‘I’m sure the notion of honour, probably family honour, is a runner. But your theory worked on an assumption that women had nothing to do with it. I seem to remember you telling me that one of his relations said Randolph was a ladies’ man throughout his lifetime, before and after his marriage. Who might he have been carrying on with who could have brought dishonour and disgrace to his family? The wife of a Colville? The wife of a competitor? Some pretty twenty-year-old serving maid? Somebody whose lowly origins would have brought disgrace to the family? But how could that lead to his death? Unless he promised money, marriage and all that to the girl and then changed his mind. Then she shoots him. That’s no good at all, Powerscourt. It remains the very centre of this case, that little tableau in the state bedroom, Randolph lying dead on the floor, Cosmo sitting opposite him with a gun in his hand, refusing to speak. If we could unravel that we could get Cosmo off, but we can’t.’
Johnny Fitzgerald dropped into Markham Square late that afternoon. He refused all offers of tea. He had further news to report, though none of it, he would be the first to admit, likely to lead to an acquittal.
‘My first piece of news,’ he began, ‘has to do with the man we used to call the Necromancer.’
‘Used to call the Necromancer?’ Powerscourt cut in. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No, he’s not dead. I followed that Septimus Parry to a warehouse in Shadwell. Huge forbidding place, about six or seven floors. Maybe they’re all filled with fake wines. Anyway I was trying to listen at the door when they pulled me in. I was, thank God, a tramp for the afternoon, rather than myself. I had to confess to working for a Lord Francis Powerscourt every now and then, before they kicked me out. Literally. I’ve got a bloody great bruise on my leg. The thing is he’s not called Necromancer at all. He’s called the Alchemist. He was very cross that his fakery had been discovered. He uttered some dire threats against you, Francis.’
‘He’ll get over it,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m not too worried about a few threats from a forger. He’ll probably find another corner of another warehouse tomorrow, I shouldn’t wonder. What news of Colvilles, Johnny?’
‘I think I’ve finally discovered what all the young men there are frightened of,’ Johnny said, stretching himself out full-length on a Powerscourt sofa. ‘They think the firm is going to go bust. It was bad enough, they said, with Randolph and Cosmo alive. Neither of them ever paid very much attention to the future. Their main concern was that things should go on as they had done in the past. But now they’re both gone, there’s nobody with any grip left in the place. There’s an old general manager who’s apparently no use to anybody at all. There’s a young relation called Tristram who tried to move into Randolph’s shoes and Randolph’s office recently but he was more interested in going out to lunch than he was in the business. He’s cleared off now. What they should do is to advertise for a first rate man from one of the other wine merchants and pay him handsomely to drag Colvilles back from the brink. One of the young men told me the place was running on collective memory, nothing else.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that any of the young men had any information about dark secrets that might lie beneath the surface?’
Johnny Fitzgerald shook his head. ‘I tried them all, all the bad words. Family rows, blackmail – I went on and on about blackmail – adultery, mistresses, fallen women. None of them registered. One of them told me they were too far from the centre to pick up any of that, and he was probably right.’
Johnny looked sternly at the cupboard in the centre of the opposite wall. That was where the Powerscourt wine usually dwelt. But the doors were firmly closed today.
‘I think they may be a bit naughty, the Colvilles,’ he said, ‘but probably not any naughtier than everybody else.’
‘What sort of crimes are they up to, Johnny?’ asked Lady Lucy, very aware of the keen interest her guest was taking in the closed cupboard by the wall.
‘Bit loose with the labels was what my man said. Stuff comes up in a wine train from the south, wagon after wagon full of cheap Languedoc red, gets bottled in Dijon or Beaune and then labelled as Bourgogne Cuvee or some such name. Much more expensive now. My man says everybody’s doing it. This chap, he comes from Beaune by the way, had another story to tell. The Colvilles have a very close relationship with a man called Thevenet, Louis Thevenet, a grower in the Maconnais to the south of Beaune. He’s rather a whiz at wine making, our Louis, and when he produces a really cracking wine every two or three years the Colvilles buy the lot, get out the labels again and call it Meursault, which sells for more than four times the price of the Macon. It all adds up. They’ve also bought up a large parcel of land just inside the official boundary of Puligny Montrachet. Clean the land up, plant your vines, wait for them to grow and then you’ve got your very own world-class white wine at world-class prices. And there’s one other thing I’ve got to report. I’ve found the pub in St John’s Wood where the Colville servants drink. It’s called the Jolly Cricketers, oddly enough. I tried the subject of family rows in there two nights running and got absolutely nowhere. They’re not saying a word.’
‘All this fiddling about with the wines, it’s still not enough to kill for,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if he would ever get to the bottom of the mystery of two brothers, one dead and unable to speak, one alive and refusing to speak, and one gun which took the life of the elder.
Johnny Fitzgerald looked at his watch and sprang to his feet. ‘Francis, Lady Lucy, forgive me, I’m going to be late. I’ve got to go to a meeting with my publishers about the bird book. Bloody man said he’d found a problem with it.’
Half an hour later Johnny’s place in the Powerscourt drawing room was taken by the dapper figure of Sir Pericles Freme, dropped by in a hurry, as he put it, to impart one piece of important news and one rather odd piece of gossip.
‘The important thing,’ he began, checking that the crease on his trousers was still immaculate, ‘is this. Colvilles are in danger of going broke, going out of business. The business hasn’t been run properly for a long time. It’s going to seed really, like a field that hasn’t been cared for in years. Pity, really. In their day they were a fine business.’
Powerscourt wondered how impending bankruptcy might provide a motive for murder but he couldn’t see it.
‘Could anything save them? The return of Cosmo maybe? A general increase in levels of thirst in the population at large?’
Sir Pericles smiled. ‘Fresh management might do the trick. A substantial injection of funds might keep them afloat but they’d still have to put their house in order.’
‘And the gossip, Sir Pericles?’ asked Powerscourt hopefully. He had known many cases where the gossip had been more useful than the facts in solving the mystery.
‘Simply this,’ replied Freme. ‘That chap from Beaune, the one who looked after the Colville interests and has since disappeared, dammit, I’ve forgotten the fellow’s name.’
‘Drouhin,’ said Powerscourt, ‘Jean Pierre Drouhin.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Sir Pericles. ‘Anyway, it seems the fellow is completely ambidextrous, able to sign his name with both hands, write at the same time on both sides of a notebook, all kinds of tricks. Just thought I’d mention it.’
With that Sir Pericles departed into the night.