by Amy Myers
‘Agreed.’
‘I’d no idea. Hoped you had.’
I sighed. ‘Tell me, Pen.’
‘Nothing, Jack. Honest. It was only that I heard the boss’s wife talking to Emma Herrick at a fashion shoot. Emma multitasks as a model when she’s skint.’
Fashion shoot? Pen? My turn for suspicious looks.
She noticed. ‘Mrs Boss dragged me along to take the photos. Me! Anyway, Emma was talking about her parents getting rid of the Packard now that old Gavin had died. She couldn’t understand why her dad was asking over the odds for it. When she asked him he just said he knew it was daylight robbery but so what? He thought it was very funny apparently. Weird. So I thought maybe there was something in its background.’
She looked so anxious for me to believe her that I almost did. ‘You’ve seen The Ladykillers. It featured a black Packard getaway car.’
‘Saw it, but I wouldn’t recognize a Packard from a Fiesta. Don’t know much about cars.’
Even more odd. Firstly, she does know quite a bit about classic cars, and secondly I’ve never heard Pen admit she doesn’t know about anything. I’ve seen her bluff her way convincingly through the thorniest situations.
‘Your knowledge of De Dions is pretty extensive.’ This was mean of me, because that was the one time the tables were truly turned on Pen.1
She stared me in the eye. ‘It’s straight up, Jack. That’s what I heard. A robbery with a Packard. Honest.’
Honest? A suspicious word in itself when someone uses it – especially if the someone is Pen. And I still had no luck in following it up. I’d tried the local papers and archives, a time-consuming process as I didn’t know when or where this robbery had taken place – even if it had ever happened. It couldn’t have made headlines or I’d have picked up something in the national press archives that fitted. If it had involved Philip Moxton or Tom Herrick such a robbery would probably be after the mid-seventies. Or, given that it was a classic Packard used, did it go back to Donald Moxton and Gavin Herrick, in which case it could conceivably have taken place in the late forties, fifties or sixties? Did it concern any of them at all, or did it only involve the Packard?
I remembered Sam West, who’d spent a year or two in banking and might remember any tales of robberies. If I drove over to see him I could then pop in for lunch in Wendy’s café. She’d been on my conscience. I seemed to be behaving to her as part-friend, part-suspect. When I arrived Sam wasn’t in, but my luck was, as I found him at Wendy’s.
‘Bank robberies?’ he asked, taken aback.
‘Yes. Any with which Donald or Philip Moxton or Moxton banks could have been associated with.’
He looked blank. ‘I only did a couple of years in the 1960s. Donald Moxton was around then, but he ran the banks, he didn’t raid them. He wasn’t Mr Big in the Great Train Robbery if that’s what you’re thinking.’
I laughed. ‘Any robberies that occurred on his watch?’
‘Can’t think of any. I’ll ring round and let you know if I hear anything.’
Wendy joined us at that point and talk once again turned – even without my help – to Geoffrey Green.
‘What would he have been ringing you for that evening, Wendy?’ I asked.
‘I hope it was just because he fancied company, not that he was in trouble. I’d feel even worse about being out. I was over at a friend’s house and he rang my landline.’
‘Did he ring from his mobile?’
‘I don’t know. The police said he’d been in London that day.’
‘His Volkswagen was at the station when I parked there around midday,’ Sam contributed. ‘When I got back from Ashford around ten, the car had gone of course.’
I knew that. The neighbours had said they thought they’d heard it pull up about eight and then Philip would have put it in the garage, having called Wendy in vain to see if she’d like to come over or if he could go over to her home. Did I know it was in vain? Presumably yes, because otherwise it would have been picked up by Brandon’s team or the Met. But even they could not rule out the possibility that the call wasn’t answered because Wendy had been at his home waiting for him.
I returned to Frogs Hill none the wiser about bank robberies. Even so life looked good as the day ticked on towards the evening that lay ahead. Would Louise be staying overnight? I had no idea, but there’s such a thing as hope. I’m not too brilliant at touches such as lavender-scented pillows and the like, but I did my best.
