Mr. Campion's Abdication

by Mike Ripley

  Lady Amanda did not look convinced. Behind her, down the hallway, Precious Aird was leaning casually against the wallpaper talking to Inspector Chamley who was making copious notes in his regulation black notebook, uniformed policemen were passing between the front room and the door to the Orangery and a rather dishevelled Lavinia Bell was struggling to make headway in the direction of the kitchen while bearing a tray of dirty cups and mugs.

  ‘I suspect it has been exactly like this since the day you arrived, Albert,’ said Amanda. ‘You should have visiting cards done which say “Fed up with conventional house parties? Invite Albert Campion: chaos and confusion guaranteed” or perhaps take out a small ad in The Times.’

  Over his wife’s shoulder, Campion saw the unmistakeable figure of Lugg appear from the kitchen, his Hitchockian outline surreally softened by the very feminine apron printed with vivid green and yellow flowers straining against his girth. He was clutching a large mixing bowl to his bosom and stirring the contents with contained aggression and a large wooden spoon. When he caught sight of Amanda in close contact with her husband, Lugg grimaced then carefully and quietly stepped backwards, retreating into the kitchen.

  ‘I will explain everything over dinner, my dear,’ said Mr Campion, ‘unless this turns out to be our Malamerenda, which if Lugg is cooking, may well be the case. Any idea what’s on the menu?’

  ‘His patent version of corned beef hash with mashed potatoes and baked eggs, or so he says, but you don’t have to worry about dreaming up an explanation. I am fully aware of what’s been going on and you should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘You are – and I should?’

  ‘You are too old for this sort of tomfoolery. Need I remind you that for your birthday this year we are going to have to find seventy candles from somewhere. We might have to send Lugg out to burgle a church.’

  ‘Perish the thought. Not only would the crime be a sin and a disgrace but any church would have to think of the costs of re-consecration after a visit by Lugg.’

  ‘Don’t avoid the subject – you know what I meant. You’ve been seeking absolution from something which happened fifteen years ago for which you were in no way responsible. I suspected this television filming business was a subterfuge from the start and those fanciful stories of a missing treasure had your fingerprints all over them. When it came to break-ins, finding buried bodies and people pulling guns, I walked out of my business meetings and drove down here before you did anything stupid or dangerous or both. It appears I was too late, but thankfully it seems there are no serious casualties and the police are now restoring order.’

  Mr Campion took a step back in order to appreciate his wife better and reached out to cup her chin in his hand.

  ‘Dearest, it was stupid of me not to include you in my plans from the outset. I fully admit that and beg your forgiveness, but there was never really much danger. I may be too old for the rough house now but I had lots of resourceful young people to watch my back. Let me introduce you to one.’

  ‘You mean Precious?’

  ‘You’ve already met her?’

  Amanda closed her eyes and opened them with a deliberate flutter. ‘I thought she might come in useful,’ she said with an air of pure innocence. ‘Her father said she had certain skills which indicated that she was considering a career in the military and assured me she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. I merely proposed that she looked after you as well.’

  Campion’s gaze again shot towards Precious Aird who, even in the middle of an interview with Inspector Chamley, managed to flick a finger to her right eyebrow in a mock salute and give Campion a cheekily deliberate wink.

  ‘She was my bodyguard?’

  ‘Let’s say she was watching over my own personal treasure,’ Amanda smiled, ‘my irreplaceable antique treasure. And she also had a watching brief over Rupert and Perdita, as well as being my only source of reliable information as to what was going on here.’

  ‘So, bodyguard and spy, eh? I should have been quicker on the uptake when we spoke on the phone the other night. You hadn’t rung the hall – Precious had called you. Lavinia mentioned that she had been making a lot of calls for someone who had only just arrived in the country and didn’t know many people. She must have been quick off the mark today for you to make it down from Birmingham so fast. I’m assuming speed limits were not a hindrance.’

  ‘The Jag did it in three hours dead and I didn’t get stopped for speeding, though I probably should have been. Precious rang me immediately after the police were called this afternoon. I was probably on my way here before they were.’

  ‘A resourceful girl indeed.’

  ‘I was worried she would not be devious enough to slip under your radar. You’re not cross, are you?’

  Mr Campion, who had never been accused of having an icy personality, visibly melted in the crossfire of Amanda’s endearing expression and Precious Aird’s cheeky smile.

  ‘Of course not, and I apologize most humbly for not keeping you fully briefed. I promise to always tell you everything in future.’

  Amanda raised herself on tiptoe and her lips pecked her husband on the nose.

  ‘Before you make any more promises you are unlikely to keep, you ought to apologize to these nice policemen who have been wondering where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing for the last few hours.’

