David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘Did you say three, William?’

‘I did,’ bellowed Burke.

‘Did they walk of their own accord or were they pushed?’

‘At least one walked out after three months in the job, saying, apparently, that he didn’t want to be there when the balloon went up.’

‘Names, William, can you get me names and addresses? Please?’

‘I’ll get them for you tomorrow, Francis. I’ve got to go. Damned cab at the door. Five hours of the wretched Lucia di Lammermoor coming up. It would all be over so much quicker if they didn’t bloody well sing.’

Powerscourt made his way back to the drawing room. Lady Lucy seemed to have captured the twins and was reading them a story. She promised to read them another story in ten minutes if they went straight up to bed.

‘I gather you’ve been talking to William Burke on the telephone, Francis?’

‘William Burke says there is something funny with the Colville money. They’ve gone through three senior accountants in the last five years, apparently.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Lady Lucy, whose knowledge of senior accountants was somewhat limited, but did include the view that they should stay in their position longer than twenty months each. ‘I’ve been thinking about Milly’s husband all the time, Francis. Suppose he did go to Norfolk intending to kill Randolph. Suppose you manage to rescue Cosmo Colville only to put Terrible Tim in Pentonville in his place. Suppose he has to go on trial for murder. It would be terrible for Milly after all she’s been through.’

Powerscourt thought his wife had travelled quite a long way down the road of trial and retribution but she hadn’t gone all the way. When would she reach the last journey, the apologetic priest, the pompous governor, the hangman and his assistant all on their way to the gallows? He was a pretty big man, Timothy Barrington White, he’d probably need a drop of seven and a half feet or so to finish him off.

‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy called him back from his reverie, ‘if he was arrested, Terrible Tim, I mean, would you try to get him off? Anything to keep the scandal away.’

Powerscourt reflected that his wife wasn’t exactly at the top of her form in this exchange. If Barrington White was arrested, it would mean that Cosmo Colville could walk free. If he then took on the responsibility of liberating Terrible Tim, somebody else would have to be arrested so that he too could walk free. Was Cosmo, after a couple of days of freedom, to return to his prison cell?

There was one definite fact where he could take action. He must speak to Beauchamp Trumper at the earliest opportunity. What if that fellow drinker of Tim’s had been so alarmed by what he heard of Tim’s drunken boasting that he would kill Randolph Colville, that he had warned the Colvilles to take care? If he had done so, one of the central mysteries of the case would be removed. Randolph Colville had taken his gun to the wedding because he thought somebody might try to kill his brother. Or himself.

Rain was falling in Fulham. It bounced off the top of the omnibuses and the roofs of the carriages. It bounced up off the pavement ensuring that the people were soaked from top to bottom. Small boys on their way home from school tried to shrink themselves inside their caps and hugged the side of the streets in a doomed attempt to keep dry. Lord Francis Powerscourt had his finest black umbrella high above his head, looking for the turning off this main road to the smaller Ringmer Avenue he believed should be the second turning on his left. London, he reflected, was growing bigger all the time, radiating outwards on all four parts of the compass. He wondered if it would ever stop.

Here was Ringmer Avenue at last and here was number sixteen, home to one James Chadwick, former senior accountant at Colvilles, who opened the door reluctantly.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Chadwick, Powerscourt’s the name. I wrote to tell you I proposed to call at this time today.’

‘Come in then.’ James Chadwick sounded as if he would have preferred to leave his visitor out in the rain. He showed Powerscourt into a small sitting room with a sofa and a couple of chairs and a good collection of books. Looking at it Powerscourt knew there was something wrong, something lacking. There was nothing warm or intimate about this place. It had all the humanity of a cell in the local jail. Powerscourt felt sure that there was no woman in the house. There might have been one here some time ago, but not now.

Powerscourt placed himself on the sofa. ‘Thank you so much for seeing me, Mr Chadwick,’ he began. ‘How long is it now since you left Colvilles?’

‘Four years nine months and two weeks,’ said Chadwick, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice.

‘Were they good people to work for, Mr Chadwick? The Colvilles, I mean?’

‘They were and they weren’t, if you follow me. Good in some ways, not so good in others. Not that I can tell you very much about them. My work was confidential, you see.’

‘I suggest, Mr Chadwick, that with one brother dead and the other one about to go on trial for his life, the time for confidentiality is past.’

‘You know the oath the doctors swear, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘The Hippocratic Oath?’

‘That’s the one. The section I’m thinking of says: All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.’

‘With the greatest respect, Mr Chadwick, that sentence is meant to apply to doctors, not to senior accountants. I can fully see the necessity for confidentiality under normal circumstances but these are not normal times. Come, I am not interested in every last detail of the Colville accounts. But I would be very interested to know how they got through three senior accountants inside five years.’

‘Can you promise me that I won’t have to give evidence in court?’

‘I’m not sure I can promise you that, Mr Chadwick, but I can promise you that you won’t have to go to court if you don’t want to.’

Powerscourt looked again at James Chadwick. There was something seedy about the man. His shirt collar was on the verge of disintegration. His jacket was badly frayed at the elbows. The shoes had seen better days and the trousers were heavily stained. Powerscourt wondered if there had been a wife who had left, or passed away from some terrible illness or died in childbirth. He wondered too if money had become a problem. No sensible employer was likely to take on a man who dressed like this. They might as well take on a tramp from one of the great railway stations. He tried a different tack.

‘Of course, if we find your information valuable there may be a question of a fee. I would have to talk to my colleagues about that.’ Nightmare visions of the prosecuting counsel unleashed on James Chadwick flashed across his brain. ‘Did you say you were paid for this information, Mr Chadwick? Perhaps you would like to tell the court how much? Gentlemen of the jury, it is for you to decide how much weight to attach to evidence which has been purchased as you might purchase a horse or a train ticket.’

The mention of money seemed to act as a tonic on the accountant. He sat up straight in his chair and fiddled with his tie as if that might restore it to health.

‘I will tell you the bald points of my time with the Colvilles, an account I hope will still fall within the general guidelines of the Hippocratic Oath.’

James Chadwick paused briefly. One of the dirty curtains across his window flapped for a moment. Powerscourt wondered if he would be offered a cup of tea in this place. Probably not, he thought.

‘I didn’t think the accounts were properly organized before I got there, Lord Powerscourt. So I changed them so they followed the wines, if you follow me. Under the old regime everything was organized alphabetically. That might have been fine in earlier times, but it was hopelessly out of date when I got there. I changed the system so that it was organized by wine. Separate accounts for port, Madeira, claret, Bordeaux and so on. I could track all the money in these accounts at the end of every month. Over time, assuming the trade followed consistent patterns year on year, we could have predicted in May how much profit the firm would have made at the close of the year.’