by Mike Ripley
For once, Lord Breeze had accurately read Luke’s mind.
‘I admit, I was surprised to get the call – from an equerry or a private secretary, of course. I mean, I’m as loyal a monarchist as the next man and have always done my best for queen and country as I saw it, but I’m under no illusions. I got my title for political services, for being useful to the government, not for slaying dragons or raising levies to go fight the French. So I’m the least likely person the Palace would turn to, unless they wanted a three-bedroom semi in Doncaster or similar, except for the fact that Lavinia’s husband is involved.’
‘Lavinia?’
‘My daughter. Her husband is that wastrel Oliver Grieg Bell.’
‘I’m sorry, Lord Breeze, but could you be clearer?’
‘Well, my involvement in this affair is all because of my son-in-law Oliver and his rather bizarre ideas about the Abdication Treasure.’
‘Treasure?’ Luke spoke far more loudly than he had intended, glanced automatically towards the bar and was reassured that the three basic tenets shared by diplomatic barman and wise monkeys, to neither hear, see, nor speak evil were being observed. Nonetheless, he lowered his voice. ‘Abdication Treasure? What on earth is that?’
‘Clearly it’s all nonsense; a myth, a legend, no more than scurrilous gossip, but it hangs around the house like a problem with the drains. Of course, I knew the stories when I bought the place – dirt cheap as it happens, as it was in a terrible state of repair and death duties would make sure there would be no money to spend on it – but I didn’t pay them any mind as I intended to raze the place to the ground and slap up a few dozen semis with garages, all mod cons and a river view for those buyers willing to cough up the premium. And that’s what I would have done except the County Council Planning Department – or the Gestapo as we in the trade call them – plus the tweedy county set, local historians, wildlife lovers and the National Trust brigade all started to object; historic building and all that. Trouble was my flaming daughter sided with them and threatened to go to the press. That would have been a nice story for the Sunday rags, I don’t think. So I thought I’d cut my losses. I sold off some of the land to the local farmers – there were no objections there, I can tell you – and I gave Lavinia the hall as a wedding present when she got hitched to Oliver. That’s Oliver Grieg Bell, by the way. Not heard of him? Don’t worry, neither had I until I was called on to give Lavinia away, but the point is Oliver fell for this Abdication Treasure fairy story hook, line and sinker.’
Luke held up a hand; a hand which had brought traffic to a halt on the Holloway Road during rush hour in its day.
‘For the sake of my poor policeman’s brain, could I clarify a few things, Lord Breeze?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then let me ask questions and you give simple answers that I can understand. Fair?’
Lord Breeze raised his eyebrows in resigned acceptance of his guest’s clear lack of intelligence and semaphored for another drink until the Easter Island statue behind the bar sprang in action. Luke took his silence as agreement.
‘The house you gave your daughter is supposed to contain this “Abdication Treasure” whatever that is, correct?’
Lord Breeze nodded as he drank.
‘Am I to assume that your son-in-law, Mr Bell, is actively looking for it?’
Another nod.
‘Yet he doesn’t know what this treasure is, let alone where it is?’
‘Small details like that would not worry Oliver. The boy’s a moron.’
‘So what are his chances of finding this mysterious treasure?’
‘Middling to none, I would say, if he was on his own. He’s been busy ripping up floorboards and knocking holes in the walls, though he could pull the hall down about his ears for all I care – that’s what I would have done if I’d had my way.’
‘Hall? You’ve called it a hall twice now. Where exactly is this place?’ Luke twisted his neck muscles against his shirt collar to ease the tingling sensation as hairs began to stand on end, a feeling every policeman knew was not an old wives’ tale.
‘Heronhoe Hall,’ said Breeze. ‘A dreadful dump, terribly run-down, good for nothing except redevelopment in my opinion; formerly the manor house of a place called Heronhoe. You’ll never have heard of it. It’s …’
‘In Suffolk, near the coast, down the road from Pontisbright,’ said Luke.
Lord Breeze looked surprised – Luke doubted he could ever look impressed by anything other than a balance sheet.
