Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

  ‘I don’t think that’s his real name for a moment,’ said Vicary. ‘If you were a Lord Powerscourt, even an Irish peer Lord Powerscourt, what on earth are you doing grubbing around in the world of pre-phylloxera wine? The man must be an impostor. We’d better watch our step, Septimus.’

  ‘Even the Customs wouldn’t investigate a suspicious business with a man pretending to be a peer,’ said Septimus. ‘But he’s going to get a shock when he opens the bottles, our fraudulent friend. I took the labels off and put some of ours on instead. But what he thinks is going to be fake pre-phylloxera wine isn’t going to be anything of the kind. They may not be pre-phylloxera, but they’re the oldest bottles of those two wines from one of London’s oldest wine merchants. When Lord Powerscourt and his friends get the corkscrew working they’ll find they’re drinking Justerini amp; Brooks’ finest. That should confuse them just a bit.’

  A few moments after Powerscourt’s departure Septimus Parry stepped out briskly into the London streets to deliver the order. His mind was too busy to notice the stooped figure of the tramp with the dirty hair who followed him fifty yards behind. As Septimus boarded a Bakerloo line train going south at Piccadilly Circus the tramp was two carriages away, looking closely at the exits when the train pulled in at a station. At Embankment Septimus changed on to the District and Circle line, again pursued by the faithful tramp. Johnny thought he knew the general area they were going to now. It seemed unlikely to him that wine forgers would be operating in the heart of the City of London. Their terrain would be further east, somewhere in the sprawling docks. They passed Tower Hill. The tramp almost missed Septimus alighting rapidly from his train at Shadwell but he caught sight of him half a minute later striding up one side of Shadwell Basin, and disappearing into an enormous warehouse on Newlands Quay.

  The inevitable seagulls were performing their ritual pavane around the shipping in the basin. Men could be seen loading and unloading different-sized vessels. The enormous warehouse betrayed no sign of ownership. It was six storeys high and had small barred windows at regular intervals. Johnny Fitzgerald crouched down by the door and strained to hear any conversation between Septimus and the Necromancer, for he was sure the Necromancer was the man Septimus had come to see. However hard he tried he could hear nothing. The door looked solid. Suddenly it was flung open and he was dragged inside the warehouse and pulled unceremoniously into a small section in the corner. Johnny saw that there were rows and rows of shelves lined with bottles of every size known to the wine trade. The two men tied him roughly to a chair.

  ‘This is the fellow I told you about,’ said Septimus, ‘the one who followed me from the office down here.’

  ‘You must be Mr Septimus Parry,’ said Johnny, staring intently at the muzzle of a gun in his companion’s hand, pointing directly toward his stomach. ‘And you, sir, you with the gun,’ Johnny turned his gaze up from the gun to the face, ‘must be the Necromancer.’

  The mention of the word necromancer seemed to cause fury. ‘I am not known as the Necromancer!’ he snarled. ‘They are mere conjurers, penny magicians on minor feast days, fortune tellers by the hedgerows, soothsayers of the future for simple minds. I am known as the Alchemist. Alchemists were famed for transmuting base metals into gold as I do with crude wines being converted into noble vintages with great names. And you,’ he began waving the gun about in what Johnny thought was a rather dangerous fashion, ‘who the hell are you?’

  Johnny made no reply. Septimus was looking rather nervous now. What had begun as a lark could turn very nasty at any moment. ‘Are you by any chance an associate of the man who calls himself Powerscourt?’

  Johnny thought that Septimus would be unlikely to resort to violence on his own. But he wasn’t sure about the other one. Above everything else, he realized, he had to remain as a tramp. If they thought he was an intimate colleague of Powerscourt he might be in great danger from the man with the gun.

  ‘Look here,’ said the Alchemist, ‘I don’t think you fully understand your position. I am perfectly happy to put a bullet into any part of your filthy anatomy I choose if you don’t co-operate. Tramps disappear all the time. In this part of London,’ he waved the gun airily in the direction of the river, ‘nobody even knows they’ve gone. Now, you’d better start telling us the truth. Are you employed by the man who calls himself Powerscourt?’

  ‘Every now and then,’ said Johnny.

  ‘What does that mean?’ snapped the Alchemist. ‘Once a week, once a month, once a year?’

