David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

Richard Napier sipped appreciatively at his wine.

‘I think you’d have to say, sir, that they have built up a considerable first innings lead. Not that we can’t come back, mind you.’

‘You arrive, Johnny,’ Pugh looked across at Johnny who was now draped across a small sofa, ‘like that messenger chappie who came from Marshal Blucher to tell Wellington that the Prussians were coming to help him at Waterloo. What news of Powerscourt?’

‘He should be here tomorrow,’ Johnny said, digging about in his inside pocket for Powerscourt’s pieces of paper. ‘He gave me this, for me to give to you with the main points he’s discovered over there.’

‘And what are the chief points?’ said Pugh, beginning to peruse the document.

‘It’s quite dramatic, really. We’ve found a man who swore he would kill Randolph Colville. He must be the fellow who checked into that hotel in Norfolk and set off for the wedding the next morning.’ Johnny took another pull at his Aloxe Corton. ‘And Randolph was a bigamist. He had another wife and another family tucked up in a pretty house near Beaune.’

‘A bigamist, did you say? A second wife? Like he was a Musselman or one of those Mormons from Utah? God bless my soul! I never heard of such a thing in all my years at the Bar. Pretty, was she, Number Two, I mean?’

‘I never saw her. I don’t think I heard Francis describe her one way or the other. Younger than Number One he said.’

‘Look here, Johnny, we need to think of the practicalities of the court,’ said Pugh, scratching his head and passing the first page over to his junior. ‘I don’t think Francis’s note is going to be admissible in evidence. You don’t suppose he has packed the two ladies into a railway carriage to confront the judge and Sir Jasper on Monday morning? No? Even then it would be the devil’s own job to have their evidence accepted.’

‘I was just coming to that,’ said Johnny, staring hard at his glass, ‘Francis was hoping to get signed statements out of both of them, witnessed by some local lawyer and looking as official as possible. That’s why he’s coming back a bit later than me.’

‘That’s something,’ said Pugh. ‘You say Francis is coming back tomorrow? If not then, Sunday?’ He scribbled something on a piece of paper. ‘I’ve just got one of these telephone machines. Perhaps he could ring me as soon as he gets back and we can arrange to meet. I’m going to have to rethink my entire plan of campaign. It’s as if some kind person at the War Office has sent you another fifteen thousand troops the day before a battle, but you’ve no idea how reliable they’re going to be. Now then, young man,’ he turned to his junior, ‘I’m afraid we’re working late, you and I. Can you see if you can find some precedents for the late admission of evidence and the various procedures that have to be gone through? If Sir Jasper decides to cut up rough we may not be able to use any of this. God knows what the judge will make of it. He’s not an adventurous man, Mr Justice Black. If we can find a precedent it’ll be easier for him.’

‘Does it matter how long ago it was, sir?’ Richard Napier was collecting his notebook for a long vigil in the Gray’s Inn Library.

‘Well, don’t go as far back as the trial of bloody Socrates,’ said Pugh, recalling his junior’s suggestion that afternoon. ‘Anything modern should do.’

As Johnny Fitzgerald took his leave of the lawyers he glanced at the bottle. In the middle of the label it said ‘Corton – Charlemagne, Grand Cru.’ And above that in a slightly larger typeface was the legend, ‘Hospices de Beaune’.

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy didn’t reach London on Saturday. They still hadn’t reached London by six o’clock on Sunday evening. By that stage Charles Augustus Pugh had rung the telephone exchange three times to check that his line was working. He had called on the Powerscourts’ house in Markham Square at four o’clock in the afternoon only to be told that the master and mistress had not returned. At last, a few minutes before seven, Pugh’s telephone rang. It was Powerscourt. He, Pugh, would set out for Chelsea immediately.

‘My God, Powerscourt, you look as though you’ve been in the wars,’ said Pugh, inspecting his friend at the top of the staircase to the drawing room.

‘I’m fine now,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘last rites not needed for a while yet.’

‘Well,’ said Pugh, ‘you must tell me the whole story when we’ve got more time.’

‘I’ll buy you lunch. How’s that? Now then, these are the French documents, my friend,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Lucy translated them while we were waiting for the train in Paris. The local lawyer thought it would help if he got the Mayor’s signature as well. They look as though you could get married or buried with them they’ve got so many stamps on the page.’

Pugh read them very fast. ‘I’ll get them typed up first thing in the morning. That junior of mine is rather an expert with the typewriters though he doesn’t advertise the fact in case he’s turned into a glorified clerk. It’s amazing what you can do with a philosophy degree these days. But I think we need something more. We need a signature from some responsible person here to say the translation’s accurate and can be relied on.’

‘Lucy’s word not good enough?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Lady Lucy’s word is good enough for anything,’ said Pugh loyally, ‘we just need something the prosecution can’t argue with.’

‘French Ambassador?’ suggested Powerscourt. ‘I’ve met the fellow a couple of times.’

‘He’s foreign,’ Pugh put in. ‘Juries don’t like foreign.’

‘How about Rosebery?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘He’s a former Prime Minister, after all.’

‘How’s his French?’ said Pugh.

‘Don’t think it matters much about his French, actually,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘It’s very good but the prosecution won’t want to cross-examine a man of his eminence, former Foreign Secretary and all that. Would you like me to drop him a note?’

‘Please do,’ said Pugh. ‘Now then, I want to hear what you think. It seems to me that all this stuff about bigamy isn’t going to wash in court. As far as we know, the Colvilles on this side of the Channel don’t know about the extra wife down there among the vineyards. Johnny Fitzgerald told me he didn’t find a hint of bigamy when he poured drinks down the Colville servants in St John’s Wood and Pangbourne, fishing for gossip about the family row. I don’t think I can just put one of the Colville women in the witness box and start asking them about bigamy. The judge wouldn’t allow the question. So I think we have to go with the sergeant. That is, if we are even allowed the sergeant.’

‘What do you mean, Pugh, no sergeant?’ asked Powerscourt. Was it for this that he had gone to France to be chased round a hospital floating in wine, tied on to a terrifying pressoir and locked up in a French lunatic asylum?

‘Well,’ said Pugh, leaving his chair and draping himself over the Powerscourt mantelpiece, ‘I’ve never been in a murder trial with evidence this late before. I’m not absolutely sure about the procedure. I should have brought young Napier with me. He’s very hot on procedure, probably reads it up in bed last thing at night in his best pyjamas after a blast of Aristotle. Never mind. This is what I think happens. I have to inform the judge and the prosecution team that the defence have fresh evidence they would like to submit, even at this late hour. Grovel grovel grovel. I would be most grateful for your considered opinions as you can fit into five minutes. Then the judge can do one of two things. He can clear the court, tell everybody including the jury to come back in an hour or something like that. We carry on the argument from our normal positions. Or, if he feels he wants his home comforts, bigger pencils, softer chairs in the case of Mr Justice Black, he takes Sir Jasper’s team and my team back to his rooms to discuss the matter.’