Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  The sound man, Maurizio, was likewise wandering over the site with a heavy tape recorder the size of a suitcase slung over his shoulder, headphones clamped to his ears and holding a bulbous, fur-covered microphone on a yard-long metal pole. Occasionally he would stop dead in his tracks, put his head on one side, hold the microphone rigid out in front of his body and fumble with the controls of his machine.

  ‘Background noise – sound effects,’ Rupert said knowingly to Perdita, who wrapped her arms around herself, shivered and remained unimpressed.

  Almost all the ‘background’ noise on the Sweethearting Barrow was coming from a level below Rupert and Perdita’s feet, where Precious and her three assistants were digging furiously to deepen the rectangle they were standing in, throwing the soil they excavated behind them, forming a ridge running along the long western edge of the trench.

  Rupert could tell (for he had ‘read up’ on these things) that Precious, Si, Dave and Cat were, in effect, creating a classical ditch-and-rampart defensive position. Attackers would be expected to clamber over the ridge of piled-up soil where they would be exposed to the spears and arrows of defenders, the survivors sliding down the slope into the ditch where defenders would pound them with stones and slash them with swords.

  Fortunately, the only invaders Precious and her team would have to face that day would be Rupert and Perdita inhabiting their 1935 personae, standing delicately on the rampart and smiling, possibly waving regally down on the diggers who were, in case the camera caught them in close-up, dressed as contemporary muscular farm labourers turned volunteer archaeologists. Or at least the top halves of their bodies would be costumed. From somewhere Daniela had acquired jackets, frayed white collarless shirts, pairs of braces (which Precious called ‘suspenders’), neckerchiefs and elasticated armbands (‘garters’), all items having been much lived-in and infrequently cleaned, along with a selection of greasy flat caps, squashed trilbies and a couple of briar pipes.

  By adding these props and layers to their existing clothes, the diggers – at least in long shot – would pass without too close an inspection as representatives of the 1935 Sweethearting workforce ready to cheer, on cue, their royal visitors. The hats would, of course, not only add authenticity to the scene but help disguise the sex of Precious and Cat and the long, girlish locks of the self-conscious Simon who had grown his hair in anticipation of a university place later that year.

  Perdita knew that the younger, non-thespian members of the supporting cast would object to having to dress up in second-hand clothes which did, she admitted, look far from sanitary, but they at least would manage to stay a damn sight warmer than she was.

  By the time Mr Campion had bathed, shaved and made himself thoroughly presentable, the archaeologists had departed for Sweethearting and Oliver Grieg Bell, dressed in a white painter’s overalls and armed with paint scrapers, sandpaper and a large bottle of white spirit, was wandering the corridors of the hall in search of decorating tasks. Lavinia Bell had clearly decided that Oliver’s time would be better spent on minor domestic repairs, of which she had a comprehensive list, than ‘hanging around’ a film set gawping at the metronomic rear view of the director.

  At Lavinia’s insistence, Campion fortified himself with a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and honey, also accepting from her a long, bright red woollen scarf as he was buttoning his overcoat and pulling on his hat and leather gloves. He was, he informed her, embarking on a brief route march into Heronhoe, where he would attempt to purchase a newspaper for himself and the latest Beano or Dandy for Mr Lugg, assuming the latter had actually risen from his pit and greeted the dawn yet. Unlike Mr Campion, who preferred to step out and meet each day with his hat at a jaunty angle, his venerable and really quite ancient friend often required a considerable amount of gentle coaxing these days.

  The morning was a chill and clear one with a hint in the air that a frost had considered forming but had thought better of settling on the muddy saltings and moved inland seeking a more sheltered target.

  As he strode down the road, Campion enjoyed the desolate view over the saltings and the Bright estuary, which belied its name as the outgoing tide had left large slabs of mud exposed. He shared that view with a squadron of noisy gulls which had, as usual, found something to squawk about, two passing cars and a post office van. As he entered the precincts of Heronhoe proper he saw his first human: a middle-aged woman in a pinafore dress beating a doormat against the step of a terraced cottage. Automatically he made to raise his fedora in polite greeting but the woman withdrew as quick as a squirrel into the cottage, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Campion sighed and rationalized the woman’s reaction, somewhat fancifully, by the fact that because he was on foot and coming from that direction he must have been mistaken for a resident of Sweethearting. He was well aware that, in rural Suffolk, local rivalries had long memories.

