Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

‘So they are, but the question is, do they know they are buying a heap of fakes, the hotel people, or do they buy them from some apparently respectable wine merchant, supposing them to be real?’

  ‘Maybe I should go and talk to the wine department of Whites Hotel.’

  ‘Never mind that, Francis, tell me what Mrs Colville had to say for herself.’

  Powerscourt told her everything, the frankness at the beginning, her description of Cosmo’s character, and then the news of the family row before the wedding.

  ‘Did she say how long the row was before the wedding? Days? Weeks?’

  ‘She said it was a week before the wedding. Now then, Lucy, I think we should run through what we know so far. Some fresh line of inquiry may come to us. Time is running short, after all. Let’s begin with the murder itself. What do you think was going on?’

  ‘Let’s think of our French friend, the one who stayed in Norfolk the night before the wedding. Suppose he has some score to settle with Randolph that has to do with the Colville wine business in Burgundy. He reaches the Hall, finds the gun, shoots Randolph and disappears, leaving the gun lying on the floor for Cosmo to pick up.’

  ‘But the gun, Lucy, how did the gun get there?’

  ‘How about this. After the family row Randolph was so worried about the possibility of family fights and family violence that he took the gun along to keep the peace if necessary. The Frenchman forced him to hand it over and shot Randolph.’

  ‘But how did the Frenchman know there was going to be a gun there?’ said Powerscourt. ‘He can’t have been exchanging messages with Randolph across the bloody Channel, can he? Maybe the gun had dropped out of somebody’s pocket. That’s not much good either. I don’t think it would stand up to cross-examination in court, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Francis. Surely if you were a Frenchman with murderous intent you would bring your own weapon with you. You wouldn’t want to take a chance on finding one lying around at a wedding.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. We’re going round in circles so we are. Why don’t we look at it another way, Lucy. I hoped I could run through with Mrs Colville the various reasons that might have persuaded Cosmo to pick up the gun and to keep quiet. We know about family honour, family scandal. What else?’

  ‘Suppose he was being chivalrous. Suppose there was a woman involved and he wanted to protect her.’

  ‘Possible, but which woman? Isabella Colville? Well, maybe he would do it for her. I can’t see him doing it for anybody else. I’m afraid there is another explanation that fits the bill perfectly,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let’s go back to the family row. Let’s suppose that an argument between Randolph and Cosmo is at the centre of it. The row grows even more heated and even more poisonous in the days leading up to the wedding. So Randolph takes his gun along, either in self-defence or because he intends to shoot Cosmo. They arrange to meet in the state bedroom at the far end of the Nashes’ Long Gallery. Either there is a scuffle and Randolph gets shot. Or Cosmo grabs the gun and kills Randolph just before the butler chap comes into the room. He can’t throw the gun away, so he hangs on to it.’

  ‘But why,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘does he keep quiet? Why doesn’t he speak?’

  ‘Ah ha,’ said Powerscourt, ‘this is where the row comes in. If he speaks he will have to explain, sooner or later, what the row was about, if not to the police, then under oath to counsel in court. That would bring disgrace on the name of Colville and ruin to the business. The grey hairs of the remaining old gentleman who raised Colvilles to fame and fortune will turn white. His last years will be spent in shame and sorrow. All of that must flash through Cosmo’s brain. He is a man of conscience, after all, susceptible to the call of duty. He keeps his mouth shut.’

  ‘You mean, the police have got the right man all along, Francis?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Lucy. It’s interesting, I think, that we haven’t yet come up with a more convincing explanation of the shooting of Randolph Colville.’ Powerscourt wandered over to the window and looked out at the traffic in Markham Square. Way over to his left there was a rumble of cabs and buses progressing along the King’s Road towards Sloane Square. Two small boys were kicking a stone along the pavement.

  ‘That’s not the only mystery we haven’t solved, Lucy. There’s the question of the blackmailer, if there is a blackmailer. There’s Randolph’s missing money and the tens of thousands those accountants found disappearing from the Colvilles’ accounts.’

