Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  ‘A popular chap, certainly,’ admitted Campion, ‘and very personable, but lacking in judgement. Visiting Germany and being chummy with Hitler, Goering and Himmler and that gang was a big mistake.’

  ‘That may be, but that was 1937, after he got the push, but perhaps you’re right – he didn’t show much judgement when it came to that woman.’

  ‘You mean he bought the book rather than renewed his library card?’

  ‘I don’t think David ever thought of it like that. He was soft, you see, always falling in love as he saw it, though it was infatuation in my opinion. With Wallis Simpson he got it worse than usual and then when people like Baldwin told him he couldn’t have her and the crown he went skulking off like a spoiled child. You ever meet Baldwin?’

  ‘Actually I did, through his socialist son. For a time we were both members of the Savage Club.’

  ‘What I most remember was that awful pipe Baldwin smoked. My God, what a stink!’

  ‘He smoked a blend called Presbyterian Mixture as I recall. It was a tobacco made before the first war for the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and dear old Stanley had supplies of it posted down from Glasgow. But that’s neither here nor there; how did the Prime Minister cut across your bows?’

  ‘Horses,’ said Wemyss-Grendle firmly. ‘It was always horses that got me into trouble, far more than females ever did. David, when he was Prince of Wales, loved to ride point-to-point. Trouble was he wasn’t terribly good at staying in the saddle and he took a few serious falls, so much so the palace got worried, Baldwin got worried and then David’s mother put her foot down. She was a formidable female by all accounts.’

  ‘She was indeed,’ said Campion automatically.

  ‘Upshot was David had to promise to give up point-to-pointing and was encouraged to take up golf.’

  ‘But he still came down to Heronhoe and rode your horses, didn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly did! He played hooky whenever he could, many a time when he was supposed to be taking the sea air here in Frinton. I’d get a telephone call telling me to “saddle up” and David would turn up and we’d go charging all over the park, whooping like drunken cowboys. ’Course, we had to keep it under wraps and his visits were always hush-hush as the reptiles were always on his tail.’

  ‘By reptiles, I assume you mean members of His Majesty’s far-from-honourable press corps?’

  ‘Damn right there, Campion. The newspaper proprietors up in London played the game and kept things quiet. Looking after their knighthoods most likely, but out in the provinces there was always a reptile lurking in the bushes hoping to catch the prince and Mrs Simpson at it. They couldn’t wait to break the story, hanging around like vultures they were.’

  ‘Oh, I hardly think …’ Campion started, but the captain, even though his glass was empty, was in full flow.

  ‘Nobody knew anything about their affair – not here anyway. They might have done on the Continent …’ Wemyss-Grendle grimaced at the thought of Europe, ‘… or in America, but apart from the society circle in London, the population was kept in the dark until that blasted newspaper in Ipswich smashed the code of silence.’

  ‘I think it was actually the Yorkshire Post which broke the story,’ said Campion, ‘though I have heard the Ipswich version bandied about, probably because that’s where Mrs Simpson was granted her divorce. That’s all slightly beside the point, though. Can you remember when the prince came down to look at the Sweethearting Mound?’

  ‘Of course I can; I’m not senile yet!’ snapped the captain. ‘And we called it the Heronhoe Tumulus in those days. You were there yourself – you and your pet bulldog there. Are you trying to trick me into something?’

  ‘Not at all, Gerald, I simply want to make sure we’re on the same page, so to speak. After all, it was thirty-five years ago, but you’re right; Lugg and I came down as the advance party – checking for reptiles as you might say, not that we found any.’

  ‘Pah! Didn’t look very far, did you?’

  Mr Campion’s eyes widened behind the lenses of his large round spectacles, but the flash of surprise was quickly replaced with steely concentration. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  The captain glanced once again at his empty glass and then, with his jaw jutting, stared up at Campion, who marvelled at how the belligerent old man was resorting to his natural state – that of the bully – even though he was in a sitting position and in a rocking chair to boot.

