Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

  A few miles to the south was the Marsham Arms in Hevingham on the Norwich road, an ancient establishment even older than the Black Boys in Aylsham. It was the lady of the house who received him.

  ‘The day you’re asking about, sir, that’ll be the day of the big wedding up at Brympton, the one with the murder, would it?’

  Powerscourt assured her that it was. She bent down and pulled out a large visitors’ book from a drawer underneath the table. ‘Frederick and I always make sure we get the visitors to sign in. You can’t be sure, of course, if they’re signing with their real names or not. In the summer holidays you’d be surprised at how many strange people we get. A great number of people called Jones come for the weekend in the summer. It must be something in the air. Never mind. Fourth, fifth, sixth, here we are. We were nearly full that night, sir. Would you like to take a look for yourself?’ She spun the book round and Powerscourt read a series of innocuous English names.

  ‘No Frenchmen?’ he asked. ‘No foreigners?’

  ‘No, sir, not that we don’t often have some foreigners here. Very welcome we make them too, if I might say so.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully and went on his way.

  North-east of Brympton Hall was the Manor House in North Walsham, a fine red-brick building that looked as if it been there for a couple of centuries. The proprietor introduced himself as Archibald Wilkins, a man of average height with pale brown hair and a broken nose and so thin it was painful to behold. He too pulled out a battered visitors’ book. ‘I remember that day well,’ he said, ‘we were short-staffed and I had to wait at table myself. I’d nearly forgotten how to do it. Here we are,’ he swung the book round so Powerscourt could see it clearly, ‘a pair of Robertses, four Donaldsons, a brace of Chadwicks and three Jardines, one about three years old. Any of them of interest to you, sir?’ The man sounded hopeful that one of his customers might be in hot water of one sort or another.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Wilkins. You didn’t have any foreigners here that night, did you? Frenchman? Italian? That sort of person?’

  ‘I never did hold with them foreigners wandering about the place and staying in our hotels,’ said Mr Wilkins, ‘don’t give them house room here, if you follow me. We usually send them over to the Saracen’s Head over Erpingham way. They’ll take anything over there. Come to think of it, them Saracens were bloody foreigners too, weren’t they? They’d be well suited, over there.’

  Powerscourt wished that Archibald Wilkins could be transferred to London and a position on the jury at the trial of Cosmo Colville. Such xenophobia could come in very useful. He had a list of nine hotels in the area in his pocket. He wondered if he would draw blank in all of them.

  His next port of call was at the Bell at Cawston a few miles to the west of Aylsham on the Dereham Road. The landlord here was a great bear of a man in his mid-thirties with a mop of black hair and a black beard called Jack Gill. He offered Powerscourt a cup of tea in the empty saloon bar while he went to fetch his books from another part of the building.

  ‘Fifth,’ the black beard muttered to himself. ‘We only had three guests that evening and they were all brothers having some sort of birthday reunion. Phelps, their name was, James, Jolyon and John Phelps, as if their parents could only cope with one letter of the alphabet.’

  ‘You didn’t have any foreigners that night, Frenchmen, Italians, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Gill, staring suddenly at his visitors’ book. ‘Hilda!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Hilda! Where the devil are you?’ His voice echoed round the ground floor of the hotel.

  Jack Gill took four strides over to the door that opened on to his garden. He was just about to shout once more when a pretty blonde woman, almost covered from head to toe in the biggest apron Powerscourt had ever seen, entered the saloon bar from the opposite side.

  ‘You didn’t have to shout, Jack,’ she said sweetly, ‘you know this is the day I do the baking in the afternoon.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Gill. ‘This gentleman is asking who we had here round about the time of the wedding and the murder up at the Hall.’ Powerscourt hadn’t mentioned it in a single establishment – all the hotel people had just assumed that was why he was here.

