Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

  ‘I cannot imagine what that would have tasted like, Sir Pericles, I shudder to think.’

  ‘Let me leave you with something better, Lord Powerscourt. We were travelling earlier on the lower slopes of the claret mountain. This comes from the very summit and I commend it to you and your wife.’ One last dip into the bag and Sir Pericles pulled out another bottle. ‘Some people think that Lafite here is supreme among clarets, the creme de la creme.’

  Powerscourt told Lady Lucy after Sir Pericles had left that he expected Johnny Fitzgerald to materialize in a couple of hours at most. He had always possessed an uncanny knack of knowing when his friend had some special sort of liquid in the house, as if he could smell it from the other side of London. Shortly before six o’clock there he was in the Powerscourt drawing room, his eye drawn like a magnet to the Lafite, recently promoted from the dining room downstairs to a small table by the window in the drawing room on the first floor.

  ‘I’m delighted to see, Francis, that you’re moving up in the wine world at last. Your stuff has never been bad in the past, I grant you that, but now you’re up there on Mount Olympus.’

  He inspected the label with great reverence, as if he were looking at a Shakespeare First Folio. ‘Did you know there’s been a great increase in burglary in these parts in the last few weeks, Francis? Fortnum and Mason burglaries the police are calling them, only the luxury items get taken. The other thing they say about this Lafite stuff is that the bottles have a habit of falling over and breaking of their own accord. They’re famous for it. Happens more often than you might think.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better open it, Johnny,’ said his friend with a smile. ‘It would be such a shame if the burglars got it first.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald held the bottle up to the light. It glowed a deep red. He inspected the label closely. He ran his hand very slowly down the side of the bottle. ‘I haven’t tasted this Chateau Lafite since my uncle introduced me to it on my sixteenth birthday, Francis. He said it would tell me what real wine should taste like. I was only allowed two glasses of the stuff. Bloody uncle knocked off the rest of the bottle on his own.’

  Johnny inserted the corkscrew very slowly. He peered into the depths of the bottle when it was open. ‘We’d better have three glasses, Francis. We couldn’t leave Lady Lucy out of this.’

  Shortly the three all had a glass in their hand, Johnny sniffing delicately at the liquid like a bloodhound that might have just found a new scent, a new trail for the elusive fox.

  ‘By God,’ said Johnny, ‘I don’t think they have much of this stuff down there in the Colville warehouses, it’s superb. Now then, Francis, let me tell you what little I have discovered so far.’

  Johnny Fitzgerald cast a quick glance over his shoulder to check the bottle was still present and correct. ‘There are two very different sorts of people who work for the Colvilles at the lower end of the trade. You could call them the workers by hand and the workers by brain as that bearded old man up in Highgate Cemetery put in one of his pamphlets long ago. The workers by hand are essentially moving the stuff around in one way or another. The wine arrives at the docks in barrels or tonneaux or barriques or feuillettes or pipes. The Colville men unload it, take it to the warehouses, store it or bottle it in their own bottling plant with their own label production and finally it’s despatched to the Colville shops or their regional headquarters in Edinburgh or Dublin. The same thing happens with the gin over in Hammersmith. That’s a very crude description. It’s an enormous operation and the men are, on the whole, satisfied with what they do, though there were the usual undercurrents about low wages and the need for strike action. Are you with me so far, Francis, Lady Lucy?’

  The Powerscourts nodded. Johnny paused to take another draught of his wine, his face breaking into a smile as the taste sank in. ‘You learn some funny things in this line of work,’ he went on. ‘Did you ever realize what the most important factor is in what a country drinks? You didn’t? Well, let me tell you, it’s politics and it’s taxes. During the Napoleonic Wars precious little French wine ever made it here. They say the Garrick Club was down to its last couple of cases of Chateau Latour when peace broke out. Even if it had managed to get here, the wine, that is, the government would have slapped a great bolt of duty on it. So what were Englishmen drinking for most of last century? Port, that’s what went down, port from those English merchants and growers in the Douro Valley. Portugal, as the Portugese reminded the English every time they even thought of increasing the duty, was England’s oldest ally. All the way back to Henry the bloody Navigator, whoever he was.’

