Mr. Campion's Abdication Read online

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  MR CAMPION’S ABDICATION*

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  Margery Allingham’s

  Albert Campion returns in

  MR CAMPION’S ABDICATION

  by

  Mike Ripley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by Mike Ripley.

  The right of Mike Ripley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8735-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-847-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-907-7 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Daniela and La Pergoletta

  (the real ones)

  Author’s Note

  I have taken numerous liberties with the geography of Suffolk but hopefully in the same spirit which Margery Allingham did. Once again, I am grateful to Roger Johnson of the Margery Allingham Society for his cartographic skills.

  As this story is set in early 1970, I have used Sutton Hoo by Charles Green, originally published in 1963, for background on boat burials in East Anglia. A comprehensive study detailing more modern excavations can be found in Professor Martin Carver’s Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? 1998, London: British Museum Press.

  Although this novel does not directly concern itself with the ‘Abdication Crisis’ of 1936, the writing of it coincided with research by Dr Jennifer Palmer into papers in the Allingham Archive at the University of Essex, which revealed Margery Allingham’s thoughts as the crisis came to a head in December. In a letter to her American agent, Margery gave her reasons why many in Britain did not wish to see the king abdicate. These were: ‘(a) he had got the makings of the best king we ever had, popular at home and abroad; (b) it would leave us with the Duke of York who stammers, is very shy and is not known anywhere except in Austria and Australia; (c) thousands of pounds have [already] been sunk in the Coronation [planned for May 1937]; (d) it would hurt our prestige, but this did not carry much weight as Mrs S. had done a lot of harm already.’

  Allingham was in London during the crisis, describing ‘a week of silent crowds’ in Whitehall as news of the abdication became official. Margery ended her correspondence on a more upbeat note as Edward was replaced by his younger brother who became George VI: ‘There is a strong feeling that this lad will make a better constitutional monarch than his brother, and having a family certainly does help.’ On that latter point, Allingham was spot on.

  Contents

  Cover

  Previous Titles by Mike Ripley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Map

  Chapter 1: Lords Temporal

  Chapter 2: Night Crow

  Chapter 3: In a Country Churchyard

  Chapter 4: Boat Burial

  Chapter 5: ’Arrods’ ’Ome Delivery

  Chapter 6: Royal Welcome

  Chapter 7: Unit

  Chapter 8: Inside the Gates, by the Sea

  Chapter 9: Lights, Camera, Inaction!

  Chapter 10: Little Italy

  Chapter 11: Tales from the Tap Room

  Chapter 12: Supporting Cast (Present)

  Chapter 13: Supporting Cast (Past)

  Chapter 14: Old Bones

  Chapter 15: The Hound of the Press

  Chapter 16: The Evil Meal

  Chapter 17: Hair in the Gate

  Chapter 18: The Sweethearting Treasure

  Chapter 19: Stamp of Approval

  Chapter 20: The Sermon Opposite the Mount

  ONE

  Lords Temporal

  ‘So where exactly did Albert Campion stand on the Abdication?’

  ‘Behind the throne, slightly to the left?’ suggested Luke. ‘I honestly don’t know, Lord Breeze. The subject never came up.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it? You’re not of our generation, the generation who lived through it; you’d be too young to be worried by such things. And it’s Gus to me friends, by the way. The title comes in handy in restaurants, but in this place every bugger’s got one, so it’s nowt special.’

  Commander Charles Luke, being a very senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, was naturally wary of complete strangers who insisted on first-name terms, even if they were members of the House of Lords. Perhaps especially if they were Lords, even self-deprecating ones.

  ‘As I’m on duty, Lord Breeze, I’ll keep it formal, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Nay, lad, there’s no need to stand on ceremony,’ said Lord Breeze. ‘Don’t let this place intimidate you.’

  Luke suppressed a snort of mild disgust at the suggestion that he could be intimidated by the sedate comfort of the peers’ bar when he had survived Friday night fights with broken bottles down the East India Docks and had once had to act as the lone keeper of the peace between two warring Chinese restaurants disputing the right of way in a dark alley off Brewer Street. On both occasions the antagonists there had all wanted to call him ‘friend’, and somehow he had remembered those nervous incidents as less disconcerting than his present situation. If anything did make Luke uncomfortable, it was Lord Breeze’s increasingly thickening Yorkshire accent and bluff camaraderie, both of which were no more than a politician’s props; the umbrella, the cigar and the black briar pipe of yesteryear updated to the age of the television interview or panel game.

  ‘I am quite familiar with the House, Lord Breeze,’ Luke said politely. ‘In my position, one has to be.’

  ‘Matters of national security, that sort of thing, eh?’

