Bones Under The Beach Hut (31 page)

    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.'

    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?'

    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.

    With
a slight shock, Carole realized that she was only a day away from the arrival
of Gaby and Lily. The mysteries of Mark Dennis and Robin Cutter had been
preoccupying her. One of them was solved. She wondered what the chances were of
the second being elucidated before she had to go into full-on grandmother mode.
The odds weren't promising. She tried to close her mind to the case and
concentrate on her imminent visitors. She wasn't successful.

    On
their way back to
Fowey,
Carole and Gulliver's route took them along the
line of the other beach huts, of which more had been opened up during their
walk. Outside
Cape of Good Hope
sat Dora Pinchbeck with a piled-high
cornet of pistachio ice cream and a
Daily Mail.
In her personal domain,
in front of her beach hut, she looked very much more in control of life than on
the previous occasions Carole had met her. It seemed that, when she wasn't
being diminished and patronized by Reginald Flowers, the woman did actually
have an identity of her own.

    She
greeted Carole warmly and glowed when congratulated on the success of the quiz night.
'Yes, it all seemed to go very well,' she agreed. 'In spite of the snafu over
the booking of the venue.'

    Carole
was surprised at Dora's use of the military slang expression 'snafu'. Easier to
imagine it coming from Reginald Flowers's lips. And she wondered whether Dora
was actually quoting her 'boss'.

    'Oh
well, everyone makes mistakes,' she said soothingly.

    'I
agree. Some of us just don't admit to them, though.' Carole's look asked for an
explanation, so Dora nodded towards
The Bridge.
'Lord High and Mighty
over there never admits to having made a mistake.'

    'Oh?'