  He meandered through the narrow streets of the town, noting a grocery, a post office, a Methodist church, a ship’s chandlers’ and hardware store, a tiny street-corner pub called the Rising Sun which had clearly seen better days some time ago, an even smaller red-brick building no bigger than a garage which claimed to be the Sailors’ Reading Room and then, as the main street gave way to the small harbour and the quayside, two fishmongers, a fish-and-chip shop and the Hythe Inn with its distinguished – and only – visitor booked in on a bed-and-breakfast basis.

  Campion found Lugg, having availed himself of the bed, taking full advantage of the cooked breakfast on offer. He was the sole occupant of the public bar – to which Campion only gained admittance by knocking plaintively on the frosted-glass window – seated alone at a table designed for four diners of normal girth. He was paying homage to a plate in front of him which appeared to display a model of a Norman castle made out of substantial rashers of Suffolk ham and several sausages, topped with a brace of fried eggs and surrounded by a moat of baked beans in an orangey tomato sauce. To help lay siege to this castle, on a separate plate were battering rams of thickly sliced toast. The gusto with which Lugg was tackling the plate in front of him augured that the siege would not last long and that the outcome was inevitable.

  ‘I see they’re feeding you up,’ said Campion. ‘They must have taken pity on a poor waif from the big city. Perhaps they thought you’d come straight from Bernado’s without passing Go.’

  ‘Less of the dark sarcastics,’ said Lugg through an explosion of toast crumbs. ‘Just keeping me strength up against the rigours of the day. You had rigours in mind, I suppose, to bring you here at the crack of dawn?’

  ‘Dawn cracked some time ago, old fruit, so I would be obliged if you would put your boots on, polish up your best knuckle-duster and introduce me to Bill Crow at his emporium, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Mr Crow was having a bit of a lie-in this morning.’

  ‘Lucky bloke. Been out on the tiles, has he?’

  ‘Not in the way you might think; then again, you probably would. There was a break-in at the King’s Head during the night, a pretty ineffective one by all accounts but with similarities to the one at Heronhoe Hall. You’ll be proud to know that the local constabulary immediately had you in the frame for it until I stepped forward and committed perjury by giving you an excellent character reference.’

  ‘Much obliged, I’m sure,’ mumbled Lugg through his last mouthful of sausage. He allowed his knife and fork to clatter on to an empty plate. ‘So you’ve got Bill Crow tagged for it?’

  ‘I am merely following your instincts in this matter. Instincts which, when it comes to matters nefarious, have proved reasonably accurate in the past, so let us pay the man a visit and submit him to your considerable charms.’

  Anyone who might have conjured a mental picture of an emporium as being something akin to an Arabic souk would have been instantly disillusioned by the Heronhoe interpretation of the concept. Down a dingy side street at the side of one of the quayside fishmonger’s there was no high Moroccan sun ref
lecting off multicoloured silks and burnished copperware; nor was the air pricked with the sharp scent of exotic spices or the warm notes of coffee brewing with cardamom pods. This emporium was dark and dingy, the overwhelming colour scheme made up of many shades of brown and the dominant smell was of a damp mustiness augmented by the fishiness wafting in from the quay.

  The emporium’s thick oak double doors, arched like church windows, were propped open with a pair of ancient, heavy flat irons – the sort of smoothing iron which Campion’s mother, although rarely using one herself, had always insisted on calling ‘sad irons’ after the old English term ‘sad’, meaning solid.

  The shape of the doors and the solid brick construction of the single-storey emporium suggested that it had originally been used as a warehouse or possibly, Campion thought, the sort of service shed usually associated with the railways. Perhaps Heronhoe had once boasted a rail line but if it had, Campion’s view was that it had disappeared long before Doctor Beeching had swung his axe.

