Classic in the Dock

by Amy Myers

  I thought of Pen’s casual reference to the Mafia brotherhood, presumably picked up from Stephanie, but it wasn’t a line I was going to press with Ricardo or with Louise. ‘And who exactly is Umberto?’

  ‘He is Lucia’s son.’

  ‘And Lucia is?’ I asked patiently.

  ‘The daughter of Giulio’s sister, also named Lucia.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I meant it ironically, but he took it seriously.

  ‘You are welcome, Jack. You might also wish to know that Giulio’s sister married Enrico di Secchio, his co-driver.’

  Game, set and match to Ricardo.

  I was speechless and Ricardo followed up this triumph with: ‘I would like to see this famous car. My father tells me I should. How can I do that?’

  Was there no end to his nerve? I pulled myself together.

  ‘I’ll speak to the owner. But not yet, Ricardo. We have to save your father first. The Compton family is still convinced that he killed Hugh.’

  ‘When you have proved the truth of this case, then I will come.’

  ‘The Comptons will think that you have come to claim the car.’

  ‘Perhaps I only claim Louise. You like that, eh?’

  He might appear to be joking, I thought, but I couldn’t take that chance and so I replied stiffly, ‘Perhaps Louise should make her own decision.’

  ‘Then we must fight,’ Ricardo said placidly. ‘We have a race, yes?’

  Were we in Disneyland? Was this for real? ‘I can’t see that influencing Louise.’

  ‘No, but it satisfies us perhaps.’

  TWELVE

  This tangled web was far more complex than would allow coincidence to play a part. The paths of Peter Compton and Giulio Santoro could well have crossed over the Alfa Romeo in Italy during the war and Peter now possessed Giulio’s Alfa Romeo without the element of chance. I could understand the passion for the car that had gripped both men. Its sleek lines, even in its unrestored form, shouted style and history at anyone who looked at it and to car buffs it shouted ten times more loudly.

  There was certainly something strange about this situation. For a start, Peter Compton did not cherish the Alfa Romeo as a classic car without parallel. He had not restored it or kept it in running order. Had he been so different as a younger man that he had set his heart on owning this car, then lost interest in it and left it to rot? No, one didn’t forget beauties like this Alfa Romeo, any more than one would forget having met Marilyn Monroe or Helen of Troy.

  Perhaps Peter had been a Grand Prix enthusiast rather than being addicted to Alfa Romeos for their own sake? No, that didn’t work either. It was unlikely he had even seen the Alfa Romeo until after the war. Even if Giulio Santoro and he were on speaking terms and could have managed to reach the local villages once in a while, they would have more important matters on their mind than racing cars. Peter said he had bought the car through Sofia, so probably she had been the driving force behind his buying it. No, that seemed unlikely. Peter didn’t come over as the kind of person to be ‘driven’ over such a purchase.

  If Ricardo’s tale was correct, I needed to dovetail Peter’s side of the story with it. I had to tread carefully though. I could hardly justify more questioning on the Alfa Romeo when it was only my own curiosity sending me down that route. I had no proof at all that the Alfa was at the heart of this murder case and I might be in danger of taking the wrong fork because of its temptation.

  Still, I cheered myself, at a church fête anything goes, and today, Saturday, was the day the vicar had told me that Plumshaw was celebrating summer with its annual beanfeast including its gathering of classic cars. Both halves of the village would be present, which in itself should make it interesting. I decided to give my Lagonda a day out and asked Louise if she’d like to come if she wasn’t working. I was highly gratified when she agreed.

  She must have caught my look of amazement. ‘My youth,’ she informed me with dignity, ‘was not misspent. At our village fête I was permitted to help run the coconut shy.’

  ‘A great honour,’ I congratulated her gravely.

  ‘And,’ she continued, clattering plates into the dishwasher, ‘I also used to cut a dash at maypole dancing.’

