Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Of course I remember them, but I suspect they are all in museums now, as perhaps we should be.’

  Campion led the way into the kitchen where the Bells were unpacking boxes of groceries into cupboards and a bulging refrigerator with puppy-like glee. Lavinia broke off from cataloguing what she clearly regarded as her personal Heronhoe Horde to forage for glasses and a bottle-opener and Campion played barman after selecting two pint bottles of Watney’s Brown Ale from a green plastic crate.

  ‘Do Harrods give you fourpence back on the empties?’ he mused as he poured.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Lugg, raising his glass religiously to his lips. ‘I’m sure I saw a couple of ham and egg pies in one of them ’ampers.’

  Mr Campion raised his glass in salute.

  ‘I’m sure you did, but they are not for your waistline, which is quite ample enough. These victuals are for the members of my little archaeological expedition who are being quartered here at the hall. You will not be staying here, old chum, you will be …’ he paused for dramatic effect, ‘… going undercover.’

  The bald man inhaled another draught of beer, one quizzical eyebrow raised, then dabbed his lips on the back of the hand surrounding his glass. He nodded his huge head towards Oliver and Lavinia, who were still as busy as squirrels in late autumn, and it was only when Campion nodded, indicating that he had no objection to speaking in their presence, that Lugg continued.

  ‘Good job I packed me country casuals then, so’s I can blend in with the yokels, though I’ve always said it lowers yer dignity if you dress too comfortable.’

  Mr Campion’s large round spectacles scanned Lugg from shiny dome to equally shiny size-twelve brown brogues, taking in the full ensemble of a black blazer with an unidentifiable badge stitched on to the breast pocket, a worsted waistcoat, its buttons stretched to bursting point, and pinstriped trousers from a morning suit which had presumably passed high noon.

  ‘I thought you had come in character,’ said Campion, ‘though I should have known you have not yet plumbed the sartorial depths you are capable of.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about yours truly. I can blend into most places except nunneries and temperance meetings. I’ve come wiv some old clobber in my traps so I can be either a poet or a peasant, as circumstances demand.’

  ‘I think I would be intimidated by both personae,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but for the moment I simply want you to do what you do best, which is hang around and keep your ears wide open down in Heronhoe.’

  ‘Is that where I’m to be billeted then?’

  ‘It is, in a wonderful, olde-worlde hostelry offering the finest food and wines as well as panoramic views over the estuary – you do realize I am lying through my dentures, don’t you? It’s called the Hythe Inn. They have rooms – well, one room – and I’m sure you won’t mind sharing with the odd lascar or cast-adrift pirate if need be. But do be wary if they offer you a pull on their opium pipe.’

  ‘Hhhhrumph!’ Lugg snorted. ‘So what am I listening out for wiv my ears akimbo?’

  ‘Oh, the usual sort of public bar gossip which seems to flow to you like iron filings to a magnet. The words “treasure” and possibly “Heronhoe Horde” should go straight into your notebook, though of course I don’t expect you to actually carry a notebook. Don’t want you mistaken for an off-duty Peeler.’

  ‘Perish the thought! Anything specific on your radar I should be aware of?’

  ‘We had a little break-in here the other night but Oliver saw him off very sharply.’ Campion glanced towards his host but Oliver was too busy stacking tins of ham and salmon as if they were chips on a roulette table to eavesdrop.

  ‘Bit of a botched job,’ Campion said, lowering his voice. ‘Didn’t get anything and I’m sure our burglar was a local.’

  ‘Get a look at ’im?’ asked Lugg with professional interest.

  ‘Only from behind, in the dark, tearing down the drive pursued by some .410 buckshot, none of which hit as far as I could tell. Medium height, thin, dark coat flapping – made me think of a crow running across a lawn. I know that would not stand up in court, not even a court of crows, if you’ll allow me a bon mot.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Lugg, then he too dropped his voice. ‘You going to tell me what’s really going on here?’

  ‘Remember when we were here together the last time, back before the war?’

  ‘’Course I do, I remembers all my trips out to this neck of the woods. It’s me getting back to nachure comin’ out ’ere, and I’ve always loved nachure. That’d be the time we were on point patrol for you-know-who. Year before the Abdication, weren’t it?’

