by Mike Ripley
It may have been a curtain call but there was no applause from any audience in Sweethearting. The few local residents who saw the two figures in unseasonal Thirties’ clothes walking down the High Street might have commented on their fashion sense but none made the connection to their historical inspiration. They were only a minor distraction on a dank winter’s afternoon, but enough of a distraction to make sure that hardly anyone noticed the thin man in the fedora walking briskly a few paces in advance of them, checking the house numbers on gates and front doors.
At number 49, however, they were recognized and, if not welcomed, at least welcomed in.
‘We are so sorry we frightened you.’ Perdita gently touched the old lady’s arm as she apologized. It was a tentative move, as if she were greeting a strange cat for the first time.
‘Don’t you mind this foolish old woman,’ said Sonia Brunt. ‘You do look the spit of her in those clothes but be thankful you don’t sound like her. She had a terrible American twang I could never get on with.’ She turned to Rupert and studied his face. ‘He’s not quite got it, though. Not enough sad lines under the eyes because he hasn’t been bullied as much yet, but then he’s a bit young for the part, isn’t he?’
‘Please don’t compliment the actors on their performances, Mrs Aldous. You’ll never see the back of them.’
‘Nobody’s called me that for thirty years,’ the woman said to Mr Campion, ‘at least not to my face.’
For the first time since they had entered the cottage directly into a cluttered sitting room from the front door, the Campions managed to get a good look at that face. There were no electric lights on in the cottage and the fading afternoon sunlight struggled to get in through windows, whose flanks were guarded by heavy green plush curtains anxious to be drawn. Even in the gloom, the bruising on Sonia’s cheek and chin were visible and there was a dark blood bubble under her right eye.
‘I know who did that to you, Sonia. They have been taken into custody by the police.’
‘Good luck to them dealing with that woman, but you didn’t come here to tell me that, did you?’
‘No, Sonia, we did not. We came to ask about your treasure.’
Sonia Brunt was a small, square-ish woman, not a blue-rinsed hair’s breadth above five feet tall and, in the shapeless, dark-blue house dress and apron she wore had something of the rag doll about her. There were liver spots on the backs of her hands and leathery wrinkles around her neck. Campion, who knew the perils of guessing the age of ladies, put her at seventy-five, and apart from a slight arthritic limp she seemed so solid on her feet that, he suspected, when those size-fours were planted they would be difficult to budge.
He was therefore mildly surprised when she replied in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘You’d better come into the kitchen and have a look at it, then.’
In single file, the Campions followed Sonia through to her cramped kitchen where she flicked a light switch to reveal a small Formica-topped table occupying most of the available floor space between larder cupboards, sink, gas oven and a battered washing machine.
Spread over the table top was a white tea towel on which was displayed the glass fragments of a bottle of Prince’s Ale, the largest fragment being that held together by the oval orange and yellow label which still clearly displayed the Prince of Wales’ feathers and the motto ‘Ich Dien’.
‘That was it?’ Rupert spoke before his father’s stern glare could silence him.
Sonia Brunt took a deep, quivering breath. ‘That’s what the king sent me, what people have come to call the “treasure”. And he was the king, not the prince, when he sent it. It might have been the last thing he did as king before he had to abdicate.’
‘And hence the legend of the Abdication Treasure,’ said Campion. ‘It must have meant a lot to you for you to keep it hidden for so long.’
‘But it was on display in the pub for all to see!’ Rupert complained, only to receive a second uncompromising glare from his father.
‘Hiding in plain sight,’ observed Perdita, ‘is often the best way.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Sonia, ‘though there’s not much point in keeping it secret now, is there?’
‘Why did you keep it secret in the first place, Sonia?’ Mr Campion asked gently.
‘Because it was secret – and it was mine.’
‘A bottle of beer?’ Rupert was in danger of slipping into his party-piece Lady Bracknell impersonation, which drew another piercing look of disapproval from his father, yet it was Sonia’s dignified response which proved the best reproof.
