Classic In the Pits--A Jack Colby classic car mystery by Amy Myers Page B

at Arthur’s wish. I was intrigued, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that I wasn’t to get the full family experience. On the whole I was glad, I decided. One to one is usually more productive.
    Arthur looked his full age this morning, and I wondered what on earth was coming my way. Just a request for an update on the Porsche? Coffee and croissants were on a table before him, but no sign of his having touched them himself.
    â€˜Sit down, Mr Colby,’ he said quietly and I took the armchair facing him. ‘Coffee?’ He poured it with a steady hand and then there was a silence for a few minutes as I drank it and he made a token attempt at doing the same. ‘See those hills?’ he eventually asked.
    He was looking out at them and a fine sight they were in their early summer green, but Arthur didn’t wait for any comment from me. Instead he continued, ‘I’m going to tell you why I set up Old Herne’s. OK by you?’
    It was, but I became even more intrigued as to the reason for this visit.
    â€˜My father was British-born,’ he told me. ‘Saw war the first time round and went to the States later. He fought on the ground and had a bad time at Messines in 1917. That’s what made me choose the air. Thunderbolts, Jack. That’s what I flew in World War II. Stationed at Debden in Essex, Fifty-Sixth Group. Been to the American Air Museum at Duxford, have you?’
    I had, which impressed him.
    â€˜Great building, isn’t it?’ he continued. ‘Thunderbolts are rare beasts nowadays, but they house one there for a private owner. I go and look at it once in a while, and go back to Debden too, but my heart’s buried deep at Old Herne’s.’
    â€˜I heard you crash-landed there.’
    â€˜Right. Summer of ’forty-three that was, mid August. Flying the new model P-47D. Ever been in a Thunderbolt?’
    A rhetorical question because he swept on: ‘Monsters they were, not like your Spitfires. Joke was you could get lost finding your way round the cockpit. We were day fighters, escorting the heavy bombers – Fortresses, Liberators – and under arrangement with West Malling airfield here in Kent we could refuel there. Old Herne’s was its auxiliary advance landing ground. Black Wednesday – heard of that? Bad day for the Eighth Air Force bombers over Regensburg and Schweinfurt. We fighters mostly fared better – not me though. Thunderbolts had belly tanks then which meant problems. I caught some strikes from some Focke-Wulfs – engine trouble, and I only just made it to Old Herne’s. The Thunderbolts were noble beasts and I got away with only minor burns and cuts, thanks to the Crossley guys. I was taken to West Malling, and they checked me over and sorted out the Thunderbolt wreckage. I was a lieutenant, so I stayed at the Manor House – know about that?’
    â€˜A new one on me,’ I told him.
    â€˜It was the West Malling officers’ mess. Great place, flowers, lake, lawns. When you were there, you could pretend there wasn’t a war on. Till the next mission, that is. It was there I met Miranda Pryde. Her voice,’ he continued, ‘you’ll have heard on records and film, but that was nothing to the real experience. You think Jason can sing? He can, but not like that. Miranda and her partner Ray toured, so I got them to come up to Debden once or twice and the next year I was back in Kent at the same time as they were. D-Day time, when we were trying to persuade the Luftwaffe that we were planning to attack Calais, not Normandy. Heard of the Twitch Inn?’
    â€˜No pub of that name round here now,’ I told him. I’d have remembered a name like that.
    He grinned. ‘It was a nickname for the cellar at the Manor House, used for entertainment in the evenings, music, drinks – quite a place. A substitute night club. Only problem was there were no women allowed there –