by Amy Myers
By the time we arrived at the hotel, the noise from the JCB had stopped and in order to ring Brandon I stayed on my own outside the hotel, walking up the drive through Martin’s garage premises to the development area. And a sad sight that was. The JCB had been demolishing an old farm building, the rubble from which now lay in heaps by the rear wall of the hotel garden. Even Huggy and Puggy in the play area had their backs to this desecration. I stood there for some time looking at it. I wondered whether this would be the fate of old Plumshaw itself sooner or later and if I could possibly be right over what fate Hugh Compton had met. It seemed unbelievable now, and yet Brandon went instantly into action, Saturday or not.
I stood there too long.
The roar of the digger started up and the whack on my back from the bucket sent me sprawling on to the piles of rubble. As I struggled to regain my feet, I saw that huge bucket rearing up to fall down on me. I saw the driver intent on positioning it for its deadly task but I couldn’t get a foothold in time. No escape to the left, nor to the right, nor ahead. My legs didn’t seem to belong to me. Terror, pure terror took hold of me. I could see nothing else but that bucket above me. I was unaware of anything else but that bucket.
Then my legs were seized, sending me sprawling again. This time I found myself being dragged and bumped over the brick and plaster rubble. I was miraculously hauled, painfully but safely, to one side as the bucket crashed down inches from where I lay, courtesy of Paul Ranger in the JCB.
I opened my eyes to find I was lying in a heap across my saviour, smothering him. I tried to roll off, bit by bit – and the world had indeed gone crazy. It wasn’t a man beneath me. It was a woman. Pen was letting off a string of oaths. I tried feeble thanks as we looked up to see the bucket swivelling dangerously above us. I flung myself, pain and all, to one side pulling Pen with me, so that once again we fell together on the debris as the bucket descended inches away from us.
When I managed to look up after that it was to see not Paul Ranger, but Jamie Makepeace, in the cab and the engine running down. Despite cuts and bruises, we were safe. Paul Ranger was lying prone on the ground.
I had another go at feeble thanks to Pen for saving my life. She ignored them.
As she staggered to her feet, she gripped me by my jacket, eyes ablaze and hissed, ‘What’s the story, Jack?’
Giovanni and Maria stayed on with Umberto for some weeks. I heard little from Brandon, whose plain-clothes man on the job had quickly materialized to help Jamie restrain Paul Ranger, once he had recovered from Jamie’s knockout blow. All I knew was that Paul had been charged with Hugh’s murder and the attempted murder of one Jack Colby (plus that of ‘courageous Kentish Graphic journalist Penelope Roxton’). Paul had admitted all charges.
I had tried to tell Brandon I still wasn’t happy as I thought there was a missing link. Brandon had told me he was happy, but if I could find this link then he’d be just as happy to consider it.
I set out to find it. What I considered first was whether I should drag Giovanni into this. I decided not to do so, because this was between me and the Comptons. If I could sort this out, it might even be possible to see the Alfa Romeo in a different light, and persuade Giovanni that the light had returned and he could now paint it.
I arranged a meeting with Peter and this time I welcomed Hazel’s presence, as it might be some comfort to him. He began to apologize to me for his family’s actions but I stopped him.
‘We need to get to the truth, Peter,’ I said gently.
He looked at Hazel, who nodded, so I took my courage in both hands and began:
‘It all stems back to the Mesola family, doesn’t it, Peter? Your first wife, Sofia, and her sister Floria.’
He flinched, but answered me. ‘Yes.’
‘Sofia was in love with you during the time you were fighting with the Partisans, not just after the war?’
‘In love with the idea of a British officer who might marry her and get her to England afterwards,’ Hazel snorted.
Peter didn’t comment on that, but simply replied, ‘I believe she was.’
‘Could it be that it was she who betrayed Floria, not Giulio? That it was she who changed the time of the meeting so that Floria would be captured and informed on her to the Fascists?’
I held my breath. This had to be the answer, but every finger I had was crossed. I thought Peter would not reply, but eventually to my relief he did. ‘It is possible. During the past weeks I have come to see that. Whether it is true or not, though, there is no getting away from the fact that I betrayed Giulio, believing him to be guilty. If I was wrong, I should find that hard to live with.’
