David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘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?

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 nephew 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.

Sir Edward Henry was the third Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police known to Powerscourt. He was a tall man with a military moustache that looked as if it might have been more at home on a Prussian grenadier. The walls of his office were still lined with the four great maps of London with the more recent crimes marked out in red. Powerscourt observed that the greatest concentration of red dots was where it had been every time he had been in this room, over the East End of London.

Powerscourt explained that he was investigating the Colville murder in Norfolk.

‘Terrible business that,’ said the Commissioner. ‘I’ve been buying our wine at home from those Colvilles for years. How can we assist you, Lord Powerscourt? I gather that our colleagues in East Anglia are fairly certain they have the right man.’

Powerscourt did not think it prudent to mention that the junior detective himself, an Inspector, no less, harboured doubts about the case. The police forces would close ranks like a cavalry squadron on drill duty.

‘In my position, Commissioner, I am merely a hired hand. I have to do the best for my client, the unfortunate Cosmo Colville, currently, as you know, a guest of His Majesty in Pentonville prison. I wanted to ask your advice on the question of fingerprints. After all, you are one of the great experts on the subject – you were a leading member of the committee which recommended their introduction in London back at the turn of the century.’

‘Fingerprints, Lord Powerscourt…’ said the Commissioner with a dreamy look in his eye. ‘Back then I could have talked for days about the things, origin in India, advantages in the solving of crime, the fact that no two fingerprints are the same. I am pleased, if that is the right word, when a man is hanged at the end of the trial, that his fingerprints have been the decisive proof of guilt, as they were in a murder trial here in London a couple of years back. Some of the officers who work in the Fingerprint Bureau see a great future in the science. Two of my brightest young men tried to persuade me the other day that every citizen in the land should have their fingerprints recorded and placed on file. Crime, they said would be eradicated in five years. I could hear our elected representatives in the House of Commons braying on forever about the ancient rights of freeborn Englishmen so I turned them down. But I have gone off the subject. How can our expertise be useful to you, Lord Powerscourt?’