  ‘More than once a year, less than once a month,’ said Johnny, ‘three or four times a year maybe. It’s always when he wants somebody followed.’

  ‘So when, before today, was the last time you worked for him?’

  ‘Just before Easter,’ said Johnny, observing that the gun now seemed to be pointing at his knees.

  ‘Very well,’ said the Alchemist. ‘There is nothing I can do, short of killing you, to prevent you telling your master what you have seen. I do not want you here any more. The man they call Powerscourt is ruining my life. My entire life depends on secrecy, on nobody knowing what I look like or where I work. You and your employer have ruined that. Don’t think I won’t get my own back. Now get out and don’t come back. And tell your master,’ the Alchemist snarled as he shoved Johnny towards the door, ‘that he hasn’t heard the last of me.’

  The Alchemist was shaking with fury as he kicked Johnny out of the warehouse and into the street. He sat down on a stool by one of his great shelves and put his head in his hands. ‘Everything I’ve worked for, gone. My work. My anonymity which I have done so much to preserve, blown away like gossamer down. My office, the very place where I do my work, now known to the tramp who must surely work for the authorities. I am finished, Septimus, finished! Just tell me, tell me before you go, what is this Powerscourt’s address?’

  Powerscourt was annoyed that he hadn’t managed to get any closer to the Necromancer. Maybe Johnny would pull it off this very day. He remembered Johnny saying that the man valued his privacy above everything else. What did he have to hide? Powerscourt had a deep suspicion of forgers, fakers and counterfeiters of every sort. In one of his previous cases he had encountered a forger called Orlando Blane who had caused chaos in the London art world with the accuracy of his reproductions. Orlando too had links with Norfolk, producing his Gainsboroughs or his Joshua Reynoldses or his Giovanni Bellinis in an abandoned Jacobean mansion close to Cromer and the sea. He felt that the fakers and the forgers debased the natural order, that they brought something squalid and sordid into a world where beauty should reign supreme, that their works poisoned the art world. Not that Powerscourt had any illusions about the art dealers and the auctioneers and the art experts. Many of them, he knew, were little better than the forgers when it came to morality. And what of his own first offering from the Necromancer, those two bottles nestling in their bag? Should he taste them immediately he reached home? Probably not, he decided. He would wait until tomorrow when the rest of the consignment arrived. He would summon Sir Pericles Freme and his finest palate to join him and Lady Lucy in the first tasting of the pre-phylloxera wines.

  A hundred miles to the north Georgina Nash was walking up her drive with its massive yew hedges towards the main road that skirted round Brympton Hall. Every day now she performed this melancholy ritual five or six times during the hours of daylight. When she reached the main road, with the church on her left where the doomed marriage took place a month or so before, she would stand and stare, now to the left, now to the right. Sometimes she would walk for half a mile or so in either direction, hoping desperately that the next person to come round the bend would be young William Stebbings. It was now three days since his disappearance, and the Nash family were, if anything, even more upset than they had been on the day he went missing. Inspector Cooper continued with his searches but he had informed them sadly that morning that he and his men could only search for one more day. Then they would be reassigned to other duties. Loo
king at the Inspector’s face in the kitchen at nine o’clock that day Georgina Nash could see that the Inspector thought William was dead. Her husband Willoughby continued his searches with some of the gardeners when he could spare the time from his legal business in Norwich. He too, she felt, was losing faith in William being alive.

  Georgina turned round and made her way back towards the Hall. The afternoon light was beginning to fade. She had thought and thought about what William might have seen in her Long Gallery on the day of the murder. Had he seen the murderer leave the state bedroom and press the gun into Cosmo’s hand? Had he seen something which he didn’t think was important, but which was of vital importance for the murderer? Had one or other of those possibilities led to his death, the murderer creeping into the Hall under cover of darkness and luring the boy outside to strangle him by the lake and throw the body into the water, pockets filled with stones? Her butler, Charlie Healey, a man with wide experience of violent death in the Boer War, didn’t think much of these theories. Somehow Georgina Nash didn’t believe in them either. Her permanent image of William was of the boy, five or six weeks ago, standing behind one of the guests’ chairs at one of the rare formal dinner parties she and Willoughby gave, holding himself perfectly still, looking very handsome in his black suit and white shirt, ready to help with the serving or removal of dishes as required. Hidden away in William’s cupboard they had found a magazine full of pictures and engravings of the great transatlantic liners where he hoped to serve as a steward sometime in the future. Looking through the illustrations of the state cabins with their unimaginable luxury on the top deck, the vast and ornate drawing rooms and libraries and dining rooms, Georgina could see where the appeal lay for the young man. She was back by the Hall now. She heard footsteps coming, loud footsteps, coming on the road from Aylsham. Perhaps it was William. Her heart leapt. She was sure it was him! He was back at last!

