Classic in the Dock

by Amy Myers

  Despite my mixed feelings about Giovanni, seeing him now was pitiful. I felt like a convict myself after the rigorous security I’d been put through. I’d put all my worldly goods inside a locked locker, passed all the inspections, produced identification, been searched and finally conducted to the visits hall, which was plentifully supplied with watching security eyes and, as it was a Sunday on a holiday weekend, also packed full of visitors of all ages.

  His face looked thinner, older, with no sign of the bravado I was so used to seeing. I only hoped he had a reasonable cell-mate. When I asked, he shrugged, which I took to mean it wasn’t a problem. The old Giovanni who would have waxed volubly on the subject for good or bad had vanished. What, I wondered painfully, would Louise make of him in this state? I heard from her only sporadically and it was tacitly understood that while Maria stayed at Frogs Hill, Louise would not be joining me, even for the weekend. She was visiting her father, she said. I was in a crazy situation, but for the life of me I couldn’t see how I could have done otherwise.

  I tried to put all thoughts of Louise out of my mind as I braced myself to sound cheerful for Giovanni.

  ‘How’s the spaghetti pescatore here?’ I joked.

  Wrong move. He wasn’t into light-hearted banter. ‘You know I kill no one, Jack. You help me, please.’ He put out his hands towards me and a dozen pairs of security eyes fixed on us. He withdrew them.

  I had to play it his way. ‘What line are your solicitors taking?’

  ‘To them I am already dead.’ A touch of the old dramatic Giovanni. That was something at least. ‘They do not believe my story, or if they do they think I killed him and do not remember doing so. That I thought Mr Hugh owned the Alfa Romeo, that I wanted it and he refused to give it to me.’

  Weak as a motive, thankfully. ‘What do they think you planned to do with it? Tuck it under your arm and walk away?’

  ‘I do not know. Perhaps they think I am conspiring with you, Jack.’

  ‘Me?’

  Even Giovanni realized he had gone too far. ‘Because you have a classic car business,’ he explained. ‘You could have taken the body for me from Challock to Plumshaw, looked after Hugh while I was with the police and then put him in the pond. Your fingerprints are in my car.’

  ‘Thanks, Giovanni,’ I said bluntly. ‘So are Len’s, come to that. Your story is hard to believe anyway, without dragging me or anyone else into it.’

  ‘But you know me.’ He looked hurt. ‘You know I could not kill a man. Why kill a man I have only just met?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. But if I’m to help you—’ I was fighting my desire to get out of this as soon as I could – ‘I’ll need some help from you.’

  He looked pained. ‘Of course I help, Jack. I want my life, not to take Mr Hugh Compton’s.’

  Remembering your life with Louise? was what I immediately thought, and made an enormous effort to forget. ‘Then you must tell me a better tale than you did last time,’ I told him firmly.

  ‘I tell you the truth last time.’

  ‘Then tell me again. Tell me everything Hugh Compton said. Everything that took place at dinner. Hugh’s daughter Bronte confirmed that everyone was on the quiet side.’

  ‘That is how the English are at dinner,’ he muttered. He seemed unwilling to continue and so I tried the yes and no method.

  ‘You told me it was your idea to go to the barn after dinner. Is that so, or was it Hugh’s suggestion? Yours?’

  The method failed. ‘His, mine. I do not know which.’

  ‘Think, Giovanni.’

  He sighed. ‘Mr Compton say in the afternoon that we talk later today about the car. I say at dinner I want to see the car again today. He say we go together and then we can talk. Mrs Compton say: Begin tonight. You both go. She’s a very forceful lady, so I agree. I do not wish this, but we go.’

  ‘No question of Peter Compton going?’

  ‘No. The old man say Mr Hugh will inherit the car as he is the firstborn son and he is too tired to go himself.’

  ‘Although he sat through the dinner?’

  ‘Yes, but he say little. He just stare at me. The other man, Paul, he there too, with his wife, the sister of Hugh. And the pretty Bronte of course. I not mind if she come to the barn.’