‘That’s right.’
‘And it explains Campion, I suppose. He never could resist a treasure hunt.’
‘Ah, yes, you would know of the Pontisbright connection. Campion married the sister of the earl, didn’t he?’
‘I believe the first time they met was in Pontisbright,’ said Luke thoughtfully. ‘It’s the sort of place where one can meet a future wife.’
Lord Breeze ignored the poignant pause the policeman had introduced and galloped on.
‘Naturally, the Earl of Pontisbright would have – should have – been the natural go-between on this matter, but he can never be found when he’s needed. I don’t think he’s ever been into the House, let alone made a speech here and he lives abroad mostly. South Africa, I think.’
‘Last reports were that Hal, the “young earl” as they used to call him, had moved to South America,’ said Luke.
‘Africa got too boring for him, eh? Well, good luck to him. The upshot is that as the father of Lavinia, who is now Mrs Oliver Grieg Bloody Bell, I have drawn the short straw and got involved in this stupid treasure business, and I’m now getting you involved too.’
‘How?’
‘You’re the one who is going to have to lean on Campion.’
‘But you still haven’t told me how Campion is involved.’
‘He’s down there at Heronhoe at this very moment; supposedly, he’s with the film company but …’
‘What film company? Are they looking for this treasure as well?’
‘Oh, damn the treasure! There is no treasure! It’s all just a story. Look, it all stems from the Thirties. Long before anyone in this country knew that the Prince of Wales was carrying on with that divorced woman Mrs Simpson, the pair of them slipped out of London to do their carrying-on at Heronhoe Hall as guests of the then owner, a chap called Wemyss-Grendle – Captain Wemyss-Grendle – who had been in the Household Cavalry, I believe, and used to go point-to-pointing with the prince. Anyway, Heronhoe provided a nice little love nest as there was also a useful cover story on hand if the prince needed it. You see, they’d just discovered an interesting bit of archaeology on the edge of the Heronhoe estate, an Anglo-Saxon boat burial.’
‘And that’s where the treasure was?’
‘No, no, no, I told you there is no treasure and there certainly wasn’t any found in that boat burial. God knows, I paid enough cash out on surveys and reports when I bought the place to be sure of that. It wasn’t like the famous one up the coast at Sutton Hoo that they found in 1939, this was a boat burial where the only thing they buried was the flaming boat! Still, archaeological digs were all the rage back then, and the prince naturally took an interest. If anyone spotted him lurking about the place he had a good excuse to be there, but nobody ever did, or if they did they didn’t tell the press. The locals round there must have known but they kept quiet, and the prince was grateful for that. When it came to the Abdication Crisis in ’thirty-six those dirty weekends in Heronhoe were quickly forgotten, except not by the prince. The story goes – and it is a story as far as I’m concerned – that when he married Mrs Simpson, in 1937, that would be, he actually sent a valuable thank-you gift to Heronhoe. That was what became known as the Abdication Treasure, although there’s no record of anything going to Heronhoe Hall, or of anybody ever receiving anything from the Duke of Windsor, and nobody anywhere claims to have actually seen anything resembling treasure.’
‘So how is Albert Campion involved?’
‘He’s in thick with the damned film company,’ said Lord Breeze in a tone which suggested Luke had not been listening carefully enough. ‘A foreign one as well, though why the Eyeties are involved I really don’t know.’
‘Eyeties … Italians? What have they got to do with it?’
‘You may well ask.’
‘I just did,’ said Luke without a smile.
‘I don’t know why but all those countries who’ve got rid of their monarchies – Italy, Spain, France …’
‘America?’
‘Worst of the lot. Anyway, all these so-called modern republics can’t get enough of our royal family and this Italian bunch are making a film about Edward and Mrs Simpson. They’re filming at Heronhoe, recreating the visit the prince made to the archaeological dig just before he snuck off with Mrs Simpson. Funnily enough, the boat burial is on the estuary and it’s nearer to the village of Sweethearting than it is to Heronhoe, which sounds just the place for a romantic tryst, doesn’t it?’
