David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘Do we know where the Necromancer lives? Or where he works? I wonder which law he is actually breaking. Anyway, Johnny, well done indeed. Think of the possibilities for blackmail all round. Consider the hotel with the dinners and the pre-plague wines. Roll up one morning and tell them you know the wines are all fakes and forgeries. For a small consideration, fifty pounds a dinner, hundred pounds a dinner, you will keep the knowledge to yourself. The potential shame and the potential scandal mean that you are almost certain to pay up. No hotel could bring it out into the open and appear in court. They’d be finished.’

‘Surely there’s something else,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Suppose the Colvilles are also customers. Might not that be the key to the blackmail, if there is blackmail? Pay up or we’ll tell the world that some of your wines don’t come from France at all, but are cooked up in some Devil’s Kitchen in a warehouse in Shoreditch. You’d pay up pretty quickly then, I should think.’

Johnny Fitzgerald rose. ‘I’m most grateful for my breakfast. Now I must sleep. I shall give my full attention to the other customers of the man they call the Necromancer. I only have one other matter to attend to early this evening.’

‘What’s that, Johnny?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘Why,’ said Johnny very seriously, ‘it concerns a young dragon called Drago who has lost his parents and fallen asleep on the riverbank in Chelsea. Do you think he should enter your house by the front door or by coming down the chimney breathing fire and smoke?’

It was just another boring morning in the life of Emily Colville in her little house in Barnes close to Hammersmith Bridge and the river Thames. The maid brought in the post as she sat sipping desultorily at a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Montague had long since departed for the wines and spirits of Colvilles. There was a bill from her dressmaker in Chelsea. Really, the amount these people charged these days was outrageous. She hoped Montague wouldn’t make a scene. She did dislike scenes so, they always gave her a headache. There was another bill from the place where she bought her shoes. That too seemed outrageous. Why was life so unkind to her? Then she noticed another, rather larger envelope in a hand she knew all too well. Emily stared at it and her heart began to beat faster. She hardly dared open it. She took a little walk into the dining room and back to the kitchen. At last she summoned her courage. She opened the letter with a trembling hand. It was the same as all those other letters she had received earlier that summer. There was no letter inside, only a sheet of music for a popular song of the time, ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’. The cover showed a cornfield at night with a couple framed in moonlight at the top. Emily looked at the first page of the sheet music and she smiled. She shivered slightly as she worked out the code hidden among the clefs and the minims. She was to meet her lover in two days’ time in the afternoon in the usual place. She would tell Montague she wished to see her parents for a day or two. Only she would leave on an earlier train and be waiting for her lover in the little house behind the lake in Norfolk.

Why do I always postpone the difficult interviews? Why can’t I go and do them at the beginning? Powerscourt was berating himself. It’s cowardice, pure and simple. Who knows, if I had conducted this interview earlier, the whole case might be over by now. A sensible investigator like Mr Sherlock Holmes would not have been smoking opium and playing the violin in 221B Baker Street. He would have summoned a brougham and driven straight to Wisteria Lodge and taken the interview in hand. Come to think of it, Powerscourt’s internal monologue went on, 221B Baker Street is only a couple of hundred yards away. He was walking across St John’s Wood to the house of Mrs Cosmo Colville, wife of the man incarcerated in Pentonville prison who had scarcely, as far as anybody knew, spoken a single word since he was found opposite the dead body of his brother, with what seemed to be his brother’s gun in his hand. Her reply to his note had been encouraging: ‘Of course you must come and see me. I would be delighted to welcome you to my house. Might I suggest three o’clock on Wednesday?’

So far it had not been a good day for Lord Francis Powerscourt. A note had come for him first thing that morning from Charles Augustus Pugh.

‘Trumper, Barrington White,’ it said. ‘Horse won’t run. No legs. Barrington White goes into witness box. Denies everything. We have no proof of anything at all. Waste of time. Only causes drop in our share price, already at dangerously low levels. Regards. Pugh.’

A military butler showed him into a well-proportioned drawing room with great sofas and prints and pictures covering the walls. Isabella Colville was sitting in an armchair to the left of the fire. She motioned Powerscourt to its twin on the other side. She was a tall, slim woman, with pale hair that was almost blonde and faint lines that might have been caused by worry and strain on her forehead, wearing a long dark grey skirt with a blue blouse that showed off the colour of her hair.

‘Lord Powerscourt, let me say first of all how grateful we are for what you are doing. It is much appreciated, you know.’

Powerscourt waved his hands slightly and shook his head, ‘I thank you for your kind words, Mrs Colville. I wish I could say that I had done enough so far to deserve them. I fear I have not. Not yet at any rate.’

‘But there’s always time, isn’t there. Somebody who knew about one of your earlier cases, Lord Powerscourt, told me the other day that sometimes the answer comes to you in a flash. There’s a sheet of lightning or something like that in your brain and all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.’

‘You’re too kind,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let’s all pray for lightning.’ They laughed.

‘Now then,’ said Isabella Colville, ‘I’ve been thinking about this conversation, Lord Powerscourt. You must feel free to ask me absolutely anything you want. I don’t mind if it seems rude or in bad taste. You see, that’s my husband and the father of my children in that horrible prison. I’ll do anything I can to help get him out. I gather you’ve seen my sister-in-law over at Pangbourne? Could I ask you what time of day it was?’

‘I arrived about half past ten,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to criticize her sister-in-law.

‘I wish you had talked to me beforehand. The hour between nine and ten is the only safe one in the day. I’ve told the lawyers that. Otherwise the Chablis flows on and on like the Mississippi river. I’m not judging her, mind you. My husband may not be in ideal circumstances but at least he’s still alive.’

‘When did you last see him, your husband I mean?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Not a word, not one.’

‘So what do you talk about? Do you tell him the latest news?’

‘I do.’ Isabella Colville smiled for a moment. ‘I decided early on that it’s like talking to some old person who’s near death’s door and has lost the power of speech. But they can still make sense of most of what you tell them. I do find I prattle on a bit but it’s the best I can do.’

‘So what kind of things do you talk to him about?’

‘Well, I tell him what news I have of the children – they’ve left home now but they’re always keen for the latest about their father. I tell him about what news I have of the other Colvilles. I tell him about the house – yesterday I had to inform him that the footman had dropped a valuable vase on the kitchen floor where it smashed to pieces. Talking of other Colvilles, you should go and see a cousin of ours who worked for the firm for a long time. He grew up with Randolph and Cosmo. He and his wife live in Ealing now.’