  My exasperation hit new heights. I bet you wouldn’t, I thought. Any pretty girl and you think she’s yours. Like Louise … Stop, I warned myself again and did my best not to react.

  ‘Hugh change clothes and come with me to the barn. I want to think car and that is hard with someone there, so I am cross. But I look at the car and try to think how to paint it. How to understand it. Hugh wants to talk, but I am thinking.’

  ‘He talked about the car?’

  ‘He tried, but I tell him not to do so, because that changes things in my mind.’

  Surely there must be something I could grasp here that would help his case? I persevered. ‘What clothes was Hugh wearing?’

  Giovanni looked at me blankly. ‘I do not put Hugh in the painting, so my eyes would not be on his clothes.’

  I held back from telling him exactly why he should be trying to remember. ‘Did you get the impression he was interested in the Alfa Romeo?’ I asked instead.

  ‘No. He did not see its beauty covered in the dust of past times.’

  ‘Why did he bother to come with you then?’

  A shrug. ‘He want the job done quickly perhaps. I do not know. Does this matter?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anything might matter. ‘What were your ideas for the painting?’

  ‘I cannot tell you.’

  I tried to be patient. Artistic temperament was irrelevant. ‘You can, Giovanni. You won’t be painting the Alfa Romeo now.’

  That roused him. ‘If I still wish to, I will,’ he said indignantly. ‘No one can stop me painting an Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B. This one is in my head and I have copyright on my head.’

  I couldn’t bear it. For all my reservations about him, I only hoped he’d have the chance to do it. Giovanni’s paintings reveal the character or soul of a car and I’m all for that. No such thing for an inanimate object? A viewer’s reaction to it can confirm there is. Giovanni’s painting of a Lancia Aurelia consoling a weeping woman in a storm of rose petals proves it.

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘do not worry. I do not wish to paint it now, Jack. Never.’

  I was surprised at that. ‘Why not? It is still a beautiful car.’

  ‘Because I look at a lovely car as a lovely woman. It give me good thoughts.’

  I dismissed the desire to punch him in the nose. Hardly advisable in these surroundings. ‘So why not this lovely car?’ I pressed on.

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Say it, Giovanni.’ It must have been obvious I was running out of patience, because he shot me a scared look.

  ‘No sunshine there, Jack. No light. Cold beauty only. What came to me, as I sat by that car, was something not good.’

  I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Sadness.’ He glanced at me nervously to see how I took this.

  There was obviously more. ‘Go on,’ I told him.

  ‘You will say I killed Hugh if I tell you,’ he pleaded. ‘They will hang me for it.’

  ‘Tell me, Giovanni.’

  ‘I smelled death.’

  I’d never put Giovanni down as someone with psychic powers, even though his surreal art must stem from some intuitive reaction to auras. Death had most certainly been around in that barn, whenever and wherever Hugh had actually been killed. What troubled me even more was that I had asked Giovanni what he had been doing after his return from the police HQ and before Hugh’s body was found. On the Monday, I was fairly sure he remained with Maria all day. He was curiously vague about the Saturday afternoon when he picked up the BMW after he was freed, and was definitely mulish on his movements on Sunday. All he would say was, ‘I drive to see my friend, that is all.’ I hoped he was right and that Brandon had the same story.
I couldn’t help remembering that he must have come home very late that night, for I had been sound asleep.

  Did I believe Giovanni over the death aura? He isn’t in the habit of covering his emotions with light jests. He’s more in the habit of conveying them to all and sundry as they happen. Where did this get me, though? No one was denying death was around with his scythe and skeletal skull in the barn that night. What seemed odd to me was that although they had agreed to Giovanni’s request to paint the car, the Comptons seemed to have no other interest in it. True, they had left it in the barn unrestored for many years, but a famous artist’s request to paint it would surely have evoked more interest in it, if not for itself then for its potential value.