  Village fêtes come in many forms, some determined to cling to well-established traditions, others striking out for a more modern approach with bouncy castles and burgers, some turning it into a sports event and some mixing every ingredient they can think of. Plumshaw, hardly surprisingly, as it was on Compton land, veered to the traditional, but it looked fun nonetheless. The classic car section was one of the few concessions to modern improvements to the traditional fête attractions. The fête was being held in a field in front of the church, with an adjacent field for general car parking and for the classic car gathering. I drove my Lagonda into the field with style, where it received many admiring glances – or perhaps they were for Louise who was looking stunning in a picture hat and short flowing blue dress. I duly parked with the other participants, which ranged from a shabby Morris Minor to a smart Aston Martin.

  A marquee had been erected for traditional tea and coffee refreshments although a hamburger stall outside it provided a rival attraction, and a roped-off area in the middle of the field provided space for – yes – maypole dancing, a dog show, an egg and spoon race and a tug of war. Not all at the same time, fortunately.

  The fête was in full flow by the time we arrived and we duly enjoyed a hamburger for lunch. Only one person seemed to recognize Louise but, with true British reserve, the gentleman averted his eyes. Privacy was to be respected, which suits Louise who struggles to keep her working life apart from her private concerns. True, the picture hat didn’t help much in this respect.

  The crowd reflected all sides of the fashion scene, from pretty summer frocks and a striped blazer or two down to jeans and tank tops. I could see mostly families here with young children or toddlers which are always fun to watch. There were a few faces I recognized, but none of them had so far featured in the Compton versus Makepeace battle; this scene was a world away from murder.

  As we began our tour of the stalls, I laughed on spotting one in particular.

  ‘What’s so amusing?’ Louise asked.

  ‘There’s a coconut shy. But you’ve been sacked. Nan’s in charge of it.’ I could see him picking up the balls and taking money from customers.

  ‘That doesn’t stop me having a go.’ She proceeded to drag me over there right away.

  Nan nodded to me. ‘Do this every year,’ he told me with pride. The Nan of the Pen episode might never have existed.

  ‘For the church?’ I hadn’t put him down as a churchgoer.

  ‘Regular there,’ he told us. ‘Caretaker and in the choir.’

  I blinked. ‘Any jobs you don’t do, Nan?’

  ‘I’m not vicar yet.’ He spoke so seriously that I was thrown for a moment. Then a big grin crossed his face. ‘Want a go, miss?’ he asked Louise, interpreting her wistful face correctly.

  ‘Yes, please.’ Louise then proceeded to miss every coconut she aimed at. Nan still gave her one, though, which she clasped lovingly for the next half an hour until I removed it and took it back to the car.

  I lingered there in admiration of a post-war Riley tourer and while I was doing so I was greeted cheerfully by Stephanie, today clad in the grande dame mode in a navy blue silk dress. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment where Plumshaw’s concerned,’ she joked. At least, I took it as a merry jest.

  ‘Pure pleasure,’ I quipped. ‘Can’t keep away from the place.’

  ‘We’ve noticed that. Still delving for pots of gold at the end of the rainbow?’

  ‘That’s a detective’s life. Digging for golden secrets.’

  She batted this one away with ease. ‘The Compton family has plenty of secrets if you go back in time. There was an eighteenth-century Compton who ran off with one of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s mistresses. And another who dabbled in the dew with the village maidens wearing a smock and sk
irt.’

  ‘Did your mother have such a colourful family as Peter’s?’

  She couldn’t bat this one away as easily but she tried. ‘She was Italian, which is always colourful, not that I recall much of it. I was only four when she died. My father never talks about her,’ she added, almost as a challenge.

  Paul then arrived, having parked his 1949 drophead Bentley coupé, which I eyed enviously. Its owner, however, was less charmed to meet me than Stephanie. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘My Lagonda likes an outing now and then, and Plumshaw is always so welcoming. And of course the Land Rover affair is far from complete.’

  He didn’t like that. ‘Nonsense. We’ve got it back.’

  ‘We have to find out who took it.’

  ‘I have my own ideas on that.’

  ‘Care to share them with the police?’

  ‘No.’