  ‘Exactly. Just keep that in mind, will you? And also, if you can manage to hold two thoughts simultaneously, keep an ear out for anything that reminds you of our adventures in Clerkenwell.’

  ‘Clerkenwell? What’s that got to do with the price of fish?’

  Campion smiled beatifically. ‘I hope something and also nothing, but don’t worry, my faithful gundog, all will become clear within the week and – who knows? – you might get a part in the film.’

  ‘Film? Nobody said anything about a film. Who do I play?’

  Lugg drained his glass and plonked it down on the kitchen table, then he straightened his great bulk, fastened the middle button of his blazer and stood at what, at his time of life, passed for attention.

  ‘A bit part is all you’re likely to be offered, I’m afraid,’ said Mr Campion, ‘as a Thirties’ amateur archaeologist climbing up and down the Sweethearting Barrow, perhaps doing a bit of digging in the background. In long shot, I think they call it.’

  ‘Do I get appearance money?’ The big man’s eyes had become slits.

  ‘Board and lodging, and your bar bill at the Hythe Inn paid for.’

  ‘I see. How about a stunt double for the dangerous bits?’

  ‘A double? For you? Where on earth would we find one of those?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Campion, could I ask about this film crew?’ Lavinia turned from a high cupboard now happily groaning with victuals. In her arms she clutched six large tubes of chocolate digestive biscuits to her chest. ‘Will they be joining us here at the hall?’

  ‘I’m not expecting them to, Mrs Bell; in fact, I’m told they have made their own arrangements to stay in Heronhoe.’ Campion exchanged glances with Lugg. ‘Where their arrival will almost certainly be noted in the newsroom that is the Hythe Inn.’

  Lugg tapped his nose with a sausage of a forefinger, indicating ‘message received’.

  ‘They will certainly want to film the exterior of the hall, I would imagine, but I hope they won’t trouble you too much. Most of their work will be done over at the dig site at Sweethearting, which is where Rupert and Perdita will be staying.’

  ‘Rupert?’ asked Oliver as if just tuning in to the conversation. He had been emptying a vegetable box and the last items – a pair of cabbages – he held balanced, one in each hand rather like a pantomime scales of justice.

  ‘My son-and-heir-to-not-very-much,’ beamed Campion, ‘and his wife. They are both aspiring thespians, which I think comes from the Greek for unemployed.’

  ‘They the stars of the show, then?’ grunted Lugg.

  ‘Of course they are. If a film producer can’t exercise a little bit of nepotism now and then, who can?’

  At approximately the same moment but seventy-five miles away to the south and west, the unpacking of a delivery of a different kind was also taking place in a kitchen – the kitchen of a small, unobtrusive Italian restaurant in Clerkenwell called La Pergoletta.

  It was the sort of Italian restaurant which neither claimed nor aspired to be on the same level as Mario and Franco’s Terrazza, a fashionable world away in Romilly Street, and its menu certainly never aspired to offer anything as exotic as vitello tonnato or fegatini di pollo alla Siracusa, but then neither did it have main courses costing over sixteen shillings nor a half-crown cover charge. A peripatetic restaurant critic – a rare sight indeed in Clerkenwe
ll – might have sarcastically suggested that the Pergoletta, with its Formica tables, dusty wallpaper and faded watercolours showing Vesuvius, the Colosseum and the leaning tower of Pisa, was more suited to a clientele which believed that spaghetti only came out of tins in a sweet neon sauce or, in its raw state, grew on trees.

  The restaurant, with its frontage of peeled paint and cracked plaster, did however enjoy a location which, with a kindly eye, could be seen as picturesque. Situated on the corner of Exmouth Market, where market traders specializing in fruit, vegetables and flowers provided a colourful backdrop, and in the shade of London’s most Italianate church, Holy Redeemer, with its own personal campanile and an interior based on Santo Spirito in Florence, gave the area an air, albeit a shabby one, of a Little Italy abroad. The only thing spoiling that impression was the giant GPO sorting office known as The Mount to those who worked there, across the Farringdon Road, but hungry and fortunately undemanding postal workers provided the Pergoletta with a regular delivery of customers.

