Classic Cashes In

by Amy Myers

  Zoe and I decided to take my precious Lagonda for a spin to Hatchwell the next morning. The weather was drizzly so it wasn’t an ideal choice but even if we didn’t look anonymous in such a car we would still be put down as carefree tourists.

  ‘Maybe we’ll be taken for a honeymoon couple,’ I remarked to Zoe.

  She snorted. ‘As if!’

  I flattered myself it wasn’t me she was dismissing so lightly from her list of theoretical spouses, but Rob Lane, who rises and falls in her preference ratings quicker than the Dow Jones.

  We became absorbed in a fascinating discussion of Desmodromic valve trains as we headed for Hatchwell. The Lagonda had been the right choice for this trip, being splendidly stately, as we were driving through a lush green countryside full of stately homes. It was hardly surprising that Elizabethan and medieval grandees had settled in this part of the world. There are such magnificent houses as Knole Park and the medieval Ightham Mote, and not that far away Sir Philip Sidney’s Penshurst, and Anne Boleyn’s Hever. This was an area relatively near to London but far enough away to keep their stately heads down (and on, save for poor Queen Anne). Added to that, Sir Winston Churchill picked Chartwell as his home and that wasn’t far away either. When we reached it, Hatchwell seemed to be glowing with pride at being Kentish too and had caught some of the same eternal confidence that they were here to stay.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?’ Zoe asked as we parked. I hadn’t explained yet, as she might not have come. It sounded a pretty unbelievable scenario and she doesn’t like her time wasted (even though I pay her for it).

  ‘Reliving a nineteen-thirties’ bank robbery,’ I told her.

  She was instantly suspicious. ‘Sounds like something out of a caper movie. This has got something to do with Philip Moxton, hasn’t it?’ she said crossly. ‘What?’

  ‘As yet, nothing. Does that matter?’

  ‘Yes. If I’m to play Hastings to your Poirot, I’d like a clue as to how this meander into social history is helping.’

  ‘Philip’s father Donald was caught up in the robbery.’

  She threw a theatrical hand to her brow. ‘Not the Packard?’ she gasped.

  ‘The very same,’ I intoned gravely.

  ‘If this crusade helps get rid of that monstrosity from my working space, I’m with you all the way. Tell me more.’

  I proceeded to tell her how it had been carried out, with it sounding more and more unlikely.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ she said in disbelief. ‘That really is like a caper movie.’

  ‘Truly, it happened, caper or not.’ I had to bear in mind it had taken place over forty years before Zoe was born.

  She sighed. ‘Let’s get going, pal. The sooner it’s over, the sooner I can get back to sanity.’

  I said that Hatchwell was frozen in time. Outwardly this was so, as it was essentially all in one long street with a few side turnings and a row of shops. Unfortunately although it still had a bank somewhere, the post office that featured in the story was no longer there – at least I don’t think that in the 1930s the post office would have consisted of a small counter at the rear of a convenience store.

  Enquiries provided me with the information that the old post office used to be in Manor Street, a turning off the High Street that led down to what still was called the manor, but was now a retirement home. The post office had been an imposing red-brick building now a private house, which told me nothing save where it was in the crime scene. Looking at it now, it was hard to imagine my Packard – was it significant that I was beginning to think of it that way? – waiting here to be loaded with the bank’s cash, perhaps observed by the dastardly villain who was planning his audacious theft.

  Randolphs Bank was our next stop. Zoe and I were directed back along the main street and told to take the second lane on the left. I could see now that there were fewer service shops than had at first appeared. There was a butcher with a greengrocer attached, a bakery, a convenience store and unusually an old-fashioned ironmonger. The rest were craft shops. Zoe grew impatient at my careful examination of these stores.

  ‘Is this part of the robbery or are you just window-shopping?’

  ‘Are you bored?’

  ‘Only admiring how a great detective works.’