  A single, low-wattage light bulb hanging from a twist of brown cable was the only source of illumination of the interior and it took Campion a full minute for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Lugg, on the other hand, blessed with suspiciously good night vision, quickly located the sole proprietor of the establishment behind and through a forest of old furniture, bicycle parts, washing machines, a snooker table, hat stands and what could have been the fishing gear from a trawler or the centre nets of a full-size tennis court.

  ‘Mr Crow, is it?’ announced Campion once he had identified the small human shape sitting on a three-legged stool beside an oil-fired stove, on top of which a battered aluminium kettle wobbled precariously.

  ‘Does I know yer? People round here call me Bill.’

  ‘Until I know you better, I will stick with Mr Crow.’

  ‘Suit yerself,’ said the small man while his hands – in fingerless black gloves – performed a complicated dance which resulted in a straggly, rolled-up cigarette being fashioned, put to his tongue to wet the gum of the paper and, with a final twist and a flourish, find its way to the corner of his mouth. A match flowered and a flicker of light showed a dark, saturnine face which quickly dissolved behind a cloud of blue smoke.

  ‘I’ve seen ’im before.’ Bill Crow aimed the glowing cigarette at Lugg like a gun. ‘Hanging around the town the last couple of days.’

  ‘I thought the town would appreciate the tourist trade, especially out of season,’ said Campion equably, ‘as there seem to be relatively few ways for a man to earn a living here. How is business, Mr Crow?’

  ‘It comes and goes, if it’s any of yours – business, that is.’

  ‘Forgive my natural nosiness, but the rag-and-bone man has always fascinated me as a stalwart British character. Do you have a horse and cart, may I ask?’

  ‘I ain’t no rag-and-bone man!’ snarled Crow. ‘I’m a trader in used goods and do house clearances, offering fair prices to the recently bereaved.’

  ‘I am more interested in the house clearances you attempt where there have been no bereavements, the residents are all hale and hearty and are often enjoying a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Just who are you anyway?’

  Bill Crow got to his feet and glared pugnaciously at Campion, though his rat-like eyes flicked beyond Campion towards the open doors leading to the street. He was a small man but wiry and at least a dozen years younger than his interrogator. Campion was under no illusions that if Crow decided to make a break for it the clutter of furniture and bric-a-brac between him and the door might slow him down more than Campion could hope to.

  ‘My name is Campion and my associate is Mr Lugg, and we are here merely as concerned citizens seeking information.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve, coming into my place of business and threatening me.’ Crow jutted out his chin and clenched both hands into fists, his eyes darting about the jumble of his stock and settling rather obviously on a set of golf clubs in a threadbare canvas bag which was temptingly within his reach.

  ‘Please do nothing you may regret, Mr Crow,’ said Campion. ‘I am sure Inspector Chamley and the local police will take a dim view of an assault on two respectable pensioners who have merely wandered into your establishment lured by the Aladdin’s cave of goods you have on offer.’

  ‘Are you barmy?’

  ‘It has been said, Mr Crow, but I should warn you that I am also armed.’

  Campion pulled off his left glove slowly and dramatically and Crow watched, mouth gaping, as he plunged the hand inside his coat as if reaching to a shoulder holster.

  Bill Crow shrank where he stood, then shuffled backwards until his thighs and buttocks came up against the oil stove, causing him to straighten involuntarily.

  Mr Campion pulled off his right-hand glove with his teeth and opened the leather wallet he was holding in his left.

  ‘As you can see, I have brought plenty of ammunition,’ he said, rifling through a wedge of notes with his thumb, ‘as I appreciate you must be a busy man. Now what can you sell me that would be worth an hour of your time and some answers?’

  ‘That depends on the questions,’ said the small, dark man, his eyes never leaving Campion’s open wallet, and the hypnotic effect it produced blinkered Crow to the fact that Lugg had moved away from Campion’s side and, with impressive silence and stealth for a man of his size, was threading his way through the clutter in a flanking movement.