  Campion sighed. ‘Yes, I must make a statement, I suppose, preferably over a stiff drink. Join me and get the story straight from the horse’s mouth.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Amanda with a grin, ‘you give the police your statement while I make sure that Lugg isn’t totally destroying Lavinia’s kitchen. I’ll wait until we get home, then you can tell me the real story.’

  They met outside the entrance to Farringdon Road tube station and walked at a leisurely pace up the hill into Clerkenwell. It was a month since Campion and Luke had met in a wintry churchyard at Pontisbright and there was a hint of damp spring attempting to penetrate the grime of London’s fumes, so much so that Luke carried a smart new raincoat over his arm and Mr Campion was stepping out with a furled umbrella at shoulder-arms position.

  They exchanged polite pleasantries and news of each other’s friends, families and the odd mutual enemy, but it was not until they had reached the Exmouth Market and Spa Fields area and turned on to Roseberry Avenue that their chatter ceased to be chatter and became serious.

  Crossing the road into Amwell Street, they stopped outside the loggia and portico with twin arches of the church of Saints Peter and Paul which to Luke, a Londoner, would always and only be ‘The Italian Church’.

  ‘This was where she was found, laid across the steps just here,’ Luke said solemnly. ‘Seraphina Vezzali, aged seventeen, not old enough to vote – not even these days. Beaten to death, assailant suspected but unknown. No arrests ever made. Case filed as unsolved though that never rests easy with me. Still, unsolved but not forgotten, eh, Albert?’

  ‘Not here,’ said Campion. ‘Let’s walk back to the Farringdon Road.’

  ‘If you can’t say it on the steps of a church, you can’t say it anywhere. If you’re worried about such things, I’m told they are big on forgiveness.’

  ‘I know they are, Charlie, but I am not, which is what makes me uneasy being in close proximity to a higher authority.’

  ‘The Vezzali girl was never your burden to bear, you know.’

  ‘So everyone said, but she deserved to be someone’s burden, even after fifteen years.’

  Luke suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, his attention drawn to a small delivery van which had drawn up across the road on the corner of Exmouth Market. Campion recognized the signs as easily as if the policeman had sprouted antennae and they were waving, but then everything about Luke screamed ‘never off-duty’. His friend stood immobile, memorizing the number plate of the van and watching the driver, who had decamped and was opening both rear doors to reveal an interior crammed to bursting with bulbous brown rubber ‘space
hoppers’ made even more ridiculous by their bendy rubber ‘ears’ which acted as handles for a rider to grasp and inane cartoon kangaroo faces.

  ‘So much for the must-have toy last Christmas,’ Luke snarled, ‘already being touted round dodgy market traders. I hate ’em.’

  ‘Bouncy spacehoppers or dodgy market traders?’ Campion asked, closely observing his friend’s reaction.

  ‘Both, but it’s mostly the thought of some wide boy trying to make a few bob out of surplus-to-requirement toys which could have been given to an orphanage or a kiddies’ hospital. Mind you, those things probably put more kids into hospital than help with recovery.’

  Campion patted Luke on his oak beam of a shoulder. ‘Amanda would say you’re just as much an old softie as I am.’

  ‘I wouldn’t last long in my job if I was. I certainly couldn’t afford to wait fifteen years to get revenge for a crime which I took personally even though it had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It was a luxury I was able to indulge in, though I am not proud of myself for succumbing to the urge.’ Campion began to walk on. ‘Perhaps that’s why I did not feel comfortable talking about it in the precincts of a church.’

  ‘Well, you can sleep easy now,’ said Luke, striding alongside. ‘You got a result, of sorts, which is more than we did in 1955.’

  ‘You’ve heard from the lawyers in Italy then?’

  ‘Oh, yes – and how. Difficult to shut them up once they got started. Cost us a fortune in overtime for the Telex operators and the translation boys but it seems as if a deal has been done.’

  ‘I’m all ears, old chum.’

  ‘As long as Oliver and Lavinia Bell won’t press for prosecution – and I’m assuming that you and your little army of film extras won’t either – then we would be willing to agree to the extradition of Daniela Petraglia into the custody of the Naples police where she apparently is wanted for questioning on various matters, though the feeling is that she’ll walk free before the key has turned in the lock on her cell door. She is what is known in the trade as “connected”.’

  ‘And in return?’ Campion prompted.

  ‘Stephano Bolzano returns to England of his own volition – and that’s a laugh for a start – to answer questions about the murder of Seraphina Vezzali in Clerkenwell in 1955, very probably in the restaurant just round the corner up ahead. Best scenario is that we can get him on perverting the course of justice and failing to report a crime. There’s no doubt he’ll blame his mad brother Marco, who always got my vote for it, but nothing could be proved at the time because, to be honest, none of my lot looked hard enough and the thought of that gives me no pleasure at all.’

