Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Please, it’s Oliver,’ said Bell automatically and immediately bit his lower lip as he recovered his composure. ‘You wish to use the telephone?’

  ‘I think Signora Petraglia wants to make sure no one uses the telephone,’ Campion intervened. ‘I do apologize, Oliver, for descending upon you like this and somewhat mob-handed as I think the expression is, but there have been … developments … down at the dig.’

  ‘You’ve found it? The Abdication Treasure?’ Oliver’s face lit up, all thoughts of armed invaders briefly banished, even as he was allowing them across the threshold and into the hallway.

  ‘I’m afraid not, old man, but we did find something which has brought matters, shall we say, to a head. In fact, to plumb the depths of bad taste, you might say head and body, for what we found was, I am convinced, the body of Samuel Salt.’

  ‘The reporter?’

  ‘The very same, which would explain why he never filed any stories about, or more significantly after, a particular royal visit in 1935.’

  ‘Enough!’ commanded their captor, waving with her pistol. ‘Inside! Everyone inside!’

  As the intruders began to troop into the hall, Lavinia Bell appeared from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Who is it, Oliver?’

  ‘Lavinia, I’m so sorry to drop in on you unannounced,’ said Campion, ‘but could you possibly break out the iron rations and knock up a late lunch for …’ he looked around and made a play of counting heads, ‘… eleven? A few cold cuts and some cheese would do nicely. It’s a terrible imposition I know, but you see I am somewhat handicapped as my film crew seems to have mutinied.’

  Before a stunned Lavinia could say anything, Rupert turned on his father.

  ‘Your film crew?’

  ‘Ah, yes, dear boy, I’m sorry. I should have said. I am a sort of investor in their film production, what I think they call an “angel” in show-business circles. But please don’t tell your mother.’

  Rupert, speechless, prompted by a metallic prod in his back, stumbled down the hallway.

  ‘Would sandwiches do?’ asked a similarly shell-shocked Lavinia.

  ‘Perfectly acceptable, thank you,’ said Campion before turning to Daniela Petraglia. ‘Now, where do you want us? Somewhere we can sit down, preferably, as I suspect we have quite a lot to talk about and we might as well get comfortable.’

  Daniela Petraglia brought her pistol close up to Mr Campion’s face. ‘You talk too much, but for once you might have something to say.’

  There was another exercise in dividing and controlling. Precious, her three diggers and Lugg were ordered to the Orangery, guarded by Giancarlo while Maurizio marched Lavinia Bell and Perdita into the kitchen on food preparation duties. Campion, Rupert and Oliver were frog-marched into the front room, which was littered with loose music manuscript staff paper, some with inked notations but most with pencilled dots and scratchings.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ Oliver apologized and hurriedly scooped up an armful of sheets, knocked them together on his thigh and placed the pile on top of Hattie the harpsichord. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the plaster bust of Lord Breeze and placed it on top of the pile to weigh the sheets down. ‘I’ve been trying to do a bit of composing,’ he said, sounding deflated.

  ‘I have a feeling,’ said Mr Campion, ‘that we will not be requiring incidental music or a theme tune any longer.’

  ‘That’s a pity. What’s happened?’

  ‘As far as our televisual re-enactment goes I believe the term is “that’s a wrap”. Things were going splendidly, with Rupert here doing a pitch-perfect impersonation of a rather pampered prince undertaking yet another boring royal chore.’

  Rupert, being an actor, was oblivious to danger or peril when praise was being given and placed a hand on his chest as he bowed in appreciation to his father.

  ‘And then, in the bottom of our re-created trench, we discovered some old bones – the bones, I am convinced, of Samuel Salt, which would explain why in your researches you never found anything written by him after that royal visit in 1935. The Sweethearting Barrow trench was backfilled the day after the visit and I think Sam Salt was in it, with, say, a light sprinkling of soil to cover him. The diggers who did the filling probably never noticed anything and an ancient grave that had been empty suddenly had a body in it, but almost nobody knew about it.’

  ‘Nobody?’ Rupert asked, happy to play the Dr Watson character.