  ‘Was that the time we had Philippe the Fair here?’ Gill went on. ‘His reservation was in the name of Legros, Pierre Legros, but I think it was false. He pretended not to understand when we mentioned the visitors’ book and signing in, but I think he knew perfectly well what was wanted. He never did sign it. That’s why I’m not sure exactly when he was here. Can you remember, my dear?’

  Hilda scratched vigorously at her blonde hair. Flakes of flour floated to the ground. ‘Do you know, Jack, I think it was then. He was here the same day the man from Norwich came about the drains. That was the day before the wedding, I’m fairly sure of it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Gill, ‘he came just after the drain man left and we were wondering if we could ever afford his bill.’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Would I be right in assuming he was French?’

  ‘He was French, with just a little English. There was something about him made me think he was a military man or had been a military man in his time. That erect bearing, beautifully polished shoes he had, I remember, as if he was going on parade.’

  ‘Age?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Thirty, thirty-five?’ said Jack Gill.

  ‘And what did he do when he was here?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Gill. ‘We hardly saw anything of him at all. He paid for his accommodation the minute he arrived. Then he went up to his room and we never saw him again, did we, Hilda, until you spotted him leaving in the morning.’

  Powerscourt looked at the hotel-keeper’s wife. ‘He’d ordered a cab to take him away, sir, so he had. And he was all dressed up with the rest of his things in that little bag he was carrying so he wasn’t going to come back here.’

  ‘How was he all dressed up, Mrs Gill?’

  ‘Well, sir, he looked as if he was going to a wedding. That Jim Cox who drove him was in here that night having a couple of pints of beer and he said he’d taken him over to Brympton Hall.’

  ‘The cabbie didn’t pick him up again after the ceremony?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘No, sir, he just left him there in the morning.’

  ‘Could you describe him for me?’

  ‘About five foot ten,’ said Jack Gill.

  ‘Very dark hair, almost black,’ said Hilda Gill. ‘We only called him Philippe the Fair because I thought I remembered some French king with that name.’

  ‘Slim, he was,’ Jack carried on.

  ‘Clean-shaven,’ said Hilda. ‘Dark eyes. He looked like a man on a mission of some kind.’

  And that, despite all his prompting, was the sum total of what Powerscourt could get out of them. He explained that they might have to come to court to give evidence about the arrival of Philippe the Fair.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to see the Old Bailey,’ Jack Gill said. ‘But sure to God I never thought I’d have to go and appear there.’

  Powerscourt found Georgina Nash sitting in her garden in the last of the sunshine. A couple of workmen were encamped round the fountain. Another seemed to have disappeared inside it head first.

  ‘Good afternoon, Lord Powerscourt, how nice to see you again.’

  ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.’

  ‘Let’s go inside and have some tea,’ said Georgina Nash, rising from her bench and taking a last wistful look at the fountain. ‘I’m sure you’ll remember that fountain wasn’t working at the time of the wedding. They haven’t fixed it yet. Willoughby says I’m getting obsessed about it.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be working again soon. They can be tricky things, fountains.’

  ‘Have you been making any progress, Lord Powerscourt? I gather that poor man is still locked up in Penton
ville and not speaking a word. Do you have any news?’

  ‘I have to say, Mrs Nash, that I have very little progress to report. I’m not doing well at this point. I do have one or two matters I would like to ask you about, but perhaps you could tell me first of all if anything new has come to light here about the events on the day of the wedding.’

  ‘Well, we’ve had all sorts of people who were there on the day come to offer condolences, that sort of thing. I’m afraid we haven’t had any strange-looking person turning up and announcing that he was the murderer.’

  ‘I don’t know if you remember, Mrs Nash, but you told me at the time that a wedding would be a very good place to commit a murder. If there were any strangers about, you said, the Nashes would think they were Colvilles and the Colvilles would think they were Nashes.’

  ‘Did I really say that, Lord Powerscourt? That’s rather clever, don’t you think? I shall have to tell Willoughby. He believes I haven’t got any brains at all.’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Nash,’ said Powerscourt with a smile, ‘that we have evidence there was a Frenchman here that day. He stayed the night before at the Bell over at Cawston where the landlord and his wife remember him. In the morning he took a cab all dressed up in his wedding clothes and came here, to the Hall.’

