Beach Hut Surprise: Escape to Little Piddling this summer — six feel-good beach reads to make you smile, or even laugh out loud

by Libertà Books

  "What? Oh, sorry. Is that a wheat beer? I'll have a pint and some nuts please. The mixed ones." She waited until Jac had drawn the pint and yanked the packet of nuts from the card hanging behind the bar and put them both in front of her, then held out a ten pound note. "Thanks. Is that Bertram Bascombe?"

  "It is."

  "I thought it had to be, but I couldn't be certain because of the side-whiskers. They're quite something, aren't they?"

  "They're magnificent, although you could keep squirrels in them." Jac felt a shiver run down her spine. "You know Bertram?"

  "Well, not personally." The girl gave a hoot of laughter that made Jac grin back. If only she knew…

  "But look." She pushed her phone across the bar.

  The sepia photograph was of a clean-shaven man in his late forties, quite clearly Bertram, despite the absence of whiskers. "That's my—hang on, I have to do this on my fingers—my great, great, great, great grandfather Basil Bonfield."

  "Then he didn't drown. I am so relieved." Jac pressed the bell for Andy and pulled herself a pint. "Let's go and get more comfortable outside."

  They found a table behind a tub of flowers and sat down. "Tell me what you know about him," Jac urged. "It has been driving us distracted, but we couldn't find any more clues to follow up."

  "Us?"

  "Yes. Hang on, I'll just call Henry. No, there he is." She waved as Henry came out of the wine bar and straightened the stand with the menus on it. He waved back, then sauntered over when she made sweeping come here gestures.

  "This is Henry Dumaine who owns the wine bar opposite. He knows about Bertram's disappearance. Henry, this is—sorry, I don't your name."

  "Tamsin Pascoe. I'm from St Mary's on the Isles of Scilly. Bertram, or Basil, rather, is my four-times great grandfather."

  "Wait, I need a drink." Henry vanished inside the Tap and came out two minutes later with a pint in his hand. "Right, go on."

  "My grandmother died a month ago. It was rotten, she was only sixty-two but… Anyway, Grandpops went last year so I had to help Mum clear out the cottage. It's the family one next to our pub." She rummaged in her bag, found a tissue, blew her nose while Jac and Henry pretended great interest in the clarity of their beer.

  "Sorry. The thing is, the family's always been hoarders and the place was jammed with stuff. We're keeping it on, though, the cottage I mean. I'm going to live there with my fiancé. I'm rambling, you don't need to hear all this." She took a deep breath, a gulp of her beer. "The point is, we found a locked tin box in the attic. It was thick with dust, didn't look as though it had been opened in years. We had to break the lock in the end. But the great thing is, it solved the mystery of where Basil Bonfield had come from."

  "I thought we were taking about Bascombe," Henry said.

  "Well, that's it. You see, in St Mary's, we all knew the story about how one of the fishing boats came in with this man they'd picked up off the coast, miles from here. He was clinging to some driftwood and they thought he was dead at first, but they hauled him in anyway and it turned out he was alive. Stark naked, no papers, said he'd forgotten where he was from or his name. So they brought him back to St Mary's and took him to the inn my ancestors ran.

  "To cut a long story short, he recovered but said he had no idea of who he was, what he was. He decided to call himself Basil Bonfield, fell in love with the innkeeper's daughter, who was the man's only child, and married her. Eventually they took over the pub and that, as far as we knew, was that."

  "So what was in the box?" Jac was almost on the edge of her seat.

  "A letter, To Whom It May Concern, saying that he had never actually lost his memory. He was really a brewer called Bertram Bascombe and he came from Little Piddling and that he'd been swept out to sea while distracted because of a hopeless love and he couldn't ever go back because it was doomed and he was in fear of his life from the woman's husband. But he wanted the truth known after his death. The trouble was, he locked the box and tucked it away so safely that no one found it, or if they did, they didn't realise it was important. It had been in the loft ever since."

  "Bloody hell," Jac said. "It must have happened right after I—I mean, he must have gone down for his usual swim, which explains why he was naked—men didn't always wear bathing suits in those days and Bertram certainly didn't, we have—er—proof of that."

