‘And which of these deadly sins do you think might apply in this case, Francis?’ Lady Lucy began her question to her husband’s back as he reached the end of his pacing and finished it to his face as he turned round to head back towards the fireplace.
‘I think the silence is important, Lucy, I really do. I think it implies he was protecting somebody, that if he had to answer questions he would end up incriminating somebody, his mistress perhaps. The thing about silence is that there are no two ways about it. Even if he offered to tell just some of what he knows, once he started talking Cosmo Colville would probably find that he had to reveal everything.’
‘You don’t think it might have something to do with his brother, that he was protecting him in some way?’
‘Even after the brother was dead, do you mean? That would have to be some secret, Lucy, don’t you think? Maybe it all has to do with the business.’
‘I find it hard to believe that the wine business could be the reason for murder, Francis. Surely people don’t go round shooting each other in the heart because the claret’s gone off or the Nuits St Georges is corked again.’
‘Maybe there was a scandal waiting to come out. When you refer to the wine business in that way of course it’s hard to see it as a motive for murder. But the Colville business is huge. Think of it as money or as a disgrace that might finish the firm off and it could well be time for pistols in the afternoon. Johnny Fitzgerald is the only wine expert we know and he’s not back from Wales until tomorrow. And even Johnny would be happy to admit that his expertise is more in the consumption end of the trade than in the business side. Lucy, I think it’s time I extended my knowledge of burgundy and Bordeaux. I’m just going to pop into Berry Bros. amp; Rudd. After all, I have been buying wine from them for nearly twenty years.’
The man they called the Alchemist had moved a little table to sit underneath the window. He brought over an electric lamp to increase the visibility further still. On his table he placed three plain bottles with red wine in them and rather unusual labels. The left-hand bottle’s inscription read BX LG68 AG15. The second one said BX LG74 AG12, and the one on the right BX LG78 AG10. Very reverently, as if he was pouring the host at the communion rails in some place of alchemical worship, the man poured a small amount of the liquid from the first bottle into a glass. The Alchemist was humming to himself as he worked. Today it was the Drinking Song from La Traviata. He was very fond of the opera. He went as often as he could. He swirled the liquid round for a moment or two and then tasted it before spitting it out into a small bucket on the floor. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then made some notes in his large notebook. Each legend with the BX heading had a page to itself. When he had finished his tasting the Alchemist smiled a slow smile and replaced the corks in the bottles before placing them on a shelf. ‘They’re coming along well,’ he said out loud, addressing nobody in particular. Blending, the man often reminded himself, was the essence of wine making, as vital to its success as the grapes or the terroir of the vineyard. Was not Haut Brion itself, one of the finest clarets in the world, the result of careful blending? Only the Alchemist knew the secrets of the labels. LG68 meant that sixty-eight per cent of the liquid was composed of standard red vin ordinaire from the Languedoc, AG15 meant that fifteen per cent of it was red from Algeria, a red often referred to as the Infuriator. In the other bottles the mixtures were slightly different, the remaining percentages being composed of good quality claret. The BX at the beginning meant that a claret was being created here, far from the south-west of France and the elegant city of Bordeaux, in a dusty warehouse on London’s river. The wine would be bastard from birth.
Lord Francis Powerscourt was shown into a small library on the first floor of Berry Bros. amp; Rudd at 3 St James’s Street, opposite St James’s Palace and the London home of the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House. Powerscourt was fascinated by the contents of the glass-fronted bookshelves, most of them containing ancient bottles of wine rather than books.
‘Good day to you, Powerscourt,’ said a tall white-haired man of about fifty years, marching across the carpet like the guardsman he had once been to shake Powerscourt by the hand. George Berry had been Powerscourt’s principal point of contact here for all his years with the company, advising more on broad strategies of wine purchase rather than recommending particular bottles. ‘I trust Lady Lucy and the family are well?’
‘Splendid, thanks,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. He had always thought that George Berry with his military bearing, those clear blue eyes and a general impression of tidy competence would have made a perfect con man.
‘What can we do for you today, Lord Powerscourt? Some white burgundies perhaps? We have some splendid wines from Montrachet and Chablis this year.’
‘I want your advice, Berry, and I’m in rather a hurry. Please keep this to yourself but I’ve been asked to look into the Colville murder, the one up in Norfolk. Cosmo’s lawyers have asked me to see if I can come up with anything to help his case.’
‘You’re trying to get him off might be another way of putting it,’ said Berry. ‘What a terrible business. We knew the Colvilles, all of them. We were meant to go to that wedding, but family commitments put a stop to it. Pity, I’ve always wanted to see that house, Brympton Hall. How can I help you?’
‘I’m not quite sure how to put this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘There are all sorts of motives for murder, greed, jealousy, revenge, hatred. Some of those may have been swirling round the Colville business. I need somebody to advise me on the wine trade in general and the Colville companies in particular. Was there anything suspicious going on? Was a scandal about to break? Had they treated anybody or any other company particularly badly?’
George Berry walked over to his window and stared out into the street where a horse-drawn carriage seemed to be overtaking a wheezing motor car, smoke pouring from its bonnet. Powerscourt remembered that Berry’s favourite activity was playing golf at fashionable courses like Huntercombe or Royal St George’s, Sandwich. Men said that George Berry seldom lost. Powerscourt had always wondered what he drank in the bar at the end of a round. Did he have beer? Or did Berry Bros. amp; Rudd supply some of these golf courses with their finest wines for George Berry and his friends to sample after their eighteen holes?
‘I wish I felt able to help you myself,’ Berry said finally, turning back from his vigil at the window overlooking the dark grey palace with its red soldiers like toys in their sentry boxes, ‘but I don’t think my expertise, for what it’s worth, is what you are looking for. You see, we deal with what we like to think of as the more expensive end of the market, the leading hotels in the capital, ten or twelve Oxbridge colleges, most of the top London clubs, a large number of restaurants, and a considerable number of private clients who are interested in their wine and are happy to be advised by us. People like yourself, Lord Powerscourt. But we’re not dealing with the same sort of people as the Colvilles. The new middle class, as they’re often referred to these days, would not buy their wine from us, they would buy it from Colvilles or one of their rivals. I think I know the man you want, he’s got enormous experience in the wine trade. At the moment he is the chief wine buyer for the White Star Line. They sell all kinds of different wine from all kinds of different countries at all kinds of different prices in their ships. He could tell you straight off, I should think, what was a proper claret and what was made in a factory or a warehouse. I’ll give you a letter of introduction.’