  There was a sudden outbreak of motor horns hooting outside, coming from the King’s Road a couple of hundred yards away. Voices could be heard, most of them raised in anger.

  ‘Later on,’ Johnny continued after a glance out into the square, ‘South African wines began to get a look in as the politicians wanted to encourage the wine industry in the colonies. Now here’s a strange thing, Francis. Even those porters and warehousemen who work for the Colvilles can sing Gladstone’s praises. You might think that he was somewhat odd, an austere old bugger, if you ask me, forever trying to save Ireland by day and the prostitutes of London by night, but he did one thing they’ve never forgotten. Somewhere in the 1860s, I think, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and taking five hours to deliver his Budget, he cut the duty on French wine. He wanted to encourage trade with the French, you see. That was the making of the Colvilles. Unlike the rest of the industry they cut their prices by almost the same as the cut in duty and prospered mightily. The other wine merchants hung on to most of the cut for themselves.’

  ‘Did I hear you right, Johnny?’ Powerscourt was refilling the glasses. ‘Did you say they have their own label production? Does that mean you can make up any number of phoney vineyards with posh names and stick the label on the bottles? Or indeed real vineyards with posh names and stick them on the bottle, whatever might be inside?’

  ‘It does, my friend,’ Johnny replied, swirling the fresh wine around in his glass, ‘and there’s worse. Much worse. If you could find the right artist and the right expert in typefaces, you could make, in your Colville labelling manufactory, a label like this one here for Chateau Latour. You don’t, of course, put Chateau Latour in the bottles. You find some good claret from a good year and then, if you’re really clever, you say it’s a Latour from a bad year. That way expectations wouldn’t be so high. But your good Bordeaux in a good year would still cost about half what a Latour would cost you in a bad one. You could make a fortune.’

  Powerscourt realized that the possibilities for fraud in the wine industry were virtually limitless, far wider than he had suspected at the beginning of his investigation. But he was still as far away as ever from solving the murder. ‘So tell us, Johnny, what did you learn from these workers by hand down in the docks?’

  ‘Precious little so far. They’re all East Enders, most of these Colville men, Lady Lucy, and they stick together like the planks of wood on their wine cases. The younger ones were so suspicious they hardly told me anything at all. I think they thought I was an agent from the Customs and Excise, come to learn their secrets. They don’t like Customs and Excise much in those parts. Some of the older ones, nearing retirement, were slightly more forthcoming but usually more about the past than the present. There are a couple of old boys who’ve worked for Colvilles, man and boy since about 1860. For them those early days were like a golden age. Old Walter Colville and his brother Nathaniel were the driving forces back then. They were young, everything was a great adventure and they were happy to take risks that the firm wouldn’t take today.’

  A high-pitched scream rose from the bottom of the stairs, followed by the noise of small feet charging up them. The twins were on the warpath once again. The parents smiled to each other.

  ‘And they were good to their workers back then,’ Johnny went on, ‘far fewer of them then, of course, than there are now. I was told heart-warming tales of all
employees being presented with half a dozen bottles every Christmas, and, in one memorable year, a goose for every worker. Now they fear the only present they will get on Christmas Day is the sack. Spirits are very low. I couldn’t work out why. I don’t think it was the murder and the arrest of Cosmo. People are always grumbling about their work, not what it was, new-fangled systems and new-fangled people coming in to replace the old ways, but these warehouse people are just miserable.’

  ‘And what about the other lot, the clerks and the junior accountants, Johnny. Were they any more forthcoming?’

  ‘The workers by brain? Well, they were and they weren’t, Francis. They’re all holed up at the back of Oxford Street with a detachment of auxiliaries at Hammersmith to make sure the gin isn’t watered down or whatever you’d do to gin. The ones I managed to pour drink down were all quite junior. Once they reach a certain position, senior clerks or whoever they might be, they don’t go to the pub any more, they take on airs, they’re off to some little villa in north London and Mrs Senior Clerk and maybe Master Senior Clerk and Miss Senior Clerk. The odd thing about these youngsters I talked to, Francis, is they’re all frightened. I think, but I don’t know, that some terrible financial catastrophe is about to hit them. One over-imaginative young man told me he was sure the Colvilles were being buffeted by those winds you get before a hurricane strikes. And it’s not the murder. It’s as if there’s something rotten that is about to come to light and maybe blow them all away. Sorry if that sounds melodramatic, I’m just the messenger for the moment. There are two or three lads I’m seeing tonight who may be able to tell me more.’

