In Vino Veritas (14 page)

Fiona Cooper was just the sort of personal assistant he needed. She was both discreet and intelligent: she gave away nothing, but vacuumed up the gossip around the place and passed it to her employer. And Beaumont himself noted the odd phrase which signified a change of attitude in Gerry Davies, a man too honest for his own good, too unused to the ways of dissimulation to adopt them when he needed them. Davies took care to say nothing about either his meetings with Jason Knight or his knowledge of what had passed between Beaumont and Sarah Vaughan. Nevertheless, Beaumont noted subtle changes in his speech and his bearing which suggested that his unthinking loyalty and admiration for the owner had been affected.

It was always Martin Beaumont's inclination to tackle opposition head on. If he was in a position of strength, he believed in exploiting it as quickly as possible, lest the situation changed. And he felt himself to be very much in a position of strength with Tom Ogden, that obstinate strawberry-grower whose land obtruded so inappropriately into his. When he sensed that he held all the cards, Martin liked to bully the opposition.

He acknowledged that openly to himself. He knew that he enjoyed a little bullying when he felt he could not lose – it was a release from the more subtle and patient manoeuvres which were so often necessary in the rest of his dealings.

On the morning of Tuesday, May the eleventh, Beaumont chose to bully Tom Ogden.

Ensure that you have the freshest fruit of all. Bring the family and enjoy a day out.

Tom Ogden was inspecting the signs which had been newly prepared for this season's picking. There was a road junction near to the entrance to his fields which meant that traffic often had to stop. That gave drivers and passengers a chance to read more than if they had been passing at thirty or forty miles an hour. Last year's signs had been perfectly serviceable, but Tom had decided upon complete refurbishment.

The psychological effect of pristine paint was to assure the public that a new and exciting opportunity was now available; Tom's son assured him of this. And Tom, like many people of his age and background, affected to despise such nonsense, but felt secretly that there might just be something in it. No one ever went bankrupt by underestimating the intelligence of the public. Some rich American showman had said that, and Tom's experience bore it out.

Take all those idiots who poured into Abbey Vineyards next door, for instance. The supermarkets and the specialist wine stores were full of decent wines at decent prices. Yet people who should know better not only flocked in to eat in the expensive restaurant. They also bought the dubious English wines grown on the long lines of vines which had surrounded Tom's defiant fields over the last twenty years.

Tom Ogden did not pretend to be objective: he saw no need to sample the product before delivering his trenchant verdict.

When he turned from the new signs to find Martin Beaumont also inspecting them, Ogden's day took an immediate turn for the worse. He said harshly, ‘You're not welcome here. You should know that by now.'

Beaumont gave him a leisured, mocking smile. ‘Going to horsewhip me out of town, are you, Thomas?'

‘Don't think I wouldn't, if I thought I could get away with it!'

‘Ever the friendly neighbour, aren't you?'

‘There's nothing for you here. How many times do you need telling?'

‘I'm a persistent soul, Tom. Anyone who has had dealings with me will tell you that. I get my own way in the end. Always, and usually on my own terms. At the moment you're lucky, Tom. Very lucky, because I'm being patient. But don't rely on your luck lasting forever. Those same people who would tell you how persistent I am could also tell you that I am not noted for my patience.'

It was like a confrontation in the western films Tom Ogden had so relished as a young man. The small landowner was being threatened by the wealth and power of the land baron who wanted to consolidate his holding. At least there were no guns here, as yet. ‘We've nothing to say to each other, Beaumont.'

‘Not quite correct, that, Thomas. You don't have much to say to me, but in spite of your churlish attitude I am still prepared to talk to you. To say things which would be sweet music in your ears, if you weren't such a stubborn old mule.'

‘My family's farmed this land for years, Beaumont. I don't intend to change that now to suit some johnny-come-lately like you.' It was an old argument that he had delivered before, but Ogden enjoyed repeating it, enjoyed the contempt he could put into his epithet for this unwelcome presence.

