The Body on the Beach

by Simon Brett

  ‘Of course, people develop expensive habits too,’ Ted ruminated, as he poured the drinks. ‘Rory Turn-bull was getting through the Scotch in here like there was no tomorrow.’

  ‘But on his income presumably he could afford an alcohol habit.’

  ‘He could afford an alcohol habit, yes, Carole.’

  She was quickly on to the slight pressure he’d put on the word. ‘What do you mean? Are you saying he had another expensive habit? Are you saying Rory Turnbull was into drugs?’

  But either Carole had mistaken his intonation or the landlord had decided he didn’t wish to amplify the hint. He just said, ‘Hardly. Don’t somehow see him in the role of crazed junkie, do you?’ He punctuated the end of such speculation by plonking the two replenished wine glasses on the counter. ‘There you are – compliments of the management. Treasure this moment. Record it on the mental video cameras of your minds. Because I can assure you, it doesn’t happen very often!’

  When the round of thank-yous had subsided, Jude looked thoughtful. ‘It’s odd, though, isn’t it? Two suicides in a week . . .’

  ‘Two?’ asked the Vice-Commodore.

  ‘That boy Aaron Spalding.’

  ‘Was that suicide?’

  Jude caught Carole’s eye and read caution in it. What they had been investigating was private, between the two of them, at least for the time being.

  ‘Well, that’s certainly been suggested,’ said Jude, making her tone more generalized. ‘I don’t know whether there’s been an inquest yet. OK, not two suicides – two unnatural deaths. All I’m saying is that for someone like me, who’s lived here less than a week, that seems rather a high number. Or is it the usual pattern in Fethering?’

  ‘By no means,’ Denis Woodville replied. ‘There’s probably a higher death rate here than in most other parts of the country, but that’s simply because of the average age of the residents. Two unnatural deaths like this is most unusual.’

  Jude’s brown eyes signalled to Carole not to worry, she was only floating an idea to see if it got any response, before she asked ingenuously, ‘Makes one wonder whether there could be any connection between the two.’

  The suggestion produced a snort of laughter from the Vice-Commodore. ‘A connection between a highly respected middle-aged man living on the Shorelands Estate and some teenager from Downside? I would think not.’

  ‘No,’ said Jude.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Carole.

  But they were both increasingly convinced that there was a connection.

  There was the clatter of the bar door opening and a voice said, ‘Evening, mine host.’

  Bill Chilcott had arrived for his nightly half.

  Denis Woodville stiffened and downed the remainder of the brandy Ted Crisp had bought him. ‘Sorry, I must be off,’ he said. ‘Suddenly a rather nasty smell around this place.’

  And, as if his next-door neighbour didn’t exist, the Vice-Commodore stalked out of the Crown and Anchor.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘It was in Rory Turnbull’s boat,’ said Carole, as they reached the gate of Woodside Cottage. The evening was mild. The frost would probably hold off that night. ‘The body was put in Brigadoon II. That’s the only thing we’ve got linking Aaron Spalding’s death and Rory Turnbull’s suicide.’

  ‘It’s not much,’ said Jude.

  Carole sighed despondently. ‘Maybe there is no connection. Maybe it’s just an unfortunate coincidence.’

  Jude shook her head. ‘No, there’s a link between them. They are connected.’

  So strong was the conviction in her voice that Carole didn’t argue. Instead, characteristically, she moved on to practicalities. ‘Well, I think we need to know more about Rory Turnbull. What he was like, what was happening in his life, what pushed him over the edge.’

  ‘And whether he did have anything to do with drugs.’

  ‘You noticed that too? When Ted hinted at something and then clammed up?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ll follow up on the drugs thing tomorrow.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Let’s say I have an idea of where to start.’

  ‘And I,’ Carole announced confidently, ‘will make it my business tomorrow to find out more about Rory Turnbull.’

  ‘How’ll you do that?’

  ‘Let’s say I have an idea of where to start,’ came the lofty reply.

  Carole Seddon could also play mysterious when she needed to.