  I took the hint and we found the lane to the bank, after a false trip down what proved to be the entry to the houses’ rubbish bins area. Rose Lane ran down the hill past a terrace of cottages for about a hundred yards or so, and then I could see several larger houses set slightly back from the road before open country. The bank must be somewhere along there. The lane seemed to wind its way into a wood in the distance and then probably made its way towards Edenbridge. Zoe was getting interested now, and we found the bank discreetly nestling beyond the first row of cottages. It was in a large, rambling, oak-beamed house with a paved forecourt and a discreet sign to confirm that one had reached Moxtons. A cash machine was set into a tasteful modern brick addition to the bank’s far side.

  I could see why parking in the front of the bank would have been logical for the Packard as it returned loaded with its loot from the post office. There was room on the near side of the building for a car to drive through to its rear, but it would be an awkward turn for a spacious saloon car such as the Packard. The natural stopping place would be in front, so that the cash could be taken more speedily through the front entrance. Beyond the bank and its modern addition, was a farm track, still shielded by shrubbery on both sides as it had been described in the press article. Easy enough for a masked villain who knew the bank’s routine to rush out and jump in the car while the staff, the manager and the guard were gathering round the boot. The Packard would have been self-starting and the key still in it, so all the robber had to do was turn the key and drive off into those blue hills yonder. The plan only misfired in that Donald Moxton had not yet made it out of the car and so had to be forcibly ejected at the first opportunity.

  It was still a strange story. I couldn’t see how Donald would have been involved in planning the theft at his age. He could have provided inside knowledge but that was hardly necessary as the routine was plain to anyone who kept a careful watch. For Donald to have been the mastermind himself was unlikely given his age. I wondered whether there had been a masked man at all and this story had been a concoction of Donald’s to cover himself if he were the one who had leapt into the driving seat and taken off. No. Wouldn’t work. At least one, and probably all three, of the three people standing at the boot would have seen him. I came back to the theory of his being the inside man, but it still didn’t work for me. If he was, he’d have made sure he was out of that car when it pulled up outside Randolphs in order to avoid suspicion.

  ‘A thousand questions come to mind, Poirot,’ my Hastings remarked, when I conveyed these theories to her.

  ‘To mine too. I shall enter the scene of this ancient crime, Hastings, and enquire of the staff what they know of this dastardly affair.’

  ‘Leave this one to me, Poirot,’ said Zoe grandly. ‘I’m good with bank managers.’

  This was news to me, but I stood aside to let her have her way. She strode in with great aplomb, but emerged a minute or two later with the aplomb missing.

  ‘No one knew a thing,’ she told me grimly.

  ‘Failed to charm the bank manager?’

  ‘No bank manager. Two staff, both female, one my age, the other still in her teens. Both thought it hilarious that there had even been a robbery in prehistoric times such as the 1930s. It’s a sub-branch so one of them did have the grace to ring up the next branch up in the pecking order, but they thought it hilarious too. Wanted to know if we were getting them mixed up with The Ladykillers.’

  I wasn’t surprised. Nineteen thirty-eight was not only long ago in time, but in era, as the Second World War marked a huge divide in attitudes and lifestyle. I seemed to be stuck with a newspaper report and a Packard car.

  ‘There must be somebody in this vi
llage who was around then. They’d probably be in their mid-eighties upwards,’ I said in frustration.

  ‘Pub?’ Zoe suggested.

  We gave it a try but the White Horse looked distinctly gastro and empty. There was no café, and the convenience store had no idea who its customers were or where they lived. I was left with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker as in the nursery rhyme – the latter being the ironmonger in this case. It looked an old-fashioned sort of shop, so I might be lucky. As we entered, it had the smell of ironmongers that I remembered from my youth, a smell that sums up screws, plugs, paints, pots and paraffin just as the Pits exudes a smell of petrol and grease. I felt at home here. On the left there was a long counter for customers to be served and staff actually serving behind it. Excellent. What was less excellent was that the staff consisted of one lad about twenty and Zoe was already pulling a face indicating we’d get nowhere with him. I still had a go.

  ‘We’re doing some family history,’ I told him, wondering if he even knew what that was. ‘Know anyone round here who would have been around in the nineteen thirties?’

  ‘Eh?’

  I made it simpler. ‘Do you know someone in their eighties who might be able to help us?’