  That ended that typical conversation with Paul. Brandon had already told me that, as was to be expected, plenty of Hugh’s DNA had been found in the Land Rover, and so had that of the rest of the family. Giovanni’s had not. That too was hardly surprising, as he had been in police custody when it was stolen.

  I made my way back to the heart of the fête, where I found Louise deep in discussion with someone who turned out to be the primary school teacher in charge of the maypole dancing. I heard the magic words: ‘We have the original maypole the school used in the 1920s. Nan restored it for us.’

  Of course he did. Nan was the hub around which the life of the village spun. Nan sat in the midst of their interlocking loves and hates. Nan settled disputes. Nan cured their physical and emotional ills. Nan was everywhere including – it occurred to me – in the choir, which meant that if there were a Sunday morning or evening service he would have been away from the cottage while Hugh Compton’s body was being disposed of nearby. A fact that of course would be generally known in the village.

  I thought Louise might be asking if she could join the children in the maypole dance, but despite the eager look on her face, she must have decided not to push it. I was rather sorry, but on the other hand it was good to wander round the fête with her – especially when she attracted Hazel Compton’s attention in the first-aid tent where she was on standby.

  ‘Had an accident, Jack?’ Hazel asked acidly, her eyes swivelling to Louise as I introduced them.

  ‘I’m in perfect health, thank you,’ I assured her. ‘I was hoping Peter might be around.’

  ‘He is not.’

  ‘I’d like another chat with him.’

  ‘I doubt if he would like to chat to you, however.’

  I wasn’t top of the popularity polls with the Comptons, it seemed. Just as Hazel was about to build on the introduction to Louise, Bronte came into the tent, nodded to us, and announced to her grandmother: ‘I’m going home. I’ve had enough.’

  For that, read ‘I’ve just seen Jamie Makepeace’, I thought. I had glimpsed him wandering around like a loose cannon. I meanly abandoned Louise to Hazel and hurried to catch up with Bronte.

  ‘Hi,’ she said without enthusiasm.

  ‘I wanted a word with your grandfather. I hope he’s not ill?’

  ‘He didn’t feel up to coming here. Can’t blame him. I know how he feels.’

  ‘Life is tough for you all at present.’

  ‘Very.’ She grimaced. ‘I made the grand gesture. I broke it off with Jamie to stick with the family, only for them to tell me about that stupid joke they played on that poor painter. How could they?’

  ‘Your father must have consented.’

  ‘Under pressure from his mother,’ she snarled. ‘I’m sure of that. Dear Grannie Hazel is a tyrant. They didn’t tell me that my father was alive and well, even though he came back one night. They just left me to worry myself sick because I’d upset them by planning to marry Jamie. And look what happens. Dad really gets murdered!’ She burst into tears as we reached the manor gates and I hugged her closely for a while, hoping Jamie wasn’t around to object.

  He was. He came charging across the road towards us, shouting, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  I let go of Bronte and faced him. ‘Looking after her – which you’re not.’

  ‘I’ll – well look after you then!’

  ‘Jamie!’ Bronte turned into a furious Boadicea, and he instantly stopped his headlong charge towards me. I let them stare at each other for a moment charged with emotion. Would they fly out at each other or fall into each other’s arms? Just at the moment I didn’t much care. I’d had enough.

  ‘Where can I find Peter?’ I demanded.

  ‘Try the barn.’ Bronte didn’t take her eyes off Jamie.

  I walked off, down the drive, straight to the barn, where I found him sitting in a picnic chair by the Alfa Romeo, a Zimmer frame at his side. I knew he had seen me enter, but he didn’t take his eyes off the car even as I reached him.

  ‘It’s a great sight,’ I said.

  He sighed. ‘It is.’

  ‘Will you sell it now?’

  ‘No. After my death, they can do what they like with it, but until then it stays here.’

  ‘You seemed willing to let Giovanni paint it, if only as a means to an end.’

  ‘And because I knew his real motive. I suffered because of that man’s family. If he was intending to make me suffer this time through litigation over its ownership I wanted him to know what it felt like.’

