by Dick Francis
The new landlord’s new broom had resulted, however, in a much cleaner looking bar, and the landlord himself, appearing from the rear, wasn’t fat, sloppily dressed and beaming, but neat, thin and characterless. In the old days the pub had been full: I wondered how many of the regulars still came.
‘A Bell’s whisky, please,’ I said. I looked at his row of bottles. .’And a second Bell’s whisky from that bottle over there, and a tomato juice, please.’
He filled the order without conversation. We carried the glasses to a small table and I began on the unlikely task with a judicious trial of the first tot of Bell’s.
‘Well?’ Ridger asked, after fidgeting a full minute. ‘What have we got?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s Bell’s all right. Not like the Silver Moondance.’
Ridger had left his clipboard in the car, otherwise I was sure he would have crossed off mine host there and then.
I tried the second Bell’s. No luck there either.
As far as I could tell, neither bottle had been watered: both samples seemed full strength. I told Ridger so while he was making inroads into the tomato juice, which he genuinely seemed to enjoy.
I left both whiskies on the table and wandered to the bar.
‘You’re new here?’ I said.
‘Fairly.’ He seemed cautious, not friendly.
‘Settling in well with the locals?’ I asked.
‘Are you here to make trouble?’
‘No.’ I was surprised at the resentment he hadn’t bothered to hide. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry, then. It was you ordering two whiskies from different bottles and tasting them carefully, as you did. Someone round here made trouble with the Weights and Measures, saying I gave short measures and watered the spirits. Some of them round here don’t like me smartening the place up. But I ask you, trying to get me fined or lose my licence… too much.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Malicious.’
He turned away, still not sure of me, which was fair enough, considering. I collected Ridger who was wiping red stains from his mouth and we went outside leaving the unfinished whiskies on the table, which probably hardened the landlord’s suspicions into certainty, poor man.
Ridger ticked off the pub on the clipboard and read out the notes of our next destination, which proved to be a huge soulless place built of brick in the thirties and run for a brewery by a prim-looking tenant with a passion for fresh air. Even Ridger in his raincoat shivered before the thrown-open windows of the bar and muttered that the place looked dull. We were the first customers, it was true, but on a greyly chilly morning there were no electric lights to warm and welcome thirsty strangers.
‘Tomato juice, please,’ I said. ‘And a Bell’s whisky.’
The puritan landlord provided them, stating the price in a tight-lipped way.
‘And could we have the windows closed, please?’
The landlord looked at his watch, shrugged, and went round closing October out with ill grace. I wouldn’t sell much in my shop, I reflected, with that scowl: everyone sought to buy more than the product they asked for and it was the intangible extra that repelled or attracted a return. The whisky in that place might be fine, but I’d never go back out of choice.
‘Well?’ Ridger said, initialling the cost on our list. ‘What is it?’
‘Bell’s.’
Ridger nodded, drinking this time barely a mouthful from his glass. ‘Shall we go, then?’
‘Glad to.’
We left the landlord bitterly reopening his windows and Ridger consulted his clipboard in the car.
‘The next place is a hotel, the Peverill Arms, on the Reading to Henley road. Several complaints of thin or tasteless whisky. Complaints investigated, September 12th. Whisky found to be full strength in random samples.’
His voice told something more than the usual dry information: a reservation, almost an alarm.
‘You know the place?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been there. Disturbances.’ He fell silent with determination and started the car, driving with disapproval quivering in the stiffness of his neck. I thought from these signs that we might be on the way to a rowdy rendezvous with Hell’s Angels, but found to my amusement on arrival that Ridger’s devil was a woman.
A woman moreover of statuesque proportions, rising six feet tall with the voluptuous shape of Venus de Milo, who had forty-two inch hips.
‘Mrs Alexis,’ Ridger muttered. ‘She may not remember me.’
Mrs Alexis indeed gave our arrival scarcely a glance. Mrs Alexis was supervising the lighting of logs in the vast fireplace in the entrance lounge, an enterprise presently producing acrid smoke in plenty but few actual flames.
