Death of a wine merchant lfp-9 Read online

  He wondered what to do about Emily Colville. If Tristram was going to continue his affair, he would have to find a house or a flat to rent close to Emily’s place in Barnes. He knew she would never yield to him in the house she shared with her husband. In Norfolk the rent on the little cottage with the thatched roof had been tiny. In London it would be rather more, but he knew he did not dare mention money to Emily or she would accuse him of putting gold before love. This, in fact, was a proposition that Tristram would gladly have subscribed to, even if not in female company.

  It was the formal invitation that finished his incipient career as a wine merchant. It came shortly before lunch on the third day. It was an invitation to the Annual Dinner of the Wine Merchants and Vintners Society of London, to be held in the Vintners Hall in the City. Formal Dress, it said on the bottom line. Tristram was no puritan in questions of food and drink, but he could imagine the whole scene. Row upon row of tables bedecked with flowers and bottles of wine. The men, all in their fifties and sixties, balding, braying and boasting about their wine business or their wives or their children, growing redder and redder as the evening went on, progressing from the colour of rose to the colour of beetroot. And then the speeches! All too long, all too pompous, all too self-obsessed, all too vain. Whatever else the wine business might hold, this was not for Tristram. He did tell Davis before he left for his club in the middle of his last afternoon that Randolph’s position was not for him. He was going back to Norfolk.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt was going to the west London suburb of Ealing on the Piccadilly line. He was thinking as he went about the links between the Necromancer in his warehouse, if that, indeed, was where he lived, Whites Hotel and Piccadilly Wine where he proposed to call later in the day. He found the history of these strange wines, real or faked, absolutely fascinating and he knew he would follow the story with great interest. But for the life of him he could not see how it might lead to murder. Faked wines would easily lend themselves to blackmail. The announcement that Colvilles or Piccadilly had been trafficking in these illicit substances would be bad for a day or two. But a sensible firm would quickly put out a statement that a bad apple had been identified and removed, that business was returning to normal and the loyal customers who had been with Colvilles or Piccadilly all these years could sleep easy in their beds as all Colville wines were now genuine.

  Thomas Colville opened the door of 27 Inkerman Avenue in person. He was in his late forties or early fifties with a great beard and a handlebar moustache.

  ‘Good morning to you, Lord Powerscourt, welcome to 27 Inkerman Avenue. The battle may be long over but the house still stands!’ He laughed lightly at his own joke. ‘Come in and sit down, I’ll rouse Ethel up from wherever she’s hiding!’

  A few minutes later they were all seated comfortably in the Colville parlour with prints of famous racehorses on the walls, drinking Ethel’s tea and eating Ethel’s biscuits. ‘You must ask whatever you want, Lord Powerscourt. Randolph and Cosmo might not be my very best friends but I wouldn’t wish their fate on anybody.’

  ‘I think you knew them as children, Mr Colville. What were they like then?’

  ‘Pretty bloody, if the truth be told,’ said Thomas Colville. ‘The adults all thought that three cousins roughly the same age should get on together and play nicely, as they used to put it. How little did they know!’

  ‘What happened, Mr Colville?’ asked Powerscourt.

  ‘There was a lot of bullying, hair pulling, kicking, various forms of physical and mental torture, really. The odd thing is that Randolph didn’t seem to have any moral sense at all. He thought this kind of behaviour was perfectly normal and that he was only exercising his God-given rights in carrying on like this.’

  ‘What about Cosmo? Did he take the same view as Randolph?’

  ‘Well, he was more normal, if I can put it like that. I think he knew the difference between right and wrong. He would tell Randolph every now and then to stop what he was doing.’

  ‘If it was all so grim, why didn’t you tell your parents? They could have stopped you going to the Colvilles, surely.’

  ‘You know what small boys are like, Lord Powerscourt. My parents were too much in awe of their richer relations to dare take me away.’

  ‘So what happened when the two others went away to school?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Life must have been somewhat easier then.’

