by Bill WENHAM
Chapter Three
Old Joe Turner had been very annoyed at having to get Bob Pratley from the D.I.Y. shop to come out to the village hall to repair the two damaged doors and to replace the locks. It would be paid for by the Parrish community fund but it was still a bloody inconvenience for him.
However, old Joe was completely mollified when a muffled voice on the phone, one that could have been either male or female, told him later exactly what the police had so far in the case. He realized that he was speaking to the person who had broken in, but weighed against the value of the juicy bit of information he’d just received, the caller’s actual identity was unimportant.
Before the day was out, via Joe Turner’s gossip network in the pubs and shops, practically everyone in the area knew as much about the case as the police did.
Then the police got what they thought to be a break. Sgt. Barnett received an anonymous call from a woman. She said that she had been unable to sleep and had seen someone, a slight figure, she thought, ride away from the village hall on a bike on the night it was burgled.
On a hunch, Barnett sent his one of his constables out to search the ditches and hedgerows of Parson’s Lane which runs in front of the village hall but nothing was found.
Now the question was, had anyone else seen someone riding or walking around in the village in the early hours of the morning or was this call a hoax? If anyone else had, they hadn’t come forward to report it. Perhaps the villagers were only just a little fidgety at the moment and hadn’t reached the point of paranoia yet.
Maybe most of their ancestors had been robbers, pillagers and plunderers in bygone days anyway and perhaps murder and mayhem had just run in their families for hundreds of years. Who would know?
How civilized are any of us really, Middleton pondered. In his job he was always astounded at what diabolical things human beings can do to each other. Not even the wildest of animals kills with that amount of savagery. They kill only to eat and survive or to protect their young.
With wild animals the deaths of their victims was invariably quick unless you discounted the domestic cat and its mouse victim. In the human sense of killing, Middleton thought, having one’s throat cut was probably about as quick as it gets.
Although none of the villagers in the area were aware of it, Sir Alfred Allenby was somewhat of an enigma, a rather apt term for him as it happens.
He arrived in Little Carrington as a twenty year old, in the spring of 1944, by bus from Cambridge. In his coat pocket he had the usual documentation of the time, an identity card and a ration book, plus a letter apparently written earlier by his recently deceased mother and a letter of explanation and introduction from his mother’s lawyer. All of which were completely false.
He had taken the train up from London to Cambridge and then the bus from there had dropped him off at the monument in Little Carrington. After asking directions he had made his way on foot, carrying a small suitcase, up to the Manor House and the Allenby estate.
He was met at the huge oak entrance doors by the current resident’s supercilious looking butler. The young visitor asked to see Sir Archibald Allenby.
“May I ask the name and the nature of your business here, sir?” Larkin, the butler asked, looking down his long nose at the visitor.
“You most certainly may, my good man. Please advise Sir Archibald that his nephew has come up to visit him from London.”
“Please wait here, sir,” the butler said in his haughty voice. “I will check to see if his Lordship will see you.”
Larkin left him standing outside the door while he went inside to speak to Sir Archibald. His Lordship’s staff at the Manor House, depleted because of call ups for the war, now consisted of Larkin, a plump and middle aged woman, Mrs. Trafford, who was the cook/housekeeper and a young girl named Dolly who was the kitchen help and general house maid. His other staff and stable hands had all joined up at the outbreak of war and his many horses were now boarded at the Harriman stables in the village.
A few minutes later Larkin returned and escorted the visitor to the Lord of the Manor’s study, where he said he would be granted a brief audience with his Lordship.
The twenty year old ‘nephew’ told Sir Archibald that he was the son of his brother, Basil, and therefore his nephew. Sir Archibald was already aware that Basil had been killed in an air raid on East Ham in the east end of London during the Blitz. He didn’t know that his sister-in-law, Amelia, had also been killed, but only recently. She had been crossing a road and had been accidentally run down by an ambulance, of all things.
The stolen ambulance hadn’t stopped and it actually hadn’t been an accident at all.
Sir Archibald was surprised to see this young man standing before him. He was totally unaware that Basil and Amelia had even had a child, but of course, he and his brother had never been very close.
It did raise an immediate question in his mind, though. Since he had never married and had no legitimate heirs, the young man now standing in front of him, as the last of the living Allenbys, would automatically inherit both the estate and the title. They had been passed down through generations of Allenbys for centuries. The original land owner, Sir Olwen Carring had been executed by order of Queen Elizabeth the First, for treason. His lands and manor house had been gifted by her to one of her more loyal supporters, Sir Francis Allenby
Actually the young visitor was not the last of the Allenby line at all, since he was no relation to Sir Archibald, despite what his papers claimed. They had all been carefully forged, together with a copy of his birth and baptismal certificates, proving him to be who he said he was.
His documentation was absolutely flawless and had been produced by experts. His upper class English accent was equally flawless and without a trace of any other accent, but he wasn’t even English. In fact he had never even been to England before he had arrived a week or so earlier.
He had been brought across the English Channel by U-Boat on a moonless night and had been rowed ashore in a rubber dinghy by members of the U-Boat’s crew. His point of entry was on a deserted stretch of beach near Ramsgate.
