Classic in the Dock

by Amy Myers

  ‘I’m attempting to find out what happened,’ I replied.

  ‘The police have already discovered exactly what happened.’

  ‘There may be unanswered questions, Hazel,’ Peter put in sharply.

  ‘Only in your mind, Peter. Mine is quite clear on the matter. There is talk of the village being involved, but no one would go to such lengths as murder to achieve their aim of so-called progress.’

  ‘Where money is involved people are inclined to go to any lengths,’ I pointed out.

  The glint in Hazel’s eye suggested I would not be invited back to the house. I’d arranged with Martin to give me a lift back to Frogs Hill as he had to pick up a magneto from Len, and so I took a footpath through the fields to his garage, reflecting that soon these pleasant meadows could be covered in housing. What of Plumshaw then? Just how strong was the desire – and need – for expansion and to what length would its supporters go?

  By the time I reached Frogs Hill farmhouse, having left Martin in the Pits with Len and Zoe, I was beginning to dread facing Maria because of the inquisition she would immediately put me through. I wanted to avoid a repetition of the Sunday evening after I had returned from seeing Giovanni. Maria had insisted on cooking me a superb pasta which took three hours to simmer to perfection. As a result, we were eating it as midnight struck and then came the inevitable dissection of my visit to him. His current plight had taken us way into the small hours. Finally I had reassured her that British justice would see Giovanni cleared and went to bed. I was by no means sure of this myself, given the facts, and Giovanni’s reluctance to tell me (and presumably also the police) about his exact movements after he had been released from custody, particularly on the Sunday, added to my doubts. There had been no point in my telling Maria this. She needed reassurance, whether baseless or not. Without it she could not keep going and would be of no comfort to her husband.

  Now as I walked over to the farmhouse, summoning up my courage to undergo another such endurance test, the pit of my stomach dropped even further. There was Louise’s Ford Focus. Delight was immediately mingled with even more apprehension.

  What on earth was she doing here? Had she thrown Maria out? I might find a blood-curdling battle going on inside. Had Len taken Maria back to stay with him again? Both Zoe and Len were in the Pits, but Len could have driven over to Pluckley with Maria. Please, please, let that have happened, I thought. Otherwise Jack’s Return Home, to quote the old melodrama, would be far from pleasant.

  Cautiously I opened the door and crept in, but I could hear no signals of battle and silence reigned. Perhaps the confrontation had already taken place and both combatants had retired to their rooms? I might sound facetious about this deadly serious matter, but I was very shaken. For Louise to find Maria still installed would be an unpleasant shock. I would have expected her to turn round and leave right away, so perhaps, I comforted myself, Maria had indeed returned to Len’s home.

  Confident that this was the explanation, I headed for the kitchen. The first sound I heard was a chuckle and then a laugh. I found Louise and Maria ensconced in the living room each with a large glass of wine before them, as matey as salt and pepper.

  ‘Jack!’ Louise leapt up and came over to kiss me. ‘Maria told me you had gone to Plumshaw. Any further news on Giovanni?’

  I tried to pull myself together. After all, Maria in the past had befriended one or two of Giovanni’s girlfriends, so perhaps it had happened again in the interests of his welfare.

  Louise read my expression correctly and giggled.

  ‘I rang Maria, Jack,’ Louise told me. ‘We’ve talked our problem over, and now we’re friends again.’

  Just like that. Women! I thought. No one seemed to care whether I was OK with my beloved being on happy terms with her ex-lover’s wife, not to mention the ex-lover himself.

  ‘For Giovanni’s sake,’ Maria said eagerly. ‘He like it we friends.’

  Now I was really dazed with shock. ‘Well, that’s great,’ is all I could manage to say. It sounded lukewarm even to me, so I added another ‘Great’ to help it along.

  Apparently I was expected to join the happy party, and Louise was looking at me encouragingly.

  ‘My Giovanni will be safe now,’ Maria assured me. ‘I tell Ricardo Louise here. Ricardo not happy, but if it help Giovanni I not mind.’

