Death of a wine merchant lfp-9

by David Dickinson

  ‘One more question, Francis. Why did Randolph Colville change his name in France? Why didn’t he just carry on being Colville? There are plenty of English people with English names living in France after all.’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I can guess. Plenty of English people pass through Burgundy for one reason or another. Randolph Colville, they say to themselves? I was at school with the fellow. I’ve bought a lot of wine from him. I wonder how he’s getting on. Fancy him ending up here of all places. I’ll pop over and see him this evening. One or two of those and you’re finished. A visitor from the Home Counties – one is enough – reports back to his friends that he’s seen Randolph Colville in France when they saw him only last week at the races in Epsom. Too risky, I’d say. That’s why I think he changed his name.’

  They had now reached their hotel. As they walked up the steps to the entrance they were greeted by a loud shout from a figure holding the largest glass of red wine that Powerscourt had ever seen.

  ‘Francis! Lucy! How very nice to see you!’ Looking completely unruffled from his hectic charge across France, Johnny Fitzgerald had come to pay his respects. There was a good deal of mutual embracing and kissing on both cheeks.

  ‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘stay here a moment for me. Don’t move.’

  He shot into the hotel and communed with the man at reception for some minutes.

  ‘Johnny,’ he said, returning to join his friend, ‘I hope you haven’t unpacked or anything.’

  ‘Course I haven’t unpacked yet,’ said Johnny, ‘I’m not a bloody butler, for God’s sake. What’s all this about, Francis?’

  ‘It is now six forty-five, my friend. At twenty minutes past seven the last Paris express stops in Beaune. There is a night train to Calais, for some reason. Most irregular but never mind.’

  ‘And why, pray, do I have to get on another train and then another one after that? I’ve only just got off the last one.’

  ‘While you fetch your bag, Johnny, I am going to write down for you the main points of what we have discovered here. It is most germane to the trial of Cosmo Colville. We don’t know when the trial starts. It could have started already. It is most important that Charles Augustus Pugh receives my note at the earliest possible moment. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat. It’s too sensitive to entrust it to the cable companies. The information could fall into the wrong hands. Lucy will go with you and tell you what we’ve found out while you fetch your bags.’

  Five minutes later Johnny Fitzgerald was tucked up in another cab, bound for the station. The cabbie was astonished for it was the same man who had brought him from the station to the hotel less than an hour before. In his breast pocket he had two pages of Powerscourt’s finest handwriting with the details of their discoveries. He leant out of the window as he left, waving his enormous glass at them.

  ‘Could you sort out the cost of this glass with the barman, Francis? Haven’t been able to finish it yet, damned thing’s so big it must hold about the same amount as a bloody bottle.’

  20

  On the outside Charles Augustus Pugh appeared confident, sure of his ground as he strode into Court Two of the Old Bailey on the opening day of the trial of Cosmo Colville for the murder of his brother. He smiled at the chief counsel for the prosecution, Sir Jasper Bentinck, and made a slight bow to the judge, Mr Justice Black. The court was full, with the members of the public crammed into their seats and looking forward to the show. It was not every day after all that you could see a senior member of one of London’s leading wine merchants on trial for the murder of his brother. Pugh turned from his table to whisper something to his junior, an industrious young man recently arrived in the Pugh chambers by the name of Napier.

  Inwardly, Pugh felt more unhappy about this case than he had about any of his previous outings as principal counsel for the defence. He had little fresh evidence and what he had did not inspire him. He was going to have to proceed through a policy of innuendo and suggestion which was alien to his nature. He was going to have to make his appeal to the Doubting Thomas side of the jury rather than the Sir Lancelot. His principal collaborator in this trial, Lord Francis Powerscourt, had vanished into the hills and vineyards of Burgundy and had not returned. Pugh had begun work on this case with high hopes that Powerscourt might pull an enormous rabbit out of a hat at the very last moment as he had the last time the two of them had worked together. Today there was no sign of anything at all, not even a minute mouse with a minuscule tail.

