by Amy Myers
‘Interesting hotel this,’ Peter observed casually.
A wheezing laugh from the life and soul of the party, who had been introduced to them as Harry Williams, though apparently addressed by his mates as Porgie. Probably from Georgie-Porgie, who ‘kissed the girls and made them cry’ in the nursery rhyme.
‘Thanks to Matt here,’ Harry said. ‘He used to own it.’
Peter was suitably impressed. ‘Fine place.’
Matt turned out to be the thin man who had proposed the toast, he of the bewildered expression.
‘Bought it for a song from the previous owners after the war, didn’t you, Matt?’ Harry continued, and Matt at last had to reply. Not through unwillingness, Georgia thought, more from a disinclination for the limelight.
‘I ran it until fairly recently, then Andrew took over,’ he half whispered.
‘His son,’ Harry explained helpfully. ‘Sold out three years ago, then this chain took over. There’s a manager here now.’
‘Were you all at West Malling together?’ Georgia asked brightly as conversation languished.
‘For a time,’ the academic one answered. His name proved to be Jan Molkar, and he had a slight accent that she couldn’t immediately identify. Dutch, perhaps? Again no one added anything.
‘Was this a hotel then?’ Luke helped out.
‘Of a kind,’ the one called Daz replied. That must be a nickname, she thought, for he’d been introduced as the Reverend Bill Dane. No dog collar now. It was he who had read the Magee poem, and still seemed the liveliest of the five.
‘It was our officers’ mess,’ he continued, ‘and we bunked down here too. It was requisitioned at the outbreak of war, like the Manor House further up the road towards Malling. How the old order changeth. Its grounds are a country park now, and the building’s being turned into flats. 26 Army Co-operation Squadron had bagged that in 1940, and there was no room for us when we flew in, so here we are.’
‘Some way from the airfield, isn’t it?’ Luke asked.
‘Aye, that was the point,’ he of the sketchbook answered, Bob McNee. The name as well as his soft accent spoke of his birthplace. Georgia put him down as an obvious local councillor type, since every bit of him gave the impression of steadiness and reliability.
‘The airfields got smashed up regularly in the Battle of Britain,’ Bob continued. ‘Bad enough losing them without losing the precious pilots too. Waste of all that training.’
‘You must have known the area well,’ she said. An inane comment but it seemed to be up to them to keep the conversation going. She would have suspected they wanted to get rid of them, but she decided it wasn’t that. Their body language was friendly enough but there was some kind of tension there that she didn’t understand.
‘Aye.’
‘And you’re all that’s left of the squadron?’ she persevered.
‘Not quite. We’re . . .’ Harry looked at the others. ‘We’re the Battle of Britain group. The whole squadron gets together at air shows and once a year in London.’
‘Were you all in the same squadron after the battle?’
A pause. ‘Gradually we all went our different ways. That was routine. Promotions, injuries, war going in new directions – any number of reasons why we split up.’
Try as she might, Georgia found herself thinking of that dell again. Here be dragons, returning fire with fire. That was an odd phrase for her, not one she normally used. It was almost as if she were thinking . . . She put a brake on her thoughts. She was here. She was listening to these former pilots and that was that.
‘We had a bar in the basement,’ Jan said. ‘We called it the Hell’s Bells Club, Angels all day . . .’ Seeing her blank look, he explained in his careful English, ‘That is the codeword for height in thousands of feet. And so we were devils by night.’
Perhaps all the group had needed was this push, for the ice suddenly broke, and the men broke into wavery song.
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me . . .
‘And that, dear lady,’ Harry concluded, ‘is why the Luftwaffe called Kent Hell’s Corner. News of our dark and daring doings in the Hell’s Bells Club travelled fast. I joke, of course,’ he added hastily, as the others’ attention fixed on him, as though he had stepped outside his script. ‘Kent got that name because of the hot reception our boys gave the Luftwaffe during the battle.’
Talk turned smoothly to the battle itself and the moment passed.
