Bones Under The Beach Hut (11 page)

    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?'