  The area reserved for members of the public was crammed. So was the area reserved for the gentlemen of the press. Many members of the public were regular consumers of the Colville products and had come to see the one who had killed his brother. Others had heard rumours of the defendant who had not spoken a word since the murder and had come to Court Two of the Old Bailey to inspect a man whose silence might cost him his life. The pressmen too had heard, of course, of Cosmo’s silence. Their collective memory, even when fortified by Colvilles’ finest in the Bunch of Grapes at the end of Fleet Street, could not recall such a silent witness in living memory.

  Pugh turned to inspect the jury. They seemed younger than the normal run of juries, he thought. They sat up in their place looking very serious, conscious perhaps that over the next few days they held a man’s life in their hands.

  Sir Jasper rose to begin the case for the prosecution. He called Georgina Nash as chatelaine of the great house where the events had taken place.

  ‘Mrs Nash. Could you tell the gentlemen of the jury what was happening at your house on the day in question?’

  ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘There was a wedding, my daughter’s wedding.’

  ‘And could you tell us who your daughter was marrying, Mrs Nash?’

  ‘She was marrying Montague Colville, son of Mr Randolph Colville and Mrs Hermione Colville.’

  ‘Did the service go off satisfactorily, Mrs Nash? And could you tell us how many guests were in attendance? Not a precise figure, you understand, just a general idea.’

  ‘The service was fine. The bride was late, but brides often are. I think I cried but then mothers often do at weddings, I believe. And we had a hundred guests or so.’

  ‘So what happened after the service, Mrs Nash? Perhaps you could give an idea of the sequence of events leading up to the murder.’

  ‘After the service everybody came back to the house. We served them champagne in the garden. I remember feeling rather cross because the gardeners hadn’t fixed the fountain. It’s a very impressive fountain when it’s working properly. It sits in the middle of the lawn where everybody can see it. I must have asked those gardeners three or four times.’

  ‘Mrs Nash,’ Sir Jasper was at his most emollient, ‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves about the fountain today.’

  ‘Sorry, Sir Jasper.’ Georgina Nash looked at the judge, unsure if she should apologize to him too, but she pressed on. ‘I think the champagne lasted about half an hour. Then we began to bring people up to the Long Gallery where the food was to be served. There were two seating plans on display in the garden for people to see where they were going and another two indoors, one in the Great Hall and another at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘In my experience, Mrs Nash, not that I possess a Long Gallery like yours in my modest home, these manoeuvres involving large numbers of people can take a long time, far longer than one would think.’

  Charles Augustus Pugh scribbled a quick note to his junior Richard Napier. ‘Bentinck’s modest home runs over five floors in Holland Park,’ the message said. ‘Enormous garden the size of three or four tennis courts. Platoons of servants. Must be worth a bloody fortune.’

  Georgina Nash carried on: ‘How right you are, Sir Jasper.’ She smiled a bright smile at him. Pugh thought you could almost hear Sir Jasper purr. ‘It did take a long time, far longer than I had thought.’

  ‘So here we are, Mrs Nash, a grand weddi
ng in a grand country house, the guests sipping their champagne in the garden then making their way up to the Long Gallery for the wedding lunch. Perhaps you could tell us, Mrs Nash, how you first became aware of the unfortunate incident which has brought us here today. Were all the guests seated by then?’

  ‘No, they were not, Sir Jasper. Some of them were still milling about looking for their places. I remember thinking how noisy it all was. Then there was a sharp bang from the rooms at the end of the Long Gallery which I later gathered was the gun being fired.’

  ‘And how were you informed of what had happened, Mrs Nash?’

  Georgina Nash paused. ‘The first I knew about it was when Charlie Healey, our butler, rushed in looking very strained. He whispered something to my husband. Willoughby told me what had happened, about Mr Randolph Colville lying dead on the floor and Mr Cosmo Colville sitting on a chair holding the gun. Everything became something of a blur after that. I felt so sorry for my daughter with her big day ruined and for the guests, many of whom had come a long way.’

  ‘Quite so, Mrs Nash, quite so.’ Sir Jasper made it sound as if he himself had been one of the unfortunate long distance travellers whose celebration of a wedding turned into a wake. He pressed on with a few more questions about the arrival of the police before he sat down.

