Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

  ‘This interest does have to do with the earlier murder, Charlie,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you’re quite right. Can I tell you the reason in confidence?’

  Charlie Healey nodded. He was an avid reader of mystery and detective stories in his leisure time, and was particularly devoted to The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

  ‘My role in this case,’ Powerscourt was checking the space behind the pillow in William Stebbings’ bed in case it contained buried treasure, ‘is to secure the acquittal of Cosmo Colville, the man you apprehended in the state bedroom with a gun in his hand. Now – forgive me this horrible thought, but I can assure you it is the same thought that has led Inspector Cooper and his men here on their search mission in the grounds – if young William has been murdered, one assumption must be that it is because of what he saw at the time of the murder. Maybe he didn’t realize how important it was since most of the people were strangers to him. Murderers often kill a second time because somebody has seen them committing the first murder or has some piece of information which links them to the killing. Are you with me so far, Charlie?’

  ‘Clear as a bell, my lord.’

  ‘Now then, this is the crucial point. If this is murder, and it is linked to the earlier one at the wedding, there is one person who couldn’t possibly have done it.’

  ‘Cosmo Colville,’ said Charlie with an air of triumph.

  ‘And,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if Cosmo didn’t commit the second one, he’s unlikely to have committed the first one either.’

  ‘I can see why everybody has rushed up here,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Could I ask you a favour, Charlie? Again it must be in the strictest confidence.’

  Charlie nodded once more. Really, he said to himself, I’m quite enjoying this. It’s as good as a detective story.

  ‘Let’s suppose,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that in one of the families involved in this case, there has been a tremendous row. Doors slamming, people stomping out of houses, real physical violence not far away. I can ask all of the people involved what the row was about and they will all tell me the row was private. Family matter. None of your business – you can imagine the sort of thing.’

  Charlie Healey was trying to work out which family Powerscourt was referring to. He thought it must be a Colville but which particular Colville family he did not know. Maybe the row had engulfed them all.

  ‘There are other people in the house who must know what the row was about, the servants. But they’re not going to betray their employers. They’d lose their job if it became known. Is there a way round it, Charlie?’

  Charlie stared out of the little window at the gathering gloom engulfing the garden. ‘That’s very tricky, sir, trying to talk to the servants. It’d be hard for you to get into the house without somebody telling the Master or the Mistress you were there and then they’d throw you out. Offering money has the same disadvantages. The only way you might do it, my lord, is to catch them away from the house altogether in a pub or a cafe, for example, if they have a regular place they go to. Most people in service like going to the pub every now and then. It gets them out of the house. I’m sorry, sir, if that’s not very helpful.’

  Powerscourt smiled. ‘It’s very helpful, Charlie. I have a friend, you see, who works with me on all my cases. He’s an expert in persuading people to talk, usually in the King’s Head or the Coach and Horses after he has poured giant’s helpings of beer or whisky down them. I hadn’t thought of him until now.’

  They made their way downstairs to the drawing room once more. Inspector Cooper was telling Mrs Nash that he hoped to return in the morning. He assured them that word would be sent to all the surrounding towns and villages about William Stebbings. Willoughby Nash, the strain showing in the lines on his face, said that his party would also carry on in the morning where they had left off that evening. The invisible figure of a sixteen-year-old boy, always polite, keen to learn about his position, fascinated by great sailing ships, hovered, about the room. Powerscourt wondered if the old adage was true, that the longer it took to find a missing person, the more likely it was that they were dead.

  He had only one suggestion for Inspector Cooper the following morning before he set out for London: to contact William’s school, and more specifically, his friends in his last year or two. Might he have gone off on some adventure with one of his old school friends? It was, he told the Inspector and Mrs Nash, a long shot, but it was the best he could do. He left Pugh’s address as well as his own with Georgina Nash. Could she please send on any news to both of them once it came? Shaking hands with Inspector Cooper at the front door, Powerscourt thought the young man’s eyes were full of foreboding. Maybe he thought William Stebbings was dead.