I heard the sound of her car from a long way off, coming closer and closer. Len and Zoe had already left the Pits, but I had told them, somewhat diffidently, about Louise’s return – whether temporary or otherwise. Even Len had looked pleased. He had clapped me on the back to express this sentiment, and only then did he remember the Bristol needing his attention.
By six thirty I had already been a quivering wreck pacing the gravelled forecourt, the crunch of my shoes making me even tenser. Then I’d returned to the garden to inspect nothing in particular. After that I’d gone round the house to check nothing in particular there too. Stupid. Because when Louise did turn into the gates everything shifted back into gear. Glory be! Here we were, at Frogs Hill, for the rest of our lives.
She sprang out of her car, came straight to kiss me and we were away. It seemed as if she had never left me. As we went together into the kitchen to inspect the feast I had laid on and then into the living room with drinks, there were a thousand questions to ask and yet there were none. A thousand things to say and none. She was here. She was wearing a blue dress, just as she had when I saw her for the first time – or was it the last time – or any time? It didn’t matter. She looked beautiful. Her hair was longer than I remembered. That didn’t matter either. All I could see was her smile, her eyes and that it was Louise.
She drew a deep breath as we went into the farmhouse. ‘It’s as I remembered it. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Can’t afford the paint,’ I joked (although it wasn’t so much of a joke as all that.)
It was a meaningless exchange, but it filled the gap. We kissed again and then we went for a short walk in the fading sunlight, postponing the feast until later. It was the walk we had often taken along the Greensand Ridge, looking down on the Weald of Kent below us. I wanted to ask what her plans were, but I couldn’t. Subject not advisable. She would tell me when she was ready – if she even knew them. Instead, romantic soul that I am, I found myself blurting out:
‘How did you meet Emma Herrick?’
‘On a film set. She’s on the production side, though she’s a pretty good actor too. And you?’
‘I only met her at the barbecue and once when I was the patsy between them and Philip Moxton over the Packard.’
‘I heard about that.’
‘Are her parents and Gwen close friends of yours?’ I hoped and hoped they weren’t. I knew about Barney but if Tom and Moira were bosom friends as well as Emma it was going to be difficult.
‘No. I know Emma fairly well, her family much less.’
‘It’s an odd one. You know Gwen was married to Philip Moxton?’
‘Yes. Barney told me. I do like him,’ she said defensively, as if I were going to accuse him of being a murderer.
‘So do I, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t mixed up in all this.’ Too late I realized that Louise was hardly likely to know what ‘all this’ was.
A silence, then she ventured to my relief. ‘You’re involved in the terrible Philip Moxton murder, aren’t you?’
‘I’m afraid so. Chiefly on the car side, but that could have repercussions on the wider case.’
‘The Herricks don’t seem very fond of your friend Wendy.’
‘Probably because of Philip’s will.’
She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t understand.’
I’d put my foot in it, but told myself that Gwen had talked without any restrictions to me so why not go ahead? ‘They all expected to gain from Philip’s will, according to a private family agreement.’
‘I didn’t know that. Barney said something about the money being left to a foundation.’
‘That plan never went through. So the old will stands.’ They did know about the foundation. There could be no doubt about that.
‘Oh.’ She pulled a face. ‘With all of them inheriting?’ She looked appalled. ‘That’s what they must have been talking about – quite freely though. I knew Gavin Herrick slightly and I had the impression that Tom and Moira had thought he was well off – or was going to be. Not sure which, but it turns out he died skint. It was something to do with a game. Is that connected to the Packard?’
I groaned. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘If the will was supposed to settle this game, the creation of a foundation might presumably have scuttled that?’ she ventured. ‘Gwen seemed in a state about it, but Barney didn’t seem to mind and he would be the main loser.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose it gives them all a motive in the eyes of the police.’
‘It does look that way,’ I said gently.
‘But your friend Wendy,’ Louise ploughed on. ‘The Herricks seem to really resent her, even Emma. Why?’
