by Amy Myers
‘Let’s say I’ve broken through the outer ring. No one gets through the inner one.’ He spoke almost as if in challenge. And perhaps, she thought, that was working.
‘You really don’t have any suspicions? That’s hard to believe.’
‘Not that I could find then.’
‘And now?’ She picked up on his hesitation. ‘I was told, for instance, that he might have been having an affair with one of the pilots’ wives.’
‘If so, I never heard it.’ He played fair with her, even though he looked annoyed. ‘Look, whatever I said wouldn’t even be rumour, not even theories, only a question mark. You need to talk to his family.’
‘I’d like to. Is his wife still alive?’
‘I gather so. I’d have heard if not. Jean Fairfax was fiercely flanked by their kids, a son and a daughter, at the time of the murder. Not that she needed much protection; she’s the formidable sort. The son went into the RAF too.’
‘Didn’t he want to write his father’s biography?’
‘No. He said his father had been about to write another book himself, and now he, the son, was too busy flying Harriers to take the job over. He gave me access to Patrick’s own notes, though.’
‘I presume that the family were out of it so far as causing his death is concerned, since Patrick was killed at Woodring Manor . . .’
‘Yes. Far more likely to have been some row he had with someone at the aviation club or one of his many creditors. Nothing came to light though, apart from poor Matt’s possible motive. I didn’t dig that deep, since Fairfax’s death wasn’t my main point of interest. I just followed the police line: unsolved.’
Curiously weak, she thought, since Jack didn’t seem the sort to follow anyone. She decided to tackle her own inexplicable deep-rooted fear. ‘Could the motive have been rooted in the wartime?’
‘Everything’s rooted in the past. Nothing’s ever buried completely, Georgia. It lives on within.’ He was definitely evasive now, and she had to force herself onwards.
‘Such as his wartime affair with a WAAF, if the film is to be believed.’
He looked distinctly wary. ‘Shooting for the Stars. Yes, I saw it.’
‘Did you find out if it was based on truth?’
‘Don’t think I’m hedging,’ he replied promptly enough, ‘but you have to understand that during the war pilots had to drink and play hard to get over what was happening to them. In the Battle of Britain they could be scrambled several times a day to fight swarms of Messerschmitts, not to mention the Heinkel and Dornier bombers. And coupled with that the airfields, including West Malling, were continually being bombed during August. They couldn’t get the runways in working order again before the next lot of bombs arrived. Even if they did, once the aircraft were in the air they might not be able to get down again at their home field, and would have to land at any old strip they could. It was a hectic time. If I’d tried to track down every WAAF and barmaid who got kissed, the task would be endless. In the evening the pilots might go into Town Malling, that’s what they called West Malling then, to the pubs or to other hotels around. Women weren’t rare anywhere the pilots went. It’s my belief that the WAAF in Shooting for the Stars was only a symbol to make the story realistic for the 1950s.’
Hedging was precisely what he was doing, and she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. ‘What about his actress girlfriend?’
‘During the war?’
Still hedging. No doubt about it, Georgia thought. She’d soon squash that. ‘You mentioned her in your biography.’
‘It was merely a rumour.’ He did not look happy.
‘A rumour that must have had a name put to it.’
‘Tell her, Jack,’ Susan intervened calmly, as she came in to clear the empty cups.
Georgia laughed. He could hardly not speak after this.
‘It was Sylvia Lee,’ Jack growled.
‘The musical comedy star of the Fifties?’ Georgia blinked. Not just A.N.Other actress, but a major one. It made sense, she supposed. The glamour couple. The golden-haired Battle of Britain pilot and the young and beautiful actress.
‘The same. Only a starlet in those days, of course.’
‘Did you interview her for your biography?’
‘I met her. It was hardly formal enough for an interview. She was long married by the 1970s. She told me the story was true in a way. She was briefly and very unseriously Fairfax’s girlfriend for a week or two during the Battle of Britain. There was no great romance. She went back to London to do her bit when the Blitz came, and never saw him again. So I hardly think she would have come down to Malling to shoot him thirty-five years later.’