Apart from the heavyside layer floating in a haze below the ceiling the hall gave a lift to the entering spirit: clusters of chintz-covered armchairs, warm colours, gleaming copper jugs, an indefinable aura of success. Across the far end an extensive bar stood open but untended, and from the fireplace protruded the trousered behind of the luckless firelighter, to the interest and entertainment of scattered armchaired guests.
‘For God’s sake, Wilfred, fetch the bloody bellows,’ Mrs Alexis said distinctly. ‘You look idiotic with your arse in the air puffing like a beetroot.’
She was well over fifty, I judged, with the crisp assurance of a natural commander. Handsome, expensively dressed, gustily uninhibited. I found myself smiling in the same instant that the corners of Ridger’s mouth turned down.
The unfortunate Wilfred removed his beetroot-red face from the task and went off obediently, and Mrs Alexis with bright eyes asked what we wanted.
‘Drinks,’ I said vaguely.
‘Come along then.’ She led the way, going towards the bar. ‘It’s our first fire this winter. Always smokes like hell until we get it going.’ She frowned upwards at the drifting cloud. ‘Worse than usual, this year.’
‘The chimney needs sweeping,’ Ridger said.
Mrs Alexis gave him a birdlike look from an eye as sharp and yellow as a hawk’s. ‘It’s swept every year in the spring. And aren’t you that policeman who told me if I served the local rugger team when they’d won I should expect them to swing from the chandeliers and put beer into my piano?’
Ridger cleared his throat. I swallowed a laugh with difficulty and received the full beam from the hawk eyes.
‘Are you a policeman too?’ she asked with good humour. ‘Come to cadge for your bloody ball?’
‘No,’ I said. I could feel the smothered laugh escaping through my eyes. ‘We came for a drink.’
She believed the simple answer as much as a declaration of innocence from a red-handed thief, but went around behind her bar and waited expectantly.
‘A Bell’s whisky and a tomato juice, please.’
She pushed a glass against the Bell’s optic and waited for the full measure to descend. ‘Anything else?’
I said no thank you and she steered the whisky my way and the tomato juice towards Ridger, accepting my money and giving change. We removed ourselves to a pair of armchairs near a small table, where Ridger again initialled our itemised account.
‘What happened with the rugger club?’ I asked interestedly.
His face showed profound disapproval. ‘She knew there’d be trouble. They’re a rowdy lot. They pulled the chandeliers clean out of the ceiling with a lot of plaster besides and she had them lined up against the wall at gunpoint by the time we got here.’
‘Gunpoint?’ I said, astonished.
‘It wasn’t loaded, but the rugger club weren’t taking chances. They knew her reputation against pheasants.’
‘A shotgun?’
‘That’s right. She keeps it there behind the bar. We can’t stop her, though I’d like to, personally, but she’s got a licence for it. She keeps it there to repel villains, she says, though there isn’t a local villain who’d face her.’
‘Did she send to you for help with the rugger club?’
‘Not her. Some of the ot
her customers. She wasn’t much pleased when we turned up. She said there wasn’t a man born she couldn’t deal with.’ Ridger looked as if he believed it. ‘She wouldn’t bring charges for all the damage, but I heard they paid up pretty meekly.’
It would be a brave man, I reflected, who told Mrs Alexis that her Bell’s whisky was Rannoch: but in fact it wasn’t. Bell’s it was: unadulterated.
‘Pity,’ Ridger said, at the news.
I said thoughtfully, ‘She has some Laphroaig up there on the top shelf.’
‘Has she?’ Ridger’s hopes were raised. ‘Are you going to try it?’
I nodded and returned to the bar, but Mrs Alexis had departed again towards the fireplace where Wilfred with the bellows was merely adding to the smog.
‘The chimney seems to be blocked,’ he said anxiously, exonerating himself.
‘Blocked?’ Mrs Alexis demanded. ‘How could it be?’ She thought for barely two seconds. ‘Unless some bloody bird has built a nest in it, same as three years ago.’