‘It was a bottle of beer sent to me by my king.’
The old woman spoke with such sincerity that Campion allowed a long silence before he pressed for details.
‘Sent towards the end of 1936, when the Abdication Crisis was coming to a head?’
Sonia nodded. ‘When he had so much else on his mind he still remembered his little treasure here in Sweethearting.’
Her hands floated over the table top and with delicate reverence adjusted the positions of two pieces of broken glass as if trying to make sense of a difficult jigsaw puzzle. When she raised her face, it had a ghost of a smile, perhaps in relief from a burden lifted or a pain vanquished.
‘Yes, that’s what he used to call me,’ she said proudly, ‘and that’s the treasure he sent his little treasure. It wasn’t much and it was a bit silly – I mean, sending a bottle of beer to a publican! – but that’s all it was and now it’s in pieces.’
‘It clearly meant a lot to you,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but I’m not quite clear why you concealed it. Oh, I appreciate you didn’t physically conceal it – you put it on open public display in the King’s Head – yet you must have been aware of all the rumours that your royal gift started running.’
‘That was Elspeth, wasn’t it? My flighty little sister, always batting her eyelashes at the prince when he used to come down here to go riding with the captain up at the hall. She convinced herself the king sent me jewels, a diamond tiara or an emerald necklace which he’d bought for Wallis but she’d turned her nose up at. It was all nonsense but it filled her head. I think she read too many trashy women’s magazines, plus she’d always thought the prince fancied her. That was in the days before he’d met Mrs Simpson, when Elspeth used to help out in the pub.’
Her facial muscles ironed out any trace of a smile and her fingers touched the edges of the tea towel acting as a shroud for the smashed pieces of bottle.
‘I kept it on display to spite Elspeth as much as anything. She’d come into the pub moaning and whining about how she was entitled to a share of whatever the king had sent, but I never let on she was standing next to it. I thought she’d forget about it, especially when she married that Italian from Heronhoe, but when she started to get ill it seemed to come back to her and she went on and on about it to her husband.’
‘That would be Stephano Bolzano,’ Campion said and Sonia nodded. ‘Did he ever ask about the so-called treasure?’
‘He had a go at me at Elspeth’s funeral; at the graveside, would you believe. I told him she must have got her wires crossed when she worked at the hall and heard all the talk of treasure in the boat burial. Somehow, in her mind, she got things confused, what with the royal visit there and all the things in the papers at the time. He must have believed her, though, otherwise why would them other Italians turn up out of the blue and start with their nastiness? Anyway, it don’t matter any more; it’s just broken glass now, not worth worrying about. Still, I’ll have the memory of it.’
‘So nobody else knew what it was the king had sent you? No one at all?’
The old woman hesitated before answering Campion. ‘Only my late husband, Arthur Aldous. He didn’t see it as anybody else’s business either. He was killed in the war, you know, thirty years ago last year. That’s why I didn’t respond when you called me Mrs Aldous when you arrived.’
‘Forgive me if I’m committing a terrible howler, Sonia, but I have a suspicio
n you never were Mrs Aldous, not legally.’
‘Dad …’ Rupert exhaled the word as a warning, but his father was undeterred.
‘It was quite unusual back in the Forties for a widow, especially a war widow, to revert back to her maiden name even if they had plans to remarry. If, however, there was the question of taking on the licence of a public house, then the brewery and the local licensing bench would insist on a legal name. I suspect the same applied when it came to getting an identity card and ration books.’
The woman dropped her eyes back to the brown splinters on the table. ‘You’re right. Arthur and I were never properly married, not that anyone these days gives a fig about couples that live in sin, but they did back then. When I got the licence I told folk I had to use my maiden name as I would be the sole licensee now that Arthur had gone. There was a war on and nobody questioned it. Nobody knew we were never wed, not even Elspeth, not that she’d have turned a hair.’