‘I’m only interested in her as background,’ Georgia said, puzzled that he was so defensive. ‘You said yourself that the past is always with us, Jack.’
‘I did. But it should be raked up only if it’s relevant.’
This line was obviously going no further, at least at present, and she was all too thankful to return to 1975. ‘Someone described Fairfax to me as a ladies’ man. You wrote that he was happily married as soon as the war ended.’
Jack had a prompt reply for this. ‘The word “happily” for Fairfax meant despite the occasional fling. Jean, his wife, rarely appeared at the aviation club, for instance, and with half of London and local society passing through it, the temptations must have been many.’
‘But you said you hadn’t heard any rumours,’ she reminded him.
‘About the pilots’ wives,’ he shot back at her.
She took a different tack. ‘We know several members of the aviation club were at the hotel the day Patrick died, and they might have had more reason to kill him than old-standing friends – save for Matt Jones of course.’
‘I’m not a private eye.’ He was holding on to his temper with some difficulty, she realized. That was good. She would press him further.
‘In the 1970s you were in your thirties, making your way as an aviation historian. I’m in my thirties now, and I know I’d have probed fully. The whole story is what one needs, whether one prints everything or not,’ she said matter-of-factly.
She’d done it. He flushed with anger. ‘There’s never a whole story. Not one you can get at. The whole story is locked inside people’s minds, deep in their memories. Not even their nearest and dearest can get it out of them unless they choose.’
‘But you tried,’ she said gently.
‘Of course I did,’ he snapped. ‘And got bloody nowhere. For what it’s worth, it’s my belief it was someone at that air club. Patrick could rub someone up the wrong way without meaning to, especially husbands. What’s more, he tended to leave business details to others, and that could well have led to someone seeing an opportunity to bump him off. I should look into that, if I were you.’
‘Is the club still going?’
‘Good grief, no. It closed down pronto after Fairfax’s death. Bankrupt, and without him there was no goodwill to sell.’
‘Is there anybody still around I could talk to?’
He shrugged. ‘Matt might know.’
‘He might be biased . . .’
‘For God’s sake, Georgia,’ he exploded. ‘Neither he nor any of the other 362 Squadron had any reason to kill Patrick Fairfax, no matter how annoying he was as a business partner. That group has met every year since 1975 in Fairfax’s honour, for heaven’s sake. You think they’d have done that if they’d loathed the man? They thought he was a good chap, despite his peccadilloes. And if you think you can find any dirt, good luck to you.’
‘I have to try.’ Puzzling, Georgia thought. He was still on the defensive – where the pilots were concerned – yet he wasn’t naming anyone who belonged to that club.
He calmed down. ‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘So why don’t you go to the squadron reunion in Tangmere next month? That’s the aviation museum at the old airfield in Sussex. I’ll spread the word that you’ll be around. You’ll find them all there, rain or shine, arthritis, Alzhei
mer’s, bloody-mindedness, the lot. All nattering away, including one of the sergeant pilots if you’re lucky. You can ask them about the aviation club. They all went there from time to time. You might not get anywhere though.’
‘Won’t they talk to me?’
‘Oh they’ll talk.’ He paused. ‘Certainly about Patrick Fairfax, since there might be another biography and even film on the cards.’
‘You’re writing another memoir of him?’ Why on earth hadn’t Jack mentioned this before?
‘No. The film’s being produced by a company called Fair Winds, which is writing its own script and reissuing This Life, This Death with a commentary. It’s going to be big.’
‘Don’t you want to reissue your biography, updated perhaps?’
He looked tired. ‘I’ve done what I can. If there’s something I missed, too bad.’
Something missed? That was interesting. Was that just a throwaway? ‘Will you be at the reunion?’ she asked as she rose to leave.
‘I have to be. Not for Fairfax, but my other work. Always looking for those few holes in the market.’ He made an attempt at being his jovial self again.
