Classic In the Clouds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Amy Myers from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Recent Titles by Amy Myers from Severn House

  The Jack Colby, Car Detective, Series

  CLASSIC IN THE BARN

  CLASSIC CALLS THE SHOTS

  CLASSIC IN THE CLOUDS

  MURDER WITH MAJESTY

  MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S BOUDOIR

  THE WICKENHAM MURDERS

  MURDER IN FRIDAY STREET

  MURDER IN HELL’S CORNER

  MURDER AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

  MURDER IN THE MIST

  MURDER TAKES THE STAGE

  MURDER ON THE OLD ROAD

  MURDER IN ABBOT’S FOLLY

  Writing as Harriet Hudson

  APPLEMERE SUMMER

  CATCHING THE SUNLIGHT

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  QUINN

  SONGS OF SPRING

  THE STATIONMASTER’S DAUGHTER

  TOMORROW’S GARDEN

  TO MY OWN DESIRE

  THE WINDY HILL

  WINTER ROSES

  CLASSIC IN THE CLOUDS

  A Case for Jack Colby, Car Detective

  Amy Myers

  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 2012 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2012 by Amy Myers.

  The right of Amy Myers 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

  Myers, Amy, 1938-

  Classic in the clouds.

  1. Colby, Jack (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Antique

  and classic cars–Fiction. 3. De Dion-Bouton automobile–

  Fiction. 4. Automobile rallies–England–Kent–Fiction.

  5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9´14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-351-8 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8223-3 (cased)

  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.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Jack Colby and Frogs Hill are based not very far from where I write, but it takes more than one person to bring Jack to the printed and electronic page. I could not record his cases without the help of my husband James whose expertise as a classic car buff has been the lynchpin of this series. It has, as always, been a pleasure to work with Severn House, in particular Rachel Simpson Hutchens and Piers Tilbury, and Dorothy Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency has once again been a stalwart supporter of Jack Colby (and me).

  My thanks are also due to the De Dion Club (www.dedionboutonclub.co.uk) and to David Burgess-Wise and Nicholas Pellett in particular; also to Colin Stephens and his team at Gowers Garage in Lenham for their help over a knotty problem. Any mistakes are through no fault of theirs. Amongst printed sources, I consulted in particular Luigi Barzini’s Peking to Paris, The Mad Motorists by Allan Andrews, Brighton Belles by David Burgess-Wise and A Celebration of the First Races for Motors in Great Britain by Nicholas Pellett.

  Jack Colby operates in Kent, situated between London and the Channel, and the majority of the locations for the action of this novel are real. For plot purposes, however, a few fictional villages, buildings and organizations have also played their part. The famous Peking to Paris 1907 challenge is, of course, fact and is still making headlines; its counterpart in this novel, however, is fiction.

  In addition to appearing on my website (www.amymyers.net), Jack Colby also has his own website and – even more dear to his heart – a blog about classic cars. Both can be found on: www.jackcolby.co.uk

  ONE

  Major Stanley Hopchurch wasn’t nicknamed the ‘Mad Major’ for nothing. I’d heard of him but never met him, so when he telephoned me at the farmhouse one evening it was a surprise, to say the least. When I heard what he had to say, I assumed it was a joke. Even mad majors weren’t this mad.

  An assertive cough to open proceedings and then: ‘Jack Colby?’ he barked. Without waiting for my confirmation the Major swept on. ‘Good. Heard the rumour that one of the De Dions is kicking around somewhere in Kent?’

  ‘What De Dions?’ I asked cautiously, conscious that my pasta was congealing on the plate. De Dion Boutons are few and far between and classic cars rarely ‘kick around’.

  His impatience grew. ‘The two that took part in the Peking to Paris rally.’

  ‘The rerun in 2007?’ I asked.

  ‘Good grief, no!’ he roared at me. ‘The rally, race – whatever you like to call it. The one in 1907.’

  Now I knew why he was called the Mad Major. I didn’t have all the facts ready and waiting but I was quite sure that none of the four cars that made it all the way to Paris in that historic event would be ‘kicking around’ anywhere near me. I opened my mouth to speak but apparently it wasn’t my turn.

  ‘You call yourself a car detective, don’t you? Pay you for your time.’

  This sounded more interesting. ‘For doing what?’

  ‘Tracking it down, man,’ he barked. ‘I want it found. Meet you at Treasure Island at ten tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Carter’s place. Harford Lee. Can’t miss it.’

  Life at Frogs Hill comes out on the pleasant side when the pros and cons are weighed up. It certainly beats the oil trade, which was formerly enriched by my presence. Now I live in the old family farmhouse and Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations are carried out in one of the barns, suitably converted and dubbed The Pits. Frogs Hill sits on the Greensand Ridge by the North Downs and surveys the lush Weald of Kent beneath it. Only two things mar this existence: one is the need to pay the hefty mortgage; the other is that apart from Len Vickers and Zoe Grant, who run the restoration business for me, I live in the farmhouse alone and am currently nursing a bruised heart.

