Dick Francis - Proof

‘No, I don’t but don’t forget there must be two hundred small châteaux in that part of Haut Médoc. I don’t know them all. I will find out.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘The rest of the label reads: “Mis en bouteilles par W. Thiery et Fils, négotiants à Bordeaux.” ’

Henri Tavel’s suspicions came clearly down the line. ‘I know of no W. Thiery et Fils,’ he said. Monsieur Tavel, négotiant à Bordeaux himself, was more likely to be aware of a fellow wineshipper than of a château seventy kilometres to the north. ‘I’ll find out,’ he said.

‘Also the label bears the year of vintage,’ I said.

‘Which year?’

‘1979.’

He grunted. ‘Plentiful and quite good.’

‘It’s an attractive label altogether,’ I said. ‘Cream background with black and gold lettering, and a line drawing of an elegant château. The château reminds me of somewhere... I wish you could see it, you might recognise it.’

‘Soak it off, my dear Tony, and send it.’

‘Yes, I might.’

‘And the wine under the label?’ he asked. ‘What of the wine?’

‘At a guess, mostly Italian. Blended with maybe Yugoslav, blended again with anything handy. Impossible, I would think, to distinguish its origins, even for a master of wine. It’s light. Not much body. No finish. But pleasant enough. Palatable. No one would think it undrinkable. Wherever it came from it wasn’t abused too much before it was bottled.’

‘Bordeaux bottled...’ he said thoughtfully.

‘If the château doesn’t exist, the wine could have been bottled anywhere,’ I said. ‘I kept the cork. It looks pretty new and there is no lettering on it.’

The row of six corks stood before me on the desk, all identical. When châteaux bottled their own wine in their own cellars they stamped the corks with their name and the year of vintage. Anyone ordering a château-bottled wine would expect to see the cork, consequently a swindler would be less likely to present his work as château-bottled: too great a risk of a clued-up customer knowing what he wasn’t being given.

Whoever had chosen the Silver Moondance labels had chosen well: all familiar-sounding respected names, all saleable at a substantial price. At a guess the wine itself, part of the great European wine lake, might have cost the bottler one-fiftieth of what Larry Trent’s diners had been charged.

I asked Henri Tavel when I could telephone again.

‘Tomorrow night, again at this time. I will enquire at once in the morning.’

I thanked him several times and we disconnected, and I pictured him as I’d so often seen him, sitting roundly at his big dining table with its lace cloth, drinking armagnac alone after the evening meal and refusing to watch television with his wife.

Flora collected me from the shop at one the following day as arranged and drove me in Jack’s opulent car to Martineau Park races. She talked most of the way there out of what seemed a compulsive nervousness, warning me mostly about what not to say to Orkney Swayle, the owner she felt cowed by.

Flora, I thought, had no need to be cowed by anybody. She had status in the racing world, she was pleasant to look at in a motherly middle-aged way and she was dressed for action in tailored suit and plainly expensive shoes. Self-confidence had to come from within, however, and within Flora one could discern a paralysed jelly.

‘Don’t ask him why he’s called Orkney,’ she said. ‘He was conceived there.’

I laughed.

‘Yes, but he doesn’t like it. He likes the name itself because it has grandeur which he’s always looking for, and Tony dear, if you can be a bit grand like Jimmy it will do very well with Orkney. Put on your most upper-class voice like you do sometimes when you aren’t thinking, because I know you damp it down a bit in the shop so as not to be intimidating to a lot of people, if you see what I mean.’

I was amused and also rueful at her perception. I’d learned on my first day of sweeping and carrying as general wine shop dogsbody that my voice didn’t fit the circumstances, and had altered my ways accordingly. It had been mostly a matter, I’d found, of speaking not far back in the throat but up behind the teeth, a reversal of the way I’d just painstakingly learned to speak French like a Frenchman.

‘I’ll do my best Jimmy imitation,’ I promised. ‘And how is he, by the way?’

‘Much better, dear, thank goodness.’

I said I was glad.

‘Orkney thinks he owns Jack, you know,’ she said, reverting to what was more immediately on her mind. ‘He hates Jack talking to other owners.’ She slowed for a roundabout and sighed. ‘Some owners are dreadfully jealous, though I suppose I shouldn’t say so, but Orkney gets quite miffed if Jack has another runner in Orkney’s race.’

She was driving well and automatically, her mind far from the road. She told me she usually drove Jack to meetings: he liked to read and think on the way there and sleep on the way back. ‘About the only time he sits still, dear, so it has to be good for him.’

‘How old is this Orkney?’ I asked.

‘Getting on for fifty, I should think. He manufactures some frantically unmentionable undergarments, but he’ll never say exactly what. He doesn’t like one to talk about it, dear.’ She almost giggled. ‘Directoire knickers, do you think?’

‘I’ll be careful not to ask,’ I said ironically. ‘Directoire knickers! Do even great-grannies wear them any more?’

‘You see them in those little advertisements on Saturdays in the newspapers,’ Flora said, ‘along with things to hold your shoulders back if you’re round shouldered and sonic buzzers that don’t actually say what they’re for, and all sorts of amazing things. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘No,’ I said, smiling.

‘I think sometimes of all the people who buy all those things,’ she said. ‘How different everyone’s lives are.’

I glanced at her benign and rounded face, at the tidy greying hair and the pearl ear studs, and reflected not for the first time that the content of what she said was a lot more acute than her manner of saying it.

‘I did tell you, dear, didn’t I, that Orkney has a box at the races? So we’ll be going up there when we get there and of course after the race for ages and ages; he does go on so. He’ll probably have a woman there... I’m just telling you dear, because she’s not his wife and he doesn’t like people to ask about that either, dear, so don’t ask either of them if they’re married, will you dear?’

‘There’s an awful lot he doesn’t like talking about,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes, dear, he’s very awkward, but if you stick to horses it will be all right, that’s all he likes to talk about and he’ll do that all night, and of course that’s just what I can’t do, as you know.’

‘Any other bricks I might drop?’ I asked. ‘Religion, politics, medical history?’

‘Yes, well, Tony dear, you’re teasing me...’ She turned into the entrance of Martineau Park, where the gateman waved her through with welcoming recognition. ‘Don’t forget his horse is called Breezy Palm and it’s a two-year-old colt, and it’s run nine times this season and won twice, and once it smashed its way out of the stalls and nearly slaughtered the assistant starter so maybe you’d better not mention that too much either.’

She parked the car but didn’t get out immediately, instead pulling on a becoming hat and adjusting the angle in the driving mirror.

‘I haven’t asked you how your arm is, dear,’ she said, ‘because it’s perfectly obvious it’s hurting you.’

‘Is it?’ I said, slightly dismayed.

‘When you move it, dear, you wince.’

‘Oh.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better in a sling, dear?’