  ‘What did he look like, Lord Powerscourt?’ said Georgina Nash, looking alarmed at the thought of unknown Frenchmen wandering about her property. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘We don’t have a name. He booked in at the hotel calling himself Legros but he didn’t sign the visitors’ book so I suspect it was a false name. Five feet ten, dark hair, almost black, dark eyes, some hint of a military look about him, the Bell at Cawston people thought. Can you remember such a man, Mrs Nash?’

  Georgina Nash stared closely at Powerscourt. ‘Dark hair, five foot ten, military look about him, I might have seen him but I can’t be sure. There were plenty of military people about on the day. You see, even if I had come across him, I think I’d have thought he was a guest of the Colvilles – they’ve got wine interests all over Europe, so it’s only natural they should invite a Frenchman or two. Sorry, Lord Powerscourt, that’s not very helpful of me.’

  ‘Could I just ask you to think very carefully, Mrs Nash, see if you can remember seeing such a man at the far end of your Great Hall where the murder happened?’

  If Charles Augustus Pugh used such a technique, Powerscourt said to himself, he would most probably receive a fearful wigging from the judge for leading the witness.

  ‘It’s no good, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Georgina Nash after a moment or two, ‘I can’t do it, I just can’t.’

  ‘Perhaps these might help you along,’ said Powerscourt, producing the two seating plans he had obtained from Inspector Cooper and placing them on the low table.

  ‘How fascinating,’ said Georgina Nash, staring carefully at the Long Gallery seating plan and the garden plan, so carefully filled in, with names in bubbles by the matchstick wedding guests, the whole resembling the identifying key to the people in enormous paintings like Derby Day by artists like Frith, where a reproduction of the painting was made, with blank white spaces where the heads of the MPs or the spectators at Derby Day had been. Inside each head was a number and the numbers matched the names of the people in the main painting in a great panel on the side.

  Georgina Nash shook her head slowly. ‘It’s no good,’ she said finally, ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Never mind, Mrs Nash, it’s of no consequence. Could I ask a favour, a double favour of you? Do you have addresses of all these people in these seating plans? I’m sure you must have had them when you sent out the invitations but you may have thrown them away.’

  ‘No,’ said Georgina Nash, ‘I have them still. I shall fetch them directly. What was the other half of your favour, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘I thought you would have them,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The second favour is to ask if I could shoot upstairs and take another look at the Long Gallery while you are fetching the addresses?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mrs Nash. ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t come with you. Neither Willoughby nor I have set foot in those rooms since the wedding.’

  Powerscourt went out to the great staircase where the guests had gathered on that terrible day. He retraced the steps most of them would have taken, into the upper Anteroom with its French hunting tapestries and on into the Long Gallery itself. He headed straight for the far end, looking out over the lake. He checked the door on the right-hand side that opened on to the staircase leading to the garden where the guests had been taking their champagne. Up these, he said to himself, into the Peter the Great room, meet Randolph Colville in the state bedroom, pull out your pistol and shoot him dead. Make your escape back the way you had come. Or take the staircase in the corner of the state bedroom down and out into the west front and the gardens on the opposite side to the wedding party. From here you could vanish, or you could make your way round to the garden party and mingle with them until the time came to climb the stairs. Those two staircases, Powerscourt was sure, in some combination or other, must have provided the way in and the way out for the murderer. There were yet more staircases in the body of the house but he wasn’t sure how many people would have known about them.

  He strode rapidly from one staircase to the other. He stared at the gardens for a long time, his mind far away. He was returned to life by a great shout from Mrs Nash in her drawing room a floor below. ‘Lord Powerscourt! Lord Powerscourt! Please come!’