  At two o’clock the following afternoon Powerscourt presented himself at the reception desk of Whites Hotel, one of London’s most discreet establishments, nestling in the streets between St James’s Square and Piccadilly. Other establishments in the capital trumpeted their services across the sides of the buses or in the pages of the newspapers and the magazines that the rich and fashionable read. Whites, if asked, would have regarded that as rather vulgar. Whites was where Lady Lucy’s mother stayed when the Powerscourts were out of town and she needed a hotel in London. Unlike other hotels, White’s did not send out regular bulletins to the press about who was staying in its elegant rooms. Anything that happened once you had crossed the threshold was private. The regular clients – and there were considerable numbers of those – behaved in White’s as they would have done when they were in their own homes. The cynics pointed out that the code of White’s Hotel made it the perfect place for the conduct of illicit affairs. Once you were safely ensconced within its walls and within its bedrooms, you were safe from exposure and scandal.

  Whites was the hotel where the pre-phylloxera dinners were held. Presumably the clients were keen to indulge their passion for these wines at a place where no publicity was likely to leak out. Maybe even their own wives didn’t know where they had gone on these evenings, or of the size of the bills. Powerscourt asked for the general manager and was shown into a small room behind the reception desk. The walls were lined with prints of the great houses of England, Blenheim, Longleat and Wilton House on one wall, Holkham Hall and Castle Howard on the other.

  Two or three minutes later a very neat little man, five feet six inches tall and clean shaven in his frock coat, who looked as if he was polished twice a day, announced himself as George Brandon, general manager of Whites Hotel.

  ‘And how might I be of service to you today, Lord Powerscourt?’

  Powerscourt wondered, not for the first time, if the Lord in his name meant that he received speedier service than a mere Mister. He reflected ruefully that he would never find out. ‘Thank you for seeing me so quickly, Mr Brandon. I am most grateful. I am seeking information and guidance on pre-phylloxera wines. I understand that you hold dinners here from time to time when such wines are served.’

  George Brandon smiled. ‘You have come to the right place, Lord Powerscourt. Would you like me to arrange to have you added to our list of clients? I don’t think that would be a problem.’

  ‘Would that it were so easy, Mr Brandon! Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to join your connoisseurs and their ancient vintages around the table. Let me be frank with you. We are talking of a dinner, a celebration, for a relative who is approaching his eightieth birthday. Indeed it may be touch and go whether he reaches that happy day or not. I fear that some of the younger and more flippant members of the family have been placing wagers on whether the old boy will see his birthday or not. He lives in a crumbling Tudor mansion in the depths of Somerset. His doctors will not let him out as far as Bath, let alone the West End of London.’

  ‘I see,’ said George Brandon. He rubbed his chin for a moment or two. ‘Let me see what we might be able to do, Lord Powerscourt. On very special occasions we put in motion a very special travel service for special clients. A luxurious
, upholstered cab to take them to the station. A special train, equipped with its own doctors and nurses, to bring them up to London. A special motor car, also furnished with medical staff, to bring the clients to the hotel. The pre-phylloxera dinner on a scale and of a complexity to suit the client. A night under supervision in one of our Edward the Seventh suites. The journey in reverse the following day. We activated the service only last month, Lord Powerscourt, for an American millionaire who was taken ill in Yorkshire. It was very satisfactory.’

  ‘What was wrong with the American gentleman?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘I fear he was somewhat over-concerned about his health. He had a pain in his chest and thought his heart was going to stop.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘The doctors said his heart was in fine condition. They said he had probably pulled a muscle, coughing from an overgenerous intake of cigarettes.’

  ‘I see. Let me return to Somerset, Mr Brandon. Even with your superb travelling hospital, as it were, I do not think the family would be happy bringing the old gentleman to London. Let me apologize to you. What I meant to ask you right at the beginning was for the name of your wine merchants. I have been diverted by the quality of your service and the range of what you can supply.’

  Powerscourt smiled at the little hotel manager. George Brandon rubbed his hands together again.