  Nothing could be done about the latter, but for the former I have to follow up every opportunity to balance the books. Len and Zoe won’t let me near any of their precious hands-on restoration work, so their boss has to eke out their contributions by other means. I don’t in fact ‘call myself a car detective
’, as the Mad Major worded it – that was Zoe and Len’s withering description of the odd jobs I do for the Kent Police Car Crime Unit or for anyone else who cares to hire my services. My staff – if I might dare to use that term – think it a hilarious joke that I have to work to keep the Pits’ roof over their heads, and of course my own.

  They were working overtime (by special favour on their part as they were totally absorbed in the engine compartment of an Austin Healey) so abandoning my cold pasta I walked over to the barn where the familiar combined smell of grease and oil cast its usual enchantment over me. Len and Zoe were even deeper under its spell because they didn’t even hear me come in.

  ‘Either of you know Stanley Hopchurch, Major or ex in Her Majesty’s Army?’

  Zoe’s head briefly popped up above the Healey’s bonnet (she had recently abandoned her former red spikes of hair for a sleek dark-haired approach). ‘No,’ she stated and went back to work.

  ‘Bentleys,’ muttered Len, eyes intent on banishing a bluebottle that seemed to have designs on the Healey’s cylinder head.

  ‘Drives them? Works for them?’ I patiently enquired.

  Len is a man of few words, especially at the moment as a mate of his – a brilliant car restorer – died in a freak accident a week or so ago. Len had worked with him on the racing scene in the late sixties and they had kept in touch ever since. I had met Alfred King once or twice, liked him and admired his work. Len had taken his death hard. Nevertheless he did stop work to consider my question, wiping his hands on the greasy cloth he favours, and came up with the answer.

  ‘Stuck in the 1930s. Don’t know why. Before he was born. Model of the Brooklands race track in his garden,’ he informed me. ‘Races Bentley Boys round it. Sammy Davis, Tim Birkin in the four and a half litre, the Dunfee brothers – all the greats. Thinks he’s right back there with them.’

  This did not sound encouraging. I’d every admiration for Woolf Barnato and his fellow ‘Boys’ and indeed for model cars, but racing them in one’s garden is a step too far for me. Still, who am I to talk? I go into Dad’s Glory Boot whenever I want a quiet think. (More about that later.)

  ‘Know anything about something called Treasure Island at Carter’s place in Harford Lee?’ Although I’d been back in the UK some five or six years now and had been brought up here, there was still a lot I had to learn about Kent. It’s a county of hidden surprises. Down every lane you’ll find an unexpected turning or two. Follow one and who knows what you might find.

  Fortunately, Len did know about Treasure Island. ‘It’s a car collection. Knew the old man, Henry Carter. Nice old chap. He began it, but he went years ago. Met his son once or twice, but he’s gone too, a year or so back. The jaw is that his son has plans for it. He’s the fellow who bought that Iso Rivolta that you fancied.’

  And couldn’t afford, I remembered ruefully. ‘I’m off there tomorrow. What sort of collection is it?’

  Len had shot his bolt, however. ‘Dunno. You’ll find out. Weirdos the lot of them.’

  Kent in springtime – any time really – is a fantastic place to be. Apple blossom and bluebells still abound despite all mankind can do to divert fruit trees and woodland to its own idea of development. It was still only mid April but the bluebells were beginning to take an interest in blooming, and I was looking forward to the drive. I decided to take my Gordon-Keeble out for an airing rather than my daily driver. Its 1960s majesty might be appreciated by the Mad Major.

  From Piper’s Green – the closest village to Frogs Hill – it is an easy drive to Canterbury and a pleasant one, especially on the route I chose, which climbed the Downs past Charing towards land which Julius Caesar might have travelled during his brief invasion. From Shalmsford a road winds along a ridge of the Downs through open countryside giving the sensation of driving along the top of the world. It’s true the various delivery vans that came face to face with my Gordon-Keeble on this single track road weren’t quite as enchanted with the road as I was, but they obligingly made way for us. The Gordon-Keeble’s quality shines out.

  On such a day as this, I decided not to think too hard about what might lie ahead in respect of the Mad Major and the De Dion Boutons in the 1907 rally-cum-race – or raid as the French call it, which is, I suppose, a mix of the two: an adventure trip starring cars. I’d had a quick check on the Internet and in the book collection in Dad’s Glory Boot. This is an extension of the farmhouse where he kept his famous collection of automobilia, everything from Giovanni oil paintings to saucy postcards (both featuring cars, of course), and from ancient cranking handles to steering wheels touched by the hands of the famous.