‘I’ll see you there then.’
He didn’t comment. What he did say was: ‘This might not be the best black hole for you to excavate, Georgia. You or your father. Take care.’
*
As Georgia’s steps crunched over the gravel at Woodring Manor, she could see Peter through the bar window looking somewhat forlorn, she thought, while he waited for her. He must have heard her footsteps for he glanced out and waved. He seemed remarkably pleased to see her.
‘Well?’ he asked eagerly, once he had put a drink into her hand.
‘I learned a lot, but came to no conclusion at all. Jack’s OK, a few years older than you, reasonably straight. He began by palming me off with the party line, but was curiously ambivalent because he was both encouraging me to go to the squadron reunion at Tangmere in mid June while at the same time saying the pilots could have had nothing to do with it, and that it was the aviation club we needed. Whoever we meet at Tangmere might clue us in about it, even if they didn’t talk about themselves. Altogether, a mixed message, since Jack also warned us to steer clear of the whole business.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Peter brightened up immediately. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Both of us? It’s out near Chichester.’ That meant a two-to-three-hour drive to West Sussex.
‘Why not? We can take your car and you’ll be there to add the woman’s touch if necessary.’
She cast him a scathing look. ‘While you’re applying your gentle ex-cop touch?’
‘A draw,’ he said amiably. ‘Why do you think Hardcastle kept changing his attitude?’
She had the answer to this, or her answer at any rate. ‘He seemed to be hinting that there might be something to discover, but he wanted no part of it.’
‘Part of what precisely? Investigating Fairfax’s death?’
‘What else could he have meant?’
‘There has to be something to find,’ Peter muttered.
‘Why?’ And then she realized where they were, and why he was looking so bleak. ‘Is this place is getting to you?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘You can still hear those pilots rioting around here if you listen hard enough. Understand their emotions, their fear . . .’
‘Let’s have lunch,’ she said quickly. At least that would take his mind off the past. The last thing she wanted was for Peter to make connections between Woodring Manor and the other unsolved mystery in their lives: her brother Rick’s disappearance over ten years ago.
‘OK. We can take a look at the old control tower afterwards. It won’t be closed in, like this place.’
Her instant reaction was no. Why should they? It had nothing to do with 1975. She forced herself to agree, however.
As they turned off the West Malling road to the King’s Hill development, Georgia saw that Peter was recovering fast. Lunch was the best weapon for fighting bleak feelings. The sun was just coming out too, but by the time she parked at the golf club at the top of the ridge, where the airfield had been, it had disappeared behind rain clouds again, and they decided to take shelter in the club bar. Peter’s hope that this hillside would not be ‘closed in’ had taken a severe beating. Houses were springing up all around, and more were under construction, taking the development even further than their map showed. At least the clubhouse with its windows overlooking the course provided some idea of what the airfield had once been like. She worked out that where they were at present was roughly where one of the runways had been, and with the open downland before them it was possible to imagine the roar of Merlin engines taking off sixty-odd years ago.
Since the rain showed no sign of stopping, she decided she should walk over to the control tower alone, leaving Peter at their window table to await her return. ‘Just behind those houses,’ the helpful lady at the bar told her, and she set off. As she reached the first houses of the estate all sense of 1940 vanished. New names for new roads, new school, new pub – but suddenly there it was. The 1940s resurrected, despite the tall iron fencing all round the site. A dilapidated building with boarded-up windows and peeling paint. The control tower. She had discovered that this one had only been built in 1942, taking the place of the pre-war watch tower. Nevertheless it served its purpose, for here it was possible to imagine only too clearly what it had been like as the centre of a wartime airfield. There was no way to get closer to the building from this side, with danger notices glaring forbiddingly at her, so she worked her way round through the streets to the other side of what was now a muddy site covered with weeds. At least there was an open gate here, and in she went.
She wasn’t alone. There were other people who appeared from the far side of the building as she approached. From the man’s accent as he talked to his wife she could tell he was American and, from his bearing, an ex-serviceman.
