Bones Under The Beach Hut

Carole took a deep breath. She'd been given the cue, and now she had to pick it up, whatever the consequences. 'The place you taught was called Edgington Manor School, wasn't it?'

'Yes.' He looked at her sharply. 'Did you know that before Thursday night?'

'No.'

'I rather hoped no one had noticed the mention of the school in all the shouting and excitement of the quiz.'

'Well, I heard what Curt Holderness said. I also saw the way you reacted to it.'

'Yes. It was a shock. I thought I'd got away from all that. I didn't realize that anyone down here knew of my connection with . . . that place.'

'The school?' He nodded. 'Edgington Manor School. I gather you had to leave there before you'd got to retirement age.'

'I did.' The expression he turned on her was one of disappointed fury. 'So are you one of them too, Carole?'

'One of what?'

'One of the people who's out to blackmail me?'

'No, I'm certainly not!' There was a silence before she continued, 'You asked whether I was one of them too. Does that suggest that Curt Holderness and Kelvin Southwest have already been in touch with you?'

'Curt Holderness has been. I haven't heard anything from that little pervert Southwest.'

'And Curt's trying to blackmail you?' She asked only for confirmation of what she had heard the other night.

'Yes. He was first in touch about a month ago. He said he'd found out something about the circumstances under which I had left Edgington Manor School and would I mind if he made it public? Well, of course I minded, so I agreed to pay him some money. I thought he was talking about just a one-off payment, but then a couple of weeks later he asked for more.'

The classic experience of the blackmail victim, thought Carole.

'I said I couldn't afford it — well, I can't, I'm only on a pension. But he said I could afford it if I sold some of my collection.' The horror of the idea spread across his face. 'Well, of course I couldn't do that, could I? So I still haven't paid him. But Thursday night was like a warning to me. Curt Holderness knew nobody at the quiz night would pick up the reference in what he shouted out — nobody except me, of course. He was saying: look, I'm quite capable of talking about this business in public and, if you don't pay up, I'll do it more vocally. Well, I can't risk that, can I? I'll have to somehow find the money and pay him. This time. But I'm afraid this won't be the last time. There's no reason why his demands should ever stop, is there?' he concluded miserably.

'Do you think Curt might go to the police with what he knows?'

'Why should he do that? It's not a police matter. I paid my dues for my crime. I served my sentence. Why on earth should it have anything to do with the police?'

'I meant in the light of . . .' Carole nodded discreetly towards Quiet Harbour'. . . recent discoveries.'

Reginald Flowers stared at her in bewilderment. 'What's that got to do with anything?'

'Well, the boy, Robin Cutter, was supposed to be the victim of a paedophile and I—'

'Are you suggesting that I ever had anything to do with paedophilia?' He sounded appalled at the idea.

'Well, you did leave Edgington Manor School under a cloud.'

'Yes, but that wasn't because I was fiddling with the children. For God's sake, Carole! If you're looking for a pervert on Smalting Beach, you'd do much better concentrating on Kelvin Southwest. Ask him about those afternoons when he goes into one of the empty beach huts with his binoculars and spies on the nippers changing. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that that's only the beginning of what he gets up to. But don't you dare accuse me of anything like that!'

'Then, if it wasn't for that reason, why did you leave the school?' asked Carole evenly.

He sighed, shook his head and looked shamefaced. 'I stole something.'

'Stole something? What?'

'Edgington Manor School was founded quite a long time ago. Late eighteenth century. And one of its first old boys was an admiral in Nelson's navy. Admiral Henryson. Not very well known, but like Nelson he was killed at Trafalgar. And his widow presented his dress uniform to the school. It stood in a glass case in the Lower Hall. I passed it half a dozen times a day, and each time I passed it I was more determined that it should be mine, that I should add it to my collection. At first the idea was just an idle fancy, but it became an obsession.

'So I worked out how I'd steal it. During the school holidays. Make it look as though vandals had broken into the school. I'd got it all worked out, all justified in my own mind. Edgington Manor School had never done me any favours, the place owed me something. I was two years off retirement and I was determined that there was one final favour the place was going to do me.

'Plan all went fine. I had keys to certain doors in the school, I knew how to switch off the burglar alarm. I took Admiral Henryson's uniform. Nobody in the school ever looked at it, none of those sports-obsessed spotty boys gave a damn about the thing. It was right that it should belong to someone who appreciated its full value. I felt no guilt. I still don't feel any guilt.'

'But you didn't get away with it, did you, Reg?'

He shook his head wearily. 'No. I'd been seen breaking into the school by some officious young housemaster. Out in the grounds pushing his bloody infant in a buggy or whatever they call those things. By the time I got out of the building, the police were waiting for me.'

'And you were charged with theft?'

'Yes. Some schools would have hushed it up. They wouldn't have wanted the adverse publicity. But that wasn't the way my sanctimonious bloody headmaster thought. He said Edgington Manor School was trying to make its pupils into honest citizens and they should therefore be made aware of the penalties for dishonesty. We'd always hated each other, and suddenly he saw the perfect opportunity to make an example of me. So yes, I went through the courts, which let me tell you was pretty bloody humiliating. I subsequently spent six months at Her Majesty's pleasure . . . which wasn't much fun either. However many times I told them the truth of what I was in for, the other prisoners assumed . . . schoolteacher, kicked out at my age, must have been for . . .' He shuddered. 'Anyway, somehow I survived that, but obviously when I was released, my career was finished.

'So after a time I moved down here, where I thought, where I hoped, that no one would ever know about that episode in my past. I still don't know how Curt Holderness did find out about it.'

'Through a policeman he'd met who'd worked up near Edgington Manor School.'

'Ah. Right.' Reginald Flowers looked very weary. His long confession had taken its toll.

'One thing I can't quite understand,' Carole began, 'is why it matters so much to you. I mean, you did wrong, but most people would not think that you did anything very seriously wrong. Given all the stuff you've got here in the beach hut, you could almost laugh it off, as an example of the single-mindedness of the obsessive collector. I mean, if Curt Holderness did go public about what you did, who do you think would actually be that worried? You're only successful as a blackmailer if your victim has got a lot to lose. And I don't really see that you have a lot to lose.'

'What!' demanded Reginald Flowers in amazement. 'How can you say that? It'd be a total disaster. Are you suggesting that, if it was known I had a criminal record, I would be allowed to remain as President of the Smalting Beach Hut Association?'

Chapter Thirty-Three

Smalting Beach was considerably busier when Carole left The Bridge and continued Gulliver's interrupted walk. They covered half a mile in the Fethering direction, and though the dog would much rather not have been on a lead, he still patently enjoyed himself.