The Hell’s Bells Club, Georgia concluded, could account for how she had felt in the basement earlier on. From the Hell’s Bells Club to ladies’ loo seemed a sad come-down. But at least it was no worse. Her imagination had simply been running out of control.
‘We’d better be going ourselves,’ Luke said with evident relief, as the group eventually showed signs of moving. It was four o’clock by the time they had said their goodbyes and left, and Luke was obviously fretting that they would be late for their own appointment in Wickenham. ‘The TV people said they’d be there at five.’
Not that the TV people would be interested in their presence, Georgia knew. It was Mary Beaumont they would be coming to interview, the excuse being the publication of Marsh & Daughter’s latest book, about a murder in the village in 1929.
‘So that explains it,’ Peter said to her as Luke went to pay their bar bill. ‘Of course there’s an atmosphere here, with all the violence and sadness of the past. Think of what they went through in the skies by day, and needed to drown out at night with drink, if only to forget the gaps caused by those who hadn’t returned.’
‘It explains the basement, perhaps,’ Georgia replied reluctantly, ‘but not that dell.’ If only it did.
‘Perhaps there was a Nissen hut for the pilots there. Who knows?’
‘Between two banks?’
‘Perhaps a V1 doodlebug crashed there later. Hence the crater.’
‘Yes,’ Georgia said gratefully, clutching this escape route. Of course. She remembered that there had been a similar tragedy on the borders of Charing Heath and Lenham which had wiped out a whole hutful of Royal Engineers. Perhaps there had been such an incident here, which, terrible though it would have been, would not be calling out for Marsh & Daughter to investigate. There would be nothing for them to find. Nothing to mourn, save the loss of a generation of young men who played with death, not football, and gambled with their lives, not slot machines. Men who drank to drown fear, not boredom, and who loved because there might be no tomorrow.
‘Wait for me,’ Peter said as Luke returned. He headed his chair after the disappearing barman, either for directions to the disabled loo or for some ulterior motive. Georgia hoped the former. She wanted to get out of this place and the thought of Peter sniffing the scent of a story only rekindled her own barely suppressed doubts. Peter was back after about five minutes, during which Luke had fumed about being late. He was in publisher mode now, with the smell of publicity in his nostrils, so Georgia sympathised. On his return, Peter had lost his temporary mask of frailty, however, and looked more like the ex-cop he was.
‘Well, well.’ He looked very smug, even for Peter.
‘Did he tell you what you wanted to know?’ Georgia asked politely.
‘I didn’t know what I wanted to know. But, thank you, yes.’
‘Ancient retainer tells all,’ Luke remarked. The barman must have been at least twenty-five.
‘He came here after the new management took over,’ Peter said. ‘Didn’t know anything about 362 Squadron or the hotel being requisitioned in World War Two.’
‘So what did he know?’
Peter produced the rabbit he’d been carefully keeping in his hat. ‘That there was an unsolved murder here in the 1970s.’
‘Whose?’ asked Luke.
‘Where?’ demanded Georgia simultaneously, thrown back into turmoil. She had a terrible feeling that she knew the answer.
‘Neither of these facts was known to my informant.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Yes. He believes the victim had something to do with the hotel itself.’
‘Staff?’
‘Perhaps, but his use of words – which he could not explain when questioned – implied a somewhat closer relationship, the owners perhaps. Oh, and by the way . . .’
‘Yes?’ Georgia asked sharply when he broke off.
‘He said he thought the murder happened somewhere in the grounds.’
*
With Woodring Manor Hotel on her mind, it seemed strange to Georgia to see Wickenham again half an hour later. She liked the look of it now, although perhaps it was a subjective judgement to imagine that the shadows hanging over it had now vanished. Perhaps it had always been like this, yet she and Peter had carried the same mental image of Wickenham as an unhappy village for ten years before its cause rose to the surface with the discovery of a skeleton.
Suppose in ten years’ time the dell at Woodring Manor returned to haunt them? No Spitfires, no returning fire with fire, but perhaps a dragon in the shape of an unsolved murder. Ten years? Somehow she felt they wouldn’t have to wait that long.