  ‘An easy one,’ said Campion, demanding Crow’s full attention, ‘would be what were you after last night when you broke into the King’s Head over in Sweethearting?’

  Crow pulled on his glowing cigarette and blew smoke down his nose. ‘That would be incriminating myself and you can’t pay people to incriminate themselves; I know the law.’

  Lugg cleared his throat loudly to attract their attention. He was holding a black man’s bicycle by its frame at chest height as if practising weight-lifting, though in his hands the bicycle appeared no heavier than a feather.

  ‘Exhibit A, M’Lud,’ he announced proudly.

  ‘So that’s a bike, so bleedin’ what? I sell lots of bikes,’ said Crow pugnaciously.

  ‘Lights in working order,’ said Lugg, shaking the bicycle so that something jingled and rattled, ‘a variety of useful tools in the saddlebag which the suspicious mind might think were suitable equipment for burglary and, wiv a stretch of the h’imagination, I’d say the seat was still warm.’

  ‘You can’t prove a thing!’ Crow spat the words along with shreds of loose tobacco.

  ‘We have a witness who saw that bicycle in Sweethearting last night and, more to the point, we have two witnesses who will swear in court that you were also the miscreant who broke into Heronhoe Hall. One would be the daughter of a peer of the realm and the other would be me. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I do have a reputation for respectability in certain circles. Now, do we go to the police or do you think you could find something to sell me?’

  Rupert and Perdita had at last been put through their paces in what Daniela Petraglia had called a technical rehearsal. She had positioned Gianfranco, the cameraman, to the east of the trench and rehearsed the slow, traversing shot he would use across the heads and shoulders of the diggers – who were suitably disguised as 1935 volunteers – and then pan up to the spoil heap rampart running along the west side. Over the top of the rampart would appear – taking care not to slip and fall headfirst into the archaeology – the Prince of Wales with Mrs Simpson at his side to acknowledge their patriotic cheers.

  ‘You should talk to each other,’ Daniela had told Rupert and Perdita in a rare directorial instruction. ‘It does not matter what you say because the microphone will not pick up the words, but you must not appear too … familiar … too cosy. No touching, no hand-holding; that would not be done in public back then. The affair was still secret, so it must be formal but … warm. There must be passion there, but passion which is … how do you say �
� in a jar or a bottle?’

  ‘Contained,’ suggested Perdita through chattering teeth. ‘I can do contained.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Daniela with a broad smile. She raised a hand to Perdita’s cheek and withdrew it sharply. ‘But you are so cold! I thought it was the make-up, which is very good, I must say.’

  ‘I am cold,’ Perdita said grimly. ‘It’s all this hanging about with nothing to do, along with having my beauty sleep disturbed by the burglary.’

  ‘What?’ Signora Petraglia’s hand rose automatically but this time stopped short of Perdita’s cheek.

  ‘There was a break-in at the King’s Head last night, or rather early this morning, while we were all sleeping,’ Perdita explained feeling, for some reason, on the defensive. ‘My gallant husband here foolishly went downstairs in his bare feet, there was a scuffle, bottles were broken and Rupert trod on some glass. You may not have noticed but Rupert’s been limping all morning.’

  ‘What was taken?’ demanded Daniela without any sympathy.

  ‘Nothing, as far as we could tell,’ said Rupert, drawing the Italian woman’s gaze on to him.

  ‘Nothing? Are you sure?’ The woman’s face was suddenly uncomfortably close to Rupert’s and she was not smiling.

  ‘Certainly not money,’ he said nervously. ‘The till drawer was locked away in Mr Yallop’s safe.’

  ‘Then what was the purpose? What were they after?’

  ‘The policeman said the only thing disturbed was the pub’s collection of historic beer bottles, which I managed to cut my foot on.’

  The Italian woman’s face contorted in fury. ‘Police? You sent for the police?’

  ‘Of course the police were called, Signora,’ said Perdita in her best schoolmistress voice. ‘A crime has been committed, so the police were called. That’s what happens in this country.’