How to answer this? Just a little money left to her, Wendy had told me. But it wasn’t just a little. Not by my standards, nor hers. At the very least, she could give up the café, if she wished. But to the Herricks even three million shouldn’t be that material to their future if Philip was as well off as we presumed. I wondered again what Philip’s new will would have done about Joan and Staveley? Would she have been dispossessed?
I came up with some sort of answer for Louise. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s because it is a big sum and Wendy is the classic girlfriend (or so they believed rightly or wrongly) who appears out of the blue as a money-grabber. They might assume she knew who Geoffrey Green was.’ Not a pleasant thought for me. Not tonight when the world looked such a happy place.
‘You’re probably right,’ Louise agreed. ‘So what are you planning to do with the Packard?’
‘It’s going to live with us for the moment.’ I relished the word ‘us’. ‘It’s in the barn with the Gordon-Keeble. Do the Herricks feel strongly about Joan Moxton giving it to me?’
‘I’m not sure. From what Emma told me, it seems to have been more than just a car,’ Louise said soberly. ‘Much more. You must know that the four of them, Gwen and Tom, Philip and his sister Joan, were all up at Oxford at roughly the same time.’
‘Yes, but I think this affair went back much further. It began with Gavin and Philip’s father Donald. The car was a sort of symbol of who was top dog.’
Louise looked puzzled. ‘That doesn’t sound right,’ she said. ‘Not from what Emma told me.’
‘What then?’ I asked. Could it be that I was about to hear the full story?
‘I’m not sure, but I think it could have been over a woman.’
My hopes rapidly deflated. ‘That was Gwen. Gavin went berserk when Philip married his daughter.’
Louise shuddered. ‘Then I feel even sorrier for Barney who’s caught in the middle. No wonder he is as he is.’
But how, I wondered idly as I took her hand and we began the journey back to the farmhouse, did anyone know how Barney really was?
Louise stayed that night. We loved and then we talked on the lavender scented pillows I’d rustled up at the last moment from some lavender stalks in the garden. The upshot of that talk was my wandering star would have a fixed abode for the next few weeks while she was filming in Sevenoaks. Beyond that … but we didn’t think beyond that. Not yet.
She left Frogs Hill at six o’clock the next morning. I couldn’t let her leave alone so like a regular couple we ate breakfast together and she drove off as the dawn came. All a dream? No. This time my star would be shooting right back this evening. We’d be eating the great feast we’d somehow forgotten to eat the previous evening.
With so much to think of and so little sleep, I wandered round in a daze, forgetting about the Volkswagen, the game and Packards. When the phone rang, I couldn’t for the moment think of who Sam West was.
‘Timothy Mild told me you were still asking about bank robberies,’ he said, sounding rather hurt.
I smartened up my act. ‘I was.’ It looked as if my luck was turning in this case as well as with Louise.
‘I rang up an old chum of mine. There was nothing we could think of in the sixties that had any link at all to Donald or Philip Moxton,’ he said, ‘but there was one pre-war, in the late thirties. His father told him about it.’
‘Tell me more.’ I did some rapid calculation. Philip Moxton wasn’t even born until the 1950s, and Donald Moxton would only have been in his mid-teens. It wasn’t looking good.
‘There was a hijack on the daily delivery of cash. The money was lost and no one ever charged for theft.’
‘So what’s the connection?’
‘The theft was from the first Moxton bank, then called Randolphs, in Hatchwell. It took place long before Donald Moxton bought it in the late forties and changed its name, though. The owner and manager was Alfred Randolph. I don’t know if this has any connection with what you’re after?’
It must have. Donald Moxton’s first bank. I thanked Sam wholeheartedly. Then it struck me. How had Timothy known I was interested in bank robberies? I didn’t remember mentioning it to him. The answer duly came to me. Pen had been at work.
TEN
The date had been 13th May 1938, an unlucky Friday. The robbery had indeed been at Randolphs Bank which was in the village of Hatchwell and that – I realized with a quickening interest – was not that far from Biddenford where Gavin Herrick and Donald Moxton had grown up. The amount stolen was £30,000. That doesn’t sound a lot by today’s standards, but for the 1930s it must have been a substantial haul.