  ‘Except the person or persons who put him there, which was quite clever really. Who would look for a body in a grave which had been opened and presented for royal inspection?’

  ‘That had nothing to do with my people,’ said Signora Petraglia grimly.

  ‘I accept that, but a body in an unmarked grave in suspicious circumstances necessitates police intervention sooner or later. You were not prepared to risk that, were you, Signora? So you thought on your feet – rather too quickly, perhaps – and brought us all here, not to telephone the police but to make sure no one else did. Well, you have us all here under one roof but what now? I don’t believe you plan on murdering all of us. I am not even sure if you have enough bullets in those little guns.’

  The Italian woman cocked her head on one side and looked at Campion with disdain and just a hint of curiosity. ‘We don’t have to hurt all of you. Just his wife – and his.’ The pistol in her hand flicked between Rupert and Oliver and then settled comfortably back on Campion’s midriff. ‘Now everyone will sit down and you’ – the gun indicated Rupert – ‘will sit there, nearest to me to prevent any foolish or dangerous actions.’

  She indicated an armchair near the harpsichord and then she herself sat on the stool by the keyboard and rested her gun arm on the lid. Campion and Oliver she waved towards the sofa in front of the fireplace. Rupert was now seated only four feet from the muzzle of the Beretta and Campion and Oliver, though still well within range, were too far away to make a realistic grab for it.

  ‘I can assure you,’ Campion pleaded, ‘that Rupert is only occasionally foolish and never dangerous. He is here solely as a jobbing actor and knows nothing about any so-called treasure or any … underlying matters.’

  Daniela Petraglia offered Campion a thin smile. ‘I do not consider your son dangerous at all, but I know you are and the best way to make you behave is for you to know that I will shoot your son without a moment’s hesitation unless you tell me the truth.’

  To his son’s horror, Mr Campion put his head back slightly and placed a forefinger to his chin; an innocent in deep thought.

  ‘Which particular truth would you like to hear?’

  Perdita and Lavinia were marched in at gunpoint bearing trays of plates and sandwiches.

  ‘They’re only tinned ham and pickles, I’m afraid, and it’s white bread,’ said their hostess, conscious of the fact that her hair was a mess and that the frilly apron she wore was doing nothing for her sense of style.

  ‘Delightful,’ said Campion, receiving a plate. ‘Am I the only one?’

  Signora Petraglia, Rupert and Oliver remained silent.

  ‘Then forgive me for eating while talking, but I really am famished.’

  ‘Let them give food to the others,’ Daniela Petraglia ordered Maurizio in Italian, ‘and put them in the Orangery too. Tell Giancarlo to stay alert, then come back here – I have a job for you.’

  Oliver and Lavinia and Rupert and Perdita exchanged confused and anxious looks but no words as the women were lead away.

  ‘Now, Signor Campion,’ the instruction came as Campion was in mid-bite, ‘you will tell me what you know of the Heronhoe Treasure.’

  ‘My dear Donna Daniela, if only you had asked me that – honestly – when you first sounded me out, then much of this unpleasantness could have been avoided.’

  ‘What do you mean “sounded out” Pa?’ blurted Rupert.

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Daniela Petraglia. ‘Let the grown-ups talk.’

  ‘I was approached by
a respectable Italian television company to act as an advisor to a film they were making about the Abdication, specifically because I was involved, tangentially, in the Prince of Wales’ visit to the Sweethearting excavation. Even though I maintained that my involvement with that event was purely transitory – Lugg and I were back in London when the visit actually took place – it seemed that my involvement was being insisted upon, almost as if I had been specially selected. The visit of Edward and Mrs Simpson was going to be reconstructed for the programme and for a small financial investment I was able to have some say in the casting of those principal roles as well as being as a sort of roving consultant to the project, though I was denied the rather glamorous title of Executive Producer, which was disappointing.

  ‘It did not take a genius to work out that the object of the exercise was the elusive Abdication Treasure or Heronhoe Horde or whatever you want to call it, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out how an Italian television company would have come across these rather dubious stories of treasure, let alone how they knew about the royal visit here. It was not an official engagement and, as it involved Mrs Simpson, it was kept very quiet at the time.