  "Have I got any relatives here, do you know?" Tamsin asked.

  "Sorry, no. He wasn't married and when he disappeared his nearest relative was in Australia. They declared Bertram dead after seven years and the brewery was sold. Oh hell." She glanced at Henry, aghast. "Does that mean you own the brewery, Tamsin? If he wasn't dead—"

  "Goodness, no," Tamsin protested. "No, no, I didn't come here on a property grab, honestly. If Bertram stayed missing voluntarily, then in my book he made the decision to give up everything in his old life. The brewery was inherited and then sold and bought in good faith. If he had wanted to, he could have contacted his solicitor and given him instructions, without revealing where he was.

  "No, I just came because we were curious and I was hoping for some long-lost cousins. And to find out more about the mystery woman in his life."

  "You mean the one with the potentially homicidal husband?" Henry said. "I feel another rummage through the newspaper archives coming on."

  "How would that help?" Jac quibbled. "With Bertram gone, he'd have just gone back to brooding jealously."

  "He might have murdered his wife or divorced her," Tamsin suggested. "Or the poor woman might have committed suicide."

  "Divorce was pretty difficult and seriously scandalous," Henry said. "But mysterious deaths after Bertram vanished might be worth looking for."

  "Parish registers," Tamsin said. "I can check those online. The nonconformist chapels as well, I've got a sub to one of the family history sites. Oh, and I can check coroners' reports, I think." She dug in her bag and came up with a tablet. "I'll have a sandwich or something for lunch and do it now."

  "I spent all morning in the kitchens tasting for the new menu," Henry said. "I'm stuffed, so I'll go and try the newspaper office. Jac?"

  "Er—no, sorry. I've just thought of something I absolutely must do and I'm starving, so I'll grab a sandwich, get it done and then I'll ring you to see how you're getting on. OK?"

  "OK." Henry stood up, lean and distractingly sexy in the sunshine.

  The thought of forgetting the sandwich, ignoring the nagging little idea and seeing what wickedness they could get up to in the newspaper vaults had its attractions. Jac told herself to be strong: they still had one of Henry's bedrooms, two of his shower rooms and all of her apartment to try out first.

  "I'll tell Andy at the bar that whatever you want is on the house," she told Tamsin. "Where are you staying?"

  "Thanks. I'm at the Plumtree Guest House just behind the Jubilee Gardens. I'm going up to London tomorrow to see an aunt."

  "Come to dinner tonight and we'll pool our findings," Jac said. "My door's round the back of that red brick house there. Just go in and climb right to the top. Sevenish?"

  She went through to the bar, told Andy about Tamsin, grabbed two cheese and pickle sandwiches and a bag of crisps and went over to Brewery House. It had an attic, a dusty, dark space that she'd never explored other than to sweep the bit nearest to the hatch to store her empty suitcases. If Bertram had hidden one important document in a box in an attic, he might have hidden others.

  Chapter Four

  The company that had sold the brewery after it had run gently into the ground had owned the house too and had employed a builder to do the conversion. They'd made a good job of it, largely because they hadn't wanted to do any more than they had to. The roof had been mended, the wiring replaced, two separate heating, water and electricity supplies run in and the fire doors installed. A lick of paint and a rather basic kitchen and bathroom in the top apartment and that was it.

  Henry had done a great deal more to the rest of the house, but all Jac's time
and money had gone into the brewery and, even though things were now a fraction easier, clearing out the attic had been low on her list of priorities for the apartment.

  Now she unhooked the hatch with the pole, hooked down the loft ladder and climbed up. The light switch just by the hatch worked, although two feeble bulbs merely produced an effect that Hammer Horror films would have appreciated. Her torch, however, was large, powerful and swept the space like a lighthouse beam, revealing piles of boxes, a large crate and a scattering of furniture.

  Jac dragged the boxes to the edge of the hatch for easier unloading, opened the crate to find what looked like an entire dinner service for twenty four diners, prodded the six chairs (two broken legs, one sagging seat, one splintered back between them), admired the washstand (which she thought she'd ask Adam and Henry to give her a hand getting down again) and decided the side table was fit only for firewood.

