Mr. Campion's Abdication
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
‘So where exactly did Albert Campion stand on the Abdication?’ ‘Behind the throne, slightly to the left?’ suggested Commander Charles Luke.
Margery Allingham’s Mr Campion finds himself masquerading as technical advisor to a very suspicious but glamorous Italian film producer and her crew hunting for buried treasure that never was in the Suffolk village of Heronhoe near Pontisbright which used to host trysts between Edward VIII and Mrs Wallis Simpson.
‘When it came to the Abdication Crisis in ’36 those dirty week-ends in Heronhoe were quickly forgotten, except not by the Prince. The story goes – that when he married Mrs Simpson, in 1937 that would be, he actually sent a valuable thank you gift to Heronhoe. That was what became known as the Abdication Treasure although there’s no record of anything going to Heronhoe Hall, or of anybody ever receiving anything from the Duke of Windsor and nobody anywhere claims to have actually seen anything resembling treasure.’
‘So how is Albert Campion involved? You said the treasure doesn’t exist.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Lord Breeze said firmly, ‘and I have been instructed to tell you to tell Campion, that unless he wants to risk embarrassing Buckingham Palace, he’d better lay off. There’s no such thing as the Abdication Treasure, so there’s nothing to find and Campion had better make sure he doesn’t find it!’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"There's no such thing as the Abdication Treasure, so there's nothing to find and Campion had better make sure he doesn't find it!" That cryptic warning, conveyed to Albert Campion through a close friend, drives the plot of Ripley's enjoyable third novel featuring Margery Allingham's gentleman sleuth (after 2016's Mr. Campion's Fault). In 1970, the production of a dramatized documentary about the abdication of Edward VIII is a family affair: Albert's son, Rupert, and his daughter-in-law, Perdita, have been cast as Edward and Wallis Simpson, and he himself is serving as the film's technical adviser. The movie is being shot at Heronhoe Hall, the Suffolk manor house where Edward and Mrs. Simpson held weekend trysts in 1936. Legend has it that, after marrying Mrs. Simpson in 1937, Edward sent an expensive present to the then-owner of Heronhoe. A representative of the crown is worried that Albert is using the movie as pretext to look for this item, but in fact someone else is after the treasure. Ripley makes the most of a clever mystery plot that's not centered on a murder.