  ‘You two came swanning up from London and did your sniffer-dog act looking for microphones in the bedrooms and photographers in the bushes, and then you buggered off back to your clubs and cocktail bars after a swift jaunt into the countryside to laugh at us bumpkins. Never even bothered to go into Sweethearting, did you?’

  ‘Why should we have done that, Gerald?’ Campion’s voice was now as hard as his glare.

  ‘You might have come across that snooper Sam Salt, an oily little oik who worked for the local rag, the East Suffolk Courier. He was hanging around Sweethearting most days, covering the excavation of the Mound, waiting to report on the finding of the great Heronhoe Horde, except there wasn’t one. Not a sausage.’

  Campion slowly removed his spectacles, hauled a large white handkerchief from a trouser pocket and began to polish them with careful circular movements of finger and thumb. Wemyss-Grendle did not understand the importance of the gesture, though Lugg did and he sniffed loudly as if in approval.

  ‘I only heard about Sam Salt yesterday,’ Campion said slowly, ‘from Thomas Spark, the farmer, at Sweethearting.’

  ‘That land-grabber …’ muttered the captain, ‘… couldn’t wait to get his mucky little paws on park land. I couldn’t bear to sell to him and his frigid little wife.’

  Campion replaced his spectacles carefully and peered over the rims down at Wemyss-Grendle, who shrank into the back of the rocking chair. For a moment, the only sound in the room was that of Lugg breathing heavily through his nose.

  ‘Yes, I got the impression there was history there, between the hall and its neighbours.’ He spoke as if pronouncing a judgement and let his words hang over the captain’s head before continuing. ‘Mr Spark told me that his father, who was one of the volunteers on the Sweethearting excavation back in ’thirty-five, knew this Sam Salt, even had a bet with him about what they might find in the dig – something about a side of pork against a pocket watch, I believe. What happened to our intrepid local reporter?’

  ‘How should I know? I haven’t seen him for years, not since that summer as a matter of fact. Didn’t like the fellow – he was always sniffing around the girls in the village, and it wasn’t tit-bits of news he was after.’ The captain’s face twisted in an uncertain combination of a grin and a leer. ‘Very fond of the young females he was, if you get my drift.’

  ‘Must be something in the water up there,’ mused Lugg.

  ‘Any female in particular?’

  ‘Oh, there were plenty of willing young girls back then. They say this is the decade of free love and permissiveness but they don’t know what they’re talking about. Lots of ripe girls with little chance of snaring a husband, stuck in a backwater village with no cash even if there had been anything to spend it on. A lot of them were grateful for any hint of a good time.’

  The captain’s face had taken on an unhealthy glow and the hand holding his empty glass was shaking, but Campion’s disapproving stare broke what was in danger of becoming a reverie.

  ‘Salt was dead keen on one of the barmaids at the King’s Head in Sweethearting; used to hang around her like a lap dog with its tongue out. Mind you, you wouldn’t blame him if you’d known Elspeth; she was a little cracker with all the curves a man could want and all in the right places, and old enough not to know better.’

  ‘Elspeth?’ Campion asked with a sharpness which Lugg noticed but Wemyss-Grendle did not.

  ‘Very popular, Elspeth was, if you know what I mean,’ the captain smirked. ‘Poor Salt didn’t
stand much of chance with her, though it didn’t stop him trying. Elspeth always went for something a bit more glamorous, a bit more romantic than a provincial scribbler who wrote about garden fetes and flower shows.’

  ‘The sort of girl who would fall for a dashing horseman and country squire?’

  Wemyss-Grendle stiffened, unsure whether to feel insulted or be frightened.

  ‘I can’t deny I had my way with Elspeth Brunt – and I won’t, so don’t look at me like that. She was more than willing and there was no harm done, and anyway, I wasn’t the only one, especially during the war years. I even sent her a bottle of bubbly after she married that wop back in ’fifty-six.’

  ‘Would you please clarify that remark,’ said Campion with the severity of a cross-examining barrister.

  ‘I sent Elspeth a wedding present when she tied the knot with that Eyetie POW to show there were no hard feelings between us. Decent thing to do, I thought, given the fun we’d had.’

  ‘Had you offered marriage?’

