David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

Detective Chief Inspector Weir smiled at his young protege, like a grandfather with a favourite grandchild. ‘Why should we wait, Albert? Surely we’ve got all the evidence we need.’

Cooper knew that what was, for him, the most compelling argument for innocence was, for his superior officer, the most compelling argument for guilt. All the same, he had to try.

‘Suppose you’re a killer, sir. Suppose you despatch your victim in a quiet room on the first floor of a great house in Norfolk. Then what do we think the killer would do? Why, he’d dispose of the weapon and get himself away from the scene as fast as he could. The last thing he would want to do is to sit there with the gun in his hand waiting to be discovered. Then there’s the business of his silence. Who is he trying to protect? Some other member of the family? Some woman?’

‘That’s mere speculation and you know it,’ said Weir. Twenty-five years before in Norwich Crown Court he had heard a distinguished counsel dismiss the elegant arguments of the defence barrister as mere speculation and he had been using the phrase ever since. ‘If the man wants to tell us what he was doing all he has to do is to open his mouth. But he won’t. Let’s stick to the facts, Albert. The gun is Randolph Colville’s. It was used to kill him. His brother Cosmo was in and out of that house all the time before the wedding. He was sitting in the chair opposite with the gun in his hand. That’s good enough for me. I’m sure it will be good enough for the Chief Constable. That’s good enough for a jury.’

‘There are still questions we can’t answer, sir. The three unidentified guests at the wedding reception for a start. We haven’t had time to trace them yet. And there’s the whole question of the wine business, whether there was anything unusual going on there. We don’t have to make the arrest so soon.’

Even as he looked at his superior officer he knew it was no good. Weir’s mind was made up. It would take an earthquake to change it. Before he went home that evening, Inspector Cooper learnt that Archibald Beauchamp Cosmo Colville had indeed been charged with murder.

Five days later Lord Francis Powerscourt was crossing the well-manicured lawns of London’s Gray’s Inn, answering a summons from a barrister friend, Charles Augustus Pugh. The two men had worked on a murder trial together some years before. Pugh’s office was lined with even more files than it had contained previously. His feet, clad today in elegant black boots, rested as usual on his desk. His suit was pale grey, his starched white collar was immaculate. He waved Powerscourt to a chair.

‘How are you keeping, my friend? Still packing the murderers off to jail?’

‘I can’t complain,’ said Powerscourt. ‘And yourself, Pugh? The clerks here still keeping the wolf from your door?’

‘They certainly are,’ said Pugh with a smile. ‘I’ve got the devil of a case on now. I’m for the prosecution for a change, Powerscourt. Three high-class con men, Granville, Trevelyan and Lawrence, Financial Consultants. With names like that and their proper cut glass vowel sounds, you’d think they’d been to Eton and Oxford. Not so, my friend, not so.’ Pugh shook his head sadly. ‘Old ladies, that was their thing. Rich old ladies, two of the rogues offering their services round Mayfair and South Kensington, one in the Home Counties. Old ladies especially susceptible to the con man in Epsom for some reason. They offered better investment returns than anyone else, you see, not by huge amounts, that might have made people think twice about them, but by enough to make a difference. They were only caught because a solicitor became suspicious. When they got their hands on the old ladies’ money, ten or fifteen or twenty thousand pounds, sometimes more, they worked out how long she was likely to live. They paid her the slightly better dividends they’d promised every year out of her own money, and kept most of the rest themselves. They created bogus accounts using real investments quoted in the financial pages that showed how much she was losing every year so that by the time the old lady died the investments had virtually all gone. These were real shares and real share prices they pretended to deal in, only they weren’t actually buying and selling, just taking notes of the different prices at different times so they could show how the old ladies might have lost most of their money. When the time came to send in the paperwork after the death, they just put in the figures they already had. Nobody asked to see the actual share certificates or the records of the stockbrokers’ dealings, though I suspect they could have finessed those all right.’

‘How were they caught?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Ah,’ said Pugh, ‘if you were feeling generous, you could say they were unlucky. You might not be so charitable if you were one of the old ladies or the people meant to inherit their money. Three of their victims in six months all had the same solicitors on Kensington High Street. All their clients invested with Granville, Trevelyan and Lawrence. All ended up without a penny. One might have been possible, two might just have been feasible, but three was too much. This solicitor went into every possible detail of the paperwork and found that they didn’t have it. Then he called in the police. Can you believe it, the three rogues have even found a couple of old ladies who testified in court in their favour. I’m not sure they believed me when I told them they were being cheated out of their money. Anyway,’ Pugh slid his feet off his desk and back on to the ground and began riffling through some papers, eventually holding up a brief tied in pink tape, ‘this is why you’re here, Powerscourt. Just been instructed yesterday,’ he went on. ‘Hopeless business, hardly worth turning up in court apart from the fact the fee is rather substantial. Wondered if you’d like to lend a hand. Solicitors keen for everybody they can find to help get our client off, particularly keen to get you on board. Heaps of money.’

‘What sort of case?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Murder,’ replied Pugh. ‘I’m for the defence, you understand. Some defence! Here’s the story.’ There was a brief pause while Charles Augustus Pugh restored his boots to their rightful place on his desk and wrapped his hands behind his neck. ‘Grand wedding, wine merchant family hook up with Norfolk grandees who have huge house. Hundred guests, maybe more, all dressed up as if they’re going to Royal Ascot. Groom’s father found shot in room near the Long Gallery where they were all about to put the nosebags on after the service. Then there’s the dead man’s brother six feet away, sitting on a chair with a gun in his hand. Blood all over the priceless carpet. Same gun, or almost certainly the same gun, police discover, used to shoot the brother. Think Cain and Abel in modern dress in the bloody Fens, for Christ’s sake. Brother Cain charged with murder. Bloody fool won’t speak. All he will say to the authorities is his name and that he didn’t do it. What, my friend, what on earth am I supposed to do with this lot? The committal hearing is next week, the Old Bailey in five or six weeks if everything goes according to plan. It could be less. Can you help me? Can you work a miracle? The loaves and fishes would have nothing on this.’

Powerscourt agreed to take the case on. His only thought at the beginning was that the silence probably meant a woman was involved who was not Cosmo Colville’s wife. Pugh gave him all the details of the families and the wedding party and took him down the street to the solicitors to take up his formal employment in the matter.

Lady Lucy Powerscourt was looking at an auction catalogue when her husband returned to Markham Square from Gray’s Inn. She turned slightly pale when Powerscourt told her the details of his latest case. ‘I’ve got a second cousin, Francis, who’s married to some minor member of the Colville family. I can’t for the moment remember if she’s on the Randolph side or the Cosmo side. How very terrible.’