Chapter Two
The sounds of altercation reached Georgia’s ears even before she had opened her father’s front door. It was only the familiar argument of whether work or lunch came first – an argument that Margaret, his indispensable part-time shadow, rarely lost.
‘Georgia, thank heavens!’ came the cry. ‘Kindly tell Margaret,’ whose ears were presumably closed, ‘that sandwiches can wait.’
‘Not toasted ones,’ Margaret said equably. Margaret came daily, her hours being a movable feast depending on who needed her most, Peter or her ailing husband. When Margaret found time for herself was one of those great mysteries of life. She had been a doctor’s receptionist and had therefore had ample experience with stubborn patients. Peter of course did not see himself in that category. He saw it as an equal partnership between them – led by him.
‘Margaret’s right,’ Georgia said. ‘Anyway, I’m hungry, if I’m included.’
‘You have no soul,’ Peter said fiercely.
‘And you no stamina,’ Margaret rejoined. ‘Have one of these, Georgia, and I’ll make some more,’ she said as she passed en route to the kitchen. Georgia advanced on both father and sandwiches.
‘What’s so urgent?’ she asked.
‘The case.’ Peter condescended to pick up a square of toasted cheese and half a tomato.
‘Case?’ she asked guardedly, suspecting where this was going. She and her father had adjoining terraced cottages in Haden Shaw’s main street, and she had therefore been aware that Peter had been suspiciously quiet for several days. ‘Nothing becomes a case until there’s something to investigate.’
‘Unsolved murder. That’s enough, surely. And, Georgia, I’m sure I know now who the victim at Woodring Manor was.’
She had fully expected he would have despatched her forthwith to the Maidstone reference library to check the local newspapers for the whole of the 1970s, and had been surprised to receive no such summons. However, it was too much to hope that he’d have forgotten. Despite herself, her own curiosity was roused. A quarrel between staff? A guest at the hotel? A lovers’ tiff? An unsolved murder was somewhat harder to track down than a solved one, which would have an ensuing trial, but Peter, it seemed, had already done so.
‘It was fully covered in The Times,’ he said.
Was it indeed? That must mean there was quite a story attached. Her curiosity grew. ‘Who was it?’
‘Patrick Fairfax.’ Peter sat back complacently, obviously awaiting her cry ‘of course’.
‘Who?’
Peter sighed. ‘I suppose it’s my age. Growing up in the Fifties, I had an overdose of the derring-do of Spitfire pilots.’
A jolt ran through her. ‘Spitfires?’ she asked guardedly. Five shadowy elderly men marched through her mind.
‘Correct. Patrick Fairfax, DSO, DFC. Thought to have narrowly missed the VC. Flew hard, played hard during the war. Anonymous author of This Life, This Death in 1942, reprinted under his name countless times after the war. Popular in society. Found murdered one evening at Woodring Manor in 1975.’
‘In May?’ Each step led onwards to the unwelcome truth.
‘Correct again, Georgia. Saturday the tenth. Shot after a reunion. I don’t need to tell you which squadron.’
‘Or which reunion. 362.’ Now Peter had put him in context, she realized she had heard of Patrick Fairfax. Not quite in the Johnnie Johnson or Bader league, but up there. And she had even read This Life, This Death, years ago. It was a thoughtful and moving, even poetic, memoir of a Battle of Britain pilot, rivalling Richard Hillary’s The Last Enemy in its time. ‘Wasn’t there a film?’
‘Shooting for the Stars,’ Margaret supplied helpfully as she shot in with more toasted sandwiches.
‘That’s it,’ Peter said triumphantly as Margaret scooped up the empty dish and departed. ‘The obituary mentioned it, but implied it was pretty feeble. Probably the cat’s whiskers when it was made in the Fifties.’
Georgia trawled through her memory, since she had a liking for old films. She had been born well after the days of double feature programmes at the cinemas, but Peter had indoctrinated her into the satisfaction of the really bad B films, usually simply programme ballast for the A league.
‘It was more of a romance than a war film, I think.’ It was beginning to come back to her. ‘Lovers parted by war. She was a WAAF. Any mention of that in the obituary?’