From there he had made his way to London and with the aid of several contacts along the way, he had finally arrived in Little Carrington and at the manor house of Sir Archibald. Of course, his real name wasn’t Alfred Allenby at all. Nothing even remotely like it, in fact.
His real name was Heinrich Schaeffer and despite his youthful age he was a well trained German spy, chosen personally for this assignment by Admiral Canaris, head of German Intelligence, the Abwehr, as was his female partner.
He immediately convinced Sir Archibald, that as the last surviving member of their clan, his Lordship should take him under his wing at the Manor and train him to take over the estate when the time came. The Lord of the Manor agreed but thought that it was highly bloody unlikely that the time would come anywhere in the near future.
He rang for Larkin, told him that the young man would be staying and that he should prepare a room for him. ‘Alfred’ thanked him and breathed a sigh of relief. The first step of his critical mission had been accomplished. He had been given a maximum of two months to accomplish the next step.
His first task was to infiltrate the Carrington community from a position of authority, which, with Sir Archibald’s introductions, he managed to do very easily. After all he was an Allenby. His papers proved he was. His second task, within the next four weeks, was to arrange for Sir Archibald, an avid horse rider, to have a fatal accident whilst out riding with him.
After the funeral and interment in the family’s private mausoleum on the estate, ‘Alfred’ dismissed Larkin and Mrs. Trafford, telling them that he intended to turn the manor house into a military convalescent hospital for the duration of the war and it would be operated by the nuns from the nearby St. Mary, Martyr convent. He would only require a very small amount of accommodation for himself and would no longer require their services.
Neither of them could fault h
is extremely generous contribution to the war effort which had led to their dismissal. Mrs. Trafford and the maid cried a lot and Larkin, although deeply resentful of losing his position of many years, buried his animosity and kept a stiff upper lip. How could he do otherwise? To complain would be totally unpatriotic.
Larkin went first, without even asking for a reference. Alfred wouldn’t have given him one anyway, since he hadn’t been served by him long enough to form an opinion. He didn’t like the supercilious man anyway.
A still tearful Mrs. Trafford went next, but unlike Larkin, she did get an excellent reference. It was extremely obvious by the way the house was kept and the delicious meals that were set before him, that she was very, very good at her job.
Dolly, the maid, was preparing to leave tearfully as well, but the new young Lord of the Manor apparently had a change of heart. He asked her to stay on to look after him personally and asked if she had learned to cook from Mrs. Trafford.
“Oh, yes, your Lordship, of course I have,” the poor girl said gratefully, unable to believe her ears. “Yes, sir, she has taught me very well indeed.”
Between them, they sorted out how much of the huge house Alfred would actually use for himself. The space they decided on was considerably larger than he had originally intended and he admitted to Dolly that he thought he’d made a really big mistake in dismissing Mrs. Trafford. He said he had no idea where she had gone when she left. Since the Manor house had been Larkin’s and Mrs. Trafford’s home for many years, they had no forwarding addresses or contact phone numbers to leave behind.
Two days later, a young woman arrived from London to take over the cooking and management of the new Lord’s accommodations. Her name was Gerda Heimer, his partner, and she was the third step in Alfred’s plan.
She too had been landed by U-Boat and in the same place. She had been awaiting her call to join him in the Manor House.
The two of them, by supporting each other, had a most important role for the Nazi war effort. It wasn’t simply by accident that they had been sent to this particular place. They needed to have a completely legitimate appearing reason for being where they were – and where they were was within a distance of less than four miles from Bassingbourn, the R.A.F. station where the U.S. Air Force’s heavy bombers, the B17 ‘Flying Fortresses’, were based.
Since the land belonging to the Manor House bordered on to Bassingbourn’s airfield, it was a not unusual occurrence to see Sir Alfred riding his favourite mare across his adjoining fields. Sometimes he would be alone and sometimes he would be accompanied by men and women from his convalescent hospital. He would offer the use of his horses to anyone who was a rider and had recovered sufficiently to ride them. Alfred believed it was excellent therapy for them and it also exercised his horses.
He also offered the use of the horses to the Americans at Bassingbourn if they cared to use them between missions.
In addition to the horse riding, he was frequently seen in the village encouraging the villagers to ‘Dig for Victory’ and other patriotic programs. Once, when asked why he hadn’t joined up, he said, with a rueful smile, that he had a faulty heart valve and was ‘doing his bit’ in other ways. In later years old Dr. Westall would discover that he had no such thing but he never challenged his Lordship on it.
In the intervening years since the end of the war and the present day, Alfred had studied law and had become a local magistrate. He was also asked to judge the Annual Rose and Flower Show and to present the trophies to the winning darts, soccer and cricket teams. He also financed the gifts and food for the children’s Christmas party and always provided the fireworks display for the Guy Fawkes bonfire night each year.
Although, because of his position in the community, and of necessity, he tended to be a little aloof, but he was not in the least bit pompous. Consequently he was well liked and respected in the whole area.
