Death of a Wine Merchant (15 page)

Tristram’s job was as East Anglia development manager for the family firm of Colville. He was to seek out possible areas of expansion for the company. So far Tristram had enjoyed only limited success. He had persuaded Fakenham Racecourse to make Colvilles their chief supplier of wines and spirits. Recommending the change to the Committee the Secretary told them that Tristram had lost so much money gambling at
the racecourse that losing his custom would cause an outcry if not a revolt among the bookmaking fraternity. He had similar success with the Norfolk Club, a rather stuffy establishment in Upper King Street, Norwich where gentlemen were encouraged to play cards for money on Fridays and Saturdays. Once again the size of his losses was instrumental in obtaining the commission.

Now it was time to go. Tristram finished his cigar and strolled down the road to Emily’s cottage. He was glad to see she had bothered to light a fire.

‘Tristram,’ she said, looking at him carefully, ‘you’re so late. I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you’d forgotten.’

‘How could I forget you?’ said Tristram, taking her in his arms. ‘That simply wouldn’t be possible.’

‘I haven’t seen you since before my wedding, Tristram. You didn’t come. Why was that?’

‘I thought I might spoil it for you,’ said Tristram, who had, in fact, spent Emily’s wedding day in the arms of a rich widow in Cromer.

Emily thought of saying that he had spoiled her wedding already but she desisted. It wouldn’t do to upset Tristram, he could turn very moody. ‘How long have you got here today? How is business?’

Tristram propelled her gently up the stairs. ‘I’ve got plenty of time today, Emily, and in a minute I’m going to tell you the latest news on the problems of the Colville family. After all, you’re part of us now.’

Early the same afternoon Powerscourt presented himself at the offices of Piccadilly Wine once more. He thought a villainous-looking tramp winked at him from across the street but he couldn’t be sure. Vicary Dodds was still pursuing the firm’s numbers through his account books and Septimus Parry was making notes about recent vintages in Bordeaux. ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Septimus, ‘how good to see you again.
Now then, somewhere here is a list of the pre-phylloxera wines we propose to marry up with your own list for your elderly relative’s celebration. He’s still well, I take it? Not succumbing to the flu or anything like that? Brain still working normally? Able to stand up unaided?’

Powerscourt knew from this inquiry that Septimus believed the aged relation in the depths of Somerset was an invention, a Bunbury. He produced a sheet of paper with his requests. ‘Now then,’ Septimus said, ‘let’s see, you’d like some Bordeaux. We don’t offer much choice on these occasions. We do have Château Figeac, a
grand cru
from Bordeaux with a delightful fragrance and gentleness of texture, and Château Gazin, a Pomerol from Bordeaux, grown next to the legendary Château Petrus. From Burgundy you would like the old gentleman’s favourite Nuits St Georges and Aloxe Corton from the village of that name at the northern end of the Côte de Beaune, we can supply both of those. White burgundy you would like, well, we have some Meursault from one of the bigger villages in the Côte d’Or and Puligny Montrachet, two of the most famous wine names in the world, and we can throw in a Sancerre and a Pouilly Fumé from the Loire Valley, if you like. If those seem agreeable to you we need to know the quantities for each bottle and we shall send you the bill after the wines have been enjoyed, not before.’

Powerscourt marked a number next to each type of bottle asking for two of everything on offer except for four of the Nuits St Georges and four of the Puligny Montrachet.

Septimus handed him another sheet with details of the normal offerings of Piccadilly Wine for him to take home. ‘The pre-phylloxera ones should be ready tomorrow. We’ll send them round to your house,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime, let us present you with a sample.’ Parry bent down behind his desk and came up with a couple of bottles. ‘We thought these might whet you appetite, Lord Powerscourt, pre-phylloxera Nuits St Georges and pre–phylloxera Pouilly Fumé. I hope you enjoy them.’

Septimus Parry watched Powerscourt walk to the end of the street and turn left towards Chelsea.

‘I wonder what he wants,’ he said, ‘the man who calls himself Lord Powerscourt. Do you think that’s his real name, Vicary?’

‘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 & 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. Looking 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!