‘We’d better wait until it’s swept again,’ Wilfred suggested.
‘Wait? Certainly not.’ She strode towards the bar. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said, seeing me waiting there. ‘Bird’s nest. Birds building their bloody nests in my chimney. They did it once before. I’ll shift the little buggers. Give them the shock of their lives.’
I didn’t bother to point out that nests in October were bound to be uninhabited. She was certain to know. She was also smiling with reckless mischief and reappeared from behind the bar carrying the fabled shotgun and feeding a cartridge into the breach. My own feelings at the sight seemed to be shared by most of the people present as she walked towards the fireplace, but no one thought of stopping her.
Ridger’s mouth opened in disbelief.
Mrs Alexis thrust the whole gun up inside the vast chimney and at arm’s length unceremoniously pulled the trigger. There was a muffled bang inside the brickwork and a clatter as she dropped the gun on the recoil onto the logs. The eyes of everyone else in the place were popping out but Mrs Alexis calmly picked up her fallen property and returned to the bar.
‘Another Bell’s?’ she asked, stowing the shotgun lengthways under the counter. ‘Another tomato juice?’
‘Er…’ I said.
She was laughing. ‘Fastest way to clear a chimney. Didn’t you know?’
‘No.’
‘It’s an old gun… the barrel’s not straight. I wouldn’t treat a good gun like that.’ She looked towards the fireplace. ‘The damn smoke’s clearing, anyway.’
It appeared that she was right. Wilfred, again on his knees with the bellows, was producing smoke which rose upwards, not out into the room. The eyes of the onlookers retreated to their accustomed sockets and the mouths slowly closed: even Ridger’s.
‘Laphroaig,’ I said. ‘Please. And could I look at your wine list?’
‘Anything you like.’ She stretched for the Laphroaig bottle and poured a fair measure. ‘You and the policeman… what are you in here for?’ The bright eyes searched my face. ‘That policeman wouldn’t come here just for a drink. Not him. Not tomato juice. Not early.’
I paid for the Laphroaig and took the wine list that she held out. ‘We’re looking for some scotch that turned up in a Bell’s bottle at the Silver Moondance,’ I said. ‘More of the same, that is.’
The sharp gaze intensified. ‘You won’t find any here.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so.’
‘Is this because of those complaints last month?’
‘We’re here because of them, yes.’
‘You’ve shown me no authority.’ No antagonism, I thought: therefore no guilt.
‘I haven’t any. I’m a wine merchant.’
‘A wine…?’ She considered it. ‘What’s your name?’
I told her, also the name of my shop.
‘Never heard of you,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Would you know this scotch if you tasted it?’
‘That’s the general idea. Yes.’
‘Then good luck to you.’ She gave me an amused and shining glance and turned away to another customer, and I carried my glass across to Ridger expecting the Laphroaig to be Laphroaig and nothing else.
‘She’s disgraceful,’ Ridger said. ‘I should arrest her.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Discharging a firearm in a public place.’
‘The inside of a chimney is hardly a public place.’
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ he said severely.
‘The smoke’s clearing,’ I said. ‘The shot worked.’
‘I would have thought you’d had enough shooting for one lifetime.’
‘Well, yes.’
I drank the Laphroaig: smoky, peaty, oak-aged historic Laphroaig, the genuine thing.
Ridger bit on his disappointment, complained about the price and fidgeted unhelpfully while I read the wine list, which was handwritten and extensive. All the familiar Silver Moondance names were there along with dozens of others, but when I pointed this out to him he said stiffly that his brief was for whisky only.
I took the wine list thoughtfully back to the bar and asked Mrs Alexis for a bottle of St Estèphe.
She smiled. ‘By all means. Do you want it decanted?’
‘Not yet.’ I went through the rest of the list with her, picking out St Emilion, Mâcon, Valpolicella, Volnay and Nuits St Georges.
‘Sure,’ she said easily. ‘Do you want all of them?’
‘Yes, please.’
