by Amy Myers
My frustration at being virtually helpless sank into relief as two fire engines arrived, together with a police car, and the professionals took over. Figures leapt out of the two cabins, pipes were unrolled, water points established, a chain of command set up and I was answering the questions shot at me and not having to think for myself any more. It was out of my hands. I just directed them to this and that, and I waited, unable to waste their time by demanding to know if the Lagonda was safe, but equally unable to leave the scene until I knew. It was excruciating to watch what was happening, like a play being enacted before me in which I had no part.
And then Len appeared. He lives locally, but news travels fast in Piper’s Green. Zoe was still sleeping at Greensand Farm, but then she, too, arrived, and Bea was with her. Both had that sleepy dishevelled look I love in women – and never more than at that moment.
Life seemed to take on a sort of normality with their arrival. Wasn’t there usually a part of this procedure when tea and coffee were handed round? Zoe and Bea seemed to think so, because Zoe took one of my arms and Bea the other, and they frogmarched me into the farmhouse. I went like a lamb. It seemed perfectly normal for Bea to be handing out mugs of cocoa at two thirty in the morning.
She smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. It’s only a car.’
The Lagonda? Only a car? Still dazed, I couldn’t believe she meant it. It was surely just a placebo. Even Zoe remained silent. It wasn’t ‘just a car’ to us. Leaving Bea in charge of tea and comfort for whoever dropped in, Zoe and I went back to the scene. The professionals would clearly have preferred we stayed put, but we kept well back. I could see Len, who was obviously doing a good job liaising with the chief fireman and police, and I steeled myself to stay out of the way with Zoe. Neither of us spoke. What was there to say?
It took an hour before the fire was declared extinguished, and then the scene had to be assessed for safety and causes of fire. There seemed doubt about this – natural enough, I supposed, as Frogs Hill is a garage, but Len and I patiently explained that it was virtually impossible for any of the petrol in the tanks of the other two jobs we had in hand to have started this conflagration for us. That was finally agreed, when the seat of the fire was provisionally established – with the help of a sniffer dog, broken glass and charred woodwork – to have been by a side window. The police then started taking more interest. As they all finally trooped out to leave, the safety officer forbade us to enter, but Len, Zoe and I put on a united front. We had at least to peer in, we pointed out, so that we could contact the owners of any burnt-out vehicles (not a job I would relish).
The smell of extinguished fire is bad. It’s depressing and somehow ominous, rather than a matter for rejoicing. We were allowed finally to stand at the doors and have a brief glimpse. The eastern side of the barn was gone, save for the fire-blackened walls. I could see the hulk of one of our two current jobs, an Austin 10. The other one didn’t look too happy either. There were also all sorts of welding hoses, tanks and other tools and equipment in a charred mess. The workshop’s centre had mostly disappeared too, and the roof looked as if it had taken a battering at least at the eastern end. But the west end had largely survived. The old brick wall had saved us, and it had saved the Lagonda. There she was, covered in what proved to be charred ash and made a paint job more of a priority than it had been. But she was safe.
Seldom had Frogs Hill had so many visitors: police, insurance, fire investigation officers, two furious car owners, Andy Wells, Dan Burgess, Liz Potter and Colin, and even a seemingly concerned Harry Prince. An endless stream trooped around in the hazy dawn and morning. Thoughtful though this was, all I wanted was time alone with Len and Zoe to sort ourselves out. We had genuine kind offers of workshop accommodation and help, so much that I left Len in charge of that side of things. Providentially, Frogs Hill did have a second barn, which was used chiefly to house Charlie and was completely unconverted for workshop use. But it had a roof. So our first job the next morning was to move the Lagonda there as secretly as possible – in-between visitors. That was vital. I didn’t anyone spreading the word that the Lagonda was safe. If, and it seemed to me very probable, the car was the reason for this attack, then the fewer people who knew it had escaped the fire the better. So we swore Bea to secrecy and blandly lied to all (save the insurance assessor) that the Lagonda was a goner.
