Death of a Wine Merchant (29 page)

‘That’s all in the past, Cosmo,’ his uncle boomed, ‘we must look to the future. The firm’s fifty years old now. We must go on. Even if I’m not going to see the end of the next fifty, I’m going to make sure we’re in bloody good shape for the anniversary.’

‘I say we must work out a new advertising campaign while people remember the headlines,’ said Sir Pericles.

‘Colvilles,’ young Napier said, ‘wine to die for, perhaps. Try Colvilles, last drink before you go.’

Powerscourt and Pugh were having a final conversation about the case. ‘Do you know who we have to thank for our good fortune, Pugh?’

‘Who?’ said Pugh.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘it’s that cleaning woman from Fakenham police station, that’s who it is. If the police thought they might have a real fingerprint then even Chief Inspector Weir would have sent it off to the Met. So there would have been two sets of prints, one lot belonging to Mrs Randolph Colville who could say she dusted the gun a week or so before. The servants aren’t allowed to touch the guns in case they kill themselves. And, of course, Cosmo’s prints,
clear as daylight. That would have been pretty hard work for us, I think.’

By eight o’clock the guests had departed. Powerscourt was going to take Lady Lucy out to dinner to celebrate the end of the case. She was adjusting her hair in the mirror.

There was a knock on the door. Rhys crept into the room carrying an opened bottle and a couple of glasses and an expensive-looking envelope. ‘The envelope is from Sir Pericles, my lord,’ said Rhys. ‘He says you are to read it first.’

‘This recipe,’ Powerscourt read it aloud, ‘comes from no less a personage than Lord Pembroke, he of Wilton House near Salisbury and the Double Cube Room and all those glorious Van Dycks. The good Lord was in the habit of saying to his guests at dinner, “I cannot answer for my champagne and claret, as I only have the word of my wine merchant that it is good, but I can answer for my port wine. I made it myself.” Here it is, from the Family Receipt Book of 1817:

‘“Mix well together forty-eight gallons of turnip juice, or strong rough cyder; eight gallons of malt spirit or brandy; and eight gallons of real port wine; adding a sufficient quantity of elder berry juice to colour it; add some of the branches of the elder tree to give it a proper roughness. Keep it, in cask or bottle, about two years before drinking it. This is Lord Pembroke’s recipe: which perhaps may be improved, with regard to roughness, by the juice or wine of sloes; and, in colour, make to any required tint, by cochineal, logwood, or Brazil wood. French brandy will certainly be better than malt spirit; and perhaps, either a good-bodied raisin wine, or even a raisin cyder, may sometimes, according as excellence or cheapness is the object, be advantageously adopted instead of rough cyder or the juice of turnips.”’

Powerscourt and Lady Lucy laughed. She put her arm through his as Rhys carried on.

‘This bottle is from Mr Nathaniel Colville, my lord, my lady.’ There was a brief pause while Rhys remembered his lines. ‘He says, you are to drink one glass of this wine before
you go out, two if you like it. He says you are to note what it says on the bottle. He says, Mr Colville, that the label is the first of its kind to be printed in this country.’

Rhys slipped away. Looking at the label, Powerscourt saw that the spirit that had made Colvilles great was still there, that even in adversity a family could show its resilience and that a dynasty founded fifty years before, when Victoria was twenty years on the throne, still had sap in its bones and fire in its belly.

‘Bâtard Montrachet 1904’, the label said. And below that, ‘Colvilles and Co., 1857–1907, Fifty Years of Excellence. Wine Merchants of distinction. London Edinburgh Bordeaux Burgundy.’

With thanks to Christopher Fielden, author of
Is This the Wine
You Ordered, Sir
? from which many of the recipes within this book were taken.

D
AVID
D
ICKINSON
graduated from Cambridge with a firstclass honours degree in Classics. He joined the BBC where he became editor of
Newsnight
and
Panorama
as well as series editor on
Monarchy
. His novel
Death of a Chancellor
was longlisted in 2007 for Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year.

Titles in the series

(listed in order)

Goodnight Sweet Prince

Death and the Jubilee

Death of an Old Master

Death of a Chancellor

Death Called to the Bar

Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

Death on the Holy Mountain

Death of a Pilgrim

Death of a Wine Merchant

Death in a Scarlet Coat