The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

“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.