  But when the figure came round the bend she saw it was only the vicar, come to open up the Church for evensong.

  Lady Lucy had organized the Powerscourt dining room with considerable care. Three places were laid at the top end of the table nearest the hall. There were no knives or spoons, but half a dozen glasses, three for red wine and three for white, and a tumbler for water. By the side of each place was a large French saucepan for the participants to spit their wine into. Lady Lucy didn’t feel they were perfect, the large saucepans, but they would suffice. She wondered if somewhere in London you could buy special glasses for the special substances of the man they called the Necromancer. Francis had put the list of pre-phylloxera wines in the centre of the table.

  As they took their places with Powerscourt at the head of the table, Sir Pericles on his right and Lady Lucy on his left, Freme was rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this. So many times in my life I have drunk wine that I knew to be fake. Undrinkable stuff composed of water and raisins and elder berries from some slum in the East End, diluted claret, watered down with low-grade red from Languedoc brewed up in some warehouse in the south of France, unspeakable burgundy made with apple juice and brandy cooked up in a seedy cellar in Hamburg, I think I’ve seen them all. But to know every bottle is a fake before you start tasting, that is a great joy. Powerscourt, how to you intend to proceed?’

  ‘I do have a plan of campaign, as a matter of fact. I think we should start with the Nuits St Georges they gave me the other day, before today’s delivery. Couple of sips of that and then compare it with the ones that came today.’

  ‘Capital!’ said Sir Pericles Freme and smiled broadly at Lady Lucy. Powerscourt was busy with the corkscrew. He poured three small helpings into their glasses. ‘To the Necromancer,’ he said, sipping at his wine. Sir Pericles took a small sip of his Nuits St Georges and spat expertly into his saucepan. He looked at Powerscourt like a man who cannot quite believe what he is tasting. ‘Would you both oblige me by taking another sip of this one you brought from the shop? I am somewhat confused.’

  All three were served another small helping by Powerscourt acting as wine waiter. All three spat carefully into their saucepans. Lady Lucy suspected that the business of spitting wine into saucepans at one’s own dining table would not have met with her mother’s approval. She wondered which of the many words of disapproval in her mother’s wide vocabulary of words of disapproval would have been employed for the practice. Disagreeable? Demeaning? Unworthy? Vulgar? Common? Common, she decided, that would have been the adjective of choice. Sir Pericles, she noticed, looked like a man who has just been given an enormous and impossible piece of mental arithmetic.

  ‘I’ll be damned, Powerscourt! Excuse my language, Lady Lucy. Could you put the right cork back in that bottle? You have the right cork? Good. You see, I don’t think that this Nuits St Georges is a forgery at all. I think it’s the real thing. I’ll take it round to one or two people I know after we’ve finished here. It’s the rich taste, the body of the wine. I’m sure it’s real. Come, let us try one of the Nuits St Georges that came today.’ Sir Pericles examined the label with great care, even producing a small magnifying glass from his jacket pocket for a closer look. ‘They sometimes make silly mistakes with the labels, these forgers. We had some Chateau Margaux years ago labelled Chateau Margo, as if the spelling had been done phonetically. Last year, I remember, we had a large consignment of Chablis with the year 1909 on the label. Time travelling Chablis perhaps. I’m sure H.G. Wells would have enjoyed a bottle or two.’

  Once again Powerscourt poured out three small glasses of the Necromancer’s burgundy. ‘Try to remember the taste of the one before,’ Sir Pericles said quickly before anybody drank. They took cautious sips of the wine.

