The Painted Altar

Chapter Six

Plot reminder: After a brief encounter with Inspector Kubič at the former site of camp 106a, Mary and local historian John Simmonds are now inspecting the painted mural which has been transferred to the village church. One of the case details which emerged in the previous chapter are the shilling coins which have been unearthed in the vicinity of the remains.

~~~~~

Stooping myself down towards the bottom right corner of the mural, I squinted eyes in close inspection. Unable to locate what I was looking for, I then repeated the manouevre on the lefthand side. Still nothing. No proud capitalised initials or brush-stroked flourish of a name.

"Can't find a signature," I remarked, straightening myself up beside Simmonds once more.

"That's because there isn't one," came the simple reply.

It was his turn now to stoop down a little, a swept hand  indicating the bottom-most members of the apostolic semi-circle - three on the left, two on the right. "If you look closely at these figures here, it's quite evident they were painted by a different artist. The colour range isn't quite the same, the details not as sharp." True, I realised, examining things more closely. "The obvious conclusion is that for some reason the original artist wasn't able to complete his work. Someone else - competent, yes, but nearly as skillful - had to take up the baton."

All of which was confirmation of what I'd suspected: at the time of his murder, my father had yet to finish his masterpiece.

I gave a nod. "I heard they moved the men on, replaced them with others. September of '43."

Simmonds observed me curiously, as if surprised I would know this. "As most camps, the National Archives Office doesn't hold any surviving records I'm afraid. But yes, there is anecdotal evidence of a prisoner turnaround at that time."

"Was that normal?" I asked.

He seemed to consider his answer carefully for a moment. "Yes and no. Yes that it was common for the men to be moved on to where their labour was most needed. But round here, even in the winter months, there'd still have been plenty to keep the men busy. Digging and clearing ditches, fencing, bailing, general maintenance, that sort of thing. To move them on in the middle of the harvest meanwhile is certainly most bemusing."

Just as Irene had always said. Abnormal, yes. An anomaly. And perhaps now it was possible to hypothesise why...

"Care to take a pew Miss Rice?"

Grinning at his own pun, Simmonds ushered me towards the backrow bench, the slanted rain whipping a constant rhythm against the stained glass window high to our left. A cleaning lady had materialised from somewhere, her mop busily slapping around the real altar of St Luke's.

Camp 106a, I learnt, had been an overspill site from a much larger camp over towards Stamford. Transport to workplace times, the Geneva Convention had detailed, mustn't exceed those of local workers; it was quite a commute from Stamford to the sugarbeet fields of the Northdyke area. Back then the village had boasted its own railway station; there were several local reports of the sound of marching boots one evening.

"Late-March 1943 we're talking, but if those coins which the scene of crime of scene officers have unearthed came from D'Ambra's own pockets, as seems highly likely,  then I'm pretty sure that whatever it was that happened was no earlier than the September of that year. Not before September the 8th, if we're going to be precise, this the date of the Italian armistice. Before then, payment such as it was had been in token form, these spendable only at the mobile shop which paid weekly visits to the camp: cigarettes, basic toiletry items and the like. Only after the armistice would the prisoners have experienced the feel of a shilling coin in their hands."