Bones Under The Beach Hut

A lot of knee-jerk responses sprang to Carole's lips, but she restricted herself to a rather acid, 'Are you? Well,' she continued, 'I'll see if I can get a chance to talk to Reginald Flowers.'

Chapter Thirty-Two

The bronchitis must have cleared up. Carole exactly repeated her timescale of the previous morning: a seven-thirty walk with Gulliver on Smalting Beach. Sure enough, even at that hour, as she and the dog passed, Reginald Flowers was sitting in his bolt-upright chair at the doors of his museum of naval memorabilia.

There was no problem about selecting her opening conversational gambit. 'Very good do the other night. Jude and I really enjoyed the quiz.'

'I'm glad to hear it.'

'Thank you very much. It must have taken a lot of organization.'

'Oh, I'm used to it,' he said in heroic self-deprecation. 'Anyway, I must thank you too. Without your prompt action, Carole, we wouldn't have had a venue, would we?'

'I can always get round Ted Crisp,' she said with uncharacteristic winsomeness.

'He was the one with the beard behind the bar?'

'Yes.'

An expression of irritation crossed Reginald

Flowers's face. 'I always think if a man is going to have a beard, he should keep it in good order. At least he had a full beard, rather than one of those goatees or other forms of contemporary topiary.' Instinctively his hand stroked his George V number. 'But I can't imagine why anyone would want to go around looking like a cross between a Viking and a hippy. It certainly made that landlord look very surly. Positively forbidding. And he wasn't particularly forthcoming when he opened his mouth either. Downright rude, if you ask me.'

'That's just his manner. Ted Crisp really does have a heart of gold.'

'Well, I'll have to take your word for that. Anyway, many thanks for making the arrangement, Carole.'

'No problem at all.'

Reginald Flowers was silent for a moment, looking back inside The Bridge. Then he said, 'Look, I've got the kettle on. Was about to make a cup of tea. Would you care to join me?'

Carole was struck by the nervousness with which he made this offer, almost as though it were something much more momentous, like asking her out on a date. She was also aware again of his deep loneliness. The Thursday night in the Crown and Anchor she'd recognized it too. Reginald Flowers had been at the centre of everything, he'd known everyone there, but he still seemed separate, outside any community spirit there had been in the function room. The only person he'd connected with — and that had been at a level of guilt and reproach — had been Dora Pinchbeck.

'Yes, I'd love a cup of tea,' Carole replied. 'Do you mind if I tie the dog up to that hook?'

'Be my guest.' Reginald Flowers went into his shrine to fetch another chair for her, and then to busy himself with the tea making.

The early morning sun was pleasantly warm and had already burned off any residual mist from the night before. Carole looked out over the sea and found herself recalling the image that Lionel Oliver had told her about — of a young man disappointed in love walking straight out to his death. The scene before her suddenly seemed less idyllic.

She looked across to Gulliver, now amiably reconciled to having his walk truncated and being tied up. He snuffled at the shingle in the shadow of the beach hut, searching out delicious-smelling morsels of seaweed.

'Do you take milk and sugar?' came the call from inside the hut.

'Just milk, thank you.'

Before Reginald Flowers emerged with the cups, Carole forced herself into a moment of intense concentration. Amidst all the pleasantry with the President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, she mustn't forget her purpose in being in front of The Bridge that morning. She had an investigation to pursue.

When they were both seated with their cups of tea, she reverted to the quiz night. 'I was wondering about the range of questions you managed to come up with, Reginald.'

'Please call me "Reg".'

'Very well, Reg. But, as I say, I was impressed by the variety. Did you research all the questions yourself?'

'Some I did. Some I got from other reference sources.'

'I was totally stumped by a lot of them — certainly the sport and pop music ones. I mean, I've just about heard of Beyonce, but I certainly couldn't name a song by her.'

'Oh, nor me. But I thought, to be fair, I should have questions for a broad age range, for the younger people like . . .'He was hard put to it to come up with any names of younger members of the Smalting Beach Hut Association. 'Anyway, those kind of subjects I got off the internet. There are whole websites devoted to pub quizzes, you know.'

'Really?' Carole was surprised to hear that Reginald Flowers was an internet user. His age, his manner, his old-fashioned way of dictating letters to Dora — and indeed the amateur printing of The Hut Parade — had marked him down in her book as someone whose acquaintance with computers was minimal.

What she was thinking must have coloured her response, because Reginald said, 'I use the internet quite a lot, you know.' He gestured back into The Bridge. 'For my collection. You'd be surprised how much naval stuff — some of it very good naval stuff — comes up on eBay. Particularly badges, buckles, that kind of thing.'

Looking at the display behind her, Carole observed that he didn't have much room for new additions.

'Oh, this isn't all I have. Only a selection. I change around what I put on show here. I've got about ten times this amount at home.'

This was the first time he'd mentioned a home, so Carole asked him where it was.

'Littlehampton. Rented flat in Littlehampton,' he grunted. It was clearly not something that he wanted to discuss further. 'And to save you asking, I live on my own.'

There was a waspishness in his reply, so Carole moved on to less controversial ground. 'How long ago did you start the collection?'

'Really started when I was a boy. As I may have mentioned, a good number of my family were in the navy.'

'Yes. Given your interest, it's surprising that you didn't follow in their footsteps.'

'Perhaps.' He looked uncomfortable at the direction the conversation was taking. 'The fact is, I did try to join up. My parents wanted me to train at Dartmouth, but I ... I didn't get in.'

Alert to the awkwardness in his hesitation, Carole prompted him with an, 'Oh?'

'I was rejected on medical grounds.'

'Ah.' Carole tried to work out the timescale. If, as she assumed, Reginald Flowers was now in his seventies, then it would have been over fifty years ago when he'd applied for Dartmouth. And back then it was quite possible that rejection 'on medical grounds' might well have covered sexual deviancy.

But she was getting ahead of herself. She needed more information before she could form any conclusions about Reginald Flowers's guilt or innocence. 'So you went into teaching, I gather?'

'Yes. It was always second best for me, but I derived some satisfaction from the profession. I was teaching English History, which of course, because we are an island nation, involved a lot of research about the navy. Yes . . .' He smiled without much humour, '. . . the only thing wrong with teaching I found was the wretched pupils.'

'Did you not get on with them?'

'Some I got on with. The ones who had some sense of motivation, the ones who actually saw the point of learning. They were few and far between, though. I'm afraid to say they were not encouraged by the ethos of the place. The school I taught at put much higher value on prowess in the sports field than it did on academic achievement.'

'Ah. And you didn't teach sport as well?'

'Good heavens, no,' he replied peevishly. 'There were plenty of bone-headed former Blues on the staff to do that.'