‘The king knew, didn’t he, or did he guess? When he was the prince he brought his lovers to the King’s Head whenever he came down to Heronhoe Hall, didn’t he? Staying at the hall with that old rascal Wemyss-Grendle was hardly discreet, but you were. I do not wish to sound judgemental, but you kept their sinful secret because you had one of your own. You were good at keeping secrets, weren’t you, Sonia?’
Perdita moved discreetly around the table closer to Sonia in case the small woman should be in need of support. It was a thoughtful but misguided action on Perdita’s part, for instead of wilting Sonia Brunt adopted a stance of steely defiance.
‘I was warned you were a slippery one, by that Italian bitch of all people. She said you were clever and that you’d come sniffing around.’ She allowed herself a brief, scoffing laugh. ‘Said you were the one I should be frightened of, not her! Hah! Well, maybe she was right, but I’m too old to be frightened now and there’s nothing you can do to me. You’ve seen the great Sweethearting Treasure, now leave me alone.’
Campion turned the brim of his fedora between his fingers. It was a sign of nervousness Rupert had never seen before. ‘I’m afraid I cannot, Sonia. Might I suggest we move into the other room and make ourselves comfortable while you tell us the rest of the story?’
NINETEEN
Stamp of Approval
Even with the lights on and a one-bar ‘realistic effect’ electric fire glowing red, Sonia Brunt’s front room would have met few definitions of ‘cosy’, although the chairs were not uncomfortable, the few paintings were passable popular reproductions of Constable’s finest work and the collection of small china ornaments showed a harmless enthusiasm for Highland terriers. There were no other clues as to her personal interests apart from a set of small pewter tankards marching across the mantelpiece in single file which Campion recognized as spirit measures as used in a bar before the advent of the plastic ‘optic’ which dispensed liquor in a manner similar to an intravenous drip in a hospital operating theatre. They were the only indications of Sonia Brunt’s association with the pub trade and there were no other pointers at all to her life, past or present, outside the confines of the cottage. But it was not the fixtures and fittings which produced the chilly atmosphere in that room; it was the question, or accusation, which Mr Campion had left hanging in the air.
He had insisted they all sat down as he was conscious of the difference in height between himself and Sonia Brunt and loathed the notion that he would appear the bully in front of Rupert and Perdita.
‘Sonia, I must press you on something, if only to get things straight in my own mind. You see, I am notoriously slow on the uptake.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ said Sonia, setting her jaw firmly.
Huddled together on the two-seater sofa, Perdita’s hand patted Rupert’s thigh in silent approval of Sonia’s judgement.
‘I get the impression that you and your husband Arthur hosted … shall we call them unofficial royal visits … at the King’s Head before the prince became involved with Mrs Simpson. Whenever David came down to Heronhoe to go point-to-pointing with Captain Wemyss-Grendle, perhaps?’
‘You won’t get any details out of me.’ In her lap, Sonia’s hands twisted the hem of her apron as through she was wringing water from it. ‘If I’d wanted to do that, I could have gone to the News of the World and earned myself a lot of money.’
‘That’s sadly very true,’ said Campion, ‘and very commendable, I’m sure. It was a secret you shared with no one else, except Arthur, of course. Is that correct?’
‘Arthur would never say a word out of place – certainly not about that. He was very patriotic was Arthur, devoted to the monarchy, he was.’
‘But someone else knew about these unofficial royal visits, didn’t they? Or at least suspected.’
Perdita grabbed Rupert’s knee and squeezed it, but Rupert had already noticed that Sonia’s hands were now not so much twisting her apron as strangling it.
‘Don’t know what you mean,’ the woman said sullenly.
‘If I say the name Samuel Salt, perhaps you will.’
The liver-spotted hands ceased their manipulations and slowly began to smooth out the material of the apron. ‘Sam Salt hasn’t been round here for a long time.’
Rupert opened his mouth to speak but was discouraged by a glance from Mr Campion coupled with more pressure on his knee from Perdita.