  With lunchtime service now over the restaurant was empty and the kitchen staff had finished their cleaning chores in double-quick time and dispersed, having been told that ‘Donna D’ required the kitchen for stocktaking purposes, though the stock that was being checked had nothing to do with the restaurant business.

  Two men, dressed alike in tight blue jeans and black leather jackets, had unloaded metal cases from the back of a left-hand drive Citroën Ami 6 with French number plates. They now stood, surrounded by their shiny luggage in the restaurant’s kitchen where Daniela Petraglia leaned against a cold cooking range, her high-heeled boots crossed at the ankles, smoking a Sobranie Black Russian cigarette.

  ‘Gianfranco, Maurizio,’ said the woman, acknowledging their arrival.

  Both men nodded respectfully and said together: ‘Donna Daniela.’

  ‘Did you have any trouble crossing the Channel?’ she asked in Italian.

  ‘No problem at all. The French customs guys are always happy to see foreigners leave their country,’ said the man called Gianfranco.

  ‘And the car is clean?’

  ‘We bought it legally, but it cannot be traced back to our family,’ answered Maurizio.

  ‘Good, very good,’ said Daniela, blowing a smoke ring towards a faded Vietato Fumare sign stuck to the side of a tall upright fridge. ‘What about the English at Dover?’

  ‘They were only interested in how many cigarettes we had bought in the duty-free shop on the ferry. They come down much harder on their own people and they take pleasure in frightening British drivers. Stronzi, all of them.’

  ‘Well then, open up.’ The woman waved her cigarette to the kitchen work surface next to the sink and, after moving a large pockmarked chopping board, Maurizio lifted one of the metal cases on to it, snapped the fasteners and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in cut-out segments of a black foam plastic block, were a variety of camera lenses and filters.

  Maurizio pushed his fingers down the sides of the foam lining and ran them down the width of the case, releasing some hidden mechanism. He lifted the pliant foam block out of the rigid case and laid it carefully on the work surface to reveal a second layer of cushioning in which lay three small automatic pistols, each in its own perfectly sculptured shallow grave.

  Donna Daniela plucked one of the guns from the foam and examined it expertly, releasing the magazine and working the slide, along which was stamped P Beretta 6.35 BREVETTATA.

  ‘Ladies’ gun,’ said Gianfranco sourly.

  The woman flashed him the sort of steely look that any male should be wary of, let alone when a female was holding a weapon.

  ‘Good thing I’m a lady, then,’ she said. ‘You have a problem with them?’

  ‘They have no stopping power,’ said Gianfranco nervously. ‘The British call them the Beretta .25 and it was James Bond’s favourite gun until they made him change because it was only effective if used at very close range.’

  Daniela weighed the gun in her right hand, reinserted the magazine and looked carefully at the pistol’s safety catch as if wondering whether it was worth engaging it.

  ‘James Bond wasn’t real,’ she said, ‘but I am, and I am very good at getting into close range. Now, check the camera and the sound gear. Make sure everything is working. We have to look professional and I do not want to come back to London for any reason. If we are successful, we will use the air ferry from Southend to Calais. It is the quickest way back to Europe.’

  ‘Will we be leaving in a hurry?’ asked Maurizio.

  ‘Who knows? We will have to see how our little drama plays out.’

  ‘Have you checked out the actors?’

  Donna Daniela nodded and unslung her soft brown leather shoulder bag.

  ‘They are young, pretty and stupid,’ she said. ‘And, other than needing their hair to be dyed, they are therefore perfect for their roles.’

  ‘You are not expecting trouble from them?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said the woman, slipping the Beretta into her bag and zipping it shut.

  ‘So why do you need the gun?’

  ‘Oh, that’s not for them …’

  SIX

  Royal Welcome

  The younger Campions left London in Perdita’s red Austin Mini Cooper, taking the Epping New Road through the Forest and reflecting on the local names – The Warren Hill, Cuckoo Pits, the Ching river, Almshouse Plain and Fairmead (not ‘Fair Maid’) Bottom – which reflected an antiquity not long for this world. The signs were everywhere: large, earth-moving machinery parked at the side of the road, dormant but ready to roar into life at any moment, advertising hoardings giving dire warnings of the advent of new desirable homes, and everywhere the temporary site offices in which surveyors and contractors made their campaign plans.

