In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  In Vino Veritas

  ( Lambert and Hook - 23 )

  J. M. Gregson

  J. M. Gregson

  In Vino Veritas

  ONE

  It was at two minutes to midnight on the third of March that Alistair Morton first entertained the idea of murder.

  He could be very precise about that, for he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece at exactly the moment when the idea came into his head. His wife had already been in bed for an hour, and Alistair had switched the television off at twenty to twelve. Since then, he had been sitting very still in his chair. Ruminating about where he stood in life and what he could do about it. It was a habit he had acquired over the last year, when his existence had moved from being merely frustrated to being embittered.

  He sat in the deep, comfortable chair, which no one else ever used, and wondered whether living had any meaning. His life in particular seemed to be completely without purpose. Murder might be the only thing which could bring some meaning back into his existence.

  Alistair was a practical man. He was an accountant for a start, and accountants were taught early in life what was possible and what was not. They also learned that imagination was the most dangerous of human properties. It had to be imprisoned within very strong walls and not allowed to escape. Better still, imagination had better be discarded altogether. Left to poets and other misfits like them. Dumped in some neglected garret until disuse starved it out of existence.

  Alistair thought he generally controlled his imagination well, but he was aware that it was an unruly and scarcely tameable beast. Of late, it had tended to come out of the shadows late at night. The dangerous time was when his wife was in bed, the television set was switched off, and he was left alone with his thoughts in the quiet sitting room.

  Alistair Morton told himself firmly that the concept of murder should probably be no more than a delightful fantasy, an idea to play with and then discard. But instead of abandoning it as his training told him to do, he now proceeded to give it substance, to put bones and flesh upon the skeleton. It should have given him no more than a minor thrill and then been rejected, like a passing spectre upon a fairground ghost train.

  Yet the more he thought about it, the more the idea began to seem feasible. That magic accountants’ word! Feasible. Instead of seeming upon examination bizarre and impossible, this particular murder began to seem as practical a proposition as tax avoidance. Just this particular murder, Alistair told himself repeatedly. He wasn’t saying that murder in general was feasible, or even desirable. But this particular murder was both of those things.

  Desirable because the man concerned would be no loss to society. Indeed, his demise would be a positive benefit to many people, not just to Alistair himself. His removal would be a public-spirited act. An act which would make a wide circle of humanity much happier in the years to come. ‘Every man’s death diminishes me’, some fusty old poet or philosopher had said; that was the kind of irrelevant nonsense they tried to fill your head with at school. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers! Alistair had never subscribed to that idea. Even when the idea was first put to him, he had immediately thought of several masters in the school whose death would have seemed positively desirable, whose passing would have diminished him not in the least.

  With the passing years, his sentiments had not changed. Hitler and Stalin, and in his own lifetime Chairman Mao in China: here were three for a start whose deaths would have diminished no one at all and benefited thousands. This man wasn’t a villain on that scale, Alistair wasn’t claiming that. But he couldn’t see that anyone would suffer by his elimi shy; shy; shy; shy; shy; shy; shy; shy; shy;nation, whereas there were a whole range of people who would benefit. Once you looked at it in those terms, the case for his removal seemed overwhelming. Alistair wriggled his toes in his slippers and luxuriated for a moment in the thought.

  In the next few minutes, he confirmed to himself — and this was the thing which appealed to the accountant in him — that the proposition was feasible. Many murders wouldn’t be, but this one was. There was no hurry, for a start. With a little ingenuity and a lot of careful planning, this death might be arranged so that no one was ever charged with it. And planning was his forte, wasn’t it? Planning was the whole raison d’etre of accountants.

  Murder wasn’t just a matter for the imagination, after all.

  That was probably why it was still such a rare crime, once you discounted the impetuous knife crimes of city youth and the domestic killings which were solved within hours. Those weren’t proper murders, not murders in the sense which most people had of the crime, where someone was struck down by person or persons unknown.

  There were probably a lot more murders than people realized from the statistics, because the most successful ones were never recognized as such. That was both a satisfying and a thought-provoking notion. It also marked a challenge which even an accountant should be excited to undertake.

  And even if the police recognized this death as murder, there would be many suspects, wouldn’t there, because the victim was such an unpopular man? Alistair decided that he would be well down that list of suspects; indeed, he might not figure on the list at all, if he planned the crime as carefully as he proposed to do. It was a crime, he supposed. Technically, at any rate. But he’d already proved that some crimes were perfectly justified, hadn’t he?

  When he looked at the clock, he was surprised to find that it was one a.m. Alistair Morton smiled. He wondered when he had last spent an hour in such fruitful and productive thought.

  TWO

  The sun was still quite low, but there was scarcely a cloud in the sky. The long lines of carefully trained grapevines stretched away over the hill, straight and regular as columns of Roman soldiers. Martin Beaumont called out a cheery good morning and waved to the visitors as he passed them in his electric buggy. They wouldn’t know who he was, of course, wouldn’t know that he owned the land as far as their eyes could see. One of the workers would tell them, if they asked. That didn’t really matter, but the thought pleased him.