  But Bertram had stashed the Isles of Scilly box away somewhere inconspicuous, not put it in a box of other stuff. She began to prowl around the edges of the space where the roof sloped down. Henry would not appreciate the spiders, she thought vaguely, then sat and contemplated Henry for a bit, in a way that made her regret asking Tamsin for dinner.

  The torch rolled off her lap and she scrambled after it, then froze as the beam of light glinted off the corner of a tin box.

  By the time she'd got it out and downstairs and the hatch closed, she was filthy and the exasperating thing was locked. "Behave like an adult," Jac muttered. That involved wiping the box clean then going and showering, changing, making a cup of tea and sitting down to approach unlocking it in a calm and logical frame of mind.

  She managed the first part of the programme, then dumped her tool box on the kitchen table with the intention of applying simple brute force. But in daylight the box looked very familiar, with its black japanned finish and narrow red and gold lines. There was a cash box in the brewery just like that. Andy had found it and used it for odds and ends. And it had a key. The boxes were cheap and mass produced, she was sure, which might mean…

  Jac put down the hammer and chisel and ran downstairs. Yes, Andy's odds and sods box was exactly the same and, when she got the key upstairs and applied some lubricant to the keyhole, the lock clicked open.

  And inside was a mass of paper. Letters.

  Jac lifted out the topmost one and unfolded it. Good quality paper crackled and a fine shower of red sealing wax fell out as she spread it open.

  Dearest,

  He is suspicious, I know he is. He says nothing, only grows more cold and distant by the hour. And I fear what he will do if he discovers that it is you who has my heart. Oh, Bertram, do take care. He would not harm you physically directly, I am certain of that, it is not his way—but he could afford to hire ruffians and I could not bear it if you were hurt. Or worse.

  We cannot go on, Dearest. It breaks my heart, but this must end.

  It was signed with a squiggle: possibly an H or an M or an N, Jac wasn't sure. She held it up to the light, then looked around for the torch to try shining that through, and realised she had left it in the attic.

  Cursing mildly under her breath she unhooked the hatch and brought down the ladder again and then began to climb. Damn, she had left the torch switched on, it was still glowing in the corner where she had found the box.

  And then, just as she was about to climb off the ladder onto the attic floor, she put her hand on something metallic and round. Her torch.

  In the far corner a man stood up, an oil lamp in his hand. "Who are you? Get away from me! Dastard! You won't get away with this, I am armed!"

  Jac shot back down the ladder, shoved it back, pushed up the hatch and then sat on the floor and had a quiet meltdown for a minute. There was silence from the attic above, no voice, no footsteps, so she went on hands and knees into the kitchen where her bag hung on the back of the chair, pulled out her phone and called Henry.

  "I'm just leaving," he said and she heard the sounds of traffic. "Didn't take long, couldn't find anything that looked relevant, although there was something interesting. But—"

  "Can you come here? My flat, now? Quickly. There's someone in the attic."

  "Get out and go to the Tap," he said urgently. "I'm coming."

  Jac hauled herself to her feet, wished she hadn't eaten those sandwiches, and then flopped into the chair. Henry was right, she should get out, but she realised she knew who that was up there: Bertram. Bertram hiding his letters. Bertram thinking she was someone sent to hurt him. All he could have seen was a tallish figure in trousers—she had pulled back her hair—so he must have thought she was a man.

  She heard feet pounding up the stairs and on an impulse she couldn't explain, grabbed the box and shoved it into the cupboard under the sink as the front door began to reverberate.

  "Jac!"

  "Coming."

  She opened the door and Henry almost fell in. He was panting and clutching one of the big spanners Andy used on the brewery pipes. "You weren't in the Tap! I told you to go to the Tap. Where is he?"

  "Gone, I think. It was Bertram, but I didn't realise until I rang you and got my breath back. He must have thought I was a man, with me wearing trousers and my hair looking short. I came up through the hatch and he only had an oil lamp. I frightened him; he assumed I was coming to attack him."

  "Why the devil should he think that? Wait here, I'll go up and check. How do you open this thing?"