  ‘Good God, no! Just fond of the gal, that was all, though I didn’t think she was showing much sense falling for that Italian Romeo, but at her age she wasn’t going to do much better.’

  ‘Italian?’ prompted Campion.

  ‘There were thousands of them in Suffolk, all prisoners of war from the North Africa campaign, and most of ’em were a damn sight happier to be over here rather than over there. They were put to work on the land and a lot of them stayed on after the war, married local girls and opened restaurants, like Stephano did.’

  ‘There’s a place called that in Heronhoe,’ said Lugg in a voice which brooked no argument.

  ‘That was his,’ said Wemyss-Grendle, ‘until a year ago. Now it’s run by a cousin of his called Rosario. Poor Elspeth died, you see. A stroke took her, sudden like, which is always the best way. Stephano said he couldn’t go on without her, leastwise not in Heronhoe, so he sold the restaurant and buggered off back to Italy to retire. Salerno, I think he said. He was going home to Salerno – yes, that was it, the place where the Allies landed during the war.’

  ‘This Stephano wouldn’t have been around in 1935, would he?’ Campion pointed out.

  ‘Not around here. Back then he’d have been goose-stepping for Mussolini somewhere. I told you, Elspeth didn’t meet him until well after the war’s end. Before then she was open to offers from British, Canadians, Free French and Americans alike – ’specially Americans. They were very popular with ladies looking for a good time.’

  ‘But Samuel Salt wasn’t that popular, at least not with Elspeth?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know, old boy – never saw him after the excavation. He’d built up the story, you know, expecting some sort of buried treasure, and when there wasn’t any he just sloped off somewhere with his tail between his legs. Mind you, we’d all hoped there would be treasure; would have come in very useful, I don’t mind admitting, but there was nothing there. It was a complete waste of time.’

  ‘You acquired an interesting bit of archaeology.’

  ‘You can’t take that to the bank, can you?’ said the older man peevishly.

  ‘Or the bookies,’ muttered Lugg in the wings.

  ‘But you could show it off to the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson,’ said Campion.

  The captain shrugged his shoulders and wrinkled his nose as if trying to put a value on such an asset.

  ‘True, but David never really needed a formal invitation to come down to the hall to go riding and he was always wandering off into Sweethearting; said he felt duty-bound to drink in any pub called the King’s Head.’

  ‘That day he came to the excavation with Mrs Simpson,’ Campion said quietly and deliberately. ‘Did he bring her to the hall?’

  ‘Of course, you’d sloped off back to London, hadn’t you? Missed all the fun – well, fun for the locals. They were over the moon when the Prince of Wales turned up to watch them digging a trench – couldn’t tug their forelocks hard enough and split their sides when he joked that if they found any treasure he would claim it by royal prerogative or some such nonsense. He was just kidding them on, of course, when he said he always knew there was a treasure in Sweethearting. They didn’t find anything though, dammit.’

  ‘But Wallis Simpson,’ Campion pressed, ‘did she stay at the hall?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. The day after you’d done a bunk, David turned up with his detective and his driver and we had a bit of lunch, then walked across the park to the dig. Mrs Simpson joined us there. Must have come under her own steam. When it was time to go, David said he would give her a lift back to her car and off they went.’

  ‘I see,’ said Campion.

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘I can see how the local legend of the Heronhoe Horde grew. A local newspaper reporter starts the speculation because he’s after a big scoop, then the Prince of Wales makes a joke about treasure in front of a group of enthusiastic diggers who are really keen to find some and it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.’

  The captain raised his glass an inch and slammed it down on the arm of his rocking chair.

  ‘Dammit, how many times? There was no flaming’ treasure! Why won’t people listen? I even had that wop Bolzano going on and on telling me there must have been. Sitting right where you are, telling me to my face I must have found treasure on my own land, and him a foreigner who was not even in the country in 1935.’

  Wemyss-Grendle recognized that something in the atmosphere within the room had changed but had no idea what. The large, bald gorilla – Grog or Log or whatever his name was – had at least stopped rocking on his heels like a bored policeman and become solidly stationary, his eyes fixed on his shoes as if in contemplation or even prayer. Campion, too, was immobile, sitting on the sofa, one long leg crossed over the other, his hands cupped over his knee, his eyes gleaming behind those round tortoiseshell frames.