  ‘Certainly those, but when an arrest has to be made …’ Luke paused mischievously, ‘… it helps to know the lie of the land,
so that we can be discreet and cause the minimum of disruption.’

  ‘You’ve had to make arrests? Here?’ Lord Breeze was definitely shaken, if not stirred.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Luke quietly, but did not volunteer the information that the arrest in question had been that of a junior kitchen porter who had been diverting joints of beef to a series of Indian restaurants in Brick Lane.

  ‘Well, I suppose it takes all sorts,’ said Lord Breeze, not before time as it was one of his favourite catchphrases when asked a difficult question by a journalist; not that Lord Breeze was often questioned by members of the press, but when he was the questions tended to be difficult. ‘Good job you came in uniform, then, in case you have to feel another collar.’

  Charles Luke flexed his shoulders and neck muscles so that the material of his blue serge jacket rippled gently across his chest.

  ‘Unless you have information to the contrary, my Lord, I am not expecting to make an arrest today. The uniform is because I have a formal dinner engagement this evening, so I am afraid this meeting will have to be a brief one.’

  ‘Nah, lad, tha’s got time for a snifter, surely?’ The faux Yorkshire accent grated on Luke like gravel and he tried his best not to wince. ‘Tha’ money’s no good in ’ere, you know. Only peers get to pay. Mind you, upside is we’re not troubled by licensing hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lord Breeze, but I must decline,’ said Luke, now tired of this particular charade. An end-of-the-peer show, he thought and allowed himself a private smile. ‘Perhaps it is best that we get down to business. I still have no idea why you have summoned me here.’

  ‘But you came anyway, a busy man like you.’

  Lord Breeze had piggy eyes at the best of times. Now, after a good lunch (a bottle-and-a-half-if-not-two lunch if Luke’s guess was right), and with a senior policeman seemingly waiting on his grace and favour, they had become the eyes of a weasel or a ferret.

  ‘It was … suggested … that I should come,’ Luke said carefully.

  ‘And that suggestion came from a rather interesting place, did it not?’

  ‘I think you know very well where it came from.’ Luke clenched his teeth to stop them grinding and wished that the peer would either stop fencing or take a long walk off a short … well, pier.

  ‘And one can’t ignore a suggestion from the Palace, can one? Neither of us can, not that we’d want to, eh? I mean, we’ve both sworn oaths of loyalty.’

  ‘I certainly have sworn to keep the Queen’s peace,’ said Luke, taking a deep, calming breath, ‘but I am at a loss to see how I am performing that duty at this particular moment.’

  Lord Breeze smiled the wincing sort of smile associated with indigestion and adopted his second-best condescending tone.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, lad …’ Luke sincerely hoped he did not, ‘… you’re wondering why the Palace should have chosen little old me, old Gus Breeze, a life peer of nobbut four years’ standing and a socialist to boot, to act as messenger boy.’

  Luke nodded his head slightly, inviting an explanation. It seemed the most likely way to get the little man to stop rambling and get to the point. For the moment, he would keep his powder dry on the fact that he knew that ‘old Gus’ had been christened Gabriel Augustus St John Breeze and that, if he had been born in a tied cottage, then it was a cottage in the grounds of his father’s estate in North Yorkshire. As Gus – never Augustus and certainly not Gabriel – Breeze he had earned his peerage from a grateful Labour government for his services to house building, having sold the estate he had inherited and ploughed his capital into other types of estates: crowded, red-brick ones with standard metal-framed windows offering better plumbing but little else in the way of improvements when compared to the Victorian terraced houses they replaced. The provision of much-needed social housing, however quickly and cheaply erected (and some Breeze Homes estates had been completed in suspiciously quick times) in desolate areas of the north had brought not just the ermine cloak but substantial profits. Some would say as suspiciously substantial as the rapid completion times of some of his housing estates.

  Lord Breeze continued without the need for prompting, raising a forefinger to tap the side of his sharp, whiskery nose.

  ‘Family, that’s why they sent me to talk to you,’ he said with a satisfied smirk.

  ‘I’m afraid I simply don’t follow you, Lord Breeze. The Home Office has perfectly good channels of communication with—’

  ‘Come on, lad, don’t pretend to be slow. You should have twigged by now that this was not something for normal channels.’

  Luke allowed himself a glance around the bar – its deep-brown leather armchairs, low tables and dark oak-bevelled wall panelling – which was empty apart from the two of them and a bored white-coated barman strangling a pale ale glass with a crisp white tea towel.

  ‘I’ll grant you that these are not my normal channels,’ said Luke, pointedly consulting his wristwatch, ‘and for once I do not have to pretend to be slow on the uptake as I sometimes have to when dealing with political situations. I assume that is what this is.’