  Missing Louise, I prowled around on the Bank Holiday Monday thinking about the Alfa Romeo, which I was certain was a focal point of interest in the case. I got no further, however, so when Dave Jennings rang me on the Tuesday morning to suggest I took the Land Rover back to the manor after its final search in the police pound, I jumped at the chance.

  Kent was looking its best and the Land Rover was just the sort of vehicle in which to enjoy it. I felt like a Yeoman of Kent, owner of all I could see. If it wasn’t for the unhappy cloud hanging over Frogs Hill and the equally unhappy situation I was heading for, I would have been a contented man. Even so, today felt like a respite.

  As I turned into the manor drive, however, the cloud enveloped me again. Something about Plumshaw still didn’t smell right to me, any more than it had to Giovanni, and the tragedy of Hugh’s death seemed more of a symptom of this than its cause. I deliberately parked the Land Rover by the barn so that I could have an excuse to stroll idly into it for a spot of solo Alfa Romeo admiration.

  It wasn’t solo, however. When I walked in, I saw Peter Compton sitting by the car on a bale of hay. He was gazing fixedly at the Alfa Romeo but didn’t look surprised to see me as I joined him.

  ‘I heard you were coming,’ was his greeting. ‘Any more news on Donati? Heard he’d been charged. Open and shut case, of course.’

  I held back my views on this in consideration of his years. ‘Strong evidence, I agree, but not quite open and shut.’

  The keen eyes swivelled back to the car. ‘If he didn’t kill my son, who did?’

  ‘He may have had other enemies.’ It was a risk but worth taking, and Peter Compton was well able to cope. His brain if not his body ignored the years. ‘The Comptons have been at Plumshaw for three hundred years, Mr Colby. They have always had enemies. We have them now close at hand. They have taken my granddaughter from my side – why not my son too?’

  This was hopeful. ‘Do you think that Giovanni might be falsely accused?’

  ‘I do not.’ The answer was very firm. ‘But there are those who would applaud the result of his action, not condemn it. George Makepeace and others. All those who see their fortunes in bricks and mortar, not in the land that nurtures us to which we have a duty. We are only caretakers of the land, not the owners.’ An abrupt switch. ‘You saw my son’s body, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I saw many dead bodies during my army days, but I could not look on his.’

  I saw my opportunity. ‘I was told you were in the SAS.’

  ‘I was. In Italy. Winter of forty-four to ’five. It was a crazy time, the Partisans fighting both the Germans and the Italian Fascists, but almost as ready to fight amongst themselves. The communists, the Christian Democrats, republicans – all Partisans waiting for their chance to further their own cause when the war ended. We British had to coordinate their efforts with our own to drive the enemy out of Italy. After the armistice with the Allies in forty-three, the Italians opened up their POW camps and the prisoners they’d been holding were either shipped off on trains to German camps or made their escape hoping to reach the British lines to rejoin the fight as their army moved slowly up the Italian peninsula. Not easy, when we were fighting the Germans back through the peninsula, village by village and street by street, in the north of the country as they poured more and more troops in. SOE was coordinating all the British special forces working in the north behind the German lines and a big job it was in the mountains. The Partisans were carrying out pinprick raids from there, with what limited supplies they had, but when we parachuted in to join them in December forty-four, supplies came with us.’

  ‘It was a tough time,’ I replied. My father had been an avid reader of Second World War memoirs and histories so I’d grown up with them. ‘That gave you your love of Italy?’

  ‘We did our job. It made me hate war. This wasn’t country against country; it was man against man and the enemy against women and children. We had to fight back. The need for vengeance doesn’t die until it’s accomplished; it just festers. Do you believe in revenge, Jack?’

  ‘I believe in justice. Not the same thing.’

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Not a fashionable word, revenge, but that doesn’t wipe it out.’

  ‘Wanting revenge against your son’s murderer is a natural emotion – once it’s known for certain who that was. And I don’t believe it was Giovanni Donati.’