  Carole wasn’t a dog person. When she left the Home Office, she’d taken on Gulliver for purely practical reasons. He would give a purpose to the many walks with which she had planned to fill the longeurs of her retirement. Being accompanied by a dog, she would avoid unwelcome questions and speculation. And anyway, people with dogs never look lonely.

  It was the same kind of sensible thinking that had made her join the Canine Trust. She didn’t feel particularly strongly about the civil liberties of dogs, but she recognized that volunteering for the charity might provide occasional useful work to fill a little more of her time.

  The demands were not onerous. She helped out with the Canine Trust local branch’s summer fête; twice a year she contributed to their bring-and-buy coffee mornings and she distributed raffle tickets.

  Carole discharged these duties punctiliously, as she did everything, but she found her involvement in the charity increasingly dull. In fact, when the latest batch of raffle tickets arrived in the post a few weeks before, she had contemplated ceasing to be a volunteer.

  But on the Saturday morning, clutching them in her hand as she walked down the High Street towards the Fethering Yacht Club, Carole positively blessed the raffle tickets. Nothing could have given her a better excuse to call on Winnie Norton.

  And the reason why in the past she had tried to avoid calling on Winnie Norton with raffle tickets – because the old lady insisted on inviting her in and subjecting her to a minimum half-hour dose of the Winnie Norton view of the world – was on this occasion a positive advantage.

  Spray Lodge was the nearest residential building to the river. Some eight storeys high, its most valued flats looked out, over the Yacht Club and the sea wall which separated the Fether from the beach, all the way to the distant horizon where the water melted into the sky. Normally, Spray Lodge was one of the most desirable of Fethering locations. But when the sea wall was being repaired, the block was uncomfortably close to the monotonous thud of the pile driver. Carole heard the noise increasing as she neared her destination.

  Carole no longer took Gulliver on her raffle-ticket-selling excursions. The first time she’d thought he might be useful to establish her credentials as an authentic dog lover, but she had not repeated the experiment. The Fethering residents whom Canine Trust directives instructed her to target were, by definition, other dog owners, and Gulliver’s noisy enthusiasm – not to mention combativeness – on greeting their pets had made for slow and uncomfortable progress. Since the first time, therefore, he had remained at home when his mistress went out with her raffle tickets.

  Winnie Norton was a dog owner, and presumably therefore a dog lover – assuming she was capable of loving anything other than her daughter. She was the owner of Churchill, whom Jude had encountered at Brigadoon. Carole didn’t really count Yorkshire terriers as dogs. They were too small, too silky, too yappy, a kind of bonsai mutant of what, to her mind, a dog should be.

  When she buzzed through on the entryphone, she heard Churchill before she heard his owner. He was yapping, as ever. Then Winnie Norton’s carefully enunciated tones inquired, ‘Yes, who is it?’

  ‘It’s Carole Seddon. I’ve got the Canine Trust raffle tickets.’

  ‘Oh, splendid. Do come up.’ And the entryphone box buzzed admission.

  Winnie Norton’s second-floor flat was relatively small, but every item in it was exquisite. Carole knew that if she referred to any piece of furniture or ornament, her hostess would say, ‘Oh yes, well, when I sold the big house after my husband died, I had to get rid of a lot
of beautiful stuff. Phillips auctioned it, and I’ve kept only the best, the very best.’ Then she would chuckle and continue, ‘There are museums all over the world who’d give their eyeteeth for what’s in this room.’

  And Carole knew if she referred to the sea view, Winnie Norton would say, ‘Oh yes, well, you see it best from here on the second floor. The people in the flats below just look out over the Yacht Club, and those above get a much less good angle on the horizon. When I sold the big house after my husband died, I insisted that I had to have the best flat in the block with the best view.’ And then she’d chuckle and continue, ‘I may be slumming, but at least I’ll slum in style.’

  That Saturday morning Carole was determined to avoid commenting on either the furniture or the sea view.

  When she opened the front door of the flat to let Carole in, Winnie Norton was revealed in a cherry-coloured woollen suit with gold braiding and buttons. Her hair, still bearing a bluish tinge, was fixed like stiff meringue on top of her head. With her spare hand, she held Churchill up to her chest. He was once again yapping furiously.