‘Gone?’ Andy Wells asked, horrified.
‘Charred metal,’ I told him.
‘Burnt?’ asked Dan, when he arrived.
‘Charred metal.’
‘Scrap?’ Harry looked as if he’d burst into tears as he paid his visit.
‘If anyone wants charred metal, yes.’
I took each of them as far as the Pits’ doors only, claiming security problems, and pointed out the heaps of metal. No one was going to inspect such piles too closely. After suitable lamentations and offers of help they departed. Harry was the hardest to get rid of.
‘You can trust me, Jack.’
Could I hell. ‘Of course, Harry.’
‘You’re in a spot, old chap.’
‘Agreed,’ I said wryly.
‘Bring any old bangers to me. I’ll give you space and facilities.’
‘Thanks, Harry. I’ll see how things go.’
‘And tell you what –’ a burst of generosity – ‘I won’t charge you for a month.’ He went off, no doubt chortling.
It wasn’t until the late afternoon that Zoe, Len and I were able to pause. ‘Time,’ I said.
The auxiliary barn is a fair distance from the Pits, and on the other side of the house, so it was well positioned to escape notice from those who don’t know Frogs Hill well. Even though it was only used for storage and Charlie, the Lagonda looked quite at home in her new accommodation, as though being on an earth floor with bits of old straw still lying around and a battered low-loader for company suited her very well.
I gave Charlie a pat to assure him he was doing a good job, and then we all gazed at the Lagonda. We’d already noticed as we brought her over that the fabric roof was not what it was. On the whole she’d come through her ordeal well, and then I got to the big question.
‘There has to be something special about her,’ I said. ‘We’re missing something.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Zoe objected. ‘It could be something our chummy arsonist thought might have been left inside it.’
That ‘scrap of paper’ again. ‘There was a café bill in it and a garage receipt. Nothing else,’ I told them. ‘I gave them to Polly.’
‘No priceless jewels? No bundles of bank notes?’
‘I’d have noticed.’
Len had been thinking. ‘It’s the car then.’
We are good, the three of us, at just standing and thinking about cars. Some people stand in front of an old-master oil painting for hours, just letting the atmosphere and meaning soak in. Len, Zoe and I do that with cars.
Someone had to make a start. I thought it might as well be me. ‘There’s the headlights, of course. We know they’re wrong.’
‘That’s a given.’ Zoe slapped me down.
‘Anything behind them?’ Len grunted. He grabbed a can of penetrating oil and set to work. Then we peered in.
‘Nothing,’ I declared.
‘Inside them?’ Zoe asked.
Len unscrewed them. ‘Nope.’
So we went around the outside of the car, taking it little by little. Wheels, hubcaps, running boards, wing-mounted spare tyres. We all knew there was nothing underneath the lady, because the car had been on the lift, but nevertheless we lay flat on the floor; all I saw was the bit of straw that got up my nose.
‘Inside then. Upholstery?’
‘Doesn’t look overstuffed to me,’ Len declared. We poked at it, but nothing emerged, and short of ripping it all off we were stuck.
‘Glove compartments?’
We delved into the lady’s secret places, but she didn’t oblige. They were empty.
‘There has to be some
thing,’ Zoe said crossly. I agreed, but the engine compartment revealed nothing, and short of ripping up the carpets in the car even more than we had already, we were finished.
‘Boot?’ I said without hope since we’d already given it a quick look. We opened it, but only the carpet and tool kit greeted us, plus lights and triangle for continental travel. We even took out the carpet, but there was nothing but the board covering the petrol tank. We lifted that out, but only a petrol tank could be seen. The tool kit? Was the awl actually a Medici dagger? Or the spanner made from gold bullion? Nope, they weren’t. The lights and triangle? Nothing there, and we already knew that Mike and Polly did the continental shows.
‘Foiled,’ Zoe muttered crossly. ‘There must have been something more left inside it, and it’s gone. Or else the perp just thought it was there.’ She and I gave up and began to leave, but Len didn’t move. He had his thoughtful look on and was taking another overview of the car.
