David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

He strode rapidly from one staircase to the other. He stared at the gardens for a long time, his mind far away. He was returned to life by a great shout from Mrs Nash in her drawing room a floor below. ‘Lord Powerscourt! Lord Powerscourt! Please come!’

She was standing by the window, mesmerized. Georgina Nash pressed a thick envelope into his hand. ‘That has all the addresses you need,’ she said, ‘but look, Lord Powerscourt, look!’ A hundred yards or so away, in the centre of the garden, the workmen had moved away from the fountain. A slow stream of water was climbing into the afternoon air. He felt her fingers tighten their grip on his arm.

‘Watch,’ she said. Even as she spoke, the mechanical devices operating the fountain sprang into full working order. The water shot twenty, then thirty, then forty feet into the air. The workmen cheered and waved their caps in the air. Georgina Nash shouted for joy. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at Powerscourt and said, ‘My fountain! At last! After so long! At last!’

Johnny Fitzgerald came to breakfast in Markham Square the next morning. This was a most unusual event. Powerscourt could only remember Johnny coming for the eggs and bacon once, or possibly twice, in all the years they had lived in London. Only great events or great peril could bring Fitzgerald out at this hour. He was sitting on Lady Lucy’s left hand, opposite the twins who were making valiant efforts to sit still.

‘If you eat your breakfast properly,’ he said, staring at them in mock severity, ‘I might, just might, begin a little story for the pair of you after breakfast. Only the beginning of a story,’ he emphasized as the twins began to consume toast at Olympic speed, ‘you might get the next bit at bedtime.’

‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how nice to see you at this early hour. It has special meaning because it is so unusual. You don’t normally come for breakfast. You don’t normally come for morning coffee. You don’t normally come for lunch. Only very rarely do you come for tea and then it is unusually late, as if it might not be time for a glass of something. So tell us, my friend, is the world about to end? Have you cracked this case? Have you fallen in love?’

Johnny Fitzgerald laughed. ‘I’m afraid I have to say no to all of those. I think my news had better wait till I have said a few words of story to our young friends across the table.’ Christopher and Juliet were sitting upright in their chairs now, their arms folded across their chests, looking demurely in front of them, as if preparing to take part in an advertisement for perfectly behaved children. In front of them two large beaches of crumbs surrounded the plates where they had eaten their toast. Johnny Fitzgerald picked them up, one on each arm, and carried the twins out of the room. Lady Lucy smiled at her husband as the beginning of the story drifted down the stairs.

‘This is the story of Drago the young dragon who got lost and separated from his parent dragons on a long journey across the sea.’ Johnny breathed heavily and made hissing noises at this point. The twins squealed happily. ‘Drago is tired now. His limbs ache from hours and hours of flying. In front of him he can see a great city where humans live and a river going through it. Drawing on the last of his strength and taking care not to blow any sheets of flame in front of him, Drago flies up the river and finally falls asleep on the riverbank. He does not know it, but Drago the young dragon has reached a place called Chelsea.’ At that point Johnny emitted a huge hiss and fled the room, leaving the twins to the care of their nurse.

‘Francis, Lucy.’ Johnny helped himself to some more toast on his return. ‘I have been doing a lot of drinking with the young men of Colvilles and some dockers and some chap who works in one of those big hotels behind Piccadilly, Whites, I think it’s called. He’s very keen on money, Francis, so I’m afraid I’ve had to humour him to get what I wanted. The news came almost by accident. He was telling me, this chap, about these big dinners they have once a month or so, pre-phylloxera dinners they’re called, where all the wines served were made before the wine pest destroyed the French vineyards. Because they’re so rare, these wines, they command high prices and these rich people, City types most of them, plenty of Old Etonians about, pay even higher prices to drink them.’

‘Where do they come from, these wines?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Pretty rare I’d have thought.’

‘Good question, Francis, very good question. They’re supposed to come from the cellars of abbeys or monasteries, or private houses where the master of the house or his butler was accustomed to laying down large quantities in the cellar during the good years. Nobody’s touched them in the plague years. At this point, Francis, a pound changed hands. Then another. You’ll not believe what I’m about to tell you, said my informant who called himself Fred, though I doubt if that is his real name.’

Johnny paused and took a sip of his tea. All this talk of wine and ancient vintages was making him thirsty and not for the produce of Assam or Darjeeling.

‘What did the man called Fred say, Johnny?’ said Lady Lucy, who remembered Johnny spinning out stories for so long that you almost wanted to scream.

‘This is what he said.’ Johnny lent forward to stare into Lady Lucy’s face. ‘The wine at these dinners is fake. It doesn’t come from the cellars of some abandoned abbey or closed-down hotel. It’s manufactured here in London, in a warehouse, where they have great stocks of pre-phylloxera labels from real chateaux they can replicate and all sorts of different wines they can blend together to produce the fakes. The chief forger has a strange name called the Necromancer or something like that. He’s very secretive. Nobody knows his real name.’

‘Surely the guests must smell a rat?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Surely they must suspect something is wrong?’

‘Fred was rather sharp about that, Francis. I asked him precisely those questions. Think of it like this, he said. Sometimes I have to wait at table on these occasions. Everybody is dressed up. The table is beautifully laid out. You are told when you arrive which wines you are going to drink. These will not be the great wines of Bordeaux, the Lafites, the Latours, Margaux. Rather they will be decent second division wines most people will not have heard of. You have paid all this money. You are surrounded by fellow wine connoisseurs. Everything conspires to tell you these wines are real. It would never occur to you to think otherwise. The ambience, the candles, the silver, the elegant glasses all conspire to complete the illusion. And there’s one other thing Fred pointed out. Very few people know a lot about wine. Nobody, but nobody would have tasted these wines before the onset of the phylloxera. So nobody would know what they were meant to taste like. So the dinners continue. The Necromancer produces the batch for the next event. The hotel must know what is going on but they and the forger are making a great deal of money.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I don’t suppose we know what the Necromancer uses to produce his fakes, do we? And I suspect you have more information for us, Johnny. I don’t believe you would have broken the customs of a lifetime to come here for breakfast and tell us about forged pre-phylloxera vintages. I think there’s more. And I think it must have to do with this Necromancer person. Who else does he provide for, Johnny? How extensive is his client list?’

Johnny Fitzgerald laughed. ‘A hit,’ he said, ‘a very palpable hit. There is indeed more, though it is not all definite. Yes, the Necromancer has other customers. Yes, they include some of the leading wine merchants of London. Piccadilly Wine, a new and well-run competitor to the Colvilles in the London area, is believed to be a client. The Colvilles themselves? Nobody knows. I don’t actually think Fred knows one way or the other. I could ask him to find out, of course, but I don’t think reliable information is easy to find. It’s not like you’re dealing with Fortnum and Mason or the Army and Navy stores, if you see what I mean.’