David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘Age?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Thirty, thirty-five?’ said Jack Gill.

‘And what did he do when he was here?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Gill. ‘We hardly saw anything of him at all. He paid for his accommodation the minute he arrived. Then he went up to his room and we never saw him again, did we, Hilda, until you spotted him leaving in the morning.’

Powerscourt looked at the hotel-keeper’s wife. ‘He’d ordered a cab to take him away, sir, so he had. And he was all dressed up with the rest of his things in that little bag he was carrying so he wasn’t going to come back here.’

‘How was he all dressed up, Mrs Gill?’

‘Well, sir, he looked as if he was going to a wedding. That Jim Cox who drove him was in here that night having a couple of pints of beer and he said he’d taken him over to Brympton Hall.’

‘The cabbie didn’t pick him up again after the ceremony?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘No, sir, he just left him there in the morning.’

‘Could you describe him for me?’

‘About five foot ten,’ said Jack Gill.

‘Very dark hair, almost black,’ said Hilda Gill. ‘We only called him Philippe the Fair because I thought I remembered some French king with that name.’

‘Slim, he was,’ Jack carried on.

‘Clean-shaven,’ said Hilda. ‘Dark eyes. He looked like a man on a mission of some kind.’

And that, despite all his prompting, was the sum total of what Powerscourt could get out of them. He explained that they might have to come to court to give evidence about the arrival of Philippe the Fair.

‘I’ve always wanted to see the Old Bailey,’ Jack Gill said. ‘But sure to God I never thought I’d have to go and appear there.’

Powerscourt found Georgina Nash sitting in her garden in the last of the sunshine. A couple of workmen were encamped round the fountain. Another seemed to have disappeared inside it head first.

‘Good afternoon, Lord Powerscourt, how nice to see you again.’

‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.’

‘Let’s go inside and have some tea,’ said Georgina Nash, rising from her bench and taking a last wistful look at the fountain. ‘I’m sure you’ll remember that fountain wasn’t working at the time of the wedding. They haven’t fixed it yet. Willoughby says I’m getting obsessed about it.’

‘I’m sure it will be working again soon. They can be tricky things, fountains.’

‘Have you been making any progress, Lord Powerscourt? I gather that poor man is still locked up in Pentonville and not speaking a word. Do you have any news?’

‘I have to say, Mrs Nash, that I have very little progress to report. I’m not doing well at this point. I do have one or two matters I would like to ask you about, but perhaps you could tell me first of all if anything new has come to light here about the events on the day of the wedding.’

‘Well, we’ve had all sorts of people who were there on the day come to offer condolences, that sort of thing. I’m afraid we haven’t had any strange-looking person turning up and announcing that he was the murderer.’

‘I don’t know if you remember, Mrs Nash, but you told me at the time that a wedding would be a very good place to commit a murder. If there were any strangers about, you said, the Nashes would think they were Colvilles and the Colvilles would think they were Nashes.’

‘Did I really say that, Lord Powerscourt? That’s rather clever, don’t you think? I shall have to tell Willoughby. He believes I haven’t got any brains at all.’

‘The thing is, Mrs Nash,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘that we have evidence there was a Frenchman here that day. He stayed the night before at the Bell over at Cawston where the landlord and his wife remember him. In the morning he took a cab all dressed up in his wedding clothes and came here, to the Hall.’

‘What did he look like, Lord Powerscourt?’ said Georgina Nash, looking alarmed at the thought of unknown Frenchmen wandering about her property. ‘What was his name?’

‘We don’t have a name. He booked in at the hotel calling himself Legros but he didn’t sign the visitors’ book so I suspect it was a false name. Five feet ten, dark hair, almost black, dark eyes, some hint of a military look about him, the Bell at Cawston people thought. Can you remember such a man, Mrs Nash?’

Georgina Nash stared closely at Powerscourt. ‘Dark hair, five foot ten, military look about him, I might have seen him but I can’t be sure. There were plenty of military people about on the day. You see, even if I had come across him, I think I’d have thought he was a guest of the Colvilles – they’ve got wine interests all over Europe, so it’s only natural they should invite a Frenchman or two. Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, that’s not very helpful of me.’

‘Could I just ask you to think very carefully, Mrs Nash, see if you can remember seeing such a man at the far end of your Great Hall where the murder happened?’

If Charles Augustus Pugh used such a technique, Powerscourt said to himself, he would most probably receive a fearful wigging from the judge for leading the witness.

‘It’s no good, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Georgina Nash after a moment or two, ‘I can’t do it, I just can’t.’

‘Perhaps these might help you along,’ said Powerscourt, producing the two seating plans he had obtained from Inspector Cooper and placing them on the low table.

‘How fascinating,’ said Georgina Nash, staring carefully at the Long Gallery seating plan and the garden plan, so carefully filled in, with names in bubbles by the matchstick wedding guests, the whole resembling the identifying key to the people in enormous paintings like Derby Day by artists like Frith, where a reproduction of the painting was made, with blank white spaces where the heads of the MPs or the spectators at Derby Day had been. Inside each head was a number and the numbers matched the names of the people in the main painting in a great panel on the side.

Georgina Nash shook her head slowly. ‘It’s no good,’ she said finally, ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Never mind, Mrs Nash, it’s of no consequence. Could I ask a favour, a double favour of you? Do you have addresses of all these people in these seating plans? I’m sure you must have had them when you sent out the invitations but you may have thrown them away.’

‘No,’ said Georgina Nash, ‘I have them still. I shall fetch them directly. What was the other half of your favour, Lord Powerscourt?’

‘I thought you would have them,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The second favour is to ask if I could shoot upstairs and take another look at the Long Gallery while you are fetching the addresses?’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Nash. ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t come with you. Neither Willoughby nor I have set foot in those rooms since the wedding.’

Powerscourt went out to the great staircase where the guests had gathered on that terrible day. He retraced the steps most of them would have taken, into the upper Anteroom with its French hunting tapestries and on into the Long Gallery itself. He headed straight for the far end, looking out over the lake. He checked the door on the right-hand side that opened on to the staircase leading to the garden where the guests had been taking their champagne. Up these, he said to himself, into the Peter the Great room, meet Randolph Colville in the state bedroom, pull out your pistol and shoot him dead. Make your escape back the way you had come. Or take the staircase in the corner of the state bedroom down and out into the west front and the gardens on the opposite side to the wedding party. From here you could vanish, or you could make your way round to the garden party and mingle with them until the time came to climb the stairs. Those two staircases, Powerscourt was sure, in some combination or other, must have provided the way in and the way out for the murderer. There were yet more staircases in the body of the house but he wasn’t sure how many people would have known about them.