‘Not right,’ he said.
‘What isn’t?’ I almost shouted at him.
‘Don’t know.’
My sudden hope vanished. If Len didn’t know, how on earth could I? ‘Do you think if you stood here for another twenty-four hours you could pin it down?’ I asked ironically.
Len took me seriously. ‘Doubt it, Jack. It either comes or it doesn’t.’
Doesn’t seemed to be the order of the day, but I have faith in Len. He’d smelled something, and if he could then there was no reason I couldn’t have a go. I thought of all the Lagondas I’d ever known or seen. I prowled round her once again and stopped at the open boot. I looked inside and sniffed like I’d never sniffed before. Len was right. Something was out of kilter.
‘Isn’t it on the small side?’ I ventured, staring into the boot.
My eyes met Len’s, and with one accord we each had a door open and were scrabbling over the rear seat. With two pretty hefty guys in there we were stuck at the wrong angle though, so Len graciously got out again and hurried (yes, hurried) round to join Zoe by the open boot.
Then I realized what was odd. There might be a space, maybe two or three inches, between the rear seat upholstery and the closing panel. I could only be sure of this by pressing down on the upholstery that spread over to the panel from the rear seat. There was a gap there, because my fingers went down as I gently pushed.
‘Got it!’ I shouted to Len who was flashing his pocket tape measure.
Simultaneously, he cried, with what passed for excitement for him, ‘Panel’s been re-bracketed.’
And together we shouted: ‘Why?’
Re-bracketing is not unknown, but usually there’s a good reason for it, and there didn’t seem to be one at hand over this Lagonda, unless Tim Beaumont, Spitfire pilot, had smuggled tobacco into the country. Or diamonds. Or maybe Polly was a champion smuggler in disguise. Or Mike. Having wiggled my hand as far as I could down the available space and finding nothing, however, I was no further forward.
‘Someone,’ I said rather obviously, ‘didn’t want us to find this.’
‘A step too far, Sherlock,’ Zoe whipped back promptly.
‘Don’t agree. Why make your boot smaller in order to have an empty space?’
‘Maybe someone wanted to move the seats back, but gave the job up halfway.’
‘And maybe Lagondas can fly,’ I retorted rudely. ‘Or they wanted to fix water wings to it.’
‘Quite possible.’ Zoe went into haughty mode.
‘Perhaps they just thought they’d like a space of one foot high by three foot long and two and bit inches wide.’ I was getting belligerent.
Len wasn’t listening. ‘What about the petrol tank?’ he asked.
‘What about it?’ I was thrown.
Len wasn’t into answering questions. He was levering off the boot carpet again. ‘There’s another space under here.’
‘There always is, Len.’ Zoe was getting cross too, so I called time.
‘OK, that’s it, folks. We’ve found something odd. Where now?’
That silenced them. Could an oddity like the rear seat space be the reason that someone had decided to burn down our Pits? And could it have anything to do with Polly’s death? Or was it a red herring? All I had was a series of apparent co incidences: the fact that Polly was killed outside the barn housing the car; that Polly’s barn had then been broken into; that my workshop was half burnt down – and that the Lagonda had something special about it. Even if it was only a gap.
THIRTEEN
‘The Merc isn’t that high priority,’ Dave said mildly, when he arrived at the Chapter Arms a mile or so off the Canterbury road on Thursday morning. I had called more or less demanding a meeting.
I had the grace to blush – at least, I hope I did. ‘It’s not the Merc, it’s the Lagonda.’
‘Ah. Unofficial or official?’
‘Whichever you think appropriate.’ In view of what had happened, I needed to touch base with the police murder case, and I didn’t feel Brandon would be the best choice. I proceeded to bring Dave up to date with events on the Lagonda front. He listened attentively, although his initial remark took me aback.
‘Brandon hasn’t lost interest in you. Thinks you and Tomas might have teamed up.’