‘If you say so, Lord Breeze, but what part is Campion playing in all this?’
‘Ah, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s the cause for concern …’ he jerked his head, presumably indicating the direction of Buckingham Palace, though he was several points of the compass out, ‘… up the road. Campion’s got himself involved with these film people as some sort of technical advisor and he’s wangled leading roles for that son of his and his daughter-in-law.’
‘Rupert and Perdita? What are they doing there?’
‘Didn’t I say? It’s what they call a dramatized documentary, so they have actors playing the roles of the real people. Young Campion is playing Edward VIII, or the Prince of Wales as he was at the time.’
‘Don’t tell me … Perdita’s playing Mrs Simpson.’ Luke allowed his eyelids to droop.
‘She is indeed, which hasn’t pleased you-know-who one bit.’ Again Lord Breeze flicked his head in the direction he thought The Mall lay. ‘Not a good career move, if you ask me, but that’s not really the point.’
‘Is there a point to all this?’ Luke snapped more sharply than he had intended.
‘Of course there is. Nobody can possibly believe that Campion is down there for anything other than the Abdication Treasure, and this filming business is just to disguise his true purpose. I’ve done my best to try and stop my daughter and her idiot husband hunting for it – now you’re needed to lean on Campion and make him stop looking.’
‘But you’re not sure he is, are you?’
‘He must be. You said yourself that treasure hunting was right up Campion’s street.’
‘And you said the treasure doesn’t exist.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Lord Breeze said firmly, ‘and I have been instructed to tell you to tell Campion that unless he wants to risk embarrassing the Palace he’d better lay off. There’s no such thing as the Abdication Treasure, so there’s nothing to find and Campion had better make sure he doesn’t find it!’
TWO
Night Crow
Not even the most optimistic of estate agents – a profession which by custom and training always looked on the rose-tinted side of life – would have described Heronhoe Hall as a lucky house. Not, at least, for its owners down the years.
Built at the very sunset of the first Elizabeth’s reign for an Ipswich merchant who then found he had invested too much money and far too much hope in a disastrous venture in the New World, the house passed almost immediately on completion to one John Weems, sometimes known as Johannes Wiems (the documentation is patchy, the signatures erratic). The new owner prospered under the new king James, possibly by changing his signature, yet again, to John Wemyss and thus claiming some distant association with the Scottish clan of that ilk. No careful scrutiny of every twig of the branches of that proud family tree, however, has ever confirmed a connection.
Whatever the provenance of John Wemyss, he acquired a sturdy manor house and some 300 acres of park land for hunting across, which was to become his downfall, quite literally, as he was thrown from his horse while riding to hounds. One of his sons, another John, also died falling from a horse at Marston Moor in 1644, though not before being shot by a Royalist musketeer. A younger son, clearly influenced by the family’s unfortunate relationship with horses, opted for the safety of a naval career only to find, at the hands of the Dutch during the Battle of Sole Bay in 1672, that safety was a relative concept. Undeterred, when a Wemyss was called upon to support king (or queen) and country, he would answer bravely, though the casualty rate among the lords of Heronhoe manor suggested perhaps too recklessly. The inheritors of Heronhoe Hall fell with appalling regularity in numerous foreign fields at the hands of a wide variety of enemies: at Ramilles (the French) in 1706, at the siege of Gibraltar (the Spanish) in 1727 and in the forests of the Ohio Valley in America (a Delaware or possibly a Shawnee native) in 1757.