  Powerscourt paused and looked back at the traffic again. ‘I don’t think this is doing us any good. We’ll make ourselves confused and depressed. I’m sure I could find some lights of hope if I set my mind to it, but just at the moment hope in this case seems rather far away. Why don’t I take you out to dinner, Lucy? There’s a new restaurant just opened in Lower Sloane Street. They say the seafood is excellent.’

  Tristram Bennett, a Colville on his mother’s side, had decided that it was his destiny to save the family. A couple of days before his tryst with Emily he was making his way towards the Colville Head Office behind Oxford Street. He looked down at his tie from time to time. He wasn’t sure that these were the clothes a sober wine merchant should be seen wearing in the heart of the West End. The suit was not a quiet suit. It did not speak of respectability. With its long jacket and wide labels it had a faint air of Regency about it, as if Tristram was on his way to some coffee house in Covent Garden. The shirt was loud and the tie was raffish. Trying to remember when he had last worn this outfit, Tristram recalled that it was on a visit to a club off Park Lane where people gambled for high stakes. He had been wondering about Emily Colville on the way. She was very young and very pretty, but had he had the best of her? She didn’t have enough money to help support his lifestyle and she wasn’t always available. Maybe he should just give her up. As he crossed the Colville threshold he remembered that he might come across Emily’s husband Montague, toiling in some lowly position among the wines and spirits. Montague was never going to set the world on fire, Tristram said to himself, not even the limited world of London’s wine. Montague was one of those regular souls who would work away for years, with only limited doses of promotion, perfectly happy to fill his days in the station and the manner he had been called to. Such a life, however, was not for Tristram. He would, as he often told himself when on the verge of some great adventure, rather die in glory on the battlefield than serve a lifetime in the counting house.

  He swept into the Colville Head Office, across the great room where the clerks laboured to keep paper track of all those different bottles and cases that circled the globe, and up to Alfred Davis’s office.

  ‘Good morning, Davis,’ he said, ‘I’ve come to restore order here. Things have got out of hand since the unfortunate events at the wedding. Take me to Mr Randolph’s room, if you would. I’ll make a start there.’

  The one thing instilled into Davis and his fellows was that obedience to any Colville demand was automatic, unquestioning, instant. In such a spirit, centuries before, the servants of the emperors in Rome must have opened doors and bottles and laid out the clothes of their masters. The Colville code, unfortunately, like that of the emperors, had made no allowance for bad Colvilles but Alfred was not to know that. He took Tristram down a floor and showed him into the large office where Randolph had worked. Tristram sat at the desk by the window and told Davis he could go now. When he, Tristram, wanted him, he would send a message. He went over to the door and made sure it was firmly shut. Then he began his morning’s work with Randolph’s diary. Nothing very interesting there. Tristram had imagined endless invitations to wine or port tastings at discreet hotels off Park Lane, lunches in expensive restaurants with leading members of the wine trade, men from Berry Bros. amp; Rudd, or Justerini amp; Brooks perhaps. Instead he found a very mundane list, meetings with wine shippers, meetings with wine merchants who dealt in bulk transport, meetings with bottlers and bottle manufacturers and advertising men. This was not the stu
ff of high romance, Tristram said to himself, wearying of the mundane. He turned instead to two large files of Randolph’s correspondence. Anybody looking at Tristram at this point would not have described him as a man dabbling around for fun in somebody else’s business. They would have said he was a man definitely looking for something. And he was. Randolph, after all, had served him well for a number of years. The payments were small. They always came on time. There was never any hint of fuss. Randolph’s demise had left a hole in Tristram’s income, a fairly small hole, but a hole nonetheless. As he peered through Randolph’s letters, or the letters to Randolph, he was looking for a replacement, another target who would pay up without any trouble.

  Tristram Bennett did not find what he was looking for that morning. Shortly before twelve o’clock he sent word to Alfred Davis that he was going to lunch. He checked his tie was in the right position in the mirror and set off for his club. He had no doubt that sooner or later, in Randolph’s correspondence, or in the late-night drunken confidences at his card parties, he would find another victim. Another Randolph.