  ‘There, you lovely boy,’ Winnie cooed. ‘Look who’s come to see you – it’s Carole. Look how pleased to see you he is, Carole.’

  The dog’s little eyes glinted a look of pure malevolence at the visitor. Don’t worry, you revolting little mutt, thought Carole, it’s mutual.

  ‘Now, you do have time to stop for a coffee, don’t you, dear?’

  It was said defensively, almost challengingly. The last few times Carole had called, she’d managed to wriggle out of staying. This time, however, she gave the right answer.

  ‘Oh, excellent. Now do sit down on the sofa, dear. The kettle’s just boiled. Barbara’s bought me one of those new-fangled cafetières, so I’m getting quite “with it”. But I must confess, it does make delicious coffee. Oh, and I’ll just say the one apology now for that dreadful thumping from the sea wall.’

  ‘Don’t apologize. You can hear it all over Fethering.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s much worse from here. I tell you, I’ve had a splitting headache for days. It keeps going through the night, you know.’

  ‘That’s because of the tides.’

  ‘Huh. I suppose it has to be done. And, in theory, it’s all going to be finished by Monday. Mind you,’ said Winnie Norton darkly, ‘I’ll believe that when it happens. Now, I won’t be a moment getting the coffee. You stay and talk to Carole, there’s a good boy.’

  Winnie Norton poured Churchill down on to the carpet and went through to the kitchen. The dog leapt forward towards Carole, then stopped about a yard away from the sofa, his body tensed backwards. He growled.

  ‘Get lost, you little rat!’ Carole hissed.

  The dog understood the sentiment, if not the words. He started up his high-pitched yapping again.

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  Again she kept her voice down, but this time the injunction had an effect. With a final look of undiluted hatred, Churchill slunk off behind the sofa.

  Carole looked out at the sea. Even though she was determined not to say so in Winnie’s presence, the view was undeniably magnificent. She rose and went closer to the picture window. No, from here Winnie couldn’t see the end of the breakwater where the dead man had lain. Because of the Yacht Club building, her view of the low-tide beach started further down.

  ‘Wonderful view, isn’t it?’ Carole heard from behind her.

  ‘Mm,’ she agreed, as she turned to help Winnie with the coffee tray.

  ‘Oh yes, well, you see it best from here on the second floor. The people in the flats below just look out over the Yacht Club, and those above . . .’

  Damn, out came the whole routine. Winnie Norton didn’t need prompting from anyone else. She was self-priming.

  While the familiar words were rehearsed yet again, Carole reflected that her hostess wasn’t acting like someone whose son-in-law had just committed suicide. Maybe she didn’t yet know the news. Maybe Barbara Turnbull had kept it from her mother out of kindness until the facts had been confirmed.

  Carole was determined to find out. She waited dutifully for the chuckle and the, ‘I may be slumming, but at least I’ll slum in style’, before saying, ‘I heard a dreadful rumour about Rory in Allinstore this morning.’ (She certainly wasn’t going to tell Winnie Norton that she’d heard it in the Crown and Anchor. Everyone in Fethering knew that Carole Seddon wasn’t a ‘pub person’.) ‘I do hope it’s not true.’

  The light that blazed in Winnie Norton’s eye revealed that she knew all the details. And also revealed that she was at least as proficient as her dog at looks of pure malevolence. ‘It’s true, all right. And absolutely typical of the man! Selfish to the end!’

  If Rory Turnbull’s suicide had been an attempt to make people feel guilty and realize how much they’d undervalued him during his lifetime, the gesture had clearly failed with his mother-in-law.

  ‘But it’s definite, is it? I mean, they’ve found the body?’

  ‘No, not yet. The police’re still looking. Typical of Rory again – wasting police time like that. That man’s never thought of anyone but himself from the moment he was born. I always told Barbara he was a dubious factor. Not our class of person at all. I could see that from the day I first met him.

  ‘Barbara is, needless to say, distraught,’ Winnie went on. ‘What a terrible thing to happen to her. And, if it’s confirmed as a suicide, that could well invalidate all the life insurance policies. Selfish, selfish, selfish. What’s more, everyone in Fethering will assume that there was something wrong with their marriage.’