  Help Giovanni? What about helping me? ‘Who’s Ricardo?’ I asked weakly. Maybe in this crazy new world he would turn out to be Maria’s lover.

  The two women looked at me in amazement. ‘My Ricardo, of course,’ Maria failed to explain.

  Louise began to look worried. ‘Ricardo is Maria and Giovanni’s son. You must have known that.’

  ‘Son?’ I did a ninety-degree turn and landed up flat on my mental back. ‘Why must I have known about him?’ I threw at them belligerently. I had vaguely known Maria and Giovanni had a family but not the details. By the time I came to know Giovanni myself I was an adult, his children had left home and we seldom talked about anything save the here and now.

  Louise seemed bewildered. ‘Because you’ve had a face like a grumpy old bear for the last week or two, after you deduced that I had an affair with him. Which I did. I lived with him for two years.’

  ‘With him?’ I wrestled with this. ‘Ricardo?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maria told me crossly. ‘She broke my Ricardo’s heart. Giovanni not happy. He not like Louise but now it will be all right.’

  ‘Me not happy then either,’ Louise told me levelly. ‘Ricardo wanted me to give up the stage, Jack. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have a family, but he insisted I gave up acting altogether for ever. I had to be what he called a real wife and mother.’

  I was still staring at them both, dumbstruck. I felt like crying. I felt like leaping into the air with joy. All I actually did choke out was: ‘I thought your lover was Giovanni.’

  Shock. ‘Giovanni?’

  I don’t know which of them squeaked this out. Or which of them laughed first. But suddenly we were all doing so. Another glass of wine was brought. That evening we ate, we drank and we were merry.

  Except for one thing. My friend Giovanni was on remand for murder and I had to clear his name.

  SEVEN

  I spent the next two days living alternately in the Glory Boot or glued to my bookshelves. The Glory Boot provided such information as I could glean on the Alfa Romeo and its owner. Fascinating though it was, I didn’t learn much more, save that Giulio Santoro’s co-driver Enrico di Secchio was the son of the Count di Secchio – which was ultimately to prove unfortunate for him. Mussolini and the compliant monarchy had smiled benignly on this wealthy aristocratic family from the north of Italy, which explained how Enrico could afford to buy the Alfa Romeo for his friend and saviour Giulio. Come the armistice, the rise of the Partisans and in 1946 the republicans’ victory in the constitutional referendum leading to the end of the monarchy, the fortunes of the di Secchio family declined.

  As for Giulio himself, I could find nothing about his war record, which I supposed was not surprising given that it would be fifty years before the Internet began to spread its web all over the world.

  I was back to considering Giovanni and Peter Compton, the two people at the centre of this case. Hugh had arranged Giovanni’s visit, but Peter was the real power here. The two men had never met each other before, so their common ground was the Alfa Romeo and the proposed painting. If, as I believed, Giovanni was innocent, the battle between the two Plumshaws also had to be taken into account. I wasn’t getting the full story on either front, either deliberately or because I had not asked the right questions.

  Six days had elapsed between the attack in the barn and the discovery of the body, and probably four between the attack and Hugh’s death. My stumbling block was that at present Giovanni could be linked to both. He had claimed that he had visited a friend on the Sunday, but he was hardly forthcoming on the subject.

  Giovanni was only allowed a certain number of visits
per week and their time was limited. Maria was using up a great deal of it, not to mention his lawyers, and so I decided not to visit him again myself until I had something more concrete to latch on to. Besides, I felt somewhat shamefaced over my mistaken assumption about Louise; he might laugh about it – in due course – with Maria but he might not be so pleased with me. Given his current situation perhaps that was not important.

  Instead, therefore, I tackled Maria. Louise was rehearsing most days but Maria was all too present at Frogs Hill, to Len and Zoe’s despair. Her frequent visits to the Pits were distracting them from what they considered the real business of life, which currently was tuning a Lanchester. I’d had the happy idea of giving Maria a free rein in my garden, but I found her there removing a stone statue of Venus (a present from Louise) to a position where her nudity could not offend – behind the runner beans and close to the compost heap. I wisely did not comment. Instead, I asked:

  ‘Was the friend whom Giovanni visited on the Sunday before you arrived the same one who told him about the Alfa Romeo being in Plumshaw?’