  ‘As far as the eye could see’ might be pushing it a bit. Eighty-five acres, to be precise; his land didn’t include the long line of the Malvern Hills to the north, or the more distant Welsh mountains to the west: that would be ridiculous. But the strolling visitors he had passed were in the valley. All they could see from there were the long lines of beautifully trained vines running away to the top of the slopes above and behind them, and every inch of that intensively cultivated land was assuredly his. Well, his company’s, if you wanted to be pedantic, but everyone understood that that was just a legal technicality.

  Beaumont stopped at the highest point of his land. He loved this spot on a spring day, loved to survey the scale of his achievement on this rolling land which was bounded by the historic rivers Severn and Wye, neither of them visible from here but each of them imbued with the turbulent history of England. That history was an appropriate setting for his revival of winemaking in this western corner of Gloucestershire. The Romans had made wine in quantity in England, as Martin was fond of reminding anyone who would listen. He was reviving an ancient craft. If global warming was giving him increasing assistance, that was but a happy accident. If your mind favoured the notion of a supreme being, the changing climate might even be seen as a sign of approval from a benevolent Providence.

  It was the middle of March and the sun was rising a little higher each day. It had real warmth in it now. The swelling buds on the vines were bursting into fresh green leaves on the more sheltered south-facing slopes, heralding the lush green and black grapes which would follow, as summer warmth and Gloucestershire rain swelled them towards maturity. Martin loved this time of the year, wh
en summer and its promise were all before them and the earth smelt of growth, whilst each day stretched a little longer and brighter.

  He walked over to where two of his men were screwing wires on to the stout wooden crosses which were to carry the first crops of the new red-wine grape they had planted. ‘Morning, Walter,’ he said to the older of the men, glad that he was able to remember the name. The man had been one of his first workers here and was now a veteran of viniculture.

  ‘Mornin’, Mr Beaumont,’ said Walter in his thick local accent. ‘’E’s comin’ on a treat, this new ’un.’

  Nothing in the local parlance was inanimate: every plant was he or she, and any failure on their part to cooperate was taken as a personal insult. Martin liked that local trait, which meant that even a golf ball had a personality of its own, exhibiting a malignity when it ran into trouble and a friendliness when it bounced favourably for you.

  Walter couldn’t have much longer to work now. Though his movements had slowed imperceptibly with the years, he never shirked and he gave full value for his wages. He had touched the canvas cap he always wore in acknowledgement of the boss’s status, and Martin was pleased despite himself by the gesture. It wasn’t very long since ill-paid rural workers here had touched their forelocks to the lord of the manor who was exploiting them. It was surely harmless for today’s much better paid workers to acknowledge their employer with a touch of the cap. The habit would die with Walter and his contemporaries; the younger workers didn’t see the need for any such demarcation in their status.

  Beaumont glanced at his watch. The meeting was in ten minutes: he had better get back to base.

  He drove the electric buggy swiftly back to the long, low complex of buildings near the entrance to the vineyards. The bricks stretched out further here each year, but there was ample room for additions where once the old farmhouse buildings had sprawled. The dining room and the shop had been extended again during the winter. The single-storey range of rooms which had been built for holiday lets was a lucrative addition to the complex over the last few years.

  His own large office doubled as a room for company meetings. He liked this sort of economy, because it showed his staff where their priorities should lie. He was always reluctant to increase office facilities, which he saw as non-productive. The available funds should go to making the shop, restaurant and residential accommodation more attractive, as these areas were self-evidently the source of the profits on which Abbey Vineyards depended.

  This morning’s meeting shouldn’t occupy them for very long. Martin, as chairman, began by telling them that. It was no more than a necessary evil, his attitude implied. His preference was to act as a benevolent dictator, but a meeting of senior staff was one of those diversions necessitated by their status as a limited company. He looked round affably at the five people who sat around the table which had been brought in for the occasion from the restaurant. There were nervous half-smiles from two of them, but all of them stared down at their brief agendas for the meeting rather than at him.

  Martin reported on a couple of items under the heading of ‘Matters Arising’, then in more detail on the progress of new planting. ‘Abbey Vineyards continues to make excellent progress. I look forward to your reports on your individual sections and to highlighting any problems we may have in particular areas, so that we can give our attention to them.’ Whether intentionally or not, he made the words seem like a threat to the people who were about to speak. ‘First on the agenda is the restaurant. Report from our head chef.’

  Jason Knight coughed nervously and said quickly, ‘Things are progressing well, I think.’ That didn’t sound as definite as he had intended it to when he had rehearsed it the night before. He had been determined that when he came in here he would exude a calm confidence, would emphasize how much he was in control of this vital source of profits. But Jason was a practical man, used to achieving results under pressure and driving himself and his kitchen staff hard. Formal reporting like this, in a quiet room full of attentive and possibly critical listeners, was still alien to him.