  She was standing by the window, mesmerized. Georgina Nash pressed a thick envelope into his hand. ‘That has all the addresses you need,’ she said, ‘but look, Lord Powerscourt, look!’ A hundred yards or so away, in the centre of the garden, the workmen had moved away from the fountain. A slow stream of water was climbing into the afternoon air. He felt her fingers tighten their grip on his arm.

  ‘Watch,’ she said. Even as she spoke, the mechanical devices operating the fountain sprang into full working order. The water shot twenty, then thirty, then forty feet into the air. The workmen cheered and waved their caps in the air. Georgina Nash shouted for joy. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at Powerscourt and said, ‘My fountain! At last! After so long! At last!’

  Johnny Fitzgerald came to breakfast in Markham Square the next morning. This was a most unusual event. Powerscourt could only remember Johnny coming for the eggs and bacon once, or possibly twice, in all the years they had lived in London. Only great events or great peril could bring Fitzgerald out at this hour. He was sitting on Lady Lucy’s left hand, opposite the twins who were making valiant efforts to sit still.

  ‘If you eat your breakfast properly,’ he said, staring at them in mock severity, ‘I might, just might, begin a little story for the pair of you after breakfast. Only the beginning of a story,’ he emphasized as the twins began to consume toast at Olympic speed, ‘you might get the next bit at bedtime.’

  ‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how nice to see you at this early hour. It has special meaning because it is so unusual. You don’t normally come for breakfast. You don’t normally come for morning coffee. You don’t normally come for lunch. Only very rarely do you come for tea and then it is unusually late, as if it might not be time for a glass of something. So tell us, my friend, is the world about to end? Have you cracked this case? Have you fallen in love?’

  Johnny Fitzgerald laughed. ‘I’m afraid I have to say no to all of those. I think my news had better wait till I have said a few words of story to our young friends across the table.’ Christopher and Juliet were sitting upright in their chairs now, their arms folded across their chests, looking demurely in front of them, as if preparing to take part in an advertisement for perfectly behaved children. In front of them two large beaches of crumbs surrounded the plates where they had eaten their toast. Johnny Fitzgerald picked them up, one on each arm, and carried the twins out of the room. Lady Lucy smiled at her husband as the beginning of the story drifted down
the stairs.

  ‘This is the story of Drago the young dragon who got lost and separated from his parent dragons on a long journey across the sea.’ Johnny breathed heavily and made hissing noises at this point. The twins squealed happily. ‘Drago is tired now. His limbs ache from hours and hours of flying. In front of him he can see a great city where humans live and a river going through it. Drawing on the last of his strength and taking care not to blow any sheets of flame in front of him, Drago flies up the river and finally falls asleep on the riverbank. He does not know it, but Drago the young dragon has reached a place called Chelsea.’ At that point Johnny emitted a huge hiss and fled the room, leaving the twins to the care of their nurse.

  ‘Francis, Lucy.’ Johnny helped himself to some more toast on his return. ‘I have been doing a lot of drinking with the young men of Colvilles and some dockers and some chap who works in one of those big hotels behind Piccadilly, Whites, I think it’s called. He’s very keen on money, Francis, so I’m afraid I’ve had to humour him to get what I wanted. The news came almost by accident. He was telling me, this chap, about these big dinners they have once a month or so, pre-phylloxera dinners they’re called, where all the wines served were made before the wine pest destroyed the French vineyards. Because they’re so rare, these wines, they command high prices and these rich people, City types most of them, plenty of Old Etonians about, pay even higher prices to drink them.’

  ‘Where do they come from, these wines?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Pretty rare I’d have thought.’

  ‘Good question, Francis, very good question. They’re supposed to come from the cellars of abbeys or monasteries, or private houses where the master of the house or his butler was accustomed to laying down large quantities in the cellar during the good years. Nobody’s touched them in the plague years. At this point, Francis, a pound changed hands. Then another. You’ll not believe what I’m about to tell you, said my informant who called himself Fred, though I doubt if that is his real name.’