10. THE ELDERLY VICAR

Our two sleuths make enquiries of naturists and we meet a very old vicar

“So what are we doing, Tray?” asked Angela, “I mean, if you’re going to help that Reuben bloke, and I quite fancy him, you know, what are you going to do?”

“Angela, there’s a limit to what I can do to help him. He wants me to be little more than a plod ticking boxes and asking irrelevant questions, thus leaving him to the real investigation. It’s what I’d do if I were in his shoes, but that doesn’t mean that I like it. What he wants is for me to sound out the folks in the fairground so that he doesn’t have to, and I might do that. But not first.”

“What are we going to do first, then, Tray?”

“I want to wander up to that naturist camp. The answer may lie there.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The way our victim was stripped naked after he was killed. Claire was quite firm that it was after death, though how she could tell defeats me, but she knows her stuff.”

Angela sniffed. “I shouldn’t think he’d been wearing much this weather. It’s even toasty at night, which means it wouldn’t take much to strip him off.”

“You’d be surprised, Ang. Even taking a tee-shirt off a corpse is no easy thing. Dead bodies tend to be so heavy and uncooperative.”

“So we’re going to case out this nudist camp? What fun!”

“You might think it amusing, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll not be going inside the gates. I’ve no intention of stripping off and parading my flesh for all to see, and they say that’s one of its rules, and anyway if I did it wouldn’t help very much. We need to test the waters, and I’ll try and do that from outside the place if I can. After all, it’s on the coast for a reason, so that members can enjoy the sea and the sun, and I’ll take advantage of that. So we’ll walk along the coast until we get there, and then see what’s what.”

“Surely they can’t expect your handsome DI to strip off before interviewing his suspects?” asked Angela.

“He wouldn’t think of it, never in a month of Sundays,” laughed Trayda. “He’s really quite a modest bloke and I’d even expect him to blush if he saw me in the nuddy!”

£Has that happened then, you know, back in the day?” grinned Angela.

“Not likely!” she laughed, “we were work colleagues, that’s all, and anyway I was his boss.”

“I still might get my eyes on a hunky bloke in the altogether then?” asked Angela teasingly.

“You just might be lucky,” grinned Trayda, “come on: a nice easy stroll. It’s only a mile or so, and when we’ve learned anything interesting we’ll come back for lunch at the pub.”

It was hardly a pretty walk along the rocky beach to where they could see the naturist camp further along. There were trees there, palms and other more native trees, but they had to walk carefully lest they slip on the rocks and sharp flinty shards of what would have been nice had it been sand.

When they arrived close enough to be aware of details they could see that although there was no artificial barrier to prevent naturist holiday makers using the beach there was the natural hurdle of the terrain. The little beach near where Sandy Shores was had long since petered out and the waves were simply crashing on stony rock, and the nudists went about bare footed.

One or two figures were obvious as they went about their business within the confines of the resort, the other side of a wire net partition that separated the real world from the naked one. One elderly couple walked tenderly towards a tennis court that butted onto the boundary, balls and racquets in hands, talking in an animated way to each other, though Trayda couldn’t make out what was being said. But they were close enough for her to feel comfortable calling out to them.

“Excuse me,” she called, “I’m with the police.”

The couple looked up, clearly surprised that there were people calling them from what could only be called an inhospitable beach.

“What is it?” asked the woman whilst her partner, or husband, or whatever relationship he had with her, loosely covered his genitals with what he hoped looked like a casual hand, and smiled towards them.

“Could you spend a moment,” asked Trayda, “as I said, we’re with the police and we’re making enquiries concerning a serious incident down the beach, near Sandy Shores.”

“That caravan place down the road?”

Trayda nodded. “Yes, that’s it,” she said.

“We don’t know anything about that, though our host at Happy Valley’s wife has been seen with a young man from down there,” replied the woman. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes and they seemed ... a bit closer than strangers ought to be.”

Before Trayda could ask anything more a stentorian voice called out authoritatively. “Now then! This is private property and we want no pryers or perverts here!”

“It’s Mr Hampton,” said the nervous elderly holidaymaker, and, “They say they’re from the police,” she stammered, and she with her shy companion moved off, towards an area in which deck chairs were laid out in an excruciatingly formal array of straight lines.

“We’re with Southwesthampton Police,” announced Trayda in her most authoritative voice.

“What have the police got to do with Happy Valley?” demanded William Hampton, and he added in a sneering voice, “you don’t look like any coppers that I’ve seen, dressed like that!”

“I didn’t say we were officers, I said we were with the police, private investigators if you like, rendering our assistance to them,” almost barked Trayda. “There’s been a murder!”

Mr Hampton moved a little closer when she said that.

“Who’s been done in?” he asked.

“A couple of miles back there,” Trayda told him, “there’s an ice cream stall, and its owner has been murdered.”

“The ice cream bloke you say?” grinned Hampton with a sudden leer, “that’s good news, that is, really good news, the best I’ve heard all week!”

oo0oo

Hidden from Sandy Shores by the Shell and Cockle and its car-park that itself was surrounded by a row of orderly but tall trees was an impossibly small church. It had been built in the early part of the twentieth century when there had still been worshippers in the neighbourhood, but since the assault on faith by a more frivolous and irreligious society its use had declined to single figure congregations.

No church so small would normally have a clergyman of its own, but the Reverend Arthur Candice had retired years ago and was no more than a volunteer who couldn’t eradicate the need to pray from his daily routines.

His calling had always been a devout one. His belief in a monotheistic faith hadn’t wavered even once despite some dark times that would have shaken many a weaker man to his very foundations.

Over the years, in fact, he had been accused of reprehensible things, once even involving a choirboy’s mother, but he had shaken the accusations off with a sermon that proved his total belief in forgiveness. The congregation had been small and nobody had noticed that the sermon admitted guilt whilst incorporating an element of self-forgiveness in its rhetoric. It had been truly brilliant. The choirboy’s mother, a single lady, had passed away soon after in a bout of accidental poisoning, and he had gathered even more praise when he had announced that the poor boy, with an unknown and unnamed father and nobody else in the world to care for him, could stay at his small vicarage and be educated in the ways of faith by himself. He never mentioned some of the dubious elements in that education, and when the choirboy mysteriously died in a freak accident involving a tea strainer and a current bun his tears were seen as proof positive that there was such a thing as faith.

But all that was in the forgotten past and since his retirement, and with the acknowledgement of a Bishop who knew little about anything, he held a weakly service in retirement within the tiny church of Saint Chad, where if he was lucky he had a congregation of almost half a dozen. There was no choir, and therefore no choirboys and no mothers of choirboys.

He noticed that there was an uncharacteristic amount of excitement on the grassy verge opposite Sandy Shores, and he decided to climb onto his mobility scooter and go to investigate. He could have walked that distance, but he loved the feeling of power the small electric scooter gave him.

He bumped (not physically but metaphorically) into Trayda and Angela as they returned from their walk along the beach after concluding their enquiries at the naturist camp.

“Hello ladies,” he said quietly, though he tried to boom like he had in days of yore, “what’s going on here, then, with all the sirens and blue flashing lights and men in white overalls?”

“There’s been an incident,” replied Trayda.

“She means a murder,” shuddered Angela hollowly.

“Goodness gracious me,” he tittered, and almost fell off his scooter.

© Peter Rogerson 28.03.19