  Pugh had originally intended to let the early witnesses go, not to ask any questions at all. But the lack of weapons in his armoury left him no choice but to cross-examine them all. Doubt, he said to himself, doubt. I can’t possibly persuade them that Cosmo didn’t do it, I just need to plant some doubt. Enough doubt and I might get an acquittal if we’re lucky.

  ‘Mrs Nash,’ he began, trying to sound as friendly as he could, ‘did you say you had a hundred guests at this wedding? And how many of them were known to you personally, the guests I mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ said Georgina Nash. ‘Are you suggesting that I didn’t know who I’d invited to my own daughter’s wedding?’

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Nash, I can’t have been making myself clear. Let me try again. I suggest that if there were a hundred guests, half were on your side and half on the Colville side. Roughly speaking that is. So you would probably have known all the guests invited on your side, and some, but probably not the majority, of those invited through the Colvilles. Would that be right?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Georgina Nash. ‘Yes, that is more or less right.’

  ‘So, of the hundred guests drinking your champagne and looking for their tables in your Long Gallery, there might be about forty you did not know and had never met?’

  ‘If you choose to put it like that I suppose that must be the case.’

  Georgina Nash didn’t sound happy at being represented as the principal hostess at a party of a hundred where forty of them were completely unknown to her.

  ‘So these people could have been English or French or of any nationality at all?’ Pugh was determined to introduce the notion of a villainous Frenchman, garlic-chewing if possible, beret-wearing, onion-carrying, frog’s-legs-munching, into the minds of the jury.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they were all English, British anyway,’ Georgina Nash said loyally.

  Pugh made a non-committal sort of noise that hinted at disbelief, a sound referred to by his junior as a muted grunt. ‘Could you enlighten us, Mrs Nash, about the various entrances and exits to the Long Gallery? It is the contention of the defence that a person or persons unknown may have made their way into your grand room, killed the unfortunate Mr Colville and made his escape long before the police arrived on the scene. Could you enlighten us about the principal ways in and out? We don’t need to know about the back stairs.’

  ‘Well,’ said Georgina Nash, ‘the principal way in is up the main staircase in the Great Hall – that’s the route the guests were taking. Then there’s a smaller staircase at the far end of the Long Gallery near the lake. And there’s another little staircase out of the state bedroom itself, now I come to think of it.’

  ‘So, Mrs Nash,’ said Pugh, taking delivery of a diagram of the first floor of Brympton Hall from Richard Napier and pointing to the relevant sections as he referred to them. ‘Here is the main staircase, slightly set back from the Long Gallery, here is the little staircase at the other end of the room, and here is another, a third staircase, in the very room where the murder was committed.’ Pugh had moved right over to the jury benches and showed them the various staircases on his diagram. He left the illustration with the foreman of the jury in case they needed to refer to it in the future.

  Mrs Nash did not say anything. She was beginning to feel that this whole business of giving evidence was rather distasteful. Pugh pressed on. ‘Let me try, Mrs Nash, if I may, to pull together some of the strands of your evidence. On your own account, there were approximately forty people roaming around at your wedding reception that you had never seen before. And we have seen from the diagram of your beautiful house that there are three separate ways in and out of the relevant rooms a murderer among the forty unknowns could have used to kill Randolph Colville and make his escape.’

  ‘Objection, my lord.’ Sir Jasper was on his feet. ‘This is pure speculation, my lord, almost fantasy. My learned friend has no more proper evidence for saying these things than I would have for saying the earth is flat.’

  ‘Mr Pugh?’ A judicial pencil span rapidly through judicial fingers.

  ‘I was merely trying to point out to the members of the jury that Mr Colville could have been murdered in a completely different fashion to that put forward by the prosecution.’

  ‘Objection overruled,’ said the judge, ‘but try to confine your comments to the facts in future, Mr Pugh. Carry on.’

