Rory Turribull was not a happy man. Sorry, I’m forgetting I’m here to work. Two more large white wines, is it?”

“Yes,” replied Jude, and Carole didn’t even feel the slightest instinct to ask for a small one. “Rory Turribull?” Jude mused. “And you said his wife’s name’s Barbara?”

“That’s right.”

“Why, do you know her?” asked Bill Chilcott.

“No. Just I had a card through the letter box yesterday. From a Barbara Turnbull. Asking me to go to some coffee morning tomorrow. As a new resident of Fethering. Something connected with All Saints’.”

“That’d be Rory’s wife,” Carole confirmed.

“And I think, if you go, you’ll have the pleasure of meeting my wife, Sandra, there in the morning. She’ll be going after our swim.”

“Oh, good.”

“Barbara Turnbull’s very active in the church locally. She and her mother, Winnie. Very devout.”

“That’s probably what drives old Rory in here,” said led. “Needs to swill out the odour of sanctity with a few large ones. So you going to this coffee morning then, Jude?”

“Oh yes.”

“Joining the God squad, eh?”

“Not sure about that. I just want to find out everything about Fethering. A new place is always exciting, isn’t it?”

Though not sure that she agreed, Carole didn’t raise any objection as they settled back at their table with the refilled glasses. But realizing she’d been given a good cue to find out a bit more about her neighbour, she asked, “Are you religious?”

Jude let out a warm chuckle. “Depends what you mean by religious.”

“Well…church-going?”

The chuckle expanded into laughter. “Good heavens, no.”

Having elicited one small piece of information, Carole pressed her advantage. “I don’t know anything about you, actually…Jude.” She managed to say the name with only a vestigial hint of quotation marks around it. “Are you married?”

“Not at the moment. What about you?”

“Have been. Divorced.” Carole still felt a slight pang when she said the word. It wasn’t that she regretted the loss of her married status or that she wished David was still around. Very much the opposite. She knew she was much better off without him. But being divorced still seemed to her to carry an overtone of failure.

“How long ago?” asked Jude.

“Ooh, ten years now. No, twelve. How time flies.”

“Any children?”

“One son. Stephen. He’s nearly thirty. I don’t see a lot of him. What about you?”

Jude looked at her watch, seeming not to hear the return question. “I’m really starving,” she said. “I’ve got to order something to eat. Are you sure you’re not going to?”

“Well,” said Carole.

They both ended up ordering fish and chips. By then, Bill Chilcott, having made his customary half of bitter last exactly his customary half an hour, had left the pub with a hearty, “Cheerio, mine host.”

The two women’s conversation for the rest of the evening moved away from their personal details. Jude was intrigued by the two dramatic events of Carole’s day and kept returning to the body on the beach and the woman with the gun, offering ever new conjectures to explain them. Only once had Carole managed to get back to her neighbour’s domestic circumstances.

She’d said, “So you’re not married at the moment?”

“No.”

“But is there someone special in your life?”

But this inquiry had prompted only another throaty chuckle. “They’re all special,” Jude had said.

Carole’s recollections of the end of the evening were a little hazy. Of course, it wasn’t just the alcohol. She may have drunk a little more wine than she usually did – quite a lot more wine than she usually did, as it happened – but it was her shocked emotional state that had made her exceptionally susceptible to its effects.

She comforted herself with this thought as she slipped into stupefied sleep.

The other thought in her mind was a recollection of something her new neighbour had said. Carole couldn’t remember the exact words, but she felt sure Jude had suggested their working together. If the police weren’t going to show any interest in doing it, then the two of them should find out who killed the body on the beach.