  She stopped rearranging the beans and gave much thought to this. ‘Si.’ She began her rearrangement again.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘I do not know. I ask Giovanni. This look better, eh?’ She stood back to admire her work.

  She and Giovanni live in the northern half of Italy near Bologna and the Apennine mountains. Peter Compton had been parachuted into that region during the war. No great coincidence there. It was a huge area and there were thousands upon thousands of soldiers and Partisans fighting there. Giovanni was now only in his late fifties, so the two could not have met. Nevertheless, bearing in mind Peter’s comments on long memories it was worth digging further.

  ‘Was your family caught up in the Second World War, Maria? And Giovanni’s?’

  She took a long time over pulling up the bindweed that had dared climb up the beans. ‘Every Italian family in war, Jack,’ she said at last. ‘Every English family in war. Like every family in the world.’

  She wasn’t getting away with that. ‘How were yours and Giovanni’s involved?’

  She straightened up again and proceeded to tell me a very long and horrifying tale of poverty, conscription, enemy brutality and Italian suffering. Maria is a very astute woman once the drama queen is stripped away. But then I’m pretty determined too.

  ‘And Giovanni’s family?’ I asked when she finally ground to a halt.

  ‘Not know.’

  ‘You must know something,’ I persisted.

  She went back to the bindweed. ‘Perhaps yes, perhaps no.’

  ‘Was his a Fascist family? Pro-Mussolini?’ This might be the reason for her obstinacy.

  She was genuinely shocked. ‘Fascisti? No, no, no. His family Partisans.’

  ‘In the north of Italy?’

  ‘Si.’ She looked uncomfortable now.

  ‘Could his family have had anything to do with Peter Compton?’

  ‘I not know about his family and Giovanni only same age as me. Peter Compton old man, I think.’ She had her mulish look on.

  I can be stubborn too. ‘Could Giovanni’s father have met him?’

  She had no problem with this question because she replied immediately. ‘Luigi. Good papa. Lived in Florence. But only child during war.’

  ‘OK, then. Luigi’s father. Giovanni’s grandfather.’

  She had no problem with this either. ‘Yes. He in war. With ships.’

  A naval man. So that ruled that line out. After the armistice, wherever he was, he was unlikely to have been up in the mountains with Peter Compton.

  She smiled at me happily. ‘I ask Giovanni about him when I see him. Now I garden.’

  Maria had relaxed, so where had I gone wrong? I must be missing something.

  I was missing more than one ‘something’. Before I tackled Giovanni about this ‘friend’ who was his alibi for the Sunday on which Hugh had probably died and been thrown in the pond, I needed to talk to Brandon again. This was easier said than done. I left a message but it was early on Friday evening before he called back.

  ‘Giovanni’s alibi for that Sunday,’ I began tentatively. Brandon usually rebuffs questions on his evidence. ‘He told me he went to see a friend of his.’

  This time Brandon was again surprisingly helpful. He actually chortled. ‘That’s what he told us too. Drove there in his hired car.’

  ‘So who’s the friend?’

  ‘The name is Umberto Monti. Runs a restaurant in the Eynsford area.’

  ‘Any reason I shouldn’t go to see him?’

  ‘No reason at all, Jack.’ Brandon was too obliging. ‘Only one thing you should know. The restaurant was closed all day and the friend didn’t see hide nor hair of Giovanni. In fact he went to France for the day.’

  Brandon picked up on my horror and added compassionately. ‘Sorry, Jack.’

  I was going to have to work hard and quickly if I still thought Giovanni innocent. I put that to one side – it was too tough to face at present. Anyway, first I had to find out what had happened that night and in the six days after it. And for that I needed to follow up the undoubted fact that the Comptons had enemies in the village, and Martin Fisher had to be my first port of call.