  ‘I should be happy to oblige. All I would ask, Lord Powerscourt, is that you would consider our services for any special occasions in the future. We should be only too happy to oblige. Now then, the name of the pre-phylloxera wine merchant is Piccadilly Wine, of Sackville Street, behind Regent Street. You should ask for Septimus Parry – he’s the gentleman we deal with.’

  Powerscourt wondered if Brandon carried the names and addresses of all his principal suppliers – florists, butchers, greengrocers, bakers, tea merchants – round in his head. ‘Might I ask if these gentlemen supply all your wines, or just the special ones?’

  George Brandon smiled. ‘They just supply the pre-phylloxera wines. They came to us in the first instance a couple of years ago. They said they had found large stocks of these pre-plague vintages. They more or less threw themselves on our mercy as to what to do with them. Piccadilly knew there were people who would pay a great deal of money to drink these wines but they didn’t know how to find them. Fortunately we were able to help on that score.’

  And Piccadilly Wine, in the person of one Septimus Parry, had finessed themselves into a position where they would be able to charge the very top prices, with a band of drinkers assembled by Whites Hotel. God only knew how much they charged for a bottle of the stuff.

  ‘Mr Brandon, I am most grateful to you. I will detain you no longer. I shall set out for Piccadilly Wine at once.’

  Twenty minutes later Lord Francis Powerscourt was shown into the office of Piccadilly Wine. There were two large desks, an enormous map of France on the wall and two young men, Vicary Dodds, attending to his account books with great care and total concentration in his suit of sober grey, and Septimus Parry, leafing idly through some wine catalogues from France in a suit that looked as if its owner should have been taking bets in the enclosure at Newmarket.

  ‘Good afternoon to you, sir,’ said Septimus. ‘How may we be of service?’

  ‘A very good afternoon to you too,’ Powerscourt replied. ‘I am interested in buying some of your pre-phylloxera wines.’

  Was it just a normal reaction, Powerscourt wondered, or did Septimus Parry put up his guard at the mention of the word pre-phylloxera? Even Vicary Dodds, keeper of the eternal verities of the account books, put down his pencil and inspected his visitor. Certainly Septimus’s manner from now on was more reserved than it had been when he came in.

  ‘Who told you we sold these wines?’ said Septimus.

  ‘I’ve just been informed about them by George Brandon at Whites Hotel.’

  ‘I see,’ said Septimus. He only realized later that a more devious wine merchant would not have been satisfied with Powerscourt’s answer. George Brandon might have confirmed to Powerscourt that these dinners with these wines existed, but it was unlikely that he would have volunteered the information. Powerscourt must have heard about them from somebody else. But who?

  ‘We do have access to some of these wines, Lord Powerscourt, but might I ask about the occasion for which they are needed and the quantities required?’

  ‘Of course you may, Mr Parry. There is an elderly gentleman in our family approaching his eightieth birthday. He lives in the depths of Somerset. He is not very strong or very well. His doctors are not sure if he will reach this birthday. In his youth,’ Powerscourt knew he was embroidering the life and times of the old gentleman every time he spoke, ‘our elderly friend was a great connoisseur of French wines, burgundy and Bordeaux in particular. Most people prefer one or the other, Bordeaux or burgundy. The old boy liked them both. He would travel there in his holidays and taste them on the spot. You know as well as I do, gentlemen, of the terrible ravages of phylloxera that ran for thirty years or so from the 1860s. Over time all the great vineyards had to be replanted. Our elderly gentleman,’ Powerscourt thought he had better give him a name fairly soon, ‘saw one important part of his life taken away from him, his love of these great French wines. The replacements and their produce he did not care for. He said they might as well come from Morocco as far as he was concerned. Then, somewhere, he can’t remember where, his memory is going so fast, he read of the existence of pre-phylloxera wines in France, and a limited quantity in England. Gentlemen, I am sure you can see why I am here. The chance to bring back to an old man some of the joys of his youth. The chance to let the old gentleman taste once more the wines that he loved so well. The chance to brighten his last days and let him approach the final one floating in a lake of Chateau Lafite or Chateau Latour.’