By now the Wemyss male line was exhausted and it was a daughter, Pamela Wemyss, who not only inherited but married well, which is to say richly. Her husband, Henry Grendle, who suggested the family name of Wemyss-Grendle, was no man of action and happy to stay close to home, if only to keep an eye on the vast number of workmen he employed. It was he who financed the rebuilding of the hall, adding an imposing Georgian frontage faced with tall sash windows looking out on a walled rose garden, an Orangery, perhaps more in hope than expectation and, internally, an elegant curving staircase and several water closets. Henry Wemyss-Grendle, having endured his first winter in Heronhoe and exposure to the winds which swept in over the salt marshes direct from Russia, also insisted on installing, in every room, one of the fashionable iron-hob grate fireplaces from the Carron Foundry in Falkirk. It was said that Heronhoe Hall was the biggest single order Carron supplied outside of London in 1785 and that Henry had been one of their most valued customers. It was therefore somewhat ironic that the eldest Wemyss-Grendle son was killed by a shot from a short cannon known as a ‘Carronade’ at the Battle of Plattsburg (Americans) in 1814, the Carronade being a successful diversification in the product portfolio of that noted Scottish ironworks and one sold with impunity to those pugnacious ex-colonials.
Wemyss-Grendle males fared little better than their Wemyss/Weems forebears when it came to following the flag away from Heronhoe. There was further pruning of the root stock at Inkerman (Russians) in 1854, Isandlwana (Zulus) in 1879 and Peking (Chinese Boxers) in 1900.
It was a local saying that a new owner of Heronhoe Hall got the best view of a sunrise over a salt marsh estuary anywhere on the east coast – but not for long.
Amazingly, the childless bachelor Gerald Wemyss-Grendle survived two world wars, one as a young cavalry lieutenant under Allenby in Palestine (Turks) and one as a Home Guard captain (Germans), only to be forced, in 1966, to sell the hall and the estate to Lord Breeze, not entirely because of the lack of an heir but rather the catastrophic mismanagement of his finances, primarily and ironically due to a long series of misjudgements when it came to the horses on offer at Newmarket race course.
Heronhoe Hall did prove lucky for Lord Breeze in the sense that Captain Wemyss-Grendle was forced by circumstances to accept a low valuation of the house and park and, though denied planning permission for his more expansive plans, selling half the parkland off to local farmers did recoup the noble lord’s cash outlay as well as providing him with a ready-made wedding present for his daughter. The magnificent profits he had envisaged did not materialize, but he contented himself that he had managed to break even on the deal. His self-satisfaction lasted until his daughter Lavinia began to entreat him in ways in which only a favourite daughter could for assistance with the few necessary extras which Heronhoe Hall needed in order for it to be habitable and a suitable place in which to raise – at some future time yet to be determined – a grandchild or two.
As Lavinia was Lord Breeze’s only daughter, her requests were impossible to refuse despite their frequency, and at first they seemed eminently reasonable. All the sash windows
on the hall’s Georgian frontage – a considerable number – would need replacing, ideally with double-glazed replacements or at the very least ones which closed properly. Those heavy black iron Carron fire grates would have to be ripped out during the redecoration; even the Victorians thought them old fashioned. They would, in any case, have been made redundant by the oil-fired central heating which would be installed, along with a new kitchen range with all modern labour-saving devices as the new occupants of the hall could not afford to employ any staff.
Nor, as Lord Breeze grumbled to himself, did it appear they could afford to repair the extensive roof, repoint the numerous chimneys, install a damp course where there had never been one and replace the wall plaster in the rooms where it was all too obvious there had never been any. As for the gardens, Lord Breeze’s advice to his daughter was that she and her new husband should roll up their sleeves and do the spadework, quite literally, themselves. He had presented them both with sturdy leather gardening gloves and the encouragement that they should begin with the kitchen garden rather than the rose garden, as that way they could grow something to eat.
Not that there was any likelihood that Lord Breeze would allow his daughter to starve. Her husband, however, was possibly another matter.
Oliver Grieg Bell would not have been Lord Breeze’s first choice as a husband for Lavinia – not that he had the slightest say in the matter, for Lavinia was an adult who knew her own mind and had done so for many years. Indeed, Gus Breeze had told his fellow noble Lords, in the members’ bar rather than the chamber, of course, that the government had not needed legislation to lower the age of majority to eighteen as his daughter had automatically assumed it at thirteen. Long before she even contemplated marriage, it was clear that the choice of a husband would be Lavinia’s and Lavinia’s alone, and when she did choose Oliver Grieg Bell, no one else had a say in the matter, possibly not even Oliver himself.