‘Thanks for the compliment.’
‘Seriously, Jack, this cosh on the head, Polly Davis’s barn break-in and now this arson attack. You may think they’re connected, but Brandon is going to say you’re inventing this so-called link to hide your own sins.’
I remained calm. ‘What are you going to say? That I’m not so crazy as to set fire to my own barn?’ The minute I said it, I saw that’s exactly what Brandon would say. I groaned. ‘I see; he’ll think it an insurance fraud. If so, what would be the point of my having called the fire brigade so soon? I might as well have let the whole lot burn down if I was after insurance money. And I wouldn’t have been so crass as to make the seat of the fire so obvious.’
‘I see that, but Brandon could well not get excited about the idea of there being something fishy over the Lagonda. After all, why? A crazed collector risking all? I know there would be a lot who would give their eye teeth for a Lagonda belonging to a famous Spitfire pilot, although that doesn’t fit with someone trying to burn your workshop down. And the technicalities of a panel of wood being shifted an inch or two would not weigh too heavily in favour of the theory either.’
‘Do they weigh with you, Dave?’
A reluctant grin. ‘I wouldn’t put my whole unit on the job.’
‘Any part of it? A junior cop?’
‘Get it a stage further, and I could be interested.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I can do that right now. This Lagonda must be really special. Your chum Barry Pole wants to buy it.’
Dave’s sharp on the uptake. ‘Wants?’ he queried. ‘Still going, is it?’
‘Only to you, me and the team, Dave.’
He grunted. ‘Hope you know what you’re doing.’
So did I. ‘Someone else is interested too. Dan Burgess.’
‘Yeah?’ Dave’s attention was all on me. ‘You know what, Jack? You really know how to stick your head into a can of worms, don’t you? Pole, Burgess and, coming right along behind, maybe Mason Trent.’
In the early evening I gave in to the temptation to check on the Lagonda in her second home. Len had told me he’d disguised her as best he could with tarpaulins, and he’d rigged up a temporary alarm. I was torn between contemplating the Lagonda problem and wondering how we were going to keep the restoration business going. A little word called mortgage kept popping into my mind too. Len and Zoe would find a way to run the workshop, I told myself. I needed to concentrate on the other problems. We had only lost a few essential pieces of equipment, and Andy had offered to loan us replacements. He’d also offered space as well, which could be useful from several viewpoints in getting to grips with who’d burnt down the Pits in the first place. Slugger Sam? A bit too obvious, since he’d been there earlier in the day. But so
metimes obvious is the answer, especially with chaps as thick as Slugger and Andy.
Maybe I should keep on the right side of Harry too, I thought. He was positively dripping with enthusiasm to help us out. He’d repeated his offer on the phone just before I’d come out to look at the Lagonda. ‘As many of your old bangers as you like, Jack. I’ll see you’re all right.’
Old bangers? In Frogs Hill? No such thing. ‘Thanks, Harry,’ I’d said again, as cordially as I could manage. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ When hell freezes, I thought as I put the phone down.
Next morning I found Len and Zoe taking care of the business by setting up a makeshift HQ in the garage where I keep the Gordon Keeble, Dad’s old MG and my daily driver Sportwagon. First, I talked to Len, who, after consultation with me, decided to take up Andy’s offer, rather than Harry’s. Next, I rang Bea saying I’d like to meet the cleaner (and her), as she had suggested, and she was very keen.
I took the Gordon Keeble, thinking it might just be the kind of car Bea would like. I was beginning to feel Greensand Farm was familiar territory, which made me uncomfortable. Polly was as yet unburied, waiting for those who loved her (and that included me) to sort out the mess surrounding her death, and here was I popping in and out of her former home as if I had some kind of right to do so. That could only be if I made progress on finding her killer. I’ve a great respect for the police – even for Brandon, though it might be possible to draw the wrong conclusion from the way I’ve been writing about him – and they seemed sure that Tomas was their man. Who was I, a mere car detective, to contradict that?