‘Times change, Thomas, times change. Bigger people than you have ended up in the bankruptcy courts through failing to recognize that.'

‘Get lost, Beaumont! Look at the evidence before your eyes!' He waved a wide arm towards the fields behind the man and his Jaguar, to where Spot Wheeler and his workers were assiduously tending the rows of his crop. ‘We're going to have a bumper crop and a bumper year. We'll still be here when your bloody vines have been and gone!'

Beaumont's face darkened, as it always did when anyone directly insulted his enterprise. ‘I hope you're right about your crop, Thomas. It would be a shame if anything happened to affect this bumper year.'

This was more than ever like a western. Tom Ogden felt he should have his gun belt slung low on his hips, with his hand hovering above the holster. ‘If you're threatening me, Beaumont, you'd better watch out. That's a game two people can play.'

Martin knew he held all the cards here: God was always on the side of the big battalions. ‘You shouldn't be hinting at violence, Thomas. Most inadvisable, for a man with your record.'

Tom Ogden whirled from a contemplation of his land and his workers. ‘What do you mean by that?'

Beaumont tapped the side of his nose. ‘No names, no pack drill, eh, Thomas? Let's just say that I have ways and means of finding out all I need to know about the people I do business with. And those ways and means tell me that you aren't a man who can afford to threaten anyone with violence.'

‘Look, just get off my land, will you, before I treat you as a trespasser.'

‘Very complicated, the law of trespass, Thomas. A study of it would tell you my rights as a bona fide visitor. A visitor who comes here in a neighbourly spirit.' He held up his hand as Ogden advanced towards him. ‘As that spirit clearly isn't reciprocated by a man who seems to be under business pressures, I shall say what I came to say and depart. I wish you to know that my very generous offer for this small parcel of land still stands. No one else will match it, and it won't last for ever. It won't last longer than another month or two, I think. The best tactic for you – the
only
realistic tactic for you – is a prompt acceptance. I might even be prepared to cover your legal fees for the transfer, and set a date which allows you to have the takings from this year's crop, if you sign by the end of June.'

‘I shan't be signing anything, Beaumont. I'm sick to death of telling you that.'

Martin had his hand on the driver's door of the Jaguar as he delivered his final thought. ‘Sick to death, eh? I do hope it doesn't come to that, Thomas.'

‘I've been watching Dad closely. He doesn't seem much different, as yet,' said thirteen-year-old Luke Hook magisterially to his brother.

‘Maybe we shall have to wait until after this graduation ceremony we're being forced to attend,' said Jack gloomily. He took advantage of his two years of seniority to ask a more practical question across the family's evening meal. ‘Will it mean promotion, Dad?'

‘No, it certainly will not!' said Bert Hook.

‘Your father could have been an inspector years ago,' said his mother sternly. ‘He had all the exams, but he turned down the chance because he enjoyed the job he was doing.' Eleanor caught Bert's sharp look of surprise. She probably shouldn't have said that, but she was immensely proud of her husband's integrity, and felt that it was only right that the boys should know about it. They were at an age when they should be learning that there were more important considerations in life than money and rank.

‘So we could be living in luxury, rather than leading a life of abject poverty,' said Jack soulfully.

‘You two have never wanted for anything! Finish your dinner, if you want pudding.' Eleanor began to gather in the plates. ‘Abject poverty, indeed!'

It was becoming almost too easy to wind up the old folks, especially Mum, reflected the precocious Luke. He dispatched the last of his roast potatoes with impressive speed and enquired innocently of his father, ‘Will you be learning to play the violin and smoking coke now that you're an intellectual, Dad?' An enthusiastic form-master had lately introduced his charges to Conan Doyle's immortal creation. Luke pushed his empty plate towards his mother, leant back, and lit an imaginary pipe. ‘This is almost certainly a three-pipe problem,' he informed his brother in an artificially deep voice.

‘The only crime I am likely to indulge in is infanticide,' said Bert Hook as sternly as he could. ‘And you're both very welcome to miss Friday's graduation ceremony. I'd rather like to miss it myself.'

