The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

Smalting Beach, she knew he wouldn’t stray too far away from her.

The interior of Quiet Harbour was very neat and not a little poignant. Everything in it seemed to be designed for two: a pair of folded director’s chairs, a small camping table. From pegs on the wall hung two snorkels, flippers, large for him, small for her, and a set of two plastic rackets with a foam ball. On a shelf at the back stood a Camping Gaz double burner and a row of sealed plastic containers, which turned out to contain cutlery and basics such as tea bags and sachets of instant coffee. There were two large and two small bright red plastic plates and a pair of mugs with humorous inscriptions: ‘MR STUD’ and ‘SEXY LADY’. Everything in the hut was a celebration of the relationship between Philly Rose and Mark Dennis; the relationship he had walked out of.

The floor was covered by an offcut of newish-looking, clean green carpet, on which Carole’s flip-flops left sandy marks when she entered the hut. She opened up one of the chairs and set it just inside the doorway. In time she would venture out on to the beach, but she wanted to make an unobtrusive start. And the position where she’d put her chair would get plenty of sun. It was a beautiful June day, one of those which should have presaged a perfect summer. But Carole Seddon had lived in England too long to be over-optimistic about that hope being realized.

Not knowing that the burner would be there, she had brought a thermos of hot black coffee with her and she poured herself a cup. Out of her tote bag she drew her copy of The Times and turned to the back of the main section for the crossword. She felt the familiar tug of annoyance at the positioning of the puzzle. In the old days, before The Times went tabloid, the crossword was always on the back page with the clues beside it, so that the paper could be folded to reveal both elements at the same time. Whereas now, it was on the penultimate page with the grid and the clues on separate halves so that, unless you had the paper flat on a table you had to keep turning the folded sheets. Why was it, wondered Carole in exasperation, that people keep wanting to change things that were already working perfectly well?

Even as she had the thought, she realized how crusty she would have sounded if she’d said the words out loud. But it didn’t worry her too much. Carole Seddon was getting to the stage in life when she reckoned a little crustiness was entirely justified. And of all the things in the world to which a crusty response was justified, meddling with The Times crossword stood head and shoulders above the rest.

“Tristram, do stand up straight. Just because you’re in your bathers, there’s no need to be slovenly.”

From her perch inside Quiet Harbour, Carole could not see the owner of the over- elocuted female voice that issued this command from the adjacent beach hut – called Seagull’s Nest – but its addressee was in clear vision. A boy of about five, wearing bright red shorts and a martyred expression, straightened his shoulders. “Yes, Granny,” he said balefully.

“And Hermione’s right down by the sea! You really should keep an eye on her, Nell.”

“Yes, Deborah, all right.” A harassed-looking, chubby young woman in a one-piece swimsuit appeared in Carole’s eyeline, hurrying down to the edge of the wavelets where a blonde-haired toddler in a swimming nappy sat doing no harm to herself or anyone else. The child was absorbed in patting at the sand with a plastic spade and seemed uninterested in her mother’s appearance by her side. Soon her brother, the one saddled for life with the name of Tristram, joined them and the three got into a routine of splashing games. Carole began to feel almost excited at the prospect of Lily doing the same, in less than a fortnight’s time.

The voice of the unseen female from the next beach hut started up again. “You know, Gavin, Nell really has let herself go since she had Hermione. She hasn’t made any attempt to get her figure back, has she?”

“Well, she’s kept pretty busy,” an upper-class male voice protested, “what with the two little ones and –”

“Mothers have always been busy,” the woman steamrollered on, “but that doesn’t mean that they should lower their standards. I was busy when I had you and Owen to look after, but I still made sure that when your father got home from work, you were both in bed and I was made up and looking my best for him.”

“Yes, but the fact is, Mummy, you didn’t have a job. Nell works full time and still –”

“Your father would have been appalled by the idea of any wife of his having a job. He would have regarded it as a criticism of his abilities to look after his own family.”

“Maybe, but times have changed, Mummy, and –”

“At least your father didn’t live to see you married to Nell. He always had very high hopes for you, Gavin. I wouldn’t have liked to see him disappointed.”

“But, Mummy –”

“Oh, look, Tristram and Hermione are throwing sand at each other now. And Nell’s doing nothing to stop them. In fact, she’s positively encouraging them.”

“They’re just kids and –”

“I’d better go and sort this out,” the voice said ponderously, and Carole watched as its owner came into view and processed down the beach. The woman called Deborah was probably seventy, but she’d kept her figure well. She wore a predominantly white bathing costume with a design of red flowers on it, and her tanned skin had the texture of shrivelled leather. Over well-cut white hair she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a thin red and white scarf tied around it. Carole recognized the type. There were plenty of them on the South Coast. Well-heeled widows, pampered, soigne and utterly poisonous.

Unwilling to witness Deborah’s latest attack on her daughter-in-law, Carole returned her attention to her crossword. And as she did so, she had the thought: that is an object lesson in how not to be a grandmother. Please, please, God, may I never behave even vaguely like that towards Lily.

? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?

Three

Carole was filling in the crossword clues almost as fast as she could write them down, when suddenly her rollerball ran out of ink. She tried pressing harder but the point only gouged holes into the flimsy paper. Oh no. She knew from experience that, however well the solving was going, she couldn’t do it without seeing the letters.

She riffled hopefully through the contents of her tote bag for something to write with, but without success. She sat in frustration, drumming her fingers on the arm of her director’s chair. Putting the crossword to one side and completing it when she got back to High Tor was not an option. When she was on a roll like this, she just had to finish the thing as soon as possible. She had to find a pen from somewhere.

A lot of people might have asked to borrow one from someone in a nearby beach hut. But not Carole Seddon. She always tried to avoid asking questions that offered the possibility of refusal. No, her first thought was to walk up the beach to find Smalting’s newsagent and buy a ballpoint.

But before she put that plan into action, it occurred to her that Philly Rose and Mark Dennis might well have used a pen for something while they were in Quiet Harbour. It would be worth checking out the beach hut before taking the long traipse up the beach to the village. Perhaps on the cutlery shelf, in or near one of those neat plastic containers.

When she reached the back of the hut, she felt the solid surface give under her. She stepped back quickly and then gingerly probed at the carpet with her toe. Yes, there was definitely something that felt like a hole in the wooden floor.

She peeled back the corner of the carpet and soon enough saw what had nearly made her trip. There was a hole in the corner, spreading across two of the planks that made up the hut’s floor. Its edges were black and charred.

Someone appeared to have lit a fire under Quiet Harbour.

? Bones Under The Beach Hut ?

Four

Carole inspected the outside of the hut to see if there were any clues as to what had happened. The structure, presumably prefabricated elsewhere and assembled on Smalting Beach, was set on four