‘Tell him, Peter,’ Hazel urged him, when he stopped.
Peter looked at her, seemingly past the ability to argue. ‘As you know, my first marriage was not happy. Stephanie adored her mother, however. Although she was so young when she died, she grew up to hate the Santoros, believing that her Aunt Floria had died through Giulio Santoro’s treachery.’
I could see now what might have happened. ‘She continued to see the Mesola family after her mother’s death, so it might have been from them rather than her mother that she had inherited this hatred of the Santoros.’
‘That is possible. They were honourable people. Stephanie does however have a memory of her mother talking of the Santoros with hatred. After her mother died, she remembers asking her grandparents who the Santoros were. All she can recall is that she was told that Giulio’s brothers had come to the house not long before her mother died, and coupled with that memory of Sofia’s hatred of the family, Stephanie became convinced that they were also responsible not only for Floria’s death but for her mother’s. Sofia had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and Stephanie had the impression from the way the family talked that it was not by accident.’
Giulio’s brothers. It was all beginning to come together now, as I’d suspected. ‘Could that be why your daughter believes that Giovanni’s family belonged to the Mafia?’ I asked. ‘A confusion between the Santoro brothers and the Brotherhood?’
Even if that childish mistake had turned the brothers into villains, however, it surely could have nothing to do with Hugh’s death. True, it had affected the fake murder plot, with Stephanie, like Peter, intent on getting vengeance on the Santoro family, but murder was a far different matter.
‘It’s possible,’ Peter granted. ‘But there is something else you should know, Jack. The Alfa Romeo. When I first met Sofia she knew that I was working with Giulio. He talked about the car with great passion during the long nights in the mountains. It helped us all, something not to do with the war. I knew all about the 1938 Mille Miglia and the Alfa Romeo, because I was in my late teens then and followed every step of the thrilling 1930s racing scene. Sofia knew how much I admired the car despite my feelings for its owner, and so I now suspect she could have asked the Fascist militia for the car in payment for her betrayal of Floria. She knew I wanted to marry her sister. At the war’s end, marrying Sofia was the price I paid for the car. I was fond of her, of course, but I did not love her and she knew that. The car won me over. Only later I wondered how she came to get it, but we are often fearful when the truth is too terrible to contemplate, and I shied away from it. It lay between us though. Poor Stephanie. All that, and now having to cope with the fact that her husband killed her half-brother.’
How could I say to him after this that I did not think Paul had acted alone? That he was probably not the instigator of Hugh’s murder and had only acted to safeguard his wife. Stephanie, for whatever reason, had herself killed her half-brother.
I was present when Brandon interviewed Stephanie under caution at Charing HQ. She didn’t seem to care that I was present too. I think she was anxious to talk in order that we should sympathize with her point of view.
‘I am Italian,’ she told us proudly. ‘My mother told me I should be proud of my family. But it was her parents who told me when I had grown up what my mother had done. So then I did not
even have a mother and it was the Santoro brotherhood who killed her. I did not have a father. He cared only for Hugh. Everything was Hugh. He was the heir, he was the one who carried on the Compton name. I never told my father he was wrong about Giulio betraying Floria. Why should I? He betrayed me, he did not care for me, only for Hugh. And we are so poor too. Paul does not earn enough, and my father would not sell the only thing that was worth money in this place – that car. He told me it had memories for him. But I had memories too.’
Her cry of distress was chilling. ‘So I told my father,’ she ranted on, ‘how he could get his revenge for Floria’s betrayal by Giulio, and we set up this plan. Hugh went to La Casa, where we knew Enrico had lived and that his descendants still ran it, and we told the owner about having seen the Alfa Romeo in a friend’s barn. He wasn’t to know it came from us and we knew the story would reach that terrible Santoro man, Giovanni Donati.’
‘But you had your own plan: to kill Hugh for real, and let Giovanni take the blame?’ Brandon asked.