  Campion felt his friend’s simmering anger.

  ‘I know, I know. What happened to Marco?’

  ‘He’s dead; caught a knife in the throat over a game of cards in a bar in Salerno in 1964. Doubtful if anyone mourned him, not even his brother, who now has to take the rap for him, even though it will probably not be much of a rap and he’s doing it because he’s more afraid of the Petraglia mob than he is of a British judge and jury.’

  They continued side by side and had emerged on to the Farringdon Road once more, opposite the fire station, before Campion spoke again as they turned right.

  ‘So we can draw a line, albeit a dotted one, under a murder from 1955, but what about the one from 1935?’

  ‘That’s a problem for East Suffolk I’m happy to say, and they’re welcome to it. There was some initial doubt about identification of the body; the old dental records technique so beloved of detective story writers only works if you know the corpse went to a dentist, who he was and where he is now. The gold watch and chain helped. It wasn’t inscribed but a few of the locals thought they recognized it as belonging to Samuel Salt.’

  ‘And its presence strongly suggests that robbery was not a motive.’

  ‘Agreed, plus there was a wallet on the corpse with a few pounds in it, though no documents, letters or press card, anything like that. All the stuff from the digs where he used to live is long gone.’

  ‘But he was definitely murdered?’

  ‘Unless he smashed the back of his own skull in and then buried himself, yes. The pathologist is still no wiser on the weapon used. It sounds like something for the archaeologists, not the boys in blue. And before you ask, the Suffolk boys in blue are nowhere near making an arrest. Don’t suppose you’d like to make any contributions on that subject, would you, Albert?’

  ‘I would prefer to change the subject,’ Campion said swiftly. ‘Heard any more from Lord Breeze?’

  ‘Thankfully no. I believe there was an angry phone call from him to the chief constable demanding hanging, drawing and quartering for the gangsters who shot up the house he’d given his daughter as a wedding present.’

  ‘Only one shot was fired,’ said Campion with a smile, ‘and the damage was minimal, though I can see why the noble lord took it personally.’

  ‘Funnily enough there was only that one phone call and since then silence. I’m presuming you followed his advice not to find the non-existent Abdication Treasure?’

  ‘Well … yes and no. I did find something valuable and it was vaguely connected to the Abdication, but not embarrassingly so if I might put it that way. I can’t see it causing any problems for anyone who lives down The Mall, for which Lord Breeze will probably claim the credit. In fact, I happen to know he already has.’

  ‘So it wasn’t the Crown Jewels then?’

  ‘Only to an avid philatelist. It was a set of unusual stamps, misprinted ones torn off an envelope or a parcel, which I found quite by accident jammed behind the skirting board in a bedroom at Heronhoe Hall. I understand that Stanley Gibbons, the stamp people, think they might fetch a couple of thousand pounds to a collector, which should pay for a new kitchen for Lavinia Bell after the destruction Lugg wrought upon it and a few other home improvements.’

  Campion stopped on the corner of the side street which was their ultimate, if unspoken, destination and, using his umbrella, pointed across the Farringdon Road to a large complex of grey buildings guarded by impressive iron gates.

  ‘Fancy a piece of whimsy, Charlie? If they had been in business here back in 1936, the Bolzano mob would have had those stamps right under their nose, just across the road as they went through the Mount Pleasant sorting office. One of life’s little ironies, don’t you think, the whole thing coming back to Little Italy in a way?’

  Luke’s face remained impassive as they turned the corner into the side street and almost immediately found themselves outside a small Italian restaurant with two card tables covered with checked tablecloths held down by salt-and-pepper cruets on the pavement guarding the door.

  ‘Well, here’s La Pergoletta,’ said Luke. ‘You sure you want to have lunch here?’

  ‘Why not? It looks cheap and cheerful and your presence should guarantee nothing shady or illegal happens on the premises.’

  ‘I’ll lay odds they don’t have the council’s permission for these tables on the pavement, but if we sit inside we should be legal. This place has been a legitimate restaurant for quite a while now and has changed hands several times since the Bolzanos were here. I know – I checked.’

  ‘Any thoughts on what might happen to Stephano?’ Campion enquired, reaching for the door handle.

  Luke shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Difficult to call. He could do a stretch inside, come out, get sent back to Italy and still be younger than you.’

  ‘Thank you for reminding me of my mortality, Charlie. If that was a tactless way to get an invitation to my birthday party in May, then it worked. The invitation, like most things to be treasured, is in the post.’

 

 

 
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