The Fethering Mysteries 12; Bones Under The Beach Hut

“What’s the name of that boring one?” asked Jude.

“Pete Sampras?”

“No, the other boring one. Czech, never won Wimbledon.”

“Ivan something…”

“Lendl!”

“Yes, that’s right. Ivan Lendl!”

“Shall I write it down, Carole?” asked Jude.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s right.”

Whether the gruesome discovery of Robin Cutter’s remains had anything to do with it or not, there was a very good turn-out for the SBHA quiz night in the function room of the Crown and Anchor in Fethering. Reginald Flowers was, needless to say, the quizmaster, smart in a blazer and tie, which looked vaguely naval (but probably wasn’t). Needless to say, he had his own neat little portable amplifier and a microphone to talk into.

Beside him at his table sat Dora Pinchbeck, with a pile of forms to fill in and tick off. Her crushed expression suggested that she hadn’t been allowed to forget her lapse over the booking of St Mary’s Church Hall.

Many of the Smalting Beach regulars were there, but there were also quite a lot of faces Carole didn’t recognize. Twenty-two people including Reginald, dividing up into four table teams of four and one of five. Carole and Jude were sitting with a married couple; enthusiastic hutters they hadn’t met before. The husband plumed himself on being Captain of the Smalting Golf Club, and it was a mercy when the start of the quiz stopped him talking about the fact. His wife spoke little, only nodding in admiration at his every pronouncement.

Deborah Wrigley was there, somewhat to Carole’s surprise. She would have thought a quiz night was too common an entertainment for the self-styled grande dame of the Shorelands Estate. But maybe curiosity about the Robin Cutter case had persuaded Deborah to slum a little. She had her son Gavin and his unfortunate wife Nell with her, so at least she was not without people to patronize. Carole reckoned the young couple were probably back on the South Coast to rescue Tristram and Hermione from their grandmother’s rigid tutelage. ‘Quality time’ with Deborah Wrigley somehow seemed unlikely also to be fun time.

Carole hadn’t expected to see Katie Brunswick in the function room either. Again she wouldn’t have thought quizzes were the obsessive rewriter’s kind of thing either. But there she was, sitting rather incongruously at a table with Kelvin Southwest, Curt Holderness and an unfamiliar third man who made up the team.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Carole whispered to the girl as she passed.

“Very important to get local colour,” Katie whispered back. “I was told that at a writing course I went to once in the Dordogne.”

Earlier in the evening Carole had been rather surprised when she and Jude had met Kelvin Southwest in the Crown and Anchor’s main bar. Gone was all his smarm, all his creepy compliments about ‘lovely ladies’. He had almost cut the pair of them dead, immediately turning away to seek out the company of Curt Holderness and some other men Carole hadn’t recognized. At the time she and Jude had exchanged looks of the ‘What’s got into him?’ variety.

The members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association conspicuous by their absence at the quiz night were Lionel and Joyce Oliver. Given the news they had recently received, there was no surprise about that, but Carole and Jude couldn’t help feeling a slight disappointment. Persuading herself that it was not a breach of client confidentiality, Jude had passed on to her neighbour what she had heard from Miranda Browning, and they were both aware that, if they were to advance in their investigation, they would probably have to talk to the Olivers at some point. It was not, however, destined to be that evening.

Another absentee was Philly Rose. But then that was hardly a surprise. Since she’d passed Quiet Harbour over to Carole, she was no longer really a member of the hutters’ community.

“Have you all put down your answers to the question?” asked Reginald Flowers.

“Well, we’ve put down an answer,” said Kelvin Southwest, who, after his earlier frostiness, now seemed determined to be the life and soul of the party. “Whether or not it’s the right answer is another matter.” And he and Curt Holderness guffawed. Even if she hadn’t known what she did about the two men, Carole might still have felt there was something slightly sinister in their complicity.

“Have you ticked that one off, Dora?” Reginald Flowers spoke to ‘his’ secretary as one might to a small child with learning difficulties.

“I have,” she replied humbly.

“Very well, next question…” The quizmaster cleared his throat into the microphone and coughed. “I’m sorry. I think my bronchitis is coming on.” And his voice certainly did have a dry, husky quality. “Right, this is the last question before we have a twenty-minute break when you can go and refill your glasses.”

Good, thought Carole, mindful of Ted Crisp’s demand that the participants in the quiz night should ‘drink lots of booze’.

Reginald Flowers again cleared his clogged throat and asked, “Of which creatures is the collective noun a ‘parliament’?”

“MPs!” shouted Kelvin Southwest raucously. “That wasn’t too tricky, Reg.”

“No, no, I said ‘creatures’, not human beings.”

“MPs are not human beings!” riposted Kelvin, proud of his rapier wit.

“The question is, ‘Of which creatures is the collective noun a ‘parliament’?’ And it’s a creature, not a human being,” Reginald Flowers repeated, clearly put out at what he saw as a challenge to his authority. He made himself feel better by having another go at Dora. “Make a note of that, please. That question may need rephrasing to deal with the nit-picking fraternity.” The note was duly made, and the quizmaster was siezed by a bout of coughing.

Jude looked blankly at her teammates. “Haven’t a clue.”

“I know it,” whispered Carole. And she mouthed ‘Owls’ at them.

“How on earth do you know that?” asked Jude.

“It came up in a Times crossword clue,” said Carole smugly.

¦

“So how are you two lovely ladies?” asked a leering Kelvin Southwest, more outgoing to them now as he queued at the bar with Curt Holderness. The Crown and Anchor would have been busy that night, even without the sudden influx of the quiz night crowd from the function room. Ted Crisp, Zosia and her girls were kept hard at it.

“We’re very well, thank you,” Carole replied primly. “Curt, this is my neighbour Jude.”

“Very nice to meet you,” said the security officer, with a lazy look of appreciation at Jude’s ample curves.

“Things have developed a bit since we last met,” Carole observed.

“Things?”

“I was referring to the discovery on Smalting Beach.”

“Yes.” A guarded look came into Curt Holderness’s eyes. “Nasty business.”

“Presumably the police have talked to you about it?” asked Carole, possibly pushing her luck.

“Why should they?” came the tart reply.

“Well, I was thinking, since you’re the security officer, they would automatically want to know if you’d seen any disturbance or anything unusual happening.”

“Yes,” he conceded, apparently relieved. Carole wondered what he had thought she was going to ask him about. “I did talk to them, yes. Not that I could be much help. I didn’t see anything odd happening.”

“You didn’t volunteer any information to them, did you, Curt? Because I seem to remember when we last met you were very against the idea of telling the police anything that –”

“Excuse me,” he said, having just attracted Zosia’s attention. But he wasn’t about to give the order. He turned to his friend. “Here, Kel, get the drinks in. Mine’s a pint of Stella.” True to the Curt Holderness principle of never buying a drink for himself. Kelvin Southwest looked slightly sour at being landed with the round, but he didn’t demur. Clearly the Crown and Anchor was not one of the local places that owed the Fether District Council official a favour and wouldn’t charge him.

Carole was intrigued by the relationship between the two men. They clearly knew each other well, yet there didn’t seem to be much affection between them. And Curt Holderness appeared to hold the balance of power. She wondered what favours they had done each other in the past.