  ‘Well, that’s all fascinating, Johnny,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Did you get the impression they were frightened of a person or persons, or some financial calamity?’

  ‘The calamity, Lady Lucy, definitely the calamity.’

  As Johnny Fitzgerald made his way off for an early evening’s drinking session with the young men of Colvilles, Powerscourt decided to open another line of attack. He had Johnny Fitzgerald at the lower end of the enterprise, Sir Pericles with his tastings of the Colville product in the middle. Now it was time to try for the top. He made his way downstairs to the telephone in his little study on the ground floor. The telephone had only recently been installed. Powerscourt had expected to be the principal user of the instrument, but found that this was not so. Lady Lucy had fallen in love with the possibilities of morning chat, afternoon chat, evening chat with her friends and relations. These, in her turn, she persuaded to subscribe to the new service as soon as possible. Lady Lucy assured them that they didn’t want to be behind the times, to be out of step with fashion. Powerscourt thought his wife should be given some large reward by the telephone companies for swelling their lists of subscribers.

  He sat down at his desk and asked the operator for the number of his brother-in-law William Burke. Burke was a great power in the City of London, director of a number of banks and mighty insurance companies, a man widely respected across the City for good advice and sound judgement. At first Powerscourt thought the Burkes must be out, but just when he was on the point of putting down the instrument there was a huge bellow down the line: ‘Burke!’

  Powerscourt remembered that William Burke did not believe that his words would be transmitted if he spoke in his normal tone of voice. The magic concealed in those little wires would not work. So he shouted. He yelled. He spoke at the top of his voice. His brother-in-law had often wondered what happened in the Burke offices in Bishopsgate. Had his people built him some special soundproof box where he could holler away to his heart’s content? If not, Powerscourt thought his conversations would have been audible all the way from London Wall to the Bank of England.

  ‘Powerscourt!’ said Powerscourt, holding the great black receiver a foot or so away from his ear. ‘I need some advice, William.’

  ‘Fire ahead,’ boomed Burke.

  ‘I’m investigating the death of that Colville, the man shot at the wedding. You remember?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ bawled Burke, ‘terrible business, terrible. And the brother locked up in Pentonville. Some fellow told me the other day that you were trying to get him off.’

  ‘I am, William,’ said Powerscourt, resisting the temptation to hold the instrument even further away. ‘This is where I hope you can help. There is something terribly wrong at Colvilles and I can’t find out what it is. There’s very little time. The clerks think some financial disaster is about to overcome them. I’ve got Johnny Fitzgerald talking to the porters and the junior staff and a chap called Freme trying to find out if the wines are genuine.’

  ‘Sir Pericles Freme?’ asked Burke. ‘Smallish chap, rather like a gnome, ex-military, white hair?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Powerscourt. ‘What of it?’

  ‘He used to advise my parents about what wines to buy years ago, Francis. Sorry, I’ve interrupted you.’

  ‘Never mind. The point is this, William. Could you ask around, discreetly, of course? Has anybody heard anything strange about the Colvilles? Is there a scandal waiting to break? Would it be a big enough scandal that it might lead to murder?’

  ‘Even in this cut-throat world around me,’ boomed Burke, ‘it would have to be a sizeable sort of scandal for pistols at a wedding. Not impossible, mind you. Family honour might be involved, Francis. Now then. I don’t think the Colvilles are with any of my banks,’ Powerscourt at the other end of the line grinned with delight at the mention of ‘my banks’, ‘but I think I know who they are with. And the chap that runs that bank owes me a favour, a bloody great favour. Leave it with me, Francis. I’ll try to call you tomorrow.’

  After a final yell of regard to Lucy and the family, Burke was gone – gone, Powerscourt thought, to the mysterious world of money he inhabited, where rumour swirled round the courts and the alleys of the City, where a man might become rich one day and lose it all the next. But were all these transactions a recipe for murder and sudden death?