‘Why not?’ She seemed genuinely surprised at our looks of horror. ‘The Santoro brothers killed my mother. I know that. It was quite easy to kill Hugh and he deserved it. I went to the chalet on Saturday evening, invited him to come during the night and stay at Manor Cottage for lunch and the next two days until his planned return. I killed him there. Paul helped me get the blood cleaned up and the clothes changed to those he wore in the barn that night, and we moved the body. It was quite straightforward.’
I had one more visit to Peter Compton at his request. I had wondered how much more emotional battering this frail old man could take, but the subject today was, he assured me, all pleasure.
‘I’ll survive long enough for this,’ he told me.
It was all pleasure. I was far from being the only guest in the barn. Giovanni was there, as were Maria, Umberto, Bronte, Hazel, Peter, Len and Zoe – and Jamie Makepeace. Even more pleasant, Louise was there, but not Ricardo. This could have something to do with the fact that we had arranged it for a weekday, which he could never have managed. My idea? Of course not.
As we stood admiringly around the Alfa Romeo, Peter said, ‘I have come to a decision about its future. I want you to have it, Giovanni. I owe it to you.’
Giovanni’s face lit up. ‘No, I do not wish to own it, thank you, but I have another plan which will make it light again after its darkness. First I will paint it as I remember it first, unrestored, and then I will paint it restored.’
Peter looked pleased. ‘That is good. What then?’
‘I ask Umberto whether he would want it, and he say no too if you ask him. You sell it and half the money you keep for this farm and the other half you give to a prison charity. We both suffer, Mr Compton. We both know what it is like to lose liberty.’
It was quickly agreed. I had remained silent, not knowing whether I had any stake in this or not. Apparently I did. Peter turned to me. ‘As for you, Jack. I want Frogs Hill to do the restoration.’
That evening Giovanni, Umberto and I went for a celebratory drink in the Half Moon pub in Piper’s Green, while Louise, Maria and Umberto’s wife looked after the restaurant. We drank quite a lot, and it was agreed that we would get a taxi back to La Casa, where we would drink another bottle and then sleep it off.
‘And now,’ Umberto told us after finishing it, ‘there is something that you do not know, Jack. Nor you, Giovanni. But I know, because I kept back one letter from the Mesola family. Too sad. But Giovanni must know. Sofia Mesola did not die by accident, nor by suicide, nor by the hand of Giulio Santoro’s brothers. They went to see the Mesola family to tell them the truth about Floria, that her own sister had betrayed her because Peter Compton wanted to marry Floria, but Sofia wanted Peter Compton for herself. Learning the truth, her parents killed her, gently, peacefully, for the honour of the Mesola family. Today this could never happen, but in those days when war was still so near to them, when the Partisans and civilians had suffered so much, it could.’
I was silent and it was Giovanni who spoke in the end.
‘It was many years ago,’ he said. ‘We keep this to ourselves, eh? It is the champagne perhaps that talks.’
Which left me just one matter outstanding from the Plumshaw case: Nan.
I went to visit him at Puddledock Cottage one last time. ‘You can stay on here?’
He smiled. ‘Yes. Miss Bronte say I can. She and Jamie are to be married. Good, yes? But they will live in the village or Manor Cottage. Not here. Good news.’
‘It is. I’m told the trust has been rewritten yet again. With Hazel as trustee in charge?’
‘No.’ He looked at me shyly. ‘I am the trustee. And it is completely rewritten. I can do with all the land what I think best.’
So there it was at last. A possible reconciliation for old and new Plumshaw. Just one thing though: ‘Does that mean you will have the last say in whether the Hop and Harry land is sold or whether it’s rebuilt?’
He smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘And how will you do that?’
‘I will listen, and then I will choose.’
I was waiting at the track for my rival, and like a warrior knight of old my charger was at my side on the starting line. I was about to fight for my lady’s hand. (In theory anyway.) My lady Louise had in fact retired into the café at Old Herne’s Club in disgust at being dragged into such a juvenile battle between Ricardo and myself.