  ‘During term-time it was, but the holidays were worse, much worse. Randolph had come across all kinds of bullying at school so he simply brought the techniques home with him. I was hung up on trees in the garden. The two of them took great pleasure holding me upside down and forcing my head in the lavatory bowl and then flushing it. Any animals or insects they could catch were given a hard time – birds had their wings pulled off, butterflies cut in two, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Great God!’ said Powerscourt. ‘How dreadful. Could I ask you, Mr Colville, why it was after all this humiliation that you went to work for the family firm? Surely you must have known that there might well be more grief, years more grief from these two.’

  ‘Once a Colville, always a Colville,’ said Thomas with a smile. ‘My parents wanted me to join the firm. They still suffered from the illusion that Randolph and Cosmo and I got on very well. So they thought I would be well looked after and would prosper in the business.’

  ‘Not so?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Not well looked after? Not prospering?’

  ‘Very little prospering,’ said Thomas, ‘very little indeed. You see, the one thing I had always shown an aptitude for was maths. Adding up, dividing, algebra, all those equations with 2x + 4 = 3y – 2 were all meat and drink to me. So I asked to work in the accounts department. Randolph, who had manoeuvred himself into a position where he was in charge of my future, sent me to the bottling plant instead. When I’d learnt all there was to know there I applied for a transfer, to the accounts department, naturally. This time I was sent to the labelling section and very boring it was too. After ten or twelve years I’d been round every department bar one, and that was where they did the sums.’

  ‘And what was Cosmo doing while all this was going on? Was he aiding and abetting his brother?’

  ‘That’s the curious thing,’ said Thomas. ‘As Randolph turned into more and more of a bully, Cosmo became a more normal member of the human race. He wasn’t Francis of Assisi or anything like that but he was decent and kind and sometimes considerate.’

  ‘Before we talk about why you left, Mr Colville, could I ask if you were the only one singled out for horrible treatment by Randolph? Or were there others?’

  ‘I was not alone. No, sir. There were plenty more singled out for bullying, some of it much worse than what I received.’

  ‘Could I ask Mrs Colville how she coped with all these difficult times?’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘We got through, Lord Powerscourt. We got through. There were times when I just wanted to walk into the Head Office and tell everybody I saw what a brute Randolph Colville was.’

  ‘You left, Mr Colville, ten years ago, I think. Do you keep up with any of the people you knew when you were working for the firm?’

  ‘One or two close friends, that’s all. Oddly enough there’s one chap come to work in the brewery where I do the accounts, Fuller’s in Chiswick. But I hear bits and pieces every now and then.’

  ‘I want to ask you both a question, and I want you to think very carefully about the answer. Do you think that the bullying could get so bad that somebody might decide to kill Randolph?’

  Thomas ate a couple of biscuits and then a couple more. It was Ethel who answered first.

  ‘I do think it is possible, Lord Powerscourt. I think Thomas is a fairly even-tempered sort of man in spite of everything he has had to put with. But if you were a redhead with a temper, like my younger brother, you could well decide to kill him. I just wonder about the timing, though. If he had been really horrible to you, and you had a gun to hand somewhere in the offices, you could go
and kill him in a fit of fury, so incensed you scarcely knew what you were doing. But leave the office, take a train to Norfolk, get your hands on a gun, I’m not sure. I think common sense would intervene somewhere along the way.’

  ‘I think what you say is very sensible, Ethel,’ said Thomas Colville, ‘but I’ve been trying to remember exactly how I felt after some of these outrages. I think there are, maybe, different sorts of anger. There’s the hot anger Ethel was talking about but there’s also a kind of cold anger which can last for days or weeks. I’m sure there were times when I could have got on the Norfolk train and killed Randolph Colville.’

  ‘You’ve both been very honest with me,’ said Lord Powerscourt. ‘Could I ask you one last favour? If you or your friends can think of anybody who might have gone to kill Randolph, could you let me know? I would be most grateful.’