No one in the area would have believed that his role during the war, along with Gerda, his radio operator, was to infiltrate the local villages and send back details of the missions, numbers of planes and personnel and the operational status of the bombers. Heinrich Schaeffer and Gerda, known as Hilda in the village, performed their roles exceedingly well.
When the war ended, they had both remained in their undercover roles as Sir Alfred Allenby and his housekeeper, Hilda. Young Dolly had only remained a couple of weeks after Gerda’s arrival and had proudly announced that she had joined up in the W.A.A.F.S.
In 1947, the convalescent hospital was closed and all of the medical equipment and some of the beds were moved over to the convent, where the nuns now operated the small hospital of their own.
Although he had spied on them and had plotted their defeat and destruction, he actually liked living where he was and the role that he had played. Both he and Gerda, who had become lovers, realized that, with Germany’s defeat, there was really nothing for them to go back for. They had never been uncovered as spies and they believed they were far better off where they were now.
Alfred would also inherit Sir Archibald’s personal fortune as well as the title and he had suggested that his ‘uncle’ should make a will immediately to save possible complications later. His Lordship had agreed and a day or two later his lawyer had arrived from London with the necessary papers for him to sign.
With the war and their spying over Alfred/Heinrich and Hilda/Gerda were both living in luxury already, so why change?
Once the patients were all gone, Sir Alfred decided to put the place back the way it was before the war and took on a new staff of maids, gardeners, a chauffeur and a cook/housekeeper to take over from Gerda, but he never again wanted a butler. Instead, he hired a valet to look after his clothes and personal needs. His name was Ives.
Alfred and Hilda were married on a beautiful June day in 1950, with a ceremony in St. Stephen’s church. The ceremony was beautifully conducted by the father of the present vicar, Reverend Malcolm Singer. Alfred had asked Bob Harriman, Albert’s father, to be best man and Beryl, his mother, to be Matron of Honour. Two of their female stable hands, suitably cleaned up for the occasion, were Hilda’s bridesmaids.
These might appear to be rather odd choices until you took into consideration that, because of the boarding of their horses with the Harrimans and despite the difference in social status, they had become close friends. The Harrimans were often invited for dinner at the Manor House. The Carrington villagers considered it to be an almost fairy tale wedding, in the style of Cinderella, or in this case, His Lordship and the servant girl.
There was an open invitation to everyone in the communities under his jurisdiction to attend and also at a huge reception with fireworks at the Manor House and grounds in the evening. It was a double treat for many of the villagers who never been inside the Manor House, and for others who had never even been inside the grounds either.
The two of them lived very happily with their closely guarded secret until Hilda/Gerda died from an extremely rapidly accelerating cancer in 1983.
They’d never had children and Alfred was gratified to see that the majority of the community appeared either have turned out for the funeral or had sent flowers. His wife was interred in the Allenby family mausoleum on the grounds of the estate.
Alfred had then spent the next twenty plus years dedicated to his role as Lord of the Manor and as the area’s magistrate. He never remarried.
Then recently he had received the very first of the phone calls. Although he had no way of knowing it, the call was actually made from a public phone box in the village and was also very brief and to the point.
The muffled voice said, – “I know who you really are – or more precisely, Sir Alfred, I know who you are not!”
There was no request for money or any other demands. It was merely a simple statement of fact and to make its point just that little bit more clearly – the message was delivered, first in English, – and then repeated in German!
Chapter Four
The first mee
ting of ORARA took place on a Saturday morning in the village hall. It occurred shortly after the second murder had been committed.
Naturally, Joe Turner wanted to know what it was all about and said he’d like to be included when he opened up the hall for them. The founder, and chairperson, an attractive redhead of about thirty five just laughed at his request.
“I don’t think so, Joe. I think you’d find it both boring and quite embarrassing for you actually,” she said.
Joe frowned.
“Why?” he asked.
She put a delicate hand on his shoulder.
“It’s a club for ladies only, Joe. No men are allowed and, apart from our main topic, we’ll be discussing things that you men don’t need to know anything about. Feminine things, Joe, if you get my drift?”
Joe was not about to give up quite that easily.
“So what does the name ORARA mean?”
The group of women was prepared for such a question and at a nod from the founder; one of the other women answered him without hesitation.
“It stands for the Orchid Recognition and Revival Association, Joe. It’s something like the Garden Club except that we are only interested in the pursuit of one particularly endangered species.”
“But…” Joe blustered.
“Thank you for opening the hall for us. It was very kind of you. We’ll call you again to lock up for us when we’re through here,” the chairperson said, staring him down. “Perhaps we’ll tell you all about it one day but I don’t think you would want to repeat any of it,”
“But I could…” Joe began, but the redheaded chairperson said, “Feminine things, Joe. We talk about all kinds of feminine things as well as orchids, like…” She leaned forward and whispered in Joe’s ear. Then she took a step back and smiled sweetly and innocently at him.
Joe’s face had turned beetroot and he looked at her wide eyed.
“See what I mean, Joe? Surely you wouldn’t want to repeat any of that around the village, would you?”
