Dick Francis: Proof

There was no tremble in the air. No shudder. No premonition at all of the horror soon to happen there. All was quiet and peaceful; expectant certainly, but benign. I remembered it particularly, after.

Jimmy continued to watch while I carted in a case of champagne and unpacked the bottles, standing them upright in one of the tubs on the floor by the tent wall behind the tables. I didn’t actually have to do this part of the job, but for Jack Hawthorn, somehow, it was easy to give service beyond contract.

I was working in shirtsleeves, warmed by a pale blue V-necked sleeveless pullover (typical racing world clothes) with my jacket waiting in the van for the metamorphosis to guest. Jimmy was understatedly resplendent in thin fawn polo-necked sweater under a navy blue blazer; plain brass buttons, no crests, no pretentions. That was the trouble. If he’d had any pretentions I could perhaps have despised him instead of suspecting it was the other way round.

I fetched a second box of champagne and began unpacking it. Jimmy bent from his great height and picked up one of the bottles, staring at the foil and the label as if he’d never seen such things before.

‘What’s this muck?’ he said. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s the real thing,’ I said mildly. ‘It comes from Epernay.’

‘So I see.’

‘Flora’s choice,’ I said.

He said ‘Ah-oh’ in complete understanding and put the bottle back. I fetched ice cubes in large black plastic bags and poured them over and round the standing bottles.

‘Did you bring any scotch?’ he asked.

‘Front seat of the van.’

He strolled off on the search and came back with an unopened bottle.

‘Glass?’ he enquired.

For reply I went out to the van and fetched a box containing sixty.

‘Help yourself.’

Without comment he opened the box, which I’d set on a table, and removed one of the all-purpose goblets.

‘Is this ice drinkable?’ he said dubiously.

‘Pure tap water.’

He put ice and whisky in the glass and sipped the result.

‘Very prickly this morning, aren’t you?’ he said.

I glanced at him, surprised. ‘Sorry.’

‘Someone knocked off a whole load of this stuff in Scotland yesterday, did you know?’

‘Champagne?’

‘No. Scotch.’

I shrugged. ‘Well... it happens.’

I fetched a third case and unpacked the bottles. Jimmy watched, clinking his ice.

‘How much do you know about whisky, Tony?’ he said.

‘Well... some.’

‘Would you know one from another?’

‘I’m better at wine.’ I straightened from filling the second tub. ‘Why?’

‘Would you know for certain,’ he said with a bad stab at casualness, ‘if you asked for a malt and got sold an ordinary standard, like this?’ He raised his glass, nodding to it.

‘They taste quite different.’

He relaxed slightly, betraying an inner tension I hadn’t until then been aware of. ‘Could you tell one malt from another?’

I looked at him assessingly. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘Could you?’ He was insistent.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not this morning. Not to name them. I’d have to practise. Maybe then. Maybe not.’

‘But... if you learned one particular taste, could you pick it out again from a row of samples? Or say if it wasn’t there?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. I looked at him, waiting, but he was taking his own troubled time, consulting some inner opinion. Shrugging, I went to fetch more ice, pouring it into the second tub, and then carried in and ripped open the fourth case of champagne.

‘It’s very awkward,’ he said suddenly.

‘What is?’

‘I wish you’d stop fiddling with those bottles and listen to me.’

His voice was a mixture of petulance and anxiety, and I slowly straightened from putting bottles into the third tub and took notice.

‘Tell me, then,’ I said.

He was older than me by a few years, and our acquaintanceship had mostly been limited to my visits to the Hawthorn house, both as drinks supplier and as occasional guest. His usual manner to me had been fairly civil but without warmth, as no doubt mine to him. He was the third son of the fourth son of a racehorse-owning earl, which gave him an aristocratic name but no fortune, and his job with Jack Hawthorn resulted directly, it was said, from lack of enough brain to excel in the City. It was a judgment I would have been content to accept were it not for Flora’s admiration of him, but I hadn’t cared enough one way or the other to give it much thought.

‘One of Jack’s owners has a restaurant,’ he said. ‘The Silver Moondance, near Reading. Not aimed at top class. Dinner dances. A singer sometimes. Mass market.’ His voice was fastidious but without scorn: stating a fact, not an attitude.

I waited non-committally.

‘He invited Jack and Flora and myself to dinner there last week.’

‘Decent of him,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Jimmy looked at me down the nose. ‘Quite.’ He paused slightly. ‘The food was all right, but the drinks... Look, Tony, Larry Trent is one of Jack’s good owners. He has five horses here. Pays his bills on the nail. I don’t want to upset him... but what it says on the label of at least one of the bottles in his restaurant is not what they pour out of it.’

He spoke with pained disgust, at which I almost smiled.

‘That’s not actually unusual,’ I said.

‘But it’s illegal.’ He was indignant.

‘Sure it’s illegal. Are you certain?’

‘Yes. Well yes, I think so. But I wondered if perhaps, before I said anything to Larry Trent, you could taste their stuff? I mean, suppose his staff are ripping him off? I mean, er... he could be prosecuted, couldn’t he?’

I said, ‘Why didn’t you mention it to him that evening, while you were there?’

Jimmy looked startled. ‘But we were his guests! It would have been terribly bad form. Surely you can see that.’

‘Hm,’ I said dryly. ‘Then why don’t you just tell him now, and privately, what you thought about his drinks? He might be grateful. He would certainly be warned. Anyway, I can’t see him whisking his five horses away in a huff.’

Jimmy made a pained noise and drank some scotch. ‘I mentioned this to Jack. He said I must be mistaken. But I’m not, you know. I’m pretty sure I’m not.’

I considered him.

‘Why does it bother you so much?’ I asked.

‘What?’ He was surprised. ‘Well, I say, a fraud’s a fraud, isn’t it? It annoys one.’

‘Yes.’ I sighed. ‘What were these drinks supposed to be?’

‘I thought the wine wasn’t much, considering its label, but you know how it is, you don’t suspect anything... but there was the Laphroaig.’

I frowned. ‘The malt from Islay?’

‘That’s right,’ Jimmy said. ‘Heavy malt whisky. My grandfather liked it. He used to give me sips when I was small, much to my mother’s fury. Funny how you never forget tastes you learn as a child... and of course I’ve had it since... so there it was, on the trolley of drinks they rolled round with the coffee, and I thought I would have some... Nostalgia, and all that.’

‘And it wasn’t Laphroaig?’

‘No.’

‘What was it?’

He looked uncertain. ‘I thought that you, actually, might know. If you drank some, I mean.’

I shook my head. ‘You’d need a proper expert.’

He looked unhappy. ‘I thought myself, you see, that it was just an ordinary blend, just ordinary, not even pure malt.’

‘You’d better tell Mr Trent,’ I said. ‘Let him deal with it himself.’

He said doubtfully, ‘He’ll be here this morning.’

‘Easy,’ I said.

‘I don’t suppose... er... that you yourself... er... could have a word with him?’