  ‘What do you think, Lady Lucy?’ asked Sir Pericles ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lucy, ‘it’s definitely not the same as the one before. But it’s not absolutely disgusting, though I thought I detected a faint hint of a nasty aftertaste. If you told me at a posh dinner at Whites Hotel that this was pre-phylloxera Nuits St Georges I’d probably believe you. I’ve only ever tasted one bottle of pre-phylloxera wine and that was a Chateau Lafite with my grandfather shortly before he died. I have to say I can’t remember the taste or the bouquet at all. Is that very bad of me?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Sir Pericles, ‘perfectly normal. What about you, Powerscourt?’

  ‘I agree with Lucy,’ said Powerscourt loyally.

  ‘Let’s try one more red, one of the Bordeaux, I think. Then we’d better taste the Pouilly Fume you brought from the shop, Powerscourt. You’ve kept it separate from the others?’

  Powerscourt pointed to a small cabinet by the wall where one bottle had been placed. He opened the Chateau Figeac from Bordeaux and poured a small amount into clean glasses.

  ‘Well,’ said Sir Pericles, ‘certainly not the real thing, but not bad, not bad at all. I suspect our friend has got hold of some cheaper claret from a lesser Chateau and diluted it with red from the Languedoc and maybe a shot of brandy. But I should say the fellow knows his blending well, how to mix the things up in the most convincing manner. Now then, last but not least, that Pouilly Fume, if you please.’

  He sipped very slowly at his glass of white. This time he didn’t spit it out. ‘If I was a betting man,’ said Freme,’ I think I’d put money on this Pouilly Fume being the real thing. I think they were trying to confuse you.’ He finished his glass. ‘Lady Lucy, your thoughts?’

  ‘Delicious,’ she said, ‘absolutely delicious. We must order some for the cellar. You’re not going to tell me, Sir Pericles, that this one is a forgery?’

  ‘I’m not, it’s not,’ said Freme, ‘I think I’ll take that bottle away with me too, if I may. Our friend the Necromancer has not done badly, mind you. It’s easy to see how those dinners at Whites Hotel have kept going. I think I’d give him six or seven marks out of ten. Now then, this is my last word.’

  He pulled a little notebook out o
f his pocket and began to read: ‘“White elder wine, very like sweet muscadine from southern France: Boil eighteen pounds of white powder sugar, with six gallons of water and two whites of egg well beaten; then skim it and put in a quarter of a peck of elder berries from the tree that bears white berries; don’t keep them on the fire. When near cold, stir it, and put in six spoonfuls of lemon juice, four or five of yeast and beat well into the liquor; stir it every day; put six pounds of the best raisins, stoned, into the cask and tun the wine. Stop it close and bottle in six months.”’

  15

  The Alchemist was fuming with rage. Ever since he arrived in London he had taken great care to defend his privacy. Nobody knew where he worked, the great space in the warehouse filled with bottles of every type and size, locks and bars on the doors. Now he and Septimus Parry had discovered that somebody calling himself Lord Francis Powerscourt and his tame tramp knew his identity and the place where he worked. The most important thing in the Alchemist’s life in London was his isolation, his solitary existence between his lodgings in north London and his bench at the warehouse in the docks. Parry had told him that he did not think Powerscourt was the man’s real name. Neither he nor Vicary Dodds believed a real lord would waste his time ordering pre-phylloxera wines that he suspected might be fakes before he even tasted them. The whole story about the elderly relative in darkest Somerset was, in Septimus’s view, a charade, a story that wasn’t true and wasn’t to be believed. Informed opinion at Piccadilly Wine reckoned the man called Powerscourt must be a government agent of some sort, come to check on the shipping manifests of the wine perhaps, or from one of the innumerable agencies that made it their business to raise taxes for the government.

  The Alchemist was due to attend the opera that evening but he didn’t go. He was too upset and too angry, even for Wagner. Terrible fates unwound themselves in his mind, incarceration in the Tower perhaps, exiled to some other terrible prison, an English equivalent of Chateau d’If maybe, deportation to France where his earlier crimes would catch up with him. The Alchemist had learnt the rudiments of his trade in the back streets of Marseilles. They knew what to do with their enemies there, those tough little Corsicans, men from Bastia and Ajaccio and Calvi. One of them had even given him lessons in the use of the knife and the garrotte. The Alchemist had never thought he would need to employ these murderous techniques on his own account. Now, he thought, in a wet November in London, the time had come to defend his privacy and his honour.