Classic Calls the Shots (20 page)

So even Pen had not dared go the whole hog and accuse Bill of murdering his wife. Perhaps she was keeping that back as a nice surprise.

‘It's pure fantasy,' Maisie continued. ‘For a start Angie and I were lowly extras. Margot was light years above us in the pecking order, and we didn't even know her to speak to. The idea that after the filming was over, Angie was so keen on Bill that she went out and killed his ex-lover is ludicrous. Angie wasn't so tough in those days.' She grimaced as she realized that even she had acknowledged Angie's imperfections. ‘Sorry.'

‘She changed, honey,' Roger said. ‘Recently she was hell to deal with. But you know we needed Bill and Angie came as part of the package.'

‘Were you still very friendly with her?' I asked. ‘Or did the friendship cool?'

Maisie took this on the chin. ‘Good friends never cease to be otherwise. Roger and I helped Angie whenever we could.'

I think she meant it. She seemed a nice woman. ‘Helped by giving way to her?' I asked bluntly. Too bluntly judging by Roger's expression.

‘Where reasonable, yes.'

‘Didn't it get beyond reasonable?'

‘No,' Roger said flatly. ‘I know what you're thinking, Jack. Angie was out of order over Tom, but Bill and I saw he kept a job here. She knew she couldn't push us too far.'

And nor could I push too far. I retreated to safer turf. ‘Did you both get on well with Margot Croft?'

‘Yes, both of us,' Roger shot back at me.

Maisie however hesitated. ‘I didn't
know
her and nor did Angie. We just saw her as extras do stars. She was kind to us, when she noticed us at all. That's not meant to be brutal. It's a fact of movie production. She and Bill were inseparable and Angie knew that. Angie and I were both horrified at the news of her suicide. Roger was still at the studios in post-production stage then and I'd hung around in some menial role. Angie had gone back to her home in London, but we stayed in touch.'

‘It was impossible not to like Margot,' Roger joined in. ‘She was a dream star. Interpreted what Bill needed on screen and gave it to him. Didn't throw her star weight about, just got on with the job.'

‘Did you know her husband?'

Roger again took the lead. ‘Not well. We knew him of course, but once the funeral was over we lost touch. Like Bill, we live about half of the year in the States so it's easy to do so.'

‘You told me Margot wanted to have a happy threesome with her husband and Bill but Bill wouldn't have it. Any idea what her husband thought about that?'

‘No,' Roger replied. ‘What I do know is that Bill was beside himself with grief when she died.'

‘But if it was his decision to leave her . . .' There was something wrong here but I couldn't get at it.

‘It was,' Roger said.

‘None of us knew the whole story,' Maisie broke in. ‘Joan Burton probably knows most. She was closest to her, so talk to her about it. Look, is all this relevant?' she asked impatiently.

‘It is if it helps me ward off Pen Roxton,' I said firmly.

I felt crunched between pillar and post as I went to find Joan again. Not that I felt I would get much further. I was flailing around in a place I didn't understand, although Joan was clearly unhappy about something more than classic cars and Nigel Biddington. I didn't at first find Joan, but I caught sight of Pen, although luckily she didn't see me. Thinking she was out of sight, she was eavesdropping on Eleanor Richey who, from her body language, was intent on seducing Justin Parr, poor bloke. I decided not to interfere. Neither was in
Running Tides
and neither as far as I knew had any reason to kill Angie, so Pen could do her worst.

Someone told me I'd find Joan with Bill in his caravan, so I went over there hoping she might be on her way out. She wasn't. It seemed to be my day for busting in on rows, however, because I could hear Bill and Joan arguing. Had it not been that the name Pen Roxton reached me, I'd have crept tactfully away, but it glued me to the spot in frozen horror.

‘Margot, Bill.' Joan sounded as if she was crying. ‘That dreadful woman Pen Roxton wants to know about Margot.'

‘For God's sake, Joannie, give me a break.' Bill sounded furious. ‘It's Angie who's died. Margot died more than ten years ago. Why rake it up again?'

‘But she thinks Angie killed Margot.'

An awful silence, then an explosion. ‘She thinks
what
? The woman's crazier than I thought. There's never been any doubt that Margot killed herself.'

