The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

again to break through.

“You’re suggesting,” Jude observed, “that Mark has gone back to Nuala.”

“Well, what else am I meant to think? He says he’s going away to sort himself out, for about a week I get regular texts from him, then suddenly nothing. Nuala’s got her talons into him again.”

“Was that the first explanation you thought of?” asked Carole. “You didn’t worry that he might have had an accident or something?”

“I did at first. But after a while I thought if he had – even if he was dead – I would probably have heard about it, from the police, from the media, from somewhere. People don’t just suddenly vanish from off the face of the earth.”

“It happens more often than you might think,” said Jude.

“Well, that wasn’t my reading of the situation. I reckoned he’d probably gone back to Nuala. Back to the vicious spiral of drinking and emotional blackmail and…The alternative was that he’d gone abroad, just cut loose from everything and arranged a disappearing act. Either way, I wasn’t ever going to see him again.” The thought was so painful that again tears welled at her eyelids.

“Well, at least now you know that he’s alive,” said Carole. “If he was seen down here only last week.”

“Yes. But that’s not much comfort. Particularly if he was down here with another woman. I’d put money on the fact that that was Nuala.”

“Do you know what she looks like?”

“I’ve never met her, if that’s what you mean. But from what Mark said, I gather she was very tall. Taller than him, nearly six foot. Very slim, and with long black hair. And those blue eyes Irish girls have.”

Carole made a mental note to check out that description with Curt Holderness if she got the opportunity.

“But why would they come down here?” asked Jude. “Do you think they wanted to meet up with you, actually talk through the situation?”

“No, I wouldn’t have thought that was why they came. I bet Nuala made him come down here, just so that she could crow over me. ‘So here’s the nice little seaside idyll you set up with Philly, is it? Well, it was never going to last, was it, because you’re back with me now, Mark.’ I can just hear her saying it.” And indeed for Nuala’s imagined words Philly had taken on a hint of an Irish accent.

“That would be very cruel,” said Carole. “Would coming here and crowing about your unhappiness be in character for Mark as you knew him?”

“Not for Mark as I knew him, no. But when he’s with Nuala he’s not Mark as I knew him. She poisons his mind. She’s a vile malevolent bitch.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t met her?” Jude pointed out mildly.

“I don’t need to meet her. I know from the effect she had on Mark what kind of woman she is.”

As she tried to make sense of her boyfriend’s actions, the pain that Philly Rose had suffered for the past few weeks had clearly now been curdled with paranoia. And deep hatred of the Irishwoman she had never met.

“Just suppose,” said Carole very calmly and judiciously, “just suppose that Mark’s motive in coming down to Smalting was not just to crow over you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When he was seen by Curt Holderness, Mark and the woman were walking down from the promenade on to the beach.”

“Yes?”

“And when we talked before you said you reckoned he probably still had a key to Quiet Harbour.”

“Well, I’m not sure…”

“You said you hadn’t found it among his things.”

“No, but –”

Carole cut through the interruption. “You said when Mark left, he told you he ‘needed a bit of time to sort things out’?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“Do you remember the exact words he used?”

Philly Rose’s brow wrinkled as she tried to remember. “He promised that he would come back to me, but he said there were things he had to sort out before he did. He said the main thing he had to sort out was Nuala.”

“And a few days after Mark, who had a key to Quiet Harbour, was seen at night- time going down to Smalting Beach in the company of a woman, human remains were discovered under the beach hut.”

Philly Rose’s hands shot up to clasp her face, as she took in the full implication of Carole’s words.

? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?

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?”