  ‘What I should have done was talked with old Wemyss-Grendle much earlier and discovered that the late, lamented Elspeth Brunt, or Elspeth Bolzano to use her married name, was the key to all this. It was Elspeth who set this particular hare running, wasn’t it, Signora?’

  Even though he had one eye on the gun levelled at him across the lid of the harpsichord, Rupert could not resist answering one question with another. ‘Isn’t she the sister of Sonia, the old dear who helps out at the King’s Head?’

  ‘Yes, she was; indeed, she worked there as well for a while, I believe, when Sonia – Mrs Aldous as she was then – was the landlady, but I have a feeling Elspeth was a little too flighty for bar work, perhaps too friendly with the customers, and she moved here to work at Heronhoe Hall for the Mad Major. She was in service here when Lugg and I stayed on the eve of the prince’s visit, and to my acute embarrassment I cannot recollect her at all, but I have the feeling she remembered me.’

  Daniela Petraglia banged the butt of her pistol on the lid of the harpsichord, producing a high-pitched squeak of anxiety from Oliver. ‘Enough! You are telling me what I already know. Now tell me where the treasure is!’

  Campion replaced his half-eaten sandwich on his plate and balanced the plate carefully on his knees before turning his spectacles fully on the Italian woman.

  ‘My dear lady, the simple fact is there is no treasure. It is a myth, a story, a local legend. Goodness knows how many hours, days or even weeks Oliver here has spent researching the topic, often to the despair of his charming wife and his eminent father-in-law,’ Mr Campion nodded politely to the bust of Lord Breeze which surveyed the room from the top of the harpsichord, ‘who himself expended some energy on the matter when he purchased the estate. Neither of them came close to discovering what form this magical treasure took, let alone its worth or where it was supposed to be found. Is that not correct, Oliver?’

  Oliver Bell nodded enthusiastically, quite content to deny, when threatened, the existence of something he had been convinced of up until now. ‘I’ve even had the floorboards taken up in some rooms,’ he gushed, keen to support Mr Campion, ‘and found nothing, nothing at all.’

  ‘Neither did our local burglar the other night, nor did he find anything at the King’s Head, although admittedly he was disturbed on both occasions.’ He turned his face back to Signora Petraglia. ‘I assumed that you were behind those break-ins, but having chatted to Bill Crow this morning I find that he was acting as a self-employed entrepreneur, albeit a pretty useless one. He was inspired, however, by your arrival in Heronhoe which, in his tiny mind, gave some credence to the stories Elspeth Bolzano was so keen on. I would hazard a guess that when she was ill, towards the end of her life, Elspeth began to remember, or half-remember, events from her youth and concocted the story that King Edward had made some sort of parting gift to Sweethearting or Heronhoe, or both, at the time of his abdication, presumably in remembrance of good times had. However she put it, her husband Stephano believed her and, when he retired to his native Italy, I suspect he told those stories to others.’

  Campion paused, delved into his trouser pocket to retrieve his handkerchief, then removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses with precise circular movements of finger and thumb. ‘Did Stephano pass on those stories to his brother, perhaps? Is Marco Bolzano still alive and also enjoying retirement in Italy? I’m afraid I’ve quite lost touch with the Bolzano brothers since they left Clerkenwell under something of a cloud fifteen years ago, and that was quite remiss of me.’

  If the scene in the front room resembled the stage setting for a theatrical drama – a classy one given that a harpsichord was involved – then the Orangery at the rear of Heronhoe Hall resembled a transit camp for Displaced Persons. The young archaeologists who had been sleeping there on camp beds had, left to their own devices, naturally devoted little time to housekeeping. As a consequence, the floor area with a creeping moss comprising items of clothing, some of them even clean, shoes, dirty plates, cups and cutlery, books, a completed jigsaw of Constable’s The Hay Wain and a game of Scrabble abandoned on the verge of a treble word score.

  ‘I’ve seen worse prisons,’ noted Lugg, being careful where he planted his feet as he was ushered in.