‘I know she did.' Joan was clearly weeping. ‘But you know how it was. Margot was one of those people who stir up passions without meaning to.'

‘Joan, stop,' Bill said more quietly. ‘Are you telling me that
you
think Angie killed Margot?'

Joan was really breaking up. ‘No, Bill,
no.
But Margot never realized how strongly people felt about her. She created lasting emotions. That's bad, because it can fester.'

There was a silence, then the door was pulled open, Bill came down the steps, saw me, realized that I must have overheard, but brushed past me and walked away. I rushed up to see how Joan was. I found her ashen faced and she hardly seemed to recognize me.

‘He doesn't realize,' she blurted out. ‘It was always just him and Margot. Margot said he never noticed anything else, he just went blindly on, as he always does, regardless of other people. I'm afraid . . . one day . . .'

I wanted to take her somewhere quiet to recover but she refused my help and said she could cope. They were about to do some outside shots and she wanted to be there.

‘It's Nemesis,' she added.

‘Revenge?'

She looked surprised. ‘Perhaps. I don't know. I hope I'm wrong, Jack.'

I could see one or two of Tom's storyboards propped on Bill's table – he must have brought them over from the ops caravan. They were new ones – and they were dark. In these the charcoal helped create Bill's mood for the film better than in any of the earlier ones I'd seen, and I could understand why he liked the storyboards to be around all the time, not only as a pre-production tool. In these, clouds and shadows hung over a Greek temple – of course, the temple in the grounds. No wonder it had caught Bill's imagination. All it needed was a few bats flying around and it would seize the imagination of Dracula himself.

I returned to Frogs Hill and the Pits, hoping that a dose of reality there would help sort my mind on Angie's murder. For once Len was the talkative one; Zoe was deep into a dynamo overhaul and I was lost in thought. Then I began to listen to Len's unusual chatter. ‘New customer with a Daimler Dart SP250, needs a gearbox rebuild. You went to the Wealden car show, didn't you, Jack?'

‘Sure, but I don't remember the Dart.' Or did I? I go to quite a few car shows. I searched my mind and one salient fact came up. I did go, and that was one of the shows at which I remembered seeing Nigel Biddington. I'd gone with Liz Potter, but the idea of jolly jaunts with her now is right out. The trip had been before we'd split up and she'd married the nerd Colin. It wasn't surprising I'd seen Biddington there, I supposed. Not only was he relatively local but his job would take him to car shows.

Had I slipped too quickly over something important? I scrabbled for the notes I had made on Angie's words, which were: ‘something fishy about the cars'. Suppose good old Nigel had misinterpreted them not as applying to the Auburn or the other cars he'd hired for the film, but as something with a much wider application? More than the Auburn, more even than the cars here on Car Day. If he was mixed up in something shady, however, Dave would surely have picked up on it.

Or would he?

Dave was investigating insurance, theft and stolen cars. Angie was referring to the Auburn and by ‘more than the Auburn' she meant the other cars Nigel had hired. But if her words had been taken by Nigel to refer to some far wider crooked scheme in which he was involved, something for instance that did involve those cars under wraps, Dave might not yet have thought of looking for a link between Nigel and Mark Shotsworth.

What scheme, though? Could we be back to insurance? Some of the cars Dave's team had seen under wraps were there for an unusually long time for stolen goods. As policies usually carry a time limit beyond which the company has to pay up if the car is still missing, the Jag I had seen might have been in Gladden car park waiting for the necessary time to expire. It would be out of the limelight while the hunt was at its hottest and the insurance investigating team was on the trail. Once the owner had been paid off, there would be less chance of its being spotted and thus it went on its merry way to a new owner across the Channel, probably in Holland or Belgium, suitably disguised. Cars like the Jag that were still lying low however needed to be kept somewhere safe and sound. Such as in a small car park guarded by Shotsworth Security.

I allowed myself the luxury of feverish excitement. Could that be it? If so, what part might Nigel be playing apart from his day job as broker in placing the insurance and processing the booty? Answer: he could be the middle man knowing when it was safe to move the cars on. Also – I clung on to my mental seat belt in case I went through the roof with this – he could be a
spotter
for the organization. Maybe that was too simple. Gang leader? Regional organizer?