  ‘And wasn’t there?’ asked Carole.

  ‘There were faults on his side certainly. The only thing Barbara did wrong in that marriage was choosing an unsuitable man in the first place. But she knows it’s a wife’s duty to stay by her man. She’s discussed her situation with Canon Granger – you know, Roddy – and he has nothing but admiration for the way Barbara has coped. She’s behaved like a saint throughout . . . in spite of all the dreadful things Rory did.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Carole decided it was going to be quite easy to get the information she was after. Such was the level of spleen Winnie Norton harboured for her son-in-law, the old woman didn’t stop to consider why she was being asked all these questions.

  ‘Well, he was always boorish. Had no manners. Someone brought up in the gutter never quite loses the tang of it, you know. Rory was a product of state education, as you could probably tell. Jumped-up little oik from a secondary modern who managed to scrape into a university and somehow get his dental qualifications. As I said, always a dubious factor. Barbara did all she could to make something of him, but . . . well, you know the proverb about silk purses and sow’s ears . . .’

  ‘But what kind of things specifically did Rory do?’ Carole persisted. ‘Was he unfaithful to Barbara?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Even he wouldn’t have dared do that. No, it was more mental cruelty, I suppose you’d call it. He collected pornography, you know.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Oh yes. Poor darling Barbara found boxes of the stuff when she was looking through their loft. And that was only the part of it.’ Winnie Norton shook her head in shocked disapproval. ‘Rory was up to all kinds of other things as well . . .’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like staying out late. Like getting into fights.’

  ‘Getting into fights?’

  ‘He came back in the small hours only a couple of months ago and he’d had a tooth knocked out, would you believe? Well, imagine how difficult it was for Barbara to maintain appearances when her husband was walking around looking like a prizefighter. And then there was the drinking . . .’

  ‘Had he always drunk? Right through their marriage?’

  ‘He’d always had it in him,’ Winnie Norton replied portentously. ‘But it was only the last few months it’d got out of hand. And it wasn’t just drink . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘D
rugs.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ The old lady nodded vigorously. While she did so, her sculpted hair made no independent movement. ‘Barbara had suspected something of the kind was going on, and I found some stuff in Rory’s study.’

  In other circumstances Carole might have asked what Winnie Norton was doing snooping round her son-in-law’s study, but she didn’t want to stop the flow.

  Winnie seemed to anticipate the thought anyway. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have been looking into his affairs, but I couldn’t go on seeing my daughter suffer like that. So I took things into my own hands, and I found . . . this stuff.’

  ‘What kind of stuff? Are you an expert on drugs?’

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ Winnie Norton snapped. ‘But I watch television. There’s hardly a drama on these days that doesn’t show people taking drugs. So I recognized it when I saw it. In Rory’s desk drawer I found a syringe, and some metal foil, and a little packet of white powder. I think he was spending all their money on drugs.’

  There were a lot of follow-up questions she could have asked, but Carole decided to bide her time until she’d talked to Jude. She’d already been given more than she had dared hope for.

  ‘Well, I’m distressed to hear all that, Winnie,’ she said blandly. ‘Do give my condolences to Barbara, won’t you?’

  If she’d thought this traditional formality would be met by an equally formal response, she was disappointed.

  ‘Condolences!’ Winnie Norton spat out the word. ‘Barbara doesn’t need condolences. She needs congratulations. Twenty-eight years of misery and now finally she’s shot of him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carole. ‘Of course. Now, about these raffle tickets . . .’

  ‘The Canine Trust, yes, yes, yes.’ Winnie rose with surprising agility from her chair. ‘Just get my chequebook.’ She crossed to a writing desk decorated with intricate marquetry designs. ‘This is a charming piece, isn’t it? You see, when I sold the big house after my husband died, I had to get rid of a lot of beautiful stuff. Phillips auctioned it, and I’ve kept only the best, the very best.’ She chuckled, then continued, ‘There are museums all over the world who’d give their eye-teeth for what’s in this room.’