David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

Powerscourt had already written about the fingerprints. ‘I don’t think I have anything at present that would get us out of our difficulties. There’s something very odd about the money, though. One of the family solicitors told me very early on that Randolph Colville should have been worth a lot more than he actually was. Colvilles have got through three senior accountants in less than five years. They too tell of funny things going on with the money. Just before the final accounts are signed off, something in the order of one hundred thousand pounds a year simply disappears. Cosmo and the late Randolph seem to be instrumental in the disappearance of these Houdini funds. If you think about it, they’re defrauding members of their own family – only family members can hold shares, you see. And the family don’t make a fuss. Maybe there’s blackmail in there, but you would have to think it’s the whole clan who are being blackmailed. What do you make of it, Pugh?’

Two elegant black shoes descended from the desk as Charles Augustus Pugh began to walk up and down his room, pausing from time to time for emphasis as his thoughts unrolled. ‘I think I like it. I didn’t like the fingerprint angle very much. It would only be really effective if we found other fingerprints on it and we knew whose those were. But blackmail, my friend, blackmail might be better. It gives us motive for a start which we didn’t have before. Juries like motives they can understand. Juries understand blackmail. Suppose one of these Colvilles learns about how they have been defrauded all these years. For some reason the fact of this missing money is very important for our man. Maybe there was a sick relative he couldn’t send to Switzerland or America or somewhere or other. He gets hold of a gun, either Randolph’s gun or one identical to it. Off he trots to the wedding and arranges to have a quiet word with Randolph before the festive board is actually rolled out. Bang, he shoots Randolph dead. He drops the gun on the floor and flees as unobtrusively as he can. Cosmo hears the bang and walks into the room. I say, he says to himself, isn’t that Randolph’s gun? So he picks it up, and then he is found with the gun in his hand and his murdered brother on the floor. Because he knows who the murderer is, Cosmo doesn’t speak. He has to protect the killer. He has to keep quiet.’

Pugh sat down again and brushed a small speck of dust off his dark grey trousers. ‘It’s fine, of course, except we don’t know who the blackmailer is or was or the nature of the blackmail itself. I can’t believe it’ll solve all our problems, Powerscourt, but I could do something with it if I had to. Can you line up these accountants to come to court? If we don’t know who the real murderer is, all we can do is try to persuade the jury that there is doubt about a conviction, that the jury shouldn’t feel comfortable sending Cosmo to the gallows. It’s all we can do.’

Pugh stared over at his window. ‘Bloody cat,’ he said again. ‘Do you know, they haven’t even got a name for it yet? I think I’ll make a suggestion at the next chambers meeting. I’ve wondered about Messalina or Cleopatra but I think we want something simpler.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.

‘It’s a perfect description for the bloody animal’s behaviour. Killer, that’s what we should call her. Killer the cat, killer, now I think about it, rather like our unknown murdering friend up in Norfolk.’

Powerscourt found Sir Pericles Freme walking up and down his drawing room in Markham Square in a state of high excitement. It was with difficulty that he persuaded the man to sit down and take a cup of tea.

‘I bring news, Powerscourt, news from the world of Colvilles. I did not receive the intelligence from them directly but I am assured it is correct.’ Freme began rubbing his hands together and nodding his head up and down. ‘Oh, yes!’ he said. ‘Oh, yes!’

‘Please continue, Sir Pericles.’

Sir Pericles stared at Powerscourt for a moment as if collecting his thoughts. Certainly he sounded now less excited than he had before.

‘In the wine business, as you know, everything is governed by the seasons. A time for harvest, a time for bottling, a time for planting. Round about now is the time Colvilles ship over their next consignment of white wine to see them through Christmas and the New Year. The winter is not quite upon us but if the wine does not come soon, the weather may cause problems. One of London’s most distinguished merchants almost went under a few years ago when their vessel sank in the Bay of Biscay with a huge consignment of claret on board. Nobody has tried to ship anything in December since. But the Colville wine is still in Burgundy. It has not left the warehouses. It has not been pulled together ready for shipping.’

‘Can’t they buy some more? Won’t there be some negociants in Beaune or in Dijon who can step into the breach?’

‘There may well be,’ said Freme, ‘but it will take time and money, a lot of money. Word will have flashed round the vineyards that a big English customer has failed to take delivery of his consignment of Chablis and Meursault and so on. Colvilles will have paid for this lot of fine burgundy once. Now they will have to pay again. And there’s worse, much worse.’

‘How much worse?’ said Powerscourt.

‘The agent in Burgundy, a Monsieur Jean Pierre Drouhin, has disappeared. Nobody has seen him for ten days or so. You see, if he was there he could assemble all the Colville wine and organize the shipment in a couple of days, he knows where everything is. He has been with the Colvilles for ten years or more. But now he is not with them. He has vanished.’

‘Does nobody know where he might have gone? Did he have a wife?’

‘A pretty wife and two lovely children, they say.’

‘Parents alive, parents not well, that sort of thing? Has he gone on a mission of mercy to the ancestral farm?’

‘He would have told his wife if he was doing that, surely.’

‘Another woman? Romance in Antibes or Biarritz, perhaps?’

‘Nobody knows, Powerscourt, nobody knows anything at all.’

‘You don’t suppose he’s dead, do you?’ Powerscourt was spinning spiders’ webs in his mind, wondering if there was any connection between death in Brympton, the missing money in Colvilles’ accounts and the missing agent in Burgundy.

‘The French police are investigating, of course.’ Sir Pericles didn’t sound as if he had great confidence in them. ‘I must leave you now, I’m afraid. I have an appointment with a senior figure in Colvilles. Would you like a recipe, or a receipt, before I go?’

‘Very much, Sir Pericles. Let me just fetch Lucy. She’s devoted to the recipes.’

Freme pulled a little book out of his bag and settled a pair of spectacles on his nose.

‘English sherry,’ he began, ‘here we go. “To every pound of good, moist sugar, put one quart of water. Boil it till it is clear. When cool (as near as possible to cold without being so) work it with new yeast, and add of strong beer in the height of working, the proportion of one quart in a gallon. Cover it up, and let it work the same as beer; when the fermentation begins to subside, tun it; and when it has been in the cask a fortnight or three weeks, add raisins, half a pound to a gallon, sugar candy and bitter almonds of each half an ounce to the gallon, and to nine gallons of wine half a pint of the best brandy. Paste a stiff brown paper over the bung hole and if necessary renew it. This wine will be fit to bottle after remaining one year in the cask; but if left longer will be improved. If suffered to remain three years in the cask and one in bottles it can scarcely be distinguished from good foreign wines, and for almost every purpose answers exactly as well.”’