‘But he was a familiar face here in the Thirties or so I’m told, riding around in his motorbike and sidecar, reporting all the local news fit to print and, I believe, showing a great interest in your sister when she was your barmaid at the pub.’
‘He had a thing for Elspeth but so did many a man. Elspeth never discouraged attention from a pair of trousers. Attracted men like ants at a picnic.’
‘But Elspeth wasn’t working at the King’s Head in 1935, was she? She’d moved up to Heronhoe Hall by then. Did you encourage that?’
‘It was best if she was out of the way when … when we had visitors. She wouldn’t have been able to keep her mouth shut.’
‘Sam Salt still frequented the King’s Head, though, didn’t he?’
‘It was a pub.’
‘And he was a journalist. I do appreciate the connection but I rather meant he was in Sweethearting quite a lot, especially when the digging of the boat burial started.’
Sonia’s hands became fists. ‘Nobody’s seen Sam Salt for thirty-five years.’ She glared at Campion, who held her gaze for what Perdita, counting silently to herself, recognized as the recommended four seconds needed for a good dramatic pause.
‘I have, Sonia. I saw him only this morning. He did not look well.’
As she spoke, in a soft unemotional monotone, Mr Campion mentally rehearsed how Sonia Brunt’s statement under caution to the police might have sounded.
Sam Salt had been a customer of the King’s Head since we took the tenancy. He was a reporter for the local newspaper and often took photographs to go with his stories. That summer in 1935, he was often in the village covering the dig at the Sweethearting Barrow, as the vicar told us to call it.
He was there the day the Prince of Wales came to see the dig and took pictures with his camera of all the villagers standing proudly round the trench, even though the dig was finished by then and they hadn’t found anything anyway.
One of the prince’s equerries had telephoned ahead to book a room in the name of Mr and Mrs David Boyle. That was the code we used and the name we put in our visitors’ book in case the revenue ever asked about our bed-and-breakfast trade. We never accepted any other visitors when we had a booking from Mr Boyle, so they would have the place to themselves and of course we never asked who ‘Mrs Boyle’ was, but it was rarely the same woman. That didn’t matter to me and Arthur.
We always made sure that Mr and Mrs Boyle could get into our private quarters without having to go through the bar and be seen. Sometimes they’d arrive late at night after closing and would be gone before opening hours the next morning.
That afternoon, the
afternoon of the visit to the dig, nobody had any idea who Mrs Simpson was – well, none of us locals anyway. She was just a face in the crowd out at the Barrow. The prince did his stuff, thanking the diggers and shaking hands, and then his driver and his bodyguard got him in his car and they drove off. Most of Sweethearting was down at the Barrow at the opposite end of the village to the pub and it was out-of-hours so nobody would have seen them.
Arthur let them in by a side door and we got them upstairs, where I’d put out some cold cuts and Arthur had laid on a bottle of wine as well as some bottles of beer. We went downstairs and when it was six o’clock we opened up. We had a good crowd that night, celebrating the end of the dig, even the vicar and the vicar of Heronhoe. It made me smile to think they had no idea what was going on in the room right above their heads.
The prince’s car and driver turned up before dawn the next morning, about five o’clock. I’d made a pot of tea but they didn’t want any breakfast, though they were very polite about it and he even introduced me to her as his ‘little Sweethearting treasure’ and said he was sure he could always trust me.
It was that afternoon when Sam Salt came calling. We were just closing up after the lunchtime session, which had been quiet. After all the excitement of the royal visit there were probably a few hangovers in the village and the bar was empty when we heard Sam’s motorbike pulling into the car park.
He came in and he looked a sight, all dishevelled and unshaven, so at first I thought he was drunk. I told him it was two minutes to closing time and he was cutting it fine, but he said he didn’t want a drink, he wanted a story and there was a funny sort of leer on his face. He had a big envelope with him and he started to clear a space on the bar, got out his notebook as well. I didn’t like his attitude so I called Arthur up out of the cellar where he’d been switching casks for the evening session.