  But Martin Beaumont wasn’t in the mood for criticism. ‘That’s what we want to hear,’ he boomed out into the quiet room. ‘The extension to the restaurant has given us room for sixteen more covers each evening: I’m sure that as the summer progresses we shall fill the place on most nights. The challenge will be to do that during the winter, when people are less conscious of us and there is less for them to see here. But I’m sure we’re all confident of meeting this new task as efficiently as we have done such challenges in the past!’ The chairman jutted his chin aggressively at the room. His attempt to stir the blood might have been more effective with a larger audience than five.

  Jason Knight said a little defensively, ‘People have to be persuaded to drive out here through the winter darkness. There’s a lot of competition from the pubs, which is going to increase during this recession.’

  ‘If other people can pull in the punters, Abbey Vineyards can,’ said Beaumont firmly. ‘We have a wonderful, spacious set-up here. Plus the individuality offered by our own wines. That is a well-nigh unique selling point.’

  Alistair Morton looked up from his notes, sensing that there was no way the chef was going to win an argument with the more fluent owner of the vineyard. ‘The fact that there is a vineyard around the restaurant has been fully exploited over the last twenty years, Martin. It probably still has some novelty appeal for visitors to our area, but the locals are well aware of it.’

  Beaumont’s forehead furrowed for a couple of seconds. Then he resumed his upbeat performance, as new arguments appeared to him. ‘It is still a pulling point, Alistair. People are well aware that they don’t have to struggle into a cramped car park and file into crowded pub dining rooms when they come here. They appreciate the space around them and the expertise which drives this place. That applies even during the winter, when they cannot see the greenery beyond our windows.’ He turned and smiled directly at Jason Knight, as a prelude to his concluding argument. ‘But of course the biggest trump in our hand when it comes to the restaurant is Jason’s cooking. The quality which he and his staff produce in their beautifully equipped new kitchens is second to none. I’m sure that all of us are aware of that.’

  There was a polite, slightly embarrassed mutter of approval from the people round the table, whilst Knight stared at his agenda and reddened. Beaumont, sensing that he had taken this as far as he could, glanced at his agenda and said briskly, ‘Residential Accommodation.’

  Vanda North, a striking woman with a prominent nose and bright blue eyes, was, at forty-six, ten years younger than Beaumont. She nodded and spoke decisively. ‘We shall have to face the fact that the residential accommodation is not going to do as well as hitherto in the next two or three years.’

  Beaumont glanced quickly at the other faces round the table before he said, ‘It’s not like you to be gloomy, Vanda.’ But he was cautious. Vanda North had been in the business from the early stages. She was his partner in the limited company, though a very junior one in terms of her financial contribution. She was also responsible for the hitherto highly successful operation of the site’s en-suite bedrooms, through her management of the residential section staff.

  ‘I’m being realistic, Martin. We don’t operate in a vacuum. If people tighten their belts in the world at large, we must expect this sort of stay to be one of their first economies. Very few of our clients use our breaks as their only holiday of the year; we might be their first economy. We shall need to be ingenious to occupy the rooms as fully as we have done in the past. It probably wasn’t the best time to extend our provision to twelve rooms.’

  Beaumont frowned. ‘That was done on the basis of our previous lettings, which had been almost a hundred per cent during the summer months. It made sound sense to extend our plant when we were making handsome profits.’

  Vanda North smiled. She was much more used to sustaining an argument than Jason Knight had been before her. �
��The extension may still make sound sense, if we take the long view. I’m merely flagging up that I anticipate problems in the next two years. We have to be flexible. The signs are certainly that we’ll need to extend our range of bargain breaks. Once we’re outside the peak summer season, we’re facing a vast range of competition. We’ll almost certainly have to accept lower profit margins, to keep the rooms occupied and hang on to the excellent staff we’ve recruited over the last few years.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you understand the problems of this area better than anyone else in the room, Vanda,’ said Beaumont shamelessly. This sort of meeting wasn’t the place to make policy decisions. Some time in the next few days, he would have a detailed discussion with Vanda North about strategy and how they were going to fill the new accommodation suites. He was better at enforcing his formidable will in a one-to-one situation than in this sort of formal meeting. ‘You are right to emphasize that we can’t ignore what is going on in the world around us, of course. The worst possible thing any of us could do is to press ahead with our plans in a blinkered way and ignore what is going on in the wider world.’ He paused for a moment, apparently to let them all dwell upon that thought, before looking down at his next agenda item. ‘Report on new initiatives introduced last year.’

  A rather nervous voice said, ‘Yes. That’s me. I have the figures to hand.’ This was Sarah Vaughan, Director of Research and Development, at thirty-three the youngest person in the room. She had long blonde hair and the sort of delicate, pretty, brittle-looking features which often seem to go with fair colouring. Sarah had a Business Studies degree and some years of experience in the retail trade with a big supermarket chain. She helped to run the shop on the site, but also had the brief to initiate new means of developing the full commercial potential of Abbey Vineyards. She was normally self-confident and energetic, but she found herself a little overawed to be included today in this formal meeting of the six people who were the driving force in what was now a large company and a considerable local employer.