  As Powerscourt left, Thomas Colville handed him a bottle of beer. Fuller Smith and Turner, 1845, it said on the label. ‘This is the beer from the place where I work now,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s a bloody sight better than any of the rubbish you can buy in Colvilles off-licences!’

  Emily Colville enjoyed the secrecy involved in meeting her lover. Now she had escaped the boring and the humdrum into the mysterious world of romance. Her cab took her from Norwich station, the blinds tightly closed in case she should meet her relations, and round the back of Brympton Hall to the tiny cottage in the woods behind the lake. It looked as though it came from a fairy tale with a round shape and a thatched roof on the top. From such a place elves or fairies might have ventured forth to dance in the woods at midnight, lit by the moon and the stars.

  Emily took out her key and settled in the tiny living room to wait for her lover. She busied herself with preparing a fire, for the tiny cottage was cold from lack of use. Her heart sang as she carried in the logs and began arranging them in the grate. Surely, this was real life. Surely this was far better then organizing tiresome elements of domestic duty, asking the servants to polish the spoons or checking that there were enough pillowcases in the linen cupboard. She checked her watch and remembered the picture of ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’ on the front of the sheet music, the code that had brought her here. He must come soon. Emily had brought the sheet music with her. It sat in a heap of other popular songs by the window. The code was very simple. Emily thought she should offer it to the Foreign Office where she was sure they had need of codes and ciphers of every description in the intelligence war with the Germans. The code was based on the musical keys. A meant Monday, B meant Tuesday, C meant Wednesday and so on. Flat meant morning and sharp meant afternoon. It was such a lovely secret. Emily liked secrets. She was the only person in the country who knew the secret behind Tristram’s mild blackmail of Randolph Colville and she was never going to tell that to anybody.

  Tristram Bennett, the man Emily was waiting for, was in no hurry to find his lady. Keep them waiting, that was his motto. After the first success, Tristram believed, the women would be more ardent if they had to sit around wondering if he was ever going to come. So he stretched his legs out in the front parlour of the Nelson Arms a couple of hundred yards from the tiny cottage and ordered a second glass of brandy and another large cigar.

  Tristram Bennett was the eldest son of Beatrice, daughter of Walter Colville, younger sister of Randolph and Cosmo. His parents had sent him to Harrow where he had one of those middling sort of school careers, middle of the class, middling in athletics, middling popular with his fellows. The one thing his contemporaries could have told you about him was that he had a passion, some might have called it a mania, for gambling. Tristram’s doting mama had great hopes of him entering the Church and rising through the lower ranks to become a bishop. He would look so handsome, she thought, in bishop’s robes and a mitre. Her husband put a stop to all that by repeating what Tristram’s housemaster had said, that of course the Church of England was a broad church which would take all manner of persons into its bosom, but a man who might take as the text for his sermon the list of runners and riders in the three-thirty at Sandown Park might not be welcomed with open arms. Beatrice took a violent dislike to the housemaster and continued her policy of secret subventions to her sons’s already generous allowance. It was decided that the Army might prove a better career than the Church Militant and Tristram joined the Blues and Royals. It might have been his charm, it might have been his good looks, it might have been the way those two qualities combined in his dashing uniform, but at this stage Tristram discovered he was very attractive to women. The ones dearest to his heart were the rich ones who would think nothing of helping him out with his gambling debts in return for his helping them into their beds.

  Just into his thirties now there was still no sign of a wife. Or rather, there were plenty of signs of wives, but they all belonged to other people. Tristram’s father wondered sometimes if the boy might never marry at all but turn into one of those ageing rakes who frequented the less reputable London clubs. His mother, devoted to the last, thought it was only a matter of time before Tristram marched up the aisle with a daughter of the aristocracy perhaps, or the daughter of some great trading concern with innumerable investments in the Funds.

  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 Chateau Figeac, a grand cru from Bordeaux with a delightful fragrance and gentleness of texture, an
d Chateau Gazin, a Pomerol from Bordeaux, grown next to the legendary Chateau 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 Cote 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 Cote 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 Fume 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 Fume. 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?’