  The three diggers gravitated to their camp beds and sleeping bags and sank on to them in shocked silence while Precious attempted to clear a space for Lugg on hers. Being familiar with the load-bearing properties of the ex-military canvas and metal rod construction of the bed, Lugg opted to sit on the floor if a snug corner spot could be found for him. Precious folded her sleeping bag to form a thick cushion and, using her boots, made a space for Lugg to lower his bulk on to it. With his back against the wall and after a considerable amount of wriggling, blowing and puffing, Lugg settled himself into a passable imitation of a very grumpy Pasha receiving bad news from some distant part of the Ottoman Empire.

  He cheered visibly when Perdita and Lavinia were shown in bearing trays containing a small mountain of sandwiches, a bowl of pickled onions, some healthy sticks of celery in a glass of water and a pile of far more popular chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Bin a while since breakfast,’ he said to no one in particular as he loaded up a plate balanced on his drawn-up knees.

  ‘You’ll have to budge up a bit, Maggers,’ said Perdita, gently nudging the big man’s thigh with her shoe. ‘Lavinia and I are joining all you other POWs here in Stalag 17, so make room for two little ’uns.’

  ‘Pull up a piece of floor and make yerself at ’ome,’ Lugg said magnanimously. ‘To what do we owe this honour? I’d’ve thought you would have been put in the officers’ camp in the front lounge.’

  Lavinia bent over to offer more food from her tray and indicated with her eyes that Precious should lean in and also take something. ‘There’s a big pow-wow going on in there,’ she said quietly, only just above a whisper, ‘but I think it’s coming to a head. The boss lady has told our personal guard to go and collect their luggage and their passports from Heronhoe.’

  ‘That’s good,’ whispered Precious Aird.

  Lavinia was suddenly indignant. ‘Good that I speak Italian? Nobody bothered to ask before.’

  ‘No,’ hissed the American girl, ‘good because now there are only two of them. I wasn’t sure I could handle three.’

  Oliver Grieg Bell cleared his throat nervously. ‘Would someone care to tell me what is going on here?’

  ‘I would like to second that motion,’ said Rupert, still conscious of Signora Petraglia’s gun arm laid across the harpsichord, the business end of the weapon pointing firmly in his direction.

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Possibly more than one. I am partly responsible for the predicament we find ourselves in and for that I humbly apologize. My rather brilliant plan has not quite gone a
s expected.’

  ‘You planned to keep the treasure for yourself!’ The pistol trembled in Daniela Petraglia’s hand, though her arm remained straight and pointing in Rupert’s direction.

  ‘My dear lady, how many times? There is no treasure and whether you call it the Heronhoe Horde or the Abdication Treasure or Sweethearting grave goods, it won’t make it reality. It was all a dream, a fantasy, a myth; a piece of wish-fulfilment promulgated by a woman who, being charitable, was probably ill and, being less charitable, was wool-headed.

  ‘Even if there was any truth in the rumour, which I stress is all we are dealing with here, then all logic would point to three places where something valuable – I will refrain from the word “treasure” from now on – might have been concealed for the last thirty-five years: here at Heronhoe Hall, at the King’s Head or at Sweethearting at the site of the boat burial. Oliver has conducted a thorough search of the hall and found nothing likely to alleviate his financial concerns, if I may be so crude and bold as to put it that way. Similarly, the landlords of the King’s Head, if appearances are anything to go by, do not seem to have prospered from any royal windfall. And we now know that the Sweethearting burial mound contained no Anglo-Saxon riches but rather a more recent body. Which is where my little plan went wrong.’

  Campion paused and thoughtfully considered his reflection in the large oval mirror hanging over the fireplace before continuing.

  ‘Although in some ways, that is where it all went right.’

  ‘Fool! Idiota! You are talking crazy talk. You had no plan, unless it was to keep the treasure for yourself.’

  Mr Campion shook his head slowly in despair and sighed dramatically. ‘Is there a problem with my diction or your hearing, Signora? I know you speak English perfectly well, yet you persistently refuse to hear the phrase there is no treasure. Should you choose not to believe me, I can get official confirmation of that fact from the very highest authority in the land. Of course, that may take a while and I would have to consult the Court Circular, but I am sure it could be done.