Len and Zoe were here with me to cheer me on. Or rather cheer our Black Beauty on. We had spent the last three months restoring the Alfa Romeo, from grappling with the seized engine and struggling to get the drivetrain out to giving its glowing black paint and gleaming chrome radiator grille and hubcaps their final polish.
Unlike the thousand miles of the Mille Miglia race, Old Herne’s track consisted of two former airfield runways linked together in a curve at both ends. Hardly a gruelling task to do four laps round it – especially as Ricardo’s yellow Triumph Stag was roughly an equal match in speed for the 1930s Alfa Romeo.
‘There he is,’ grunted Len. I saw Zoe’s eyes widen and thought it was because she could see, as I did, Louise sauntering out from the café. It wasn’t. Certainly it was Ricardo now saluting Louise with one graceful hand, but it wasn’t the Stag.
Ricardo had cheated. He was driving Giovanni’s red Daytona Ferrari. That red monster would be round Old Herne’s in half the time it took the Alfa, forty years its junior.
He drew up on the starting line with splendid aplomb and laughed as he saw my face.
‘All’s fair in love and war, Jack!’
Should I complain? Accept the challenge? I took one look at Louise’s amused face and chose the latter.
‘Tortoise and the hare, Ricardo!’ I yelled back at him. This morning I had patted the tortoise emblem on my Gordon-Keeble’s bonnet for luck, so now I was calling on it even harder. It was the Red Devil against the Black Beauty and if I were thrashed at least I’d go down fighting.
Louise refused point blank to start the race, but Len nobly stepped in and dropped the flag. We were off – Ricardo much more speedily than me. Half of me minded very much, the other half didn’t. To feel this Alfa Romeo in my hands on a real track was an experience I will never forget. I remembered an old cliché about the Alfa Romeo. You don’t steer her. You just keep your hands on the wheel and wish her round bends. And here I was wishing like crazy.
Even if Ricardo did lap me as I was midway through Lap Three. The tortoise did its best but it wasn’t going to catch the hare up before the end of the race after the fourth lap.
Fortune favours the brave, it’s said, and though I was feeling far from being a brave warrior by how, fortune dropped in with a vengeance. The dulcet voice of Louise, beloved by fans all over the world and especially by me, intervened. ‘Bravo, Ricardo!’ her mellow tones shouted as he passed her shortly before the last bend. I could see him turn, see him go too fast into the bend – and spin off into the undergrowth.
The tortoise dro
ve sedately past him and crossed the finishing line triumphant.
To do him justice, Ricardo drove back on to the track, completed the lap, climbed out, shook my hand and kissed Louise’s hand with perfect poise.
‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I win.’
I had to ask Louise when we were alone: ‘Did you shout out on purpose?’
‘As if,’ she retorted, and took my hand.
The Car’s the Star
James Myers
The Starring Cars
1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B
The 1930s was a triumphal time for Alfa, racking up eight Mille Miglia and four Le Mans victories as well as an outright win at the 1935 German Grand Prix by Nuvolari. The 8C 2900 was designed in the mid-30s for racing. It used a 2.9 litre uprated version of the inline eight-cylinder engine featuring dual camshafts, dual magnetos and dry sump oiling. It sported two Roots type superchargers fed by two Weber carburettors. In its competition form, the engine produced 180+ horsepower. The chassis featured fully independent suspension.
Just over thirty 2900Bs were built in 1937 and 1938 (plus one more from spare parts in 1941). The bodies were made by Carrozzeria Touring and Pininfarina.
1972 Ferrari Daytona Spyder
The Ferrari 365 GTB/4, generally known as the ‘Daytona’, was a grand tourer made from 1968 to 1973. It replaced the 275 GTB/4 and in its turn was replaced by the mid-engined 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer in 1973.
The ‘Daytona’ name no doubt came from Ferrari’s 1-2-3 victory in the 1967 ‘24 Hours of Daytona’. The Daytona was a traditional front-engined, rear-drive car with a 4.4 litre V12 engine producing around 360 horsepower. It was styled by Pininfarina and is still one of the fastest road cars ever with a top speed of 175 mph.