She disappeared briefly and came back with a partitioned basket containing the six asked for wines. I picked each bottle up in turn to read the labels: all the right names but none from the right year.
‘We’ve sold all we had of 1979,’ she explained patiently when I pointed it out. ‘We constantly update the wine list, which is why we don’t have it printed. We’re writing another at the moment. These present wines are better. Do you want them, then, or not?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not.’
She put the basket of bottles without comment on the floor near her feet and smiled at me blandly.
‘Do you know the Silver Moondance?’ I asked.
‘Heard of it. Who hasn’t, round here? Never been there. Not my style. I’m told it’s a tube job, anyway.’
‘A tube…?’
‘Down the tubes,’ she said patiently. ‘The bank’s foreclosing on the mortgage. As of this morning the staff have been sacked. I had one of the chefs telephoning to ask for a job.’ She spoke with amusement as if the closure were comic, but she’d worn the same expression all the time we’d been there, her cheek muscles seeming to be permanently set in tolerant mockery.
‘At the Silver Moondance,’ I said mildly, ‘they were selling one single wine under six different labels.’
Her expression didn’t change but she glanced down at her feet.
‘Yes, those,’ I said. ‘Or rather, not those.’
‘Are you insulting me?’
‘No, just telling you.’
The brilliant eyes watched me steadily. ‘And you’re looking for that wine as well as the scotch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry I can’t help you.’
‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Well… I don’t think its too utterly safe to know much about that wine. The head waiter of the Silver Moondance undoubtedly knew what he was selling… and he’s dead.’
Nothing altered in her face. ‘I’m in no danger,’ she said. ‘I can promise you that. Do you want anything else?’
I shook my head. ‘We’ll be on our way.’
Her gaze slid past me to rest on Ridger and still without any change of expression she said, ‘Give me a man who’ll swing from a chandelier. Give me a goddamn man.’ Her glance came back to my face, the mockery bold and strong. ‘The world’s a bloody bore.’
Her abundant hair was a dark reddish brown gleaming with good health and hair dye, and her nail
s were hard and long like talons. A woman of vibrating appetite who reminded me forcibly of all the species where the female crunched her husband for breakfast.
Wilfred (currently on the menu?) was still on his knees to the fire god when Ridger and I eventually made our way to the door. As Ridger went out ahead of me there was a sort of soft thudding flump from the direction of the chimney and a cloud of dislodged shot-up soot descended in a sticky billowing mass onto logs, flames and man beneath.
Transfixed, the armchair audience watched Wilfred rise balefully to his feet like a fuzzily inefficient demon king, scattering black rain and blinking great eyes slowly like a surprised owl on a dark night.
‘I’ll sue that bloody sweep,’ Mrs Alexis said.
SIXTEEN
We went to four more pubs on that first day and I grew tired of the perpetual taste of neat Bell’s whisky. Ridger methodically annotated his clipboard and showed not the slightest disappointment as glass after glass proved genuine. The pub crawl was a job to him like any other, it seemed, and he would phlegmatically continue until instructed otherwise.
He was a man without rebellion, I thought, never questioning an order nor the order of things; living at the opposite end of the spectrum from that mean kicker-over-of-traces, Kenneth Charter’s son. Somewhere between the two lay the rest of us, grousing, lobbying, enduring and philosophical, making what best we could of our imperfect evolution.
Towards the end I asked him if they’d found any trace of the Bedford van used in the robbery at my shop, and perhaps because by that time he had provisionally accepted me as a full colleague he answered without his usual reservations.
‘No, we haven’t found it,’ he said. ‘And we don’t expect to.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘It belonged to a firm called Quality House Provisions who hadn’t noticed it was missing until one of our PCs went there early Monday asking about it. Dozy lot. They’d got several vans, they said. It’s now on the stolen-vehicle list marked urgent because of its tie-in with Zarac’s murder, but a hot van like that’s sure to be dumped somewhere already, probably in a scrap yard miles away with the number plates off. No one will find it except by luck, I shouldn’t think.’