  ‘He’s over there.’ The lad pointed to the other side of the shop, which was shrouded in gloom but which I could now see boasted another counter, behind which was a very elderly gentleman engaged in sorting screws into tiny wooden drawers and taking no interest in us at all.

  ‘Bill,’ yelled the lad. ‘You over eighty, are you?’

  Bill looked up crossly. ‘No need to shout. I’m not deaf. Not very anyhow. What d’yer want?’

  Zoe marched grimly across to him, out to charm. ‘This is a wonderful village. Have you lived in Hatchwell for long?’

  He looked pleased. ‘I have, young lady. Long enough to know where the original hatch was, that was the gateway to the village, see. Up on the old track. Know what the old track is, do you?’

  Zoe looked nonplussed, but this was where I could help out, thanks to a friend who knew all about ancient tracks.2 ‘Ley lines,’ I said.

  He nodded approvingly. ‘Sighting points. Markers. That’s where the churches lie. Now, old Alfred Watkins …’

  We were off. Alfred had written the book on ancient tracks way back in the 1920s and to listen to a soliloquy on the subject from one of his fans would be time-consuming, but perhaps worth it. Zoe clearly thought I was bonkers, but we waited until eventually Bill ground to a halt.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you but I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said promptly. ‘Just a minute or two more of your time though. There was a bank robbery here in Hatchwell in 1938. Were you living here then?’

  His eyes lit up like a router when the power’s switched on. ‘Robbery at Randolphs. I was a boy then of course. Friday the thirteenth. Unlucky for them all right. Talked of nothing else for months, we did. Playing cops and robbers round the place, solving the crime for the police—’

  This sounded hopeful. ‘Did you solve it? Who was this masked man?’

  ‘If I’d worked that out proper I’d be owning the blooming Ritz by now, not this ironmongery.’

  I dutifully chuckled. ‘Did you see it happen?’

  ‘Some of it, I did. I was at school, see. The old school – pulled down now by those vandals that call themselves a council – was opposite Rose Lane. A few of us saw the hullabaloo going on through the window. Half past nine on the clock. Remember that as clear as day. Not that days are clear, all those petrol fumes people keep filling the air with. Can’t breathe sometimes round here.’

  I thought of Hatchwell’s traffic and compared it to the M25’s as it circles London but decided not to comment. ‘How much of the robbery did you see?’ I asked. Keep on track or we’d be into climate change in a jiffy.

  ‘There was old Alfred Randolph, he were the manager, dancing around shaking his fist, and folks were shouting and yelling. Old Jimmy Buttons, him being the village constable, came running, a-swinging his rattle Not that that was much good – he was the only copper around for miles. He got there as fast as he could, which wasn’t that fast, him carrying the fattest stomach since Humpty Dumpty. Armed Response they call it now.’

  Zoe was open-mouthed. ‘How did he get reinforcements with only a rattle?’

  Bill had to think about this, then came up with ‘There was a police phone box in the High Street and the bank had a telephone, I reckon. Anyway, old Randolph couldn’t believe his eyes, seeing his dosh and car going off like that. He got the car back but not the cash. It was found a week later.’

  ‘So you didn’t see the robber himself?’

  ‘Can’t say I did,’ Bill told us with regret, ‘but he was there all right. Talk of the town for days. Folks had seen him here and seen him there, seen him hiding in the bushes, seen him in the woods, seen the mask, he was tall, he was short, he was fat, he was thin.’

  ‘Didn’t the armed guard with them take any action?’ I was still bemused.

  ‘Armed guard? That was Bert Pink.’

  ‘What was he armed with?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Truncheon of course. Old Bert was proud of his truncheon. Prize bit of wood that. Polished up a treat.’

  Zoe stifled a giggle, but not efficiently enough, as she earned herself a glare from Bill. ‘Very handy was Bert with his truncheon,’ he told her. ‘Jimmy Buttons was too.’

  I hastily intervened. ‘So the bank manager drove the car to the post office himself every day and then carried the bundles of cash into the bank?’

