‘I do have a plan of campaign, as a matter of fact. I think we should start with the Nuits St Georges they gave me the other day, before today’s delivery. Couple of sips of that and then compare it with the ones that came today.’
‘Capital!’ said Sir Pericles Freme and smiled broadly at Lady Lucy. Powerscourt was busy with the corkscrew. He poured three small helpings into their glasses. ‘To the Necromancer,’ he said, sipping at his wine. Sir Pericles took a small sip of his Nuits St Georges and spat expertly into his saucepan. He looked at Powerscourt like a man who cannot quite believe what he is tasting. ‘Would you both oblige me by taking another sip of this one you brought from the shop? I am somewhat confused.’
All three were served another small helping by Powerscourt acting as wine waiter. All three spat carefully into their saucepans. Lady Lucy suspected that the business of spitting wine into saucepans at one’s own dining table would not have met with her mother’s approval. She wondered which of the many words of disapproval in her mother’s wide vocabulary of words of disapproval would have been employed for the practice. Disagreeable? Demeaning? Unworthy? Vulgar? Common? Common, she decided, that would have been the adjective of choice. Sir Pericles, she noticed, looked like a man who has just been given an enormous and impossible piece of mental arithmetic.
‘I’ll be damned, Powerscourt! Excuse my language, Lady Lucy. Could you put the right cork back in that bottle? You have the right cork? Good. You see, I don’t think that this Nuits St Georges is a forgery at all. I think it’s the real thing. I’ll take it round to one or two people I know after we’ve finished here. It’s the rich taste, the body of the wine. I’m sure it’s real. Come, let us try one of the Nuits St Georges that came today.’ Sir Pericles examined the label with great care, even producing a small magnifying glass from his jacket pocket for a closer look. ‘They sometimes make silly mistakes with the labels, these forgers. We had some Chateau Margaux years ago labelled Chateau Margo, as if the spelling had been done phonetically. Last year, I remember, we had a large consignment of Chablis with the year 1909 on the label. Time travelling Chablis perhaps. I’m sure H.G. Wells would have enjoyed a bottle or two.’
Once again Powerscourt poured out three small glasses of the Necromancer’s burgundy. ‘Try to remember the taste of the one before,’ Sir Pericles said quickly before anybody drank. They took cautious sips of the wine.
‘What do you think, Lady Lucy?’ asked Sir Pericles ‘What do you make of it?’
‘Well,’ said Lucy, ‘it’s definitely not the same as the one before. But it’s not absolutely disgusting, though I thought I detected a faint hint of a nasty aftertaste. If you told me at a posh dinner at Whites Hotel that this was pre-phylloxera Nuits St Georges I’d probably believe you. I’ve only ever tasted one bottle of pre-phylloxera wine and that was a Chateau Lafite with my grandfather shortly before he died. I have to say I can’t remember the taste or the bouquet at all. Is that very bad of me?’
‘Not at all,’ said Sir Pericles, ‘perfectly normal. What about you, Powerscourt?’
‘I agree with Lucy,’ said Powerscourt loyally.
‘Let’s try one more red, one of the Bordeaux, I think. Then we’d better taste the Pouilly Fume you brought from the shop, Powerscourt. You’ve kept it separate from the others?’
Powerscourt pointed to a small cabinet by the wall where one bottle had been placed. He opened the Chateau Figeac from Bordeaux and poured a small amount into clean glasses.
‘Well,’ said Sir Pericles, ‘certainly not the real thing, but not bad, not bad at all. I suspect our friend has got hold of some cheaper claret from a lesser Chateau and diluted it with red from the Languedoc and maybe a shot of brandy. But I should say the fellow knows his blending well, how to mix the things up in the most convincing manner. Now then, last but not least, that Pouilly Fume, if you please.’
He sipped very slowly at his glass of white. This time he didn’t spit it out. ‘If I was a betting man,’ said Freme,’ I think I’d put money on this Pouilly Fume being the real thing. I think they were trying to confuse you.’ He finished his glass. ‘Lady Lucy, your thoughts?’
‘Delicious,’ she said, ‘absolutely delicious. We must order some for the cellar. You’re not going to tell me, Sir Pericles, that this one is a forgery?’
‘I’m not, it’s not,’ said Freme, ‘I think I’ll take that bottle away with me too, if I may. Our friend the Necromancer has not done badly, mind you. It’s easy to see how those dinners at Whites Hotel have kept going. I think I’d give him six or seven marks out of ten. Now then, this is my last word.’
He pulled a little notebook out of his pocket and began to read: ‘“White elder wine, very like sweet muscadine from southern France: Boil eighteen pounds of white powder sugar, with six gallons of water and two whites of egg well beaten; then skim it and put in a quarter of a peck of elder berries from the tree that bears white berries; don’t keep them on the fire. When near cold, stir it, and put in six spoonfuls of lemon juice, four or five of yeast and beat well into the liquor; stir it every day; put six pounds of the best raisins, stoned, into the cask and tun the wine. Stop it close and bottle in six months.”’
15
The Alchemist was fuming with rage. Ever since he arrived in London he had taken great care to defend his privacy. Nobody knew where he worked, the great space in the warehouse filled with bottles of every type and size, locks and bars on the doors. Now he and Septimus Parry had discovered that somebody calling himself Lord Francis Powerscourt and his tame tramp knew his identity and the place where he worked. The most important thing in the Alchemist’s life in London was his isolation, his solitary existence between his lodgings in north London and his bench at the warehouse in the docks. Parry had told him that he did not think Powerscourt was the man’s real name. Neither he nor Vicary Dodds believed a real lord would waste his time ordering pre-phylloxera wines that he suspected might be fakes before he even tasted them. The whole story about the elderly relative in darkest Somerset was, in Septimus’s view, a charade, a story that wasn’t true and wasn’t to be believed. Informed opinion at Piccadilly Wine reckoned the man called Powerscourt must be a government agent of some sort, come to check on the shipping manifests of the wine perhaps, or from one of the innumerable agencies that made it their business to raise taxes for the government.
The Alchemist was due to attend the opera that evening but he didn’t go. He was too upset and too angry, even for Wagner. Terrible fates unwound themselves in his mind, incarceration in the Tower perhaps, exiled to some other terrible prison, an English equivalent of Chateau d’If maybe, deportation to France where his earlier crimes would catch up with him. The Alchemist had learnt the rudiments of his trade in the back streets of Marseilles. They knew what to do with their enemies there, those tough little Corsicans, men from Bastia and Ajaccio and Calvi. One of them had even given him lessons in the use of the knife and the garrotte. The Alchemist had never thought he would need to employ these murderous techniques on his own account. Now, he thought, in a wet November in London, the time had come to defend his privacy and his honour.
Charles Augustus Pugh was seated at his desk in Gray’s Inn. His feet, for once, were on the ground, not resting on his desk. His hands were attending to some piece of paper rather than wrapped round the back of his neck.