  Septimus Parry smiled. ‘I can almost see the old gentleman, tottering slowly round his house, taking a few hesitant steps in the garden. I regret to have to tell you that we have no Latour and no Lafite. That is not to say there is none of it in England – there is – but we cannot persuade the owners to part with it for any amount of money. Just let us know how many red and how many white you would like, what quantities of Bordeaux and burgundy would suit you and we will do the rest.’

  ‘You don’t have a carte des vins, a wine list?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Septimus, feeling rather anxious now. ‘As I say, we ask the clients what they would like, in general terms.’

  ‘Is that not rather unusual?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You mean my old relative can’t even have a bottle of his favourite Nuits St Georges?’

  ‘I think we could manage that, Lord Powerscourt. You see, the way it works at Whites Hotel is that we supply the wines at our discretion. Their chef plans the meal round the particular vintages we are going to provide and everybody is happy. So if you let us know the colour and the quantity we can set to straight away.’

  Powerscourt wondered if the young man knew that he, Powerscourt, suspected that the wines were fake, that they weren’t playing an elaborate game of charades. ‘I should be most interested to know,’ he said, ‘how you discovered these wines. And how nobody else has discovered them. That’s rather a coup, I should say.’

  ‘It was luck, really,’ said Septimus, running his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ve got this great-uncle, he’s dead now, but he was a great lover of wine. Every year Berry Bros. amp; Rudd would send him their pick of the best clarets and the best burgundies of that year. In the early 1860s he saw the writing on the wall – he thought that sooner or later the phylloxera insect would munch its way through all the vineyards of France, starting in the south and going all the way up to Champagne. So he doubled the size of his order. Soon the cellar was full to bursting with this stuff. Then, before he had time to drink a tenth of it, he died. His son wasn’t interested in wine at all, hardly touched it. I knew his son, third in line from the man who bought all the wine, at Oxford. So when we s
tarted the business, Vicary and I, we got in touch with this chap. His family knew two or three others who also had supplies. Then we got into touch with Whites to organize the dinners.’

  ‘How fascinating!’ said Powerscourt. ‘I should love to go and see the cellars where these treasures are kept. Is there any chance of a visit?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Septimus, sending the ball back across the net once more. ‘If it was up to me we could go there this very day, but the owners don’t like people trampling all over their house as they put it. They’re very strict about their privacy.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I can’t see a wine list, I can’t see the place where the bottles are stored – what can I see, Mr Parry?’

  Septimus laughed. ‘You come back tomorrow, Lord Powerscourt, and bring us a list for you to choose from. I promise you.’

  Powerscourt said he would return and set off on his way back to Markham Square. As he went he reflected that there was only one part of Septimus Parry’s story that might be true but probably wasn’t. The house in the country with the wine lover forty years before ordering his supplies from Berry Bros. amp; Rudd, that was possible, but probably untrue. This evening Septimus would have a meeting with the Necromancer where they would agree the wines to be faked. Powerscourt looked forward very much to tasting them. And he sent urgent word to Johnny Fitzgerald to ask him to follow Septimus Parry wherever he went the following afternoon. He, Powerscourt, was going to call on Piccadilly Wine in the early afternoon. Maybe Septimus Parry would lead him to the Necromancer.

  14

  After three days Tristram Bennett tired of being the replacement for his murdered cousin Randolph. Life as a wine merchant was not quite what he had expected. Tristram had imagined that Colville retainers would appear at regular intervals throughout the day, bringing tea or coffee or drinks. They did not appear. Instead a wide variety of messengers appeared with things for him to read, things for him to sign, people in the trade he must talk to. These conversations did not go easily. For although Tristram had absorbed a certain amount about the wine business in his time with the firm, he was not capable of an opinion on the likely vintage quality in Burgundy or whether they should change shippers for the delivery of their Sancerre. To all difficult questions he told his visitors he would get back to them. He rather wished he could return to his undemanding position in East Anglia.