  ‘No, maybe twice a week, but always Fridays, they were special being pay day, see, and there were a lot of businesses round these parts one way and another. And Mr Randolph, he never did the carrying himself. Far too grand. The two clerks did that. Blocks they called them, blocks. Big heavy things, about this long –’ he indicated a foot or so – ‘and this deep.’ He indicated about nine inches.

  ‘Packed with five pound notes?’

  ‘No. One pound and ten bob notes. Few fivers but they were rarer. My dad told me all about it – his sister was old Alf’s typist. Fivers? I never even saw a fiver till after the war and then not often. Great big things they were, not the skinny little things we have today. You knew you had money in your hand if you held a fiver then.’

  I was fascinated. ‘How many staff were there altogether?’

  Bill had to think about this. ‘My Auntie Mags, then there was the chief accountant and under him the chief cashier and a couple of clerks. That makes five, don’t it? And another one at the till, maybe two.’

  ‘Donald Moxton was one of the clerks. Did he stay on after the robbery?’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that.’ Alert eyes fixed themselves on me. ‘Ancestor of yours, was he?’

  I’d forgotten my role as family historian. ‘Distant,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. Well, he stayed on till he was called up in the war, I reckon. I think he came back after, not sure when, but back he came and blow me a year or two later he bought the bloody bank. Poor old Alfred, eh? Never got over the robbery, money never found, insurance wouldn’t cover much of it, if any, then his son died in the war, and that was a real blow. No one to take over, see. Mr Randolph, he gave up driving around in the Packard. His pride and joy it was, even after the robbery, but he had to sell it.’

  ‘To Donald Moxton?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know about that, but it went somewhere. Poor old Alfred, eh? I was a young man then and didn’t know what it was like to be old. Now I do and I don’t like it.’

  ‘What about the other clerk, the one in the car with Donald?’

  ‘Wasn’t from round here. A posh lad, he was.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember his name, would you?’ Hope flared up.

  ‘I was only nine, but like I said Dad talked about it and so did Auntie Mags. Gary something …’

  ‘Not Gavin?’ I said, leading the witness, hope racing ahead of cautio
n.

  ‘That’s it. Gavin. Gavin Herrick. Saw him on the telly sometimes. Another relation of yours?’

  ‘Can you trust that?’ Zoe asked doubtfully as we left the ironmongery, after I had assured Bill that Gavin was not my ancestor, merely a friend.

  ‘Probably, but we can build on it anyway.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ I told her grandly. I hadn’t a clue, only that wild hope still flaring away.

  Gavin Herrick, the Packard, Donald Moxton. At last I had three pieces that would tentatively fit even if I didn’t yet know what the jigsaw was all about. What did look certain was that the game must surely be one of the pieces, which confirmed it had stemmed back much further in time than the 1970s. The drawback was that if this bank robbery began it, how did ‘the woman’ Gwen and her marriage to Philip come into it? Gavin and Donald were only fifteen and sixteen respectively when the robbery took place and they were connected by their work. War had come about sixteen months later, but when they were called up for military service they were in different forces.

  After the war ended, Donald had remained in banking and Gavin had gone on the stage. How did they get together? Donald had bought the bank in 1948 when he was in his mid-twenties, but where did he get the cash? Buying a bank is a mind-boggling concept looking back from the twenty-first century, but I supposed it was not so much out of the ordinary then. Unusual perhaps for a private buyer but for a run-down concern such as Randolphs seemed to have been it might have been unremarkable.

  My heart bled for Alfred Randolph, still driving around in his status symbol, the black Packard. With his son a victim of war, he would have had no successor and might have been grooming Donald to take over. True, it would have required some cash even if it had been a step by step transaction as Alfred gradually withdrew from the business. That was the most likely explanation, otherwise I was faced with a theory that two young teenaged boys hired a masked man and then divided the profits three ways. Unlikely, I thought. Again I considered whether Donald Moxton could have driven the Packard off himself and then pinched the cash. No. Even putting aside the fact that he had gone on working at the bank, it was not likely that he would have been able to drive a car at sixteen – given the few there were around in the thirties.