‘No, but he had a wife and family by that time.’
As far as she could recall, the romance was doomed through one of those tragic twists of fate once so popular in dramas like Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years, and the Cary Grant film An Affair to Remember.
‘I’ve found a picture of Fairfax in his heyday in one of Dad’s old books,’ Peter said. ‘Look.’ He found the photo and pushed the book over to her. It was a drawing in profile, not a photograph. Light-coloured hair, classical features, the subject looking not at the artist but out into an unknown future. A scarf at his neck – very much the fighter pilot. Put him in today’s casual gear, however, and this face would be gracing many a country pub at weekends.
‘Any clues on why the death was unsolved?’
‘Not yet. Give me time.’
‘Or on who the suspects were?’ No prizes for guessing here. ‘Any suspicion of suicide?’
‘Pass on the latter. On the former, someone was taken in for questioning. Not named. A more delicate age.’
‘Any hints on motive?’
‘No. The Times has no more to say after the memorial service was covered. The top brass of the RAF attended that, plus half of London society, actors, actresses, aviation darlings, former pilots.’
‘If the murder was after the reunion, they must have been questioned, so—’
‘We have a way in, of a sort,’ Peter finished for her.
‘But what about the murder’s alleged connection with the hotel?’
‘Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Patrick Fairfax owned it together with Matthew Jones and a third partner.’
Her stomach seemed to be churning, and it wasn’t the sandwiches’ fault. She and Peter were getting perilously close to the point of no return from it becoming a Marsh & Daughter case, and still all her hackles were warning her to run like hell. ‘His name didn’t come up at the reunion last weekend.’
‘How would we know? We weren’t with them all the time.’
‘You’d think with someone so famous in their ranks they would have done some name-dropping,’ she continued obstinately. ‘Especially since they were happy to tell us Matt Jones was the other owner.’
‘You’re making too much of it,’ Peter said – reasonably, she admitted. ‘Besides, the hotel wasn’t Fairfax’s sole concern, apparently. His obituary said he also ran something called the Wormshill Aviation Club, and that was his main love. The hotel only received a passing mention, so per
haps he was a sleeping partner. Maybe he put up the money and let Matthew Jones run it.’
‘You’re hooked, aren’t you?’ she asked in trepidation.
‘I must admit I find it tempting. Such a high-profile case, unsolved – and that dell.’
‘If that was where he was killed.’
He grinned at her. ‘Let’s find out.’
‘I’m surprised you haven’t done so already.’
‘I would have done if some people –’ He raised his voice meaningfully as they heard Margaret’s footsteps in the passageway on her way home – ‘hadn’t insisted on interrupting me.’ The bang of the front door was the culprit’s only response.
*
Georgia scribbled her signature on the courier’s clipboard, a procedure she’d carried out several times since last Wednesday, and took the parcel in to Peter. He seized on it eagerly, tearing at the sticky tape and paper like a child with a birthday present. Oh well, she’d probably do the same, Georgia conceded. It was merely the knowledge that this must be to do with Patrick Fairfax that still made her want to ignore it.
‘Excellent,’ Peter proclaimed, gazing with admiration at a scruffy second-hand jacketless book. She leaned over his shoulder to look at the title page. Dancing the Skies: The Life of Wing Commander Patrick Fairfax, DSO, DFC by Jack Hardcastle. Did that, she immediately wondered, explain the reading of the Magee poem at the reunion they had gatecrashed? It might well do. A code between the survivors to read the poem in Fairfax’s honour rather than just toast the name. Although that, Georgia told herself firmly, is hypothesis ahead of the facts.
‘Does it cover his death?’ she asked.
‘Probably. It was published in 1977. It’s his life that might be more interesting, however, considering his murder remains unsolved. I had the devil’s own job to get this. It’s the only biography of him. This Life, This Death, because of the time it was first published with wartime restrictions, is short on hard fact. I read it yesterday.’
‘Didn’t he write a full biography later? I thought that was usual for pilots.’