  Jac found she was quite happy to be the little woman and hide behind Henry's broad shoulders. She'd been up and down that ladder quite enough for one day, thank you. She handed him the pole with the hook on the end and stood back while he advanced cautiously upwards.

  "Nobody here. There's a torch by the hatch. Yours?"

  "Yes. Is there an oil lamp? You'll need to switch on the torch."

  Henry's legs and feet disappeared, light bounced down. "Yes."

  Jac moved to the foot of the ladder and raised her voice. "There wasn't one when I first went up. I looked around, moved some boxes closer to the hatch then came down. I had a shower and got changed, realised I'd forgotten the torch, went back up and there was Bertram."

  "I'll bring it— Shit!"

  "What?" Jac shot up the ladder and peered over the edge.

  "It's warm." Henry stood there with the lamp in one hand, the other cupped around the glass chimney. "He really was here."

  He came back down the ladder with the torch, handing the oil lamp to Jac first. They closed the hatch again, then retreated to the table with a bottle of wine.

  "This must have been before you saw him in the beach hut," Henry said. "We know he didn't come back from that swim. What triggered this appearance, do you think? The first time it must have been you having the ledger."

  And this time I've taken his box of love letters. "You are convinced I did see him then? Both times?"

  "Yeah." Henry poured himself another glass of wine. "That lamp being warm… But why the attic?"

  "Perhaps he was hiding the love letters from the lady with the threatening husband," Jac suggested, still oddly reluctant to say that she had found them. "He might not want to risk one of the servants finding them if he kept them in the house."

  "I'll go up again and have a look."

  "Pass down the boxes I'd moved to the hatch while you are up there, will you?" Jac asked. "Goodness knows what's in those. The crate has a dinner service."

  Henry climbed up and, as soon as she heard him moving about, Jac rescued the box of letters and flipped through, scanning as fast as she could. They seemed to cover three months of rapidly escalating attraction and then, at the beginning of April, it seemed passion had overpowered them. The note had been written on a torn scrap of notepaper.

  I never knew. I never dreamed… Oh, my darling, how can I bear even to be with D after this? How can I act so he suspects nothing?

  And again, that odd initial of a signature. Frustrated, one ear on the sounds of Henry in the attic, Jac refolded the no
te and realised this one had an embossed crest at the top, mostly torn away, leaving only what looked like a pair of clawed feet and a flame on the scrap of paper.

  A phoenix, like Henry's signet ring. Bertram had been having an affair with a Dumaine? And the obvious candidate was his three times great grandmother, the one who had a vague reputation for being fast, the one who had spent months away in Switzerland.

  "Oh hell," she said. How would Henry take that news? An amusing bit of family gossip about an ancestor was one thing, but would adultery upset him or intrigue him?

  "Jac? These boxes are too heavy to pass down. Shall I unpack them up here?"

  "Yes, hang on, I'll pass you some bags for the stuff." She hid the tin box more securely in her wardrobe, then came back to the foot of the ladder. "Did you find anything?"

  "No, but the dust is disturbed in that corner. You are right: when Bertram appears, he's solid, not a ghost."

  The boxes proved to hold a man's clothing. Judging by the style, Jac guessed it must have been Bertram's, packed away by his housekeeper and never looked at again.

  "A costume museum might be interested," she said. "They aren't in bad condition." Then, "Hell, look at the time. I need to do some shopping if I'm going to cook dinner tonight."

  "Shall I take these downstairs?" Henry gestured at the clothing strewn around. "I can hang them all up in one of the spare rooms, let them air, check the pockets, that sort of thing."

  "Great. I'll lock the door at the bottom, don't worry about this one," she called back as she went out to the stairs.

  "Everything all right?" Andy asked as she passed through the bar. He had just locked the doors and cashed up for the afternoon, ready to straighten things ready for the evening opening, when their recently-employed barmaid Angie would come in to help him. "Saw Henry rushing through earlier. He looked a bit stressed."

  "False alarm. Good business?"

  "Excellent." Andy shuffled his feet and Jac wondered if he was about to ask for a pay rise. She'd been working it out and was pretty sure she could manage it. He certainly deserved it.