  ‘I’ve known Giovanni for many years, Mr Compton. Painting means everything to him, not possession.’

  The Pickwickian side of Peter vanished. ‘You are too trusting, Jack. Life has taught me not to trust.’

  ‘Your army life or post-war?’

  He turned to look at me for the first time. ‘My army days.’

  ‘You told me you served in Italy. Did you meet Giulio Santoro then?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You were friends?’

  ‘That wasn’t a word that applied. We were comrades, we were fighting for the same cause – no, let me correct that. We worked to the same end, to rid Italy of the Germans, but not for the same reasons. The Italians wanted their country back, we were fighting to save ours.’

  ‘Were you fighting closely with Giulio?’

  ‘I was. Giulio and his Partisan banda were poorly equipped and poorly organized, until Florence was freed in 1944 and SOE took over organized resistance. Up till then the Partisans could bark but they had no teeth. They had fought bravely and recklessly and undoubtedly we could not have done without them, but once supplies could be dropped in by parachute, operations against the Germans could be effectively organized over the entire area.’

  ‘I thought you were in the SAS, not SOE.’

  ‘You want the full story?’ Peter seemed to have come to life, to have come to a decision. ‘Here it goes then. All special forces united under SOE in that final effort to push the German lines back. My SAS squadron landed at Bari in the south of Italy and some of us were parachuted behind the German lines into the mountains. Giulio’s banda was well-placed for attacking the railway line to Parma, a distance of about seventy to eighty miles. Any dislocation to German troop movements or supplies was valuable, big or small, to hinder the German ability to fight our advancing troops and as a morale booster to the oppressed civilians. They’d gone through a terrible time, and that lasted until the end of the war and after.

  ‘I joined Giulio’s banda in late December 1944,’ he continued, ‘and was in command. Giulio naturally resented my arrival, but the banda needed our communication set-up plus our supplies if they were to achieve anything. I did my best to work with Giulio, but it was difficult.’

  ‘He wouldn’t work with you?’

  ‘He did, up to a point. There was only a certain amount we could do before the heavy snows hit us, but we planned an attack on the railway at Fornovo di Taro near the point where the track to Parma from La Spezia emerges from the tunnel through the Apennines. We had already tackled one further down the lin
e at Pontrémoli where the tunnel begins. We were ambushed there, but we fought it out, and managed to escape. We thought Giulio had been captured, but he joined us an hour or so later back at our refuge. That was basically a cave, although a wooden structure had been erected in front and around it and then camouflaged with scrub. It was on the second raid that we did lose Giulio. He was taken by the Fascists and shot, probably tortured. Most were.’

  I shivered at the matter-of-fact tone in which Peter recounted his experiences, probably because he had lived with them so long in his mind. ‘Did you leave Italy then or stay on?’

  ‘I was in the army, and after the war returned to England. I had met Sofia in Italy however, so as soon as I could I returned there; that would be early in 1946. She had already told me that she’d heard this car was for sale. She arranged the sale and it became mine.’

  His eyes remained fixed on it. ‘I didn’t expect to be locked up in jail for it, but that’s what happened. I had assumed Giulio’s family had wanted to dispose of it after his death. I had no means of knowing that it had been taken from the family by the Fascist Militia when he was killed and that I was effectively buying it from one of their number. Nor did Sofia. They wanted cash for it – everyone did at that time. Italian politics and the whole country were in chaos and in June 1946 came the referendum on whether the monarchy should be retained or whether there should be a republic and who should rule that. The republicans won. I was already in jail by this time, but after the referendum the British stepped in and I was freed. I had been there four or five months because the family claimed the car was wrongly seized by the Fascists and I refused to return it. There had been no court case for me to state my viewpoint and that was the issue that the British took up to get my freedom. They just let me go and the car.’

  This more or less dovetailed with Ricardo’s account but sounded more of a recital than a vivid memory of the past and so, to my frustration, I couldn’t see where to push the story forward. ‘You’ve kept the car in memory of those days?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Was Sofia a Partisan herself?’