Even though I was now armed with the year and the place, it still proved difficult to track down information about the robbery in the local press, although eventually I got there. A very unlucky day indeed for Randolphs Bank. Nineteen thirty-eight was the year of Chamberlain’s September visit to Hitler in Munich when he had brought back – or so he thought – the promise of ‘peace for our time’. Those on the reserve list for military service relaxed. In May, however, when the robbery had taken place, the threat of war had been at its height, after the annexation of Austria and murmurings of Czech mobilization, and so even bank raids seemed to have escaped notice in the national press. The Hatchwell theft had nevertheless received full attention in the Cantium Press, a local paper long defunct, which was probably why it had escaped Pen Roxton’s eagle eye. There it was in front of me in Kent Archives microfiche form:
Daring Raid on Bank
Randolphs Bank in Hatchwell suffered a severe loss on Friday after its owner Mr Alfred Randolph, accompanied by two clerks and an armed guard, had driven his motor car from Hatchwell Post Office back to the Bank, having collected the day’s money delivery. He, one of the clerks and the guard were about to begin the removal of the blocks of notes from the boot of the car to the safe inside the building, when a masked man ran from nearby bushes to the motor car, and drove it off together with the other clerk, Mr Donald Moxton, still in the rear seating. Mr Moxton’s shrieks of alarm were to no avail. He was pushed from the motor car into woodland outside the village bounds and the thief drove off with the blocks of Bank of England notes still in the boot of the motor car. Mr Moxton, aged 16, was unhurt but owing to the mask and the robber’s cap he was unable to tell the investigating police officer much about him save that he was a man of middle age, of stocky build and with brown hair. He is believed to have escaped with more than £30,000. The motor car is understood to be a black Packard imported from the United States of America and has not yet been found.
I whooped with pleasure at this discovery – to the sympathetic grins of my fellow researchers in the Archives – and slumped back on my chair with great satisfaction. A later edition of the newspaper reported the discovery of the said motor car at Robertsbridge railway station a week a
fter the robbery. Thus two birds with one stone, the Packard and Mr Donald Moxton were now linked. All I had to do was answer a question or two. First query: was the black Packard the Packard. Answer: it had had plenty of time to be recovered after the theft and in due course to be acquired by the Moxtons and repainted. Next: was there any link to the Herricks here? Answer: not yet. Next: why did the bank get its cash through a post office? Did the Bank of England not use the train and its own fleet of cars? No answer to that either as yet. Next: why was the bank manager driving his own car and for what must have been only a short distance? Next: what about this armed guard? Didn’t he have an eye open for masked robbers? And last – a delightful one this – surely it must have been an inside job?
I really relished the thought of that one. All sorts of interesting theories occurred to me as Donald Moxton was present at the theft. Forcing myself to be objective, however, this masked robber could be anyone, if this method of business was the bank’s regular policy and therefore this was a daily or weekly trip to the post office.
My first job would be to walk the ground. Even if this robbery had nothing to do with Philip Moxton or his death, I could not be sure of that until I could rule it out with certainty. I needed to visit Hatchwell and I needed a companion for the trip. A man and a woman poking round a village would draw less attention than a sole inquisitor. True I had no plans to repeat the bank robbery but I prefer any information I gather not to be guarded because the informant is speaking to a possibly suspicious stranger. Louise was filming and in any case her face is so well known that anonymity would be the last thing her companionship would achieve, so I asked Zoe to come with me. She agreed with such alacrity that it didn’t take many of my car detective powers to deduce her current job, rebuilding the brakes on a Morris Oxford, was not to her taste. She takes the view that if you’ve had a Morris Minor through your hands1, every other Morris is definitely second best.
Hatchwell is way off the beaten track, but it’s smaller and unlike Monksford is not moving with the times. It’s frozen into them. When I checked it out on the web I was amazed to find that it still had a bank at all, though it was no longer Randolphs but Moxtons. I wondered why such a prestigious bank was still catering for a village, but then realized that there must be plenty of wealthy people living nearby who could well be happy to have an inconspicuous bank on their doorstep.