  I now knew that the winner of the rally, an Itala, was safely in a museum and so was the Spyker, but I could find no record of what had happened to the other two cars that succeeded in reaching Paris, the ten h.p. De Dion Boutons. The last mention of either of them, according to the available books on the subject, Dad’s invaluable handwritten notes in them, and the Times archive he had consulted, seemed to be in late 1907 at the London Olympia motor show of 1907, where the London De Dion company advertised one of them as being on display. Nothing after that. I wasn’t entirely surprised. In those heady early days of motoring there were so many long-distance races going on that it was doubtful whether sticking the cars in a museum was top priority for the manufacturers and drivers.

  My newly acquired knowledge made me uneasy, however. To me this project was way up in the clouds of unreality. Suppose the Major really was serious, however, and truly believed there was something to this rumour? It still seemed to be highly unlikely that over a hundred years later there could ever be a positive identification of one of the missing two De Dion Boutons.

  Harford Lee is a wooded rural hamlet along a lane off a B road to Canterbury, which makes it very rural. No shop, only a pub – and that, being before ten o’clock in the morning, was closed. A girl was hanging out tablecloths to dry in the garden however, and so I stopped to ask directions for Carter’s ‘place’ and Treasure Island. She looked puzzled.

  ‘There’s a gentleman lives out at Burnt Barn Bottom,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Think he’s called something like that.’

  ‘That might be it.’ I wasn’t all that confident, however, especially when she directed me back the way I’d come, then to find a gate, go through it and along a lane, and take the first right after a mile or two.

  I was even less confident when I found the gate and the lane that lay beyond it. I began to regret bringing the Gordon-Keeble as I met one pothole after another. The road surface deteriorated the further I went towards Burnt Barn Bottom, so I forgot about impressing the Mad Major and decided to walk the rest of the way. My precious car had suffered enough in the cause of my car detective work and I had promised it an easy life from then on.

  I’d walked about another quarter of a mile before I heard a car behind me. It was a 1950s Bentley Continental and someone who could only be the Mad Major poked his head out of the window. Motoring cap, moustache, mid sixties. Maybe he was the son of a Bentley Boy.

  ‘Jack Colby?’ he barked.

  I nodded.

  ‘That your Gordon-Keeble?’

  I agreed it was.

  ‘Not bad.’ A tone of condescension nevertheless. ‘Jump in.’

  I duly jumped, and – with both hands clutched on the wheel as though he were at Brooklands – the Major charged along the lane and driveway, then past the side of a large early-Victorian red brick house, then past what must be its walled garden and round to its rear. We came to a gravelled area, sheltered by woodland on both sides, with, so far as I could see, fields and woodland at its rear. It was dominated by several huge and unsightly corrugated iron sheds in the middle – which had probably given rise to the Island part of its name and were the result of the Burnt Barn that had preceded them.

  The Major drew up outside the largest of them, where waiting for us was a slightly built man of medium height and about my age in his mid-to-late forties, together wit
h a younger woman in her mid thirties who looked much more interesting.

  She had a warm smile that reached her soft eyes, tumbling curly auburn hair and an air that indicated she was welcoming you into her life – on a friendly basis, not sexual. Well, not yet. She was quite tall and I liked the way she moved forward immediately, hand extended.

  ‘Helen Palmer,’ she said as I shook the hand. No rings on the other one I noted. Not that that was a foolproof basis on which to proceed. And proceeding seemed a good idea to me.

  ‘Julian Carter.’ Her companion took her place at the handshaking ceremony. ‘Helen, Stanley and I are the trustees of the trust. You know about that?’

  ‘Not yet.’ But I’d like to, as it involved Helen.

  Julian was not as welcoming as Helen, nor as extrovert as the Major. He was the quiet, intense and perhaps wary sort, and was staring at me as though he wanted to sum me up before deciding whether he wanted me to interrupt his day. What I did recognize immediately from years of experience was that he was the stuff of which fanatical car collectors are made. After all, it was he who had snaffled up that Iso Rivolta. He had the look of a hunter who would let nothing stand in his way between desire and achievement. Was it he or the Major who was on the scent of the De Dion Bouton? I realized uneasily that I had stopped thinking of this quest as a joke.

  ‘Army training.’ The Major glared at me. ‘Thought I’d explain the trust to you as we do the recce.’

  Forget the army. I was still at sea. ‘This De Dion Bouton,’ I said firmly. ‘Are you hoping to buy it for Treasure Island?’ I wasn’t sure whether this was the official name for the collection or not, but I tried it out.

  It seemed I’d cast a casual firebomb into the arena. Julian and the Major both tried to speak at once, and Helen gave something between a gasp and a giggle.

  ‘Both of us want it,’ Julian said coolly. ‘Stanley heard this snippet of information about its being in Kent and insisted on paying you to find out whether it is true.’

  What about Helen? I wondered. She seemed to be excluded from the ‘both’. I was still at sea, but paddling fast. ‘But it is for the Treasure Island collection?’ I persisted.