  Owning an independent garage he could – as he had pointed out – sit comfortably between the two rival sides and wasn’t reliant on either side for his future. I wouldn’t have thought he was making a fortune out of Four Star Services, but at least independence gives you security in one way – no one can tell you what to do (except the bank and taxman of course). Nevertheless, restoring classic cars is an up and down business as we know all too well at Frogs Hill, and I’d noted that Martin now had only the one mechanic working for him instead of the two I recalled in the past. Not that that means a lot, as we do it for the love of the job, although we do have to make ends meet. Martin was single – divorced I think – so unless he had heavy maintenance costs he could afford to follow his heart. At the moment that must be divided between the Makepeaces and Comptons, as both sides of the village depended on his services. Although classics were his main love, he handled any sort of car.

  It was a Saturday and Martin was working there alone.

  ‘Care for a quickie lunch?’ I suggested.

  ‘Not today, thanks. Got a job to deliver. You should enjoy it though. The grapevine’s already humming. George Makepeace put in a way-over-the-top offer to Compton for the freehold of the Hop and Harry. Bold move.’

  ‘Not the most considerate one with Hugh so recently dead.’

  ‘Could be a good time for George though. Catch the enemy when he’s weak.’

  ‘Good if cold-blooded,’ I observed.

  ‘George is cold-blooded – over the Comptons at least. He’s a grand old chap provided you see things from his point of view. Without his heir, Peter Compton could decide to throw in the towel over the Hop and Harry. And once that’s settled, the way would be open for Makepeace all the way to the bank.’

  ‘Would the family go with that?’

  ‘The Rangers would.’

  ‘And Bronte?’

  ‘She’ll be a Makepeace soon and out of the picture. Not a penny to her. Compton and Makepeace will stick to their guns over that and neither will budge.’

  ‘Why did this feud start? Over land or something more personal?’

  ‘All sorts of stories. But the one most people believe is that way back when the Comptons first came to Plumshaw in the 1880s they bought a piece of land from the Makepeaces down around the church. It was a symbolic purchase only, because one of the Compton sons married a Makepeace and it was a gift to her. But the husband died before the wife so the Comptons said it was still their land when the Makepeaces tried to claim it.’

  ‘Bronte going over to the Makepeace side must seem a double betrayal?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘If the Hop and Harry goes and development forges ahead, the whole village will change.’

>   ‘Yup to that too. To outside planners, this battle isn’t over that, it’s only about a pub that’s old, decaying, not listed, and with a landlord who’s all but skint. We’re all fond of it, but that won’t win the day, however many protesters there are winding up the media and preservation societies. The pub’s doomed. I don’t want to see it go, but pretty pictures don’t make money.’

  Could this be the reason for Hugh’s murder? That someone wanted Hugh off the playing field? Removing Peter would achieve nothing because Hugh would inherit and take the same view as his father. There was a lot at stake and I needed to be in the picture. Quite how I was going to catch a murderer in the Hop and Harry I wasn’t sure, but the pub would be one sure source of information. Everyone would gravitate there to find out if there was any news on the Makepeace offer.

  The first thing I registered was that Nan’s Ford Escort was outside the Hop and Harry from which I deduced he was probably inside. If so, his usual powers of peacemaking were failing. The noise of angry voices reached me even before I got out of my car. It was a fine day and some customers had retreated to the garden, but the battle was raging inside. The main entrance door was standing open so I made straight for it.

  Too quickly for my own good. As I ran up the steps to the door a man came staggering out, reeling under the force of a blow. He overbalanced straight into me, sending us both tumbling down the steps together. I painfully picked myself up and hauled my assailant to his feet. I didn’t recognize him, but I did recognize some of the group that spilled out after us.

  The formidable Nan came rushing to the fore – not to my rescue, I noted, but to separate the contenders who were intent on continuing the fight outside. One of them was Jamie Makepeace. The man he’d assaulted was older than Jamie, maybe in his mid twenties, and must, I assumed, be one of the anti-development protesters. He was certainly protesting now and very vocally. He made a sudden rush at Jamie, but was fielded expertly by Nan. While they were still sorting themselves out, I slipped inside to assess the situation.