  13

  Powerscourt glowered at the telegram which had just arrived in Markham Square. He had never liked telegrams. He vaguely remembered some malevolent deity from the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece who only brought bad news. He slit it open. ‘Another tragedy has come to Brympton Hall. William Stebbings, sixteen years old, has disappeared. He was the junior footman running errands for Charlie Healey in the Long Gallery on the day of the murder. Please come. Please stay with us at the Hall. Georgina Nash.’

  ‘My God!’ said Powerscourt. ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ She glided into the hall, holding a twin in each hand. They stared anxiously at their papa. He didn’t look well, the twins thought. Perhaps he would have to go to bed during the day and lie down, a terrible fate if you were a twin.

  ‘I’ve got to go to Norfolk, Lucy. A junior footman has gone missing at Brympton Hall. He was right in the middle of the action at the time of the murder. Maybe he saw more than he told us or the police. God knows what’s happened to him. Only sixteen years old, poor boy.’

  ‘Can you see what this means, Francis? I’ve only just thought of it. Suppose this poor little boy has been killed. Whoever did it, it can’t have been Cosmo, he’s locked up in Pentonville, he hasn’t been allowed out for weeks.’

  ‘So, if we suppose that we have two linked murders here,’ said Powerscourt, ‘then Cosmo’s off the hook. Somebody else must have done the second one, Cosmo couldn’t have done it, and so, as night follows day, Cosmo couldn’t have committed the first murder either. Or probably couldn’t have done the first one. That would be a pretty problem for the prosecution. But, Lucy, I think it only works for Cosmo if this young man is dead and we shouldn’t be thinking that, not for a moment. I must go now, I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

  Six hours later, as the light was fading, Powerscourt arrived at Brympton Hall and found Georgina Nash staring out at the gardens in her downstairs drawing room.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, how good of you to come. This is all too terrible.’

  ‘Good evening to you, Mrs Nash. Is there any news? Has the young man turned up?’

  ‘No, he has not. There’s no sign of him at all. The police are here, searching the house and grounds. Willoughby is leading a search party around the lake. We’ve had one corpse here already, and now this.’

  Georgina Nash looked as though she might be about to cry.

  ‘Do we know when he was last seen?’ said Powerscourt. ‘How long has he been missing?’

  ‘I think he was last seen after supper in the servants’ quarters yesterday evening. He said he was going up to his room. William shares a room on the top floor with the other trainee footman, Oliver Fox, but Oliver’s away at present. So nobody noticed until he didn’t come down to breakfast. I’m going to find our butler Charlie Healey, if he’s not out with one of the search parties, he knows more about William than anybody.’

  Powerscourt stared out into the gardens behind the south front. He smiled when he saw that the fountain, source of so much anxiety to Georgina Nash until it was finally repaired, was still working properly, great bursts of water shooting into the evening sky.

  Charlie Healey looked about forty years old. Powerscourt could tell at once that Charlie had been in the British Army. He vaguely recalled being told that he had fought with great distinction in the Boer War.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Healey,’ Powerscourt began. ‘This is a bad business.’

  ‘It is indeed, sir. I pray to God we can find him.’

  ‘Tell me about William Stebbings if you would. What sort of a young man was he?’

  Charlie had given his account twice already today to different varieties of policemen.

  ‘Well, sir, he was a very good young man, if you know what I mean. He was hard-working and polite and always keen to learn. When he’d finishing learning how to be a footman, sir, he would have been a credit to anyone’s household.’

  ‘Did he want to be a footman? Or did he have other plans?’

  ‘Funny you should ask that, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey. ‘He did have other plans for later on, if you follow me, and he was kind enough to ask my advice.’