I thought of Pen, with her love of theory built on air. For once I didn't care. All I could think of was that if Nigel had taken Angie's words as an accusation of his role in a major classic car ring, it could well give him a motive for her murder. Trouble was, I was almost sorry.

D
ave did his best to be interested in this new theory, but there was a definite touch of a damp squib about his response. He would, he promised, check into it – and he would keep Brandon posted. The more I thought about it, however, the more it seemed to me to fit, although I was forced to admit that finding proof was another matter. Dave might nail Nigel on the car theft front, but proof for murder was a very different matter. The message Dave put over was that I should keep my nose firmly glued to what I was paid to do and leave the clever stuff to the professionals. Fair enough, I conceded, but there was
something
I could do on home ground.

Len and Zoe should have been slaving away in the Pits on my behalf when I reached home, as there was a Riley RME to finish by the end of the working day. In fact only Len was there. Zoe was going to be late as she had to run Rob somewhere. Luckily she and her Fiesta arrived in a haze of blue mist before I got too involved in my story.

‘Physician, heal thyself,' I remarked drily to her.

She looked puzzled. ‘I'm fine.'

‘But your car isn't,' I said patiently. ‘So why not fix it?'

She wasn't fazed. ‘I would if I knew a good garage. What are you doing here, anyway? We thought you were set on a movie career.'

‘I am, but I've had an idea about why I was duffed up the other day.' I proceeded to tell them my Biddington theory, but they both looked unimpressed.

‘Soooo . . .' Zoe began doubtfully. ‘What do we do?'

‘Keep your ears open when you're out and about in car circles,' I said firmly.

‘For what?' Len grunted. He isn't exactly a socialite.

‘Who the big hitters insure with. Who's had cars nicked. Possible spotters. Anything that might tie in with Shotsworth Security.'

Len grunted again, from which I understood that he was far too busy doing things that mattered, such as adjusting a throttle linkage. Zoe looked distinctly disapproving.

‘What about Rob?'

‘Rob?' I couldn't remember mentioning him.

‘Are you suggesting he's bent too?'

I'd clean forgotten lover boy was a chum of Nigel's. ‘No,' I said firmly, hoping to goodness I was right. I have little time for Rob but even so I couldn't see him being energetic enough to be a crook. Then I remembered that it had been Rob who first offered to take me to see Clarissa at her Gladden home, and that had led me to finding the car park and the Auburn. Had he had some sneaky reason for doing so? Or was it yet another case of Rob blindly barging into trouble? I was prepared to go with the latter – for the moment.

‘You might be doing him a favour,' I pointed out. ‘If Nigel's clean no problem.' (And Ferraris can fly, I thought meanly.) ‘If he
is
mixed up in this racket then Rob would be well out of it.'

Zoe thought this through. ‘OK,' she said reluctantly. ‘You're on.'

‘Len?'

A further grunt which I took as a yes. ‘Good,' I said. ‘Remember, folks, it's all in the cause of our classic car heritage.'

A wet cloth flew over the Riley RME and caught me mid-T-shirt.

Somewhat cheered by this partial success, I drove up to Syndale Manor the next morning in happier mood not least because it was Friday and the weekend offered some promise of time with Louise. As I turned in through the gates, however, the mood began to evaporate, for no reason that I could deduce. I parked the car and began to walk up to the house. There had been few cars in the car park, so I guessed that meant that today we were down to the cast, crew and catering staff without extras.

It felt somewhat creepy on my own, as though I were in one of those old ghost films where buildings suddenly vanish and trees close in for the kill. True, it was early morning, damp and even drizzly, but that did not fully account for it. Even the catering area was deserted as I passed it, and there was no one around on the manor forecourt. No, I was wrong. The front door was opening and out came my old friend Nigel, who looked as pleased to see me as though I were a long lost friend come for the weekend. It was good to see me, he told me, and even looked as if he meant it, which made it hard to remember that this was the man whom Dave and I were investigating as a possible major player in a car-theft gang.