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!
But when the figure came round the bend she saw it was only the vicar, come to open up the Church for evensong.
Lady Lucy had organized the Powerscourt dining room with considerable care. Three places were laid at the top end of the table nearest the hall. There were no knives or spoons, but half a dozen glasses, three for red wine and three for white, and a tumbler for water. By the side of each place was a large French saucepan for the participants to spit their wine into. Lady Lucy didn’t feel they were perfect, the large saucepans, but they would suffice. She wondered if somewhere in London you could buy special glasses for the special substances of the man they called the Necromancer. Francis had put the list of pre-phylloxera wines in the centre of the table.
As they took their places with Powerscourt at the head of the table, Sir Pericles on his right and Lady Lucy on his left, Freme was rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
‘I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this. So many times in my life I have drunk wine that I knew to be fake. Undrinkable stuff composed of water and raisins and elder berries from some slum in the East End, diluted claret, watered down with low-grade red from Languedoc brewed up in some warehouse in the south of France, unspeakable burgundy made with apple juice and brandy cooked up in a seedy cellar in Hamburg, I think I’ve seen them all. But to know every bottle is a fake before you start tasting, that is a great joy. Powerscourt, how to you intend to proceed?’