David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘Did she say how long the row was before the wedding? Days? Weeks?’

‘She said it was a week before the wedding. Now then, Lucy, I think we should run through what we know so far. Some fresh line of inquiry may come to us. Time is running short, after all. Let’s begin with the murder itself. What do you think was going on?’

‘Let’s think of our French friend, the one who stayed in Norfolk the night before the wedding. Suppose he has some score to settle with Randolph that has to do with the Colville wine business in Burgundy. He reaches the Hall, finds the gun, shoots Randolph and disappears, leaving the gun lying on the floor for Cosmo to pick up.’

‘But the gun, Lucy, how did the gun get there?’

‘How about this. After the family row Randolph was so worried about the possibility of family fights and family violence that he took the gun along to keep the peace if necessary. The Frenchman forced him to hand it over and shot Randolph.’

‘But how did the Frenchman know there was going to be a gun there?’ said Powerscourt. ‘He can’t have been exchanging messages with Randolph across the bloody Channel, can he? Maybe the gun had dropped out of somebody’s pocket. That’s not much good either. I don’t think it would stand up to cross-examination in court, do you?’

‘No, I don’t, Francis. Surely if you were a Frenchman with murderous intent you would bring your own weapon with you. You wouldn’t want to take a chance on finding one lying around at a wedding.’

‘You’re absolutely right. We’re going round in circles so we are. Why don’t we look at it another way, Lucy. I hoped I could run through with Mrs Colville the various reasons that might have persuaded Cosmo to pick up the gun and to keep quiet. We know about family honour, family scandal. What else?’

‘Suppose he was being chivalrous. Suppose there was a woman involved and he wanted to protect her.’

‘Possible, but which woman? Isabella Colville? Well, maybe he would do it for her. I can’t see him doing it for anybody else. I’m afraid there is another explanation that fits the bill perfectly,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let’s go back to the family row. Let’s suppose that an argument between Randolph and Cosmo is at the centre of it. The row grows even more heated and even more poisonous in the days leading up to the wedding. So Randolph takes his gun along, either in self-defence or because he intends to shoot Cosmo. They arrange to meet in the state bedroom at the far end of the Nashes’ Long Gallery. Either there is a scuffle and Randolph gets shot. Or Cosmo grabs the gun and kills Randolph just before the butler chap comes into the room. He can’t throw the gun away, so he hangs on to it.’

‘But why,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘does he keep quiet? Why doesn’t he speak?’

‘Ah ha,’ said Powerscourt, ‘this is where the row comes in. If he speaks he will have to explain, sooner or later, what the row was about, if not to the police, then under oath to counsel in court. That would bring disgrace on the name of Colville and ruin to the business. The grey hairs of the remaining old gentleman who raised Colvilles to fame and fortune will turn white. His last years will be spent in shame and sorrow. All of that must flash through Cosmo’s brain. He is a man of conscience, after all, susceptible to the call of duty. He keeps his mouth shut.’

‘You mean, the police have got the right man all along, Francis?’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, Lucy. It’s interesting, I think, that we haven’t yet come up with a more convincing explanation of the shooting of Randolph Colville.’ Powerscourt wandered over to the window and looked out at the traffic in Markham Square. Way over to his left there was a rumble of cabs and buses progressing along the King’s Road towards Sloane Square. Two small boys were kicking a stone along the pavement.

‘That’s not the only mystery we haven’t solved, Lucy. There’s the question of the blackmailer, if there is a blackmailer. There’s Randolph’s missing money and the tens of thousands those accountants found disappearing from the Colvilles’ accounts.’

Powerscourt paused and looked back at the traffic again. ‘I don’t think this is doing us any good. We’ll make ourselves confused and depressed. I’m sure I could find some lights of hope if I set my mind to it, but just at the moment hope in this case seems rather far away. Why don’t I take you out to dinner, Lucy? There’s a new restaurant just opened in Lower Sloane Street. They say the seafood is excellent.’

Tristram Bennett, a Colville on his mother’s side, had decided that it was his destiny to save the family. A couple of days before his tryst with Emily he was making his way towards the Colville Head Office behind Oxford Street. He looked down at his tie from time to time. He wasn’t sure that these were the clothes a sober wine merchant should be seen wearing in the heart of the West End. The suit was not a quiet suit. It did not speak of respectability. With its long jacket and wide labels it had a faint air of Regency about it, as if Tristram was on his way to some coffee house in Covent Garden. The shirt was loud and the tie was raffish. Trying to remember when he had last worn this outfit, Tristram recalled that it was on a visit to a club off Park Lane where people gambled for high stakes. He had been wondering about Emily Colville on the way. She was very young and very pretty, but had he had the best of her? She didn’t have enough money to help support his lifestyle and she wasn’t always available. Maybe he should just give her up. As he crossed the Colville threshold he remembered that he might come across Emily’s husband Montague, toiling in some lowly position among the wines and spirits. Montague was never going to set the world on fire, Tristram said to himself, not even the limited world of London’s wine. Montague was one of those regular souls who would work away for years, with only limited doses of promotion, perfectly happy to fill his days in the station and the manner he had been called to. Such a life, however, was not for Tristram. He would, as he often told himself when on the verge of some great adventure, rather die in glory on the battlefield than serve a lifetime in the counting house.

He swept into the Colville Head Office, across the great room where the clerks laboured to keep paper track of all those different bottles and cases that circled the globe, and up to Alfred Davis’s office.

‘Good morning, Davis,’ he said, ‘I’ve come to restore order here. Things have got out of hand since the unfortunate events at the wedding. Take me to Mr Randolph’s room, if you would. I’ll make a start there.’

The one thing instilled into Davis and his fellows was that obedience to any Colville demand was automatic, unquestioning, instant. In such a spirit, centuries before, the servants of the emperors in Rome must have opened doors and bottles and laid out the clothes of their masters. The Colville code, unfortunately, like that of the emperors, had made no allowance for bad Colvilles but Alfred was not to know that. He took Tristram down a floor and showed him into the large office where Randolph had worked. Tristram sat at the desk by the window and told Davis he could go now. When he, Tristram, wanted him, he would send a message. He went over to the door and made sure it was firmly shut. Then he began his morning’s work with Randolph’s diary. Nothing very interesting there. Tristram had imagined endless invitations to wine or port tastings at discreet hotels off Park Lane, lunches in expensive restaurants with leading members of the wine trade, men from Berry Bros. amp; Rudd, or Justerini amp; Brooks perhaps. Instead he found a very mundane list, meetings with wine shippers, meetings with wine merchants who dealt in bulk transport, meetings with bottlers and bottle manufacturers and advertising men. This was not the stuff of high romance, Tristram said to himself, wearying of the mundane. He turned instead to two large files of Randolph’s correspondence. Anybody looking at Tristram at this point would not have described him as a man dabbling around for fun in somebody else’s business. They would have said he was a man definitely looking for something. And he was. Randolph, after all, had served him well for a number of years. The payments were small. They always came on time. There was never any hint of fuss. Randolph’s demise had left a hole in Tristram’s income, a fairly small hole, but a hole nonetheless. As he peered through Randolph’s letters, or the letters to Randolph, he was looking for a replacement, another target who would pay up without any trouble.