  ‘So what did he hope to do?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie Healey, pausing as if not sure he should mention this in front of Mrs Nash, ‘he was in love with those great ships, the ones that cross the Atlantic on the White Star Line and the fleets of the other great shipping companies like Cunard. Mauretania, Lusitania, Carmania… the names of those huge vessels were music in William’s ears. His plan, my lord, Mrs Nash, was to get lots of experience working as a footman. Then he was going to apply for a job as a steward on one of them big ships. After that he thought he could get promoted up from steward to senior steward and maybe even purser. That was William’s dream. One day he told me that he might even see if he could transfer from being a steward to being a sailor. Maybe he’d have ended up Captain, who knows.’

  Charlie smiled at the end of his account. ‘You don’t suppose, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that his dream might have got the better of him? That he’s run away to sea?’

  ‘I have thought about that, my lord. It’s possible. Inspector Cooper had the same idea and he’s sent word to Southampton and Liverpool and all the places those big ships sail from asking them to look out for William.’

  ‘What about his room?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Has he taken all his clothes? Would it be possible for me to have a look, Mrs Nash?’

  ‘Of course you can, Lord Powerscourt. Charlie will take you up there now. Remember to mind your head in the attics.’

  Charlie Healey and Powerscourt had a brief military conversation on the way to the top floor, discovering each other’s regiment and dates of service. Charlie was most impressed when he learnt that Powerscourt had been Head of Military Intelligence for the British Army in South Africa. ‘Why, my lord,’ he said, ‘we must have been there at the same time even though we never met. Just fancy that.’

  The first two floors of Brympton Hall were full of large elegant spaces like the drawing room downstairs or the Long Gallery on the first floor. Up here it was as if the architect and the builders had run out of room. The second floor was a rabbit warren of little rooms, attic rooms, twisting staircases and even one room directly underneath the clock tower with a kind of balcony looking out over the front drive that seemed to Powerscourt like the perfect place for suicide.

  ‘Just round this corner, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey, showing them into a small room above the Long Gallery with low windows and a sloping ceiling overlooking the garden. If you twisted your neck, Powerscourt discovered, you could just catch a corner of Georgina Nash’s fountain. There were two single beds lined up against opposite walls. Each bed had a small cupboard beside it. There was a tall cupboard for clothes at the far end.

  ‘Feel free to look into William’s cupboard, the one on the left of the door,’ said Cha
rlie Healey. ‘The only thing that seems to have gone is the money, but I have no idea how much he had, or if he had anything at all. He bought an expensive present for his father’s birthday last month, that might have cleaned him out completely.’

  ‘And the clothes? Have they gone?’

  ‘As far as we know, they’re still here. He didn’t have very much in the way of clothes, William. Most of them looked to have been inherited from his brothers, there were plenty of elder brothers.’

  ‘And he was last seen after supper yesterday evening, ‘said Powerscourt, ‘and his disappearance was only spotted after breakfast this morning, am I right, Charlie?

  ‘You are, my lord. We eat our meals together in the servants’ quarters in the basement. Cook was always trying to get William to have second helpings. He was thin, you see, and she thought he needed fattening up.’

  ‘If William wanted to go out, did he have to tell you where he was going, when he would be back, that sort of thing?’

  ‘All the servants could go where they wanted in their free time. Sometimes they told me if they could find me. I’d gone out myself yesterday evening so maybe William tried to tell me but wasn’t able to do so.’

  ‘Were there any visitors expected? Did anybody see any strangers in the grounds or approaching the house?’

  ‘Inspector Cooper asked that one too, my lord. I don’t think so. Inspector Cooper did say that the Hall was so full of doors and staircases that you could get a whole football team in and out and nobody would notice.’

  Powerscourt sat down on William’s bed and tried to imagine that he was sixteen years old and obsessed with ocean liners. What would William have done? Where would he have gone? Did it have to do with the murder?

  ‘Forgive me for asking, my lord,’ said Charlie Healey, ‘but is William’s disappearance very important? To your investigation, I mean. It’s not every day after all that Norfolk sees all these policemen arriving on the case, closely followed by a top investigator from London. I presume it must have to do with the earlier murder.’