  ‘Stephano Bolzano?’ Campion asked softly but deliberately.

  ‘Yes, Stephano – Elspeth’s Eyetie husband. Came calling last year to tell me she’d died and he was packing up and going back to Eyetie-land. Too late to go to her funeral, of course, not that the Gestapo here would have let me go. They keep me on a tight rein, you know. There again, I hadn’t seen Elspeth for quite a few years. Best to keep the married ones at arm’s length is what I always say. Don’t know why Stephano suddenly got this thing about treasure in his head, but he seemed more interested in that old fairy tale than he was about his wife dying. But then, who can understand the mind of foreigners?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Campion uncrossed his legs and stood up until his thin frame towered over Wemyss-Grendle. ‘I thank you for your time, Gerald. It has been most useful.’

  ‘It has? Can’t quite remember what it was you came for.’

  ‘Oh, just to reminisce and fill in a few blanks in my sieve-like memory, that’s all. We’ll get out of your hair now and leave you to the nice nurses.’

  ‘Huh!’ snorted the captain. ‘Fat chance of a sympathetic hearing there; bunch of ice maidens the lot of them and mostly as ugly as sin.’

  ‘Perhaps you should take up another hobby, Gerald.’

  ‘Bit difficult, being virtually a prisoner here. By the way …’ the captain waggled the empty glass he still clutched as firmly as a rosary, ‘… you said you would consider smuggling in some extra supplies for me.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll consider it,’ said Campion. ‘You can bet on that.’

  As they trooped down the wide staircase, Lugg expelled breath and invective in equal proportions.

  ‘Now there’s a gent wot don’t deserve the title gent. If that was the h’officer class, it’s a wonder the revolution didn’t happen years ago. You ain’t going to get his whisky, are you?’

  ‘I told him I’d consider it, I just didn’t say when.’ Campion turned towards the fat man. ‘You heard that name, I take it?’

  ‘Yus.’ Lugg nodded. ‘Thought it best not to react.’

  ‘Well done, though I don’t
think it meant anything to dear old Gerald.’

  ‘He’s old but he’s not very dear.’

  The nurse had materialized at the foot of the staircase to see the visitors off the premises with a stern expression.

  ‘If I’d spent as long in there with him as you have, I’d come out black and blue in places I don’t like to think of.’

  Lugg stepped towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Just a little something to make your life more bearable, my dear, along with my ’umble apologies for treating you like a skivvy earlier on.’

  The nurse looked at the small, plastic, rectangular object with tiny wires protruding from one end which Lugg had placed in her palm and asked, ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the stylus cartridge from his nibs’ record player,’ said Lugg through a grotesque smile. ‘And for your information, he’s got a half bottle of Scotch stuffed into the cover of a Vera Lynn LP, should you be interested.’

  The nurse closed her hand and nodded her thanks. ‘Now you, sir, are a proper gentleman,’ she said and Lugg beamed with pride, but only for a moment as she continued, ‘and if you should decide to see out your days in Frinton, you’ll be welcome here at Harbour Lights.’

  Lugg was still grumbling, and Campion still chuckling, as they re-crossed the Greensward to where they had left the Volkswagen. The two old ladies and their Pekinese were still occupying the bench and all four faces were examining the lime-green vehicle with curious distaste.

  As Lugg opened the passenger door and began to heave himself in, he fixed ladies and dogs with an icy stare and snapped: ‘So we’re a pair of ageing hippies. Wot of it?’

  NINE

  Lights, Camera, Inaction!

  ‘I don’t care if this skirt makes my waist look good – I’m freezing.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be summer,’ said Rupert, taking off his jacket and draping it over his shivering wife’s shoulders.

  ‘But it’s February,’ wailed Perdita, ‘and I’m fed up with all this hanging around. We could have stayed back at the pub until they needed us. They wouldn’t have kept the real Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson waiting while they dug what looks like a giant grave.’