  ‘We must differ then. I’m getting old, Jack. But I’ll live to see him get his deserts.’

  Time to change gear if I was to get to the end of this journey. The Alfa Romeo was crying out for attention. This, after all, was where the story began. ‘The driver of this car, Giulio Santoro, died in the war. Do you know whether he was a Partisan, or had he died earlier during the war when Italy was still allied to Germany?’

  Silence. ‘It was all a very long time ago,’ he said at last.

  ‘But a time that must be vivid in your memory,’ I said.

  ‘It never fades, the loss of friends. The loss of loved ones. The loss of enemies. But he was none of these.’

  I was getting nearer, I sensed. Peter seemed to be indicating he had had enough, but I had to push. ‘What took you back to Italy after the war?’

  ‘I met Sofia,’ he told me after a while, ‘while I was still in Italy after the war ended. We married in 1946 and came back to England to live.’

  ‘Many happy marriages came about that way.’

  ‘Mine was not one of them,’ he said shortly. ‘She was not happy in England, but my life was here. She returned to Italy and died a few years later.’

  ‘Is that why you lost interest in this car?’ I asked. ‘Because it reminds you of her?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, and I thought what cold eyes he had. ‘There are always stories, Jack. Always. Many old scores left to settle after the war. The Mesola family, to which Sofia belonged, was prominent in the resistance, helping the Partisans. You are right about the car. It speaks of Sofia. Most stories die with time, and most of them change. But cars remain as they are. Isn’t that strange? There’s love, there’s betrayal and there’s revenge. War memories die hardest of all.’

  ‘Many bad ones get forgiven with time.’

  ‘Many do not. I believe in justice too, Jack. And that is why I need to know what happened after my son was attacked by Donati. His body—’ his voice trembled, the first sign of personal emotion I had seen – ‘was only placed in that pond a few days before it was found. Where had it been?’

  ‘That’s what the police are looking into, so far without result.’

  ‘If they failed to find him in the first four days, they will query why the painter would have moved it to somewhere where it would be more easily found.’

  ‘That’s true and a big point in his favour,’ I agreed. This was a sharp man. Hazel might often be his mouthpiece to the world, but that was clearly through choice and not incapability on his part. ‘After all,’ I continued, ‘Giovanni had no motive for wanting to kill your son. He only came here to paint a picture.’

  Those cold eyes again. ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  Before I could reply, Gatekeeper Hazel arrived on the scene, together with Stephanie. They’d clearly spotted the Land Rover and guessed whom they might find inside the b
arn. They were an odd couple, Hazel in her jeans and T-shirt and Stephanie looking as though she were about to open the village fête.

  ‘Are you rattling on about the war again, Peter?’ Hazel spoke lightly, but the message was clear. She was displeased to find us together.

  I could be reading too much into a fleeting impression, because Peter replied good-humouredly, ‘Jack is a good listener.’

  ‘No doubt he is also taking his opportunity to admire the car,’ Stephanie said drily.

  ‘Not entirely,’ I replied. ‘I’ve heard some interesting stories as well about the Partisans and your mother’s family.’

  Nothing like throwing a cat among the pigeons in a conversation and seeing those feathers bristle. Not Peter’s though.

  ‘Ancient history,’ snapped Hazel.

  ‘Not that long,’ Stephanie retorted.

  An inimical look passed between them, as I said, ‘You must be proud of your heritage, Mrs Ranger.’

  Stephanie unbent a little – perhaps because Hazel was still looking furious. ‘My uncles were Partisans. My mother and sister too. Many young men avoided conscription by the Germans by fleeing to the hills to join the resistance, but they needed support from the villages to survive. That’s what my family organized.’

  ‘This is a long way from my son’s death, Mr Colby,’ Hazel said coldly. As Giovanni had observed, there seemed little love lost between her and her stepdaughter. ‘I am glad to see the Land Rover is back with us. However, I presume you are also here with the fruitless task of proving this Italian murderer innocent.’