‘No chance, Dad, with Mum and Mr Lambert on the job,' said Jack. ‘And Luke and I aren't going to miss a day off school, are we?' His eyes lit up delightedly as apple pie and custard arrived upon the table. ‘I expect you'll get a more interesting succession of cases, now that you're a graduate, Dad. When you have to pit your brains against the modern Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime, I might agree to chronicle your exploits, if you ask me nicely. I quite fancy being your Watson.'

Martin Beaumont was elated by his latest encounter with Tom Ogden. He had seen fear in the man's eyes. No one enjoyed the feeling that an enemy had the power to find out all about him, including those secrets he had kept hidden for years. It gave you a feeling of power over other people's lives, and Martin knew enough about himself to know that nothing excited him more.

Today was a day for action; he felt that he was definitely on some sort of a roll. That was no doubt why he decided it was time to have a word with Jason Knight and Gerry Davies. The two were conferring outside the entrance to the shop as he drove back into Abbey Vineyards. Martin lowered the window of the Jaguar and called, ‘I'd like to see both of you for a short meeting. In ten minutes?'

He didn't believe in giving people time for elaborate planning.

They came in nine minutes; he was still arranging the set-up of chairs he wanted in his room when he heard them talking to his PA in the outer office. He had pulled up the two armchairs in front of his desk, so that they would be looking into the light and lower than he would be on his seat behind the desk. Crude stuff, but it often worked, even now that more people were conscious of such things. If they realized that he had arranged things to give himself the advantage of position, that would be no bad thing. He decided against coffee.

He would sound them out, test whether they were moving to curb his power, as he suspected they might be. He wasn't paranoid about such things, but it was as well to be perpetually aware of the way your senior executives' minds were working. He would approach the matter obliquely, as was his way in these matters.

He said, ‘This shouldn't take very long. I wanted your advice about something. Both of you have your fingers on the pulse of this place.' A little flattery never came amiss, so long as you did not lay it on so thickly as to sound false. He might quite enjoy this, if it went as he hoped it would.

Neither of them spoke. He sensed that they wanted to look at each other, but the configuration of the furniture he had set up did not allow that without it being a sign of weakness. He asked each of them conventional questions. Gerry Davies reported that there was as yet no discernible decline of spending in the shop as a result of the recession which was hitting other Gloucestershire businesses hard. Jason Knight reminded him that there was usually a falling away in the number of restaurant bookings in spring and early summer, as the lighter evenings offered other options and the tourists were not yet around in great numbers. However, he had compared April bookings with those for the same month last year and found that they were marginally up.

It was all a little cautious and stilted, as if they were waiting for something more important. Martin cleared his throat and said, ‘We must continue to expand. I regard you two as the most forward-looking and experienced of my senior staff. That means I shall need your support.'

There was a pause before Jason Knight said, ‘Are you thinking about something which wasn't discussed at our general meeting in March? If you are, perhaps we should convene—'

‘It's nothing very radical. Merely a continuation of the expansion we have pursued successfully over the years.'

Gerry, feeling the unease of the man beside him and wanting to support him, said, ‘We're only talking about a meeting of six people, Martin, with you in the chair as usual. It's easy enough to arrange. Even if it was only an informal meeting, you would then be aware of everyone's opinion.'

Martin Beaumont hadn't expected opposition from this quarter: Davies had always been the most stalwart of his supporters. And this was opposition, despite the reasonable tone used to clothe it. It seemed that he was justified in his suspicions: Knight had been marshalling support. It was just as well he'd detected this now, whilst there was still time to nip it in the bud. He gave them what he hoped was a disarming smile. ‘As I said, there is no radical departure from previous policy involved. I am merely keeping you in the picture. I propose to buy out the strawberry farmer next door and incorporate his land into ours.'

They were feeling their way as he was, but it was he who held the map. He knew where he was going; no doubt they would follow him when they saw his plans clearly. Jason Knight said cautiously, ‘It's a logical development. His land would consolidate our control of the area.'