  ‘That’s better, lad. Showing a bit of gumption – that’s more what I was told to expect.’ Breeze turned to the barman and made a flamboyant hand gesture which would not have looked out of place on a race course. The barman, grateful for something to do, began to rattle bottles and glasses as officiously as possible. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you, Commander?’

  ‘Lord Breeze, I am on duty, in uniform and due somewhere else very soon, so would you mind awfully getting to the point and sharing this message you say you have been intrusted with?’

  ‘I was told you could be blunt,’ said the peer, taking a balloon of brandy and soda from the silver tray proffered by the barman, who had slid silently up to the table.

  ‘So you had me checked out, as the Americans say.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Breeze. ‘First rule of business: know who you’re dealing with. I’d be surprised if you didn’t ask around about me as well.’

  ‘Oh, I did,’ said Luke, deadpan.

  ‘Did you find owt? Any muck worth raking?’

  ‘Little mysteries, that’s all,’ said Luke. ‘The Yorkshire accent, for instance. Did you develop that at Stowe or wait until you got to Oxford?’

  Lord Breeze hid his face in his glass but Luke’s sharp eye, conditioned by a thousand witness interviews, detected a pink glow in the drinker’s cheeks.

  ‘It comes in useful sometimes,’ said Breeze, lowering his glass.

  ‘When booking tables in restaurants?’ suggested Luke innocently.

  ‘When I’m playing the part of a Labour peer with a background in the building trade, it does. It’s what’s expected, but if the Tories get in at the next election, I will call myself a property developer and hopefully never have to sit on another arbitration committee with gruesome trades unionists again. Is that too cynical for you, Commander Luke?’

  ‘Too honest for a politician,’ said Luke, ‘though I doubt you’d repeat that outside the House.’

  ‘You’re not wrong on that, and I’ll deny every word of it should you ever think of writing your memoirs.’

  If I ever did, thought Luke, you’d be lucky to get a footnote, though at this rate I might reach retirement before the noble lord gets to the point.

  ‘Needless to say,’ Lord Breeze continued, ‘none of what I am about to divulge will go in your memoirs, either.’

  ‘I can think of nothing which could go in a memoir, Lord Breeze,’ said the policeman solemnly. ‘All you’ve asked me is a rather obscure question about Albert Campion and the Abdication which happened thirty-three years ago, if my maths is up to scratch.’

  ‘A third of a century, indeed, but not forgotten. Still news; still scandal in some quarters. It’s a story which simply will not … go away.’

  Dies, thought Luke, you meant to say the story that never dies.

  ‘It was a story which had everything,’ he said. ‘The aristocracy,
scandalous behaviour, outraged politicians and a king giving up a throne for the woman he loved. It’s the stuff of a thousand romantic novels and a million women’s magazines and it could have made a Disney film if it hadn’t been for his fondness for Hitler.’

  ‘I can see you were not a fan.’

  ‘As you said, I was too young to have an opinion when it happened, but looking back I’m totally convinced we got the right king for the war.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lord Breeze, placing his empty glass on the table between them and slapping both hands on his thighs. ‘We are on the same page on that. The point is does Albert Campion sing from the same hymn sheet?’

  ‘I really don’t know. It is not a topic I can remember ever having discussed with him.’

  ‘But you are aware of his connections to the Palace?’

  ‘I’m as aware as anyone, which is to say rather vaguely. He has never volunteered information on that subject and certainly never boasted about it, but then he never boasts about anything. Well, nothing serious. I think he once claimed to be a tiddlywinks grand master and that he would captain the British team if it was ever allowed at the Olympics.’

  ‘Mmm …’ Lord Breeze scratched his chin as he ruminated. ‘I’ve heard he’s a bit of a clown, which is why he’s been kept on the sidelines.’

  ‘When it comes to Albert Campion, both those statements are completely false, and many a reprobate who shared those views has found they have made a dangerous mistake. The loveliest trick of Mr Campion is to persuade you that he is totally harmless.’

  ‘You think quite highly of him, Commander, don’t you?’

  ‘More to the point, Lord Breeze, I like him and count him a friend, so perhaps you should tread carefully if you are asking for my help with anything to do with dear old Albert.’

  Lord Breeze took a deep breath. ‘Very well, I will tread carefully, for the friendship of a good policeman is to be valued, but I am not asking you for help as such, rather a character reference. One that I might pass on – pass on upwards, if you get my drift – to reassure certain personages.’ He caught Luke’s unblinking eye. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking what is this jumped-up bricklayer doing acting as a go-between with Scotland Yard for the Palace?’