‘Did you serve here?’ she asked politely, as they all stared at the forlorn building. This man would be too young to have served during the war, she estimated. He could only be in his sixties. It emerged that he had served here in the 1960s with 9 Fleet Air Support Squadron, flying Dakotas.
‘That’s how we met.’ His wife was clearly eager to tell her story. ‘I come from Town Malling. My parents wanted to lock me in my room when the Yanks arrived, and when they found out I’d taken up with Ed, they said I’d come to grief.’
‘Instead she came to Arizona. Best flight I ever made,’ her husband chimed in. ‘Sure is sad to look at this place now. At least the Rose and Crown’s still going in Malling.’
‘That’s where we met. We came back for Sally B though,’ his wife explained.
The man laughed at Georgia’s puzzled face. ‘The Liberator used for the filming of a TV series.’
One more story, one more memory, still as vivid as when it had happened – as it must be to the 362 Squadron pilots, she imagined. To her they looked weary old men, but to themselves they were once again twenty-year-old men fighting a war for survival. Or was it the 1970s those five men thought about when they gathered now, she wondered as she walked back to the clubhouse. This former airfield belonged to a time far in the past by the time Fairfax was killed in 1975, and there was no logical reason for her and Peter to be here at all. Logically the reason for Fairfax’s death would lie in the 1970s, so why had her father taken it into his head that they should not only revisit Woodring Manor Hotel, but also walk the ground that had once been West Malling airfield? If she were honest with herself, she too now felt the need to be here. And where that admission led, she decided not to contemplate.
By the time she reached the clubhouse again, Peter was as usual best mates with the bar staff, and insisted that they should also visit the country park just out of West Malling village. Its landscaped gardens would have been on the route walked by the 26 Squadron pilots on the way to their mess at the Manor House, which she realized must have been the eighteenth-century
building she had seen when she had driven through West Malling to meet Peter.
The rain was falling more steadily now, and once in the parking area of the gardens, Peter elected to stay put. Manoeuvring his wheelchair along muddy paths in the rain was not his favourite pastime, he said. Georgia was tempted herself; this was a bleak place in the rain, though in sunshine it must be lovely. She refused to be defeated, however, so donned her anorak and hood and set off along the lakeside path to look at the manor perched on the hillside on the far side of the road. It told her nothing, though its former interior must have had the same atmosphere as Woodring. Not far away were the ruins of St Leonard’s Tower and she made a quick detour to see it on the way back. In 1940, perhaps, Fairfax might have come this way to visit the 26 Squadron mess bar, and strolled in the grounds after flying finished for the day. She shivered. The tower reminded her of Lady Rosamund’s Tower in Friday Street, scene of their previous case, and this place seemed to have much the same atmosphere, especially in this gloomy weather.
Were the ghosts of the past watching her as she walked back to the car? And was she disappointed or relieved that they seemed to be offering her no definite link?
*
Once back in Haden Shaw, Peter immediately logged on to Suspects Anonymous to record the information that Georgia had brought back from Jack Hardcastle. She watched him despondently, with the feeling that so far they were only circling round the case – if it could be called that – without any idea where the core lay, let alone any hope of reaching it.
‘Sylvia Lee,’ Peter murmured, as he opened a new file. ‘Golden girl of the 1950s stage. Married Richard Vane, later Sir Richard Vane. She later made a skilful transformation into a straight actress and now plays very ancient ladies in TV cameo roles.’
‘Jack said she was only a casual girlfriend of Fairfax for a week or two during the war, and mentioned nothing about her being around in the 1970s.’
‘Cherchez la femme. We don’t know what’s relevant yet, and what isn’t. Anyway, nothing about the Battle of Britain was casual,’ Peter said firmly, clicking save on the file. ‘They lived intensely, therefore they loved intensely. Each day could be their last so it had to be made to count for something. Would you make love to Luke casually in those circumstances?’