  7

  There was a letter from Charles Augustus Pugh waiting for Powerscourt the following morning. As he slit it open in his upstairs drawing room he suddenly wondered what Pugh’s telephone manner would be like. Would each sentence be a question? A suggestion perhaps? I put it to you, Lord Powerscourt, that you have been less than truthful with this court? The news inside was grim.

  ‘Committal hearing yesterday. Bow Street Magistrates Court. Magistrate virtually asleep throughout the proceedings. Sir Jasper Bentinck on parade for the prosecution. The man is said to be very good with police witnesses for some reason. Only bright note from our side is that both policemen were called to give evidence, so I shall be able to cross-examine them when the time comes. Case looks pretty watertight to me. There is Randolph, dead on the floor. There is Cosmo, gun in hand. There is Cosmo, refusing to speak. Juries always think a man is guilty if he refuses to speak, however much you try to persuade them to the contrary. No sign of any of the wedding guests to be called as witnesses. Can you read anything significant into that? I said nothing, of course. I pretended to be holding my fire for another day. They looked at me with great sadness. As things stand, my friend, it’s as if I’m the last man in to bat for England against Australia in the Lord’s Test. England need over five hundred to win. The last man is a hopeless batsman. The last rites are but a few minutes away. Do you have any hope? I don’t mind being beaten in court but I’m damned if I’m going to be pitied. I reckon we have three weeks at most before the Old Bailey. Regards, Pugh.’

  Powerscourt swore violently under his breath. Time was running out. Somewhere at the back of his brain there was a question hovering just below the surface. He began to write his letters. He wrote to Nathaniel Colville, requesting an interview. Nathaniel in a way was the last Colville left standing, his brother dead, one nephew murdered, another enclosed in the unforgiving brick of Pentonville. Powerscourt assured him that he had no intention of upsetting him, but hoped the old gentleman might remember something that would help his ne
phew become a free man once again. He wrote to the Norfolk police requesting another interview. He wrote to Mrs Georgina Nash asking if he might call on her once more. The trial was very close now. And then, just before he left his house, the thought surfaced. He began pacing up and down the drawing room, ignoring the traffic outside in the square, ignoring the paintings on his walls, ignoring the coals spitting in his fire.

  Why hadn’t he thought about it before? Fingerprints. Fingerprints, first used by the British in India to make accurate records of people who spoke no English. Fingerprints, coming into use by police forces in Europe and in Britain. Fingerprint evidence had already been accepted in British courts of law. He didn’t know if the Norfolk police used fingerprint techniques. He rather thought not. Cosmo’s fingerprints must be on the gun. But were there fingerprints of another as well, another person who might be the murderer? Even if not, the idea could certainly be used, in Charles Augustus Pugh’s immortal phrase, to throw mud in their eye. Powerscourt knew that no serving police fingerprint expert would give evidence against another police force. Could he bring one in from America? Somehow he suspected the twelve good men and true on Cosmo’s jury might not be too impressed with foreign evidence from a faraway country which had kicked the British out a hundred and fifty years before. Maybe there was an alternative. With a look of determination about his person, Lord Francis Powerscourt set off for New Scotland Yard to find a British fingerprint expert who might yet save the life of Cosmo Colville.

  Two questions were swirling round Powerscourt’s brain as he made his way to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters on the Embankment. The first concerned the motive for murder. Powerscourt did not believe, as he had told himself so many times already during this inquiry, that wine could lead to murder. People did not kill for bottles of Krug. They did not murder for Meursault. So what was left? Money? So far there was precious little evidence of that apart from the solicitor’s rather Delphic reference to Randolph being worth one or two hundred thousand pounds less than he should have been. Affairs of the heart? Of that there was, as yet, no sign at all. Then there was the question of the gun. It seemed scarcely credible that a man would go to a family wedding with a gun in his hand or his pocket unless he was going to some marriage in the American Wild West years before, when guns were as necessary an item of clothing as socks and shoes and those big hats they all had to wear. And, if Randolph had taken the gun with him, who was he defending? Himself? His brother? His family? Round and round they floated, these questions, like children’s ducks on an aimless progress round a bath.