  ‘I have no further questions for this witness,’ said Pugh, bowing slightly to Mrs Nash. He had, he thought, done as much damage as he was capable of to the prosecution case. But his victory over the objection, he suspected, was Pyrrhic. These tactics of suggestion and innuendo were all he had until Powerscourt returned. Maybe they would still be all he had after Powerscourt returned.

  Sir Jasper moved majestically on. Charlie Healey, the Nash butler, was in the witness box now, being guided through his role on the day of the murder. Pugh waited until the police had been called and Charlie’s role returned to that of attendant lord rather than major player. Sir Jasper looked particularly pleased with himself as he sat down.

  ‘Am I right in thinking, Mr Healey,’ said Pugh genially, ‘that you were a military man before you turned butler?’

  ‘I was, sir. I was a sergeant in the Blues and Royals.’

  ‘A most responsible position, I’m sure. I want to concentrate on the events immediately before and after the murder, if I may.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Charlie Healey looked at Pugh as if he were a detachment of hostile cavalry dimly seen in the distance but approaching fast.

  ‘Can you tell us exactly where you were when you heard the shot, Mr Healey?’

  ‘I was at the far end of the Long Gallery, trying to get people seated in their proper places, sir.’

  ‘And with your military experience, you knew immediately that it was gunshot?’

  ‘I did, sir,’ said Charlie Healey, wondering where this elegantly dressed lawyer was trying to take him.

  ‘But let us be clear on this point, Mr Healey. You didn’t see the gun, you didn’t see anybody pull the trigger.’

  ‘I did not, sir.’

  ‘And at this point, you told my learned friend, you hurried as fast as you could towards the direction of the gunfire.’

  ‘I did, sir,’ said Charlie, ‘I wanted to make sure there weren’t any more shots.’

  ‘Quite right, Mr Healey, quite right. Perhaps you could tell the court precisely what you saw when you went into the state bedroom on the far side of the house from the Long Gallery.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Charlie. ‘It was like a tableau, so it was, everything sort of frozen. Mr Randolph Colville lying on the floor, lo
oking very dead with blood trickling out on to the carpet, and Mr Cosmo locked into the chair opposite with the gun in his hand. I managed to get the gun off him and sent word to the master about what had happened.’

  ‘I’m sure you behaved very properly, Mr Healey,’ said Pugh, who suspected that a witness like Charlie would make a very good impression on the jury. ‘But could we just be clear on a couple of points? You saw the defendant with the gun in his hand. But you didn’t see him fire it, did you?’

  ‘No, sir, I did not.’

  ‘And, to the best of your knowledge, the gun could have been fired by some other person or persons unknown who made good their escape down the stairs in the state bedroom, so convenient as that was the room where the murder was committed. Is that not the case, Mr Healey?’

  ‘If you put it like that,’ said Charlie defensively, ‘then I suppose it could have happened in that way.’

  ‘Let me try to sum up your position for the benefit of the gentlemen of the jury, Mr Healey. You didn’t see anybody fire the gun. You didn’t see the defendant fire the gun. A completely different person could have fired the gun and fled down the stairs leaving the defendant to follow the noise of the gunshot and find his brother dead. Is that not so?’

  Charlie Healey did not choose to reply.

  ‘No more questions,’ said Pugh and sat down.

  Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were eating lunch in the buffet of the Gare du Nord in Paris. Lady Lucy was looking anxiously at the weather. ‘I do hope we’re not going to have a crossing like the one we had on the way over, Francis.’

  ‘That’s not possible, my love.’ Powerscourt was making his way through an enormous lamb chop. ‘I’m sure those kinds of storm only happen about once every five years or so.’

  ‘Johnny Fitzgerald should be back in London by now.’ Lady Lucy was having moules, a growing mountain of empty shells threatening to spill out of the bowl. ‘That should cheer Mr Pugh up at any rate.’

  ‘I’m not sure that what we’re bringing is a great deal of use,’ said her husband, relapsing into miserable mode. ‘I’m sure he was going to make a lot of the mysterious foreigner going to the wedding anyway. We’ve just managed to put some flesh on the bones for him. We’ve got a name and address.’