  They cut across country to Chipping Ongar and then picked up the old Roman road at Chelmsford. Between there and Colchester Rupert gave a running commentary as he drove, pointing out that settlements along the way such as Witham and Kelvedon would, he guaranteed, be eight miles apart as that was the distance between Roman staging posts on a major itinerary, as they would have called it. Going the other way, it was also the road which Boadicea, the vengeful queen of the Iceni tribe, had lead her army south towards London in order to sack and burn the city as she had done in Colchester, which was of course the capital of Britain at the time.

  Perdita had listened patiently for twenty minutes before advising her husband that it was now accepted that the queen of the Iceni who rebelled against the Romans was called Boudicca, which experts in the field spelled with one ‘c’ rather than two, and not Boadicea, which was a Victorian affectation. More to the point, she wondered why her husband was taking such an interest in ancient history, to which Rupert replied it was a question of getting into character. They would be filming on an archaeological dig, so he had been mugging up on archaeology.

  With the sympathetic patience that recently married women perfect remarkably quickly, Perdita pointed out that any archaeology they encountered was likely to be Anglo-Saxon rather than Roman in period, but in any case as Rupert would not be playing an archaeologist but a famous member of a royal family on a sightseeing tour instead, she added sweetly that all he had to ‘mug up’ on was being royal.

  Beyond Colchester, they stopped for a ploughman’s lunch in a smart, timber-framed pub in Stratford St Mary and, between chunks of bread, bites of strong cheddar and the dissection of a giant pickled onion, Perdita asked her husband if he knew of the King’s Head in Sweethearting, their next stop now they had crossed the border into Suffolk.

  Rupert admitted that although he had visited Pontisbright as a lad, he had never ventured as far as Sweethearting or Heronhoe or, if he had, he had no viable memory of either place but he was sure that the locals there would be similar to the inhabitants of Pontisbright.

  When Perdita had asked him in what way they would be similar, Rupert had replied simply, ‘They’ll be interesting.’

  The King’s
Head, the first dwelling of Sweethearting as approached from Pontisbright, was not Perdita’s idea of a village pub in what parliamentary supporters of the Development of Tourism Act (though perhaps not Lord Breeze) might have generously called ‘Constable Country’.

  This was not a thatched-roofed, roses-around-the-door village pub with its plasterwork painted in traditional ‘Suffolk pink’. It was an angular, brick-and-tile building, its windows and doors badly in need of a coat of any colour of paint. It was both ugly and out of proportion; clearly too big for the needs of the village of Sweethearting, which was visible in its entirety along the road from the empty pub car park. Perhaps it had been built when an influx of tourists – possibly cycling clubs – were expected in the summer months, but then the First World War had intervened. Whatever and whenever its origins, it had seen better days and even the pub’s sign hanging over the road from a free-standing pole was faded and tinged with mould. Fortunately the king it depicted was a generic medieval one and so badly painted that the sign’s condition would hardly be a matter of public concern, though it would probably find favour among republicans.

  ‘We should have got here during opening hours,’ said Perdita as the pair of them, luggage in hand, approached the front door of the pub, framed by a slightly leaning porch which seemed to do little except shelter a thin white sign announcing that Joshua P. Yallop was licensed to sell alcohol both on and off the premises. ‘The place looks deserted.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Rupert, rapping his knuckles on one of the panes of glass in the upper half of the pub’s door, ‘the English country pub, and especially the East Anglian country pub, is famed for its hospitality, and the staff are probably busy roasting chestnuts or baking bread for us, or slipping hot warming pans into our bed.’

  Behind the glass a dark curtain was whipped aside and a face appeared: a round, female face wearing pink plastic-framed National Health spectacles repaired at the bridge with a plaster. Beneath the spectacles a toothless mouth opened, and from it a muffled voice made its feelings known through the door.