David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

‘I don’t think there was anything strange about his going. He said he had to go to England on business. There was nothing unusual about that. He went to London a lot. He must have spent nearly half the year there, now I come to think about it. But he never wrote this time – normally he was a good if irregular correspondent. He just got on the train in Beaune one morning and disappeared out of our lives.’

‘And since then, madame,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you haven’t heard anything at all? Not even a letter or a card?’

‘Nothing, monsieur, not a word.’

‘And had your husband, madame,’ Lady Lucy was trying to sound as sympathetic as she could, ‘ever disappeared like this before? Gone to visit his family perhaps?’

‘Often he has left us,’ said Madame Drouhin, ‘but he has always told us where he was going and written to us while he was there. It was usually London or near London that he went to.’

For twenty minutes or more Powerscourt and Lady Lucy questioned Madame Drouhin about her husband and his movements. Finally Powerscourt felt he could delay no longer.

‘Can I ask you a question, Madame Drouhin?’ Powerscourt was leaning forward in his chair. ‘It may seem rather odd if the answer is No. Could your husband write equally well with both hands?’

‘How interesting that you should know that,’ she said with a smile. ‘Yes, he could. The children were always fascinated by it.’

Powerscourt had been looking carefully round the room. On a small table by the window there were some photographs but he couldn’t see them clearly.

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there,’ said Madame Drouhin. ‘That’s why you’re here. There must be something wrong, very wrong.’ She looked at Lady Lucy with pleading eyes.

‘I’m afraid there is,’ she said. ‘Francis will tell you.’

Powerscourt pulled a photograph out of his pocket, the one Mrs Colville had given him while she was still sober. ‘Is that your husband, madame?’

‘Of course it is,’ she said. Randolph Colville was standing next to a punt by the side of the Thames with a boater on his head, smiling happily at the world. By his side was a handsome woman of about forty-five, some years older than Madame Drouhin. In front of them were a couple of children with determined smiles for the camera.

‘How very English,’ said Madame Drouhin with a note of bitterness in her voice. ‘On the outside we have the smiles, inside we have the cold hearts and the betrayal.’

‘Do you know who these other people are in the photograph, madame?’ Powerscourt was speaking very softly.

‘I do not know,’ she replied and her voice was filled with despair, ‘but I can guess. That is the English wife of Mr Drouhin, and those must be two of the children he had with her.’

‘You knew?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You knew your husband had two wives?’

‘I did. I have known for some time.’ Silence fell in the handsome room as Powerscourt and Lady Lucy digested this astonishing piece of information. Bigamy. They had suspected it might be here but to find it in reality was stunning. And terrible. Bigamy. A unique arrangement whereby one man could betray two women at the same time twenty-four hours a day. A clock on the mantelpiece announced that it was half past three. Outside in the square a group of starlings were holding a concert in the trees. Powerscourt felt so very very sorry for Madame Drouhin, so dignified with them this afternoon.

‘When did you find out?’ said Powerscourt, astonished that Madame Drouhin already knew.

‘It must have been about two months ago, maybe more.’

‘May I ask how you found out?’

‘It was silly, really, silly of Jean Pierre, I mean. He left a letter from his first wife in the back pocket of his trousers one day. He left his trousers on the floor as he usually did. The piece of paper virtually fell out when I picked them up. Normally you’d never find anything at all in Jean Pierre’s pockets. He was always very careful. Not surprising really with two different lives to lead. I took the letter to the schoolmaster and he told me what it said. All kinds of things about his life made sense to me then. Those regular trips to England for a start. There are a number of other merchants round here, you see, who have the same sort of business with other houses in London like the Colvilles. They only go to London two or three times in a whole year, these other merchants. My Jean Pierre was going ten or twelve times. Often I have suspected that he must have a woman over there. Only now do I realize that it wasn’t just a wife but a whole family as well.’

‘How did he take it? When you confronted him with the letter, I mean?’ Lady Lucy was feeling full of sympathy for a woman so badly wronged by a member of the opposite sex.

‘His first reaction was to laugh. I found that strange. Then he said that he had always thought he might get caught at some time on either side of the Channel. I think he found that element of danger exciting. He said he still loved me and our children. He wasn’t going to run away from his responsibilities.’

It was one thing, Powerscourt thought, to travel to France and tell somebody they were married to a bigamist. Then you had to tell them that their husband was dead. Not to tell Madame Drouhin would have been too cruel.

‘I fear there is more bad news, madame,’ he said.

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’re going to tell me he’s dead, aren’t you?’

‘I’m afraid I am.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve known he was dead for about three weeks now. I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Always before there were letters. Always. This time there were none. That bastard from up the road has got to him at last. I knew it, I knew it!’ Madame Drouhin paused for a moment while she contemplated the bastard from up the road.

‘My wife and I extend to you our most sincere condolences.’ said Powerscourt.

Madame Drouhin folded her hands over and over again in her lap. She looked at them both in turn, as if in supplication.

‘Can you tell me how he died?’

Powerscourt gave a heavily censored version of what had happened. The unfortunate event, he said, took place at a house in Norfolk. He did not say that there was a wedding in progress. He made no mention of wedding guests either. Jean Pierre had been shot, he told her. He decided to mention the dead man’s brother being found in the same room with a gun in his hand, and that the brother Cosmo was about to stand trial for murder in London any day now, and that he, Powerscourt, was trying to secure the release of Cosmo. Madame Drouhin only asked one question. The killing itself, the arrest of the brother did not seem to interest her very much.

‘What was he called? In England, I mean. My husband.’

‘He was called Colville, madame, Randolph Colville.’

That seemed to please her. ‘Colville.’ She rolled the strange English word round her tongue. ‘Randolph Colville. So he was one of the family. No wonder he always seemed to have so much money. He bought an enormous amount of land over here, you know. Vineyards, mostly.’

Powerscourt wondered if this was where the missing Colville money had gone, beautiful houses on the edge of the Burgundy hills, another wife to maintain, another life to lead, another family to feed and support.

‘Forgive me, madame, we have no wish to disturb you any more at this time. We shall make our departure in a moment. Just now you referred to somebody as that bastard down the road who has got him at last. Could I ask who that somebody is?’

Madame Drouhin got up and walked over to the windows. ‘This is difficult for me, very difficult,’ she began, still facing the square. ‘I’m sure you can understand that any man with two wives is going to have an eye for the ladies. That’s how he got into marital difficulties in the first place, being unable to resist the charms of another woman. Jean Pierre or Randolph in the English version was a relentless pursuer of women. I imagine he had been like that since he was about sixteen years old. Chase anything in a skirt, as my grandmother used to put it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he was committing adultery all the way from here to Dijon. It was just a kiss here, an embrace there and he was on his way. Sometimes I’m sure he would have liked to go further. Anyway, the point of this story is that in the street that runs into the bottom of the square here there lives a very pretty young wife of about twenty-five years. Yvette is her name, Yvette Planchon. It was she who told me this story.’