Death of a Wine Merchant (22 page)

‘Madame,’ said Powerscourt, ‘could you give us the name of the house where Yvette lives? We would like to hear her story for ourselves.’

‘I will take you to her myself,’ said Madame Drouhin. ‘You have been very kind to me, coming all this way with the unhappy information.’

A couple of moments later the strange party of three, the French widow, the Irish peer and his wife, were seated round Yvette’s kitchen table where Yvette was doing something culinary with a chicken. She was so mortified by her behaviour with the man she thought of as Madame Drouhin’s husband that she would hardly speak of it at all. It was Lady Lucy who solved the problem, narrating what she believed to have happened and asking Yvette to nod her head or to say yes in agreement. When they were past the dangerous rapids of the kissing Powerscourt asked her where her husband was now.

‘I do not know, monsieur. He went away after the events of that unhappy day and I have not seen him since.’

‘Has he gone back to the Army? Perhaps his leave was very short.’

‘I do not know, monsieur. He had not been in touch with me since that day.’

‘Really?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You don’t happen to know, madame, if your husband went over to England at all?’

‘Once again I just don’t know, monsieur. My Philippe is very impulsive, he is always changing his plans.’

‘And do you think he meant it when he said he was going to kill Monsieur Drouhin?’

‘Oh yes, I did believe it, he is a very violent man, my husband. He is perfectly capable of killing somebody. They teach you how to do those things in the Army. That is what armies are for, after all, killing people. May I ask you a question, monsieur? Do you know where my husband is? Do you know
where Madame Drouhin’s husband is? This is not a good time for wives in Givray, I think.’

Powerscourt smiled. ‘We do not know where your husband is. Madame’s husband, as she has suspected for some time, is dead. He was shot over in England. We are not sure who killed him. We have been hired to try to find out who the real murderer is. We think the police have arrested the wrong man and the trial is due to start any day now.’

Yvette grew pale. ‘So you think my husband went all the way to England and shot Monsieur Drouhin? That is what you are thinking, is it not?’

‘I have to tell you, madame,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that we have absolutely no idea who killed Monsieur Drouhin, no idea at all.’

Powerscourt took a surreptitious look at his watch. The afternoon was nearly over. The two women had been through enough strain and emotional upset for one day. Signed statements would have to wait until the morning. He hoped they weren’t going to miss the court case altogether.

‘Ladies, thank you so much for your assistance this afternoon. I would like to return in the morning. I would like to ask for further help concerning this forthcoming court case in England. It is obviously impossible for you to cross the Channel and attend the trial in person, but I will find a local lawyer and we can prepare statements summarizing your position for you to sign in his presence in the morning. That will be very helpful for our court case.’

‘The finest lawyer in Givray, monsieur, is Antoine Foucard whose offices are just up the street from here,’ said Madame Drouhin, pointing helpfully in the right direction.

Powerscourt bowed slightly. ‘In that case, may we thank you both for your time this afternoon, and, Madame Drouhin, our condolences once again on your sad loss.’

Ten minutes later the Powerscourts were on their way back to the hotel. The lawyer had proved a most accommodating young man who promised to meet them in the morning. He
said he would bring a copy of the marriage certificate for they had one on file in their offices. Powerscourt had said that he would bring prepared statements for the two women to sign. He thought it would save time.

Georgina Nash was completing her walk round the lake at the back of Brympton Hall. Every day for weeks past, whatever the weather, she had donned her wellingtons and set off with a couple of dogs for a trip up the road outside the house or a circuit of the lake. There was much on her mind. She still worried about the murder committed in her own house at her own daughter’s wedding those weeks before. She felt they had all been coarsened by it. It was, she thought sometimes in her more fanciful moments, as if they would never be clean again. She worried about Emily and her miraculous escape after the fling with Tristram. Georgina wasn’t sure that she herself would have chosen to marry Montague Colville, so decent, so well brought up, so stupid, so gullible that Emily had him plucked and trussed and ready at the altar less than six weeks after they met. She worried that Emily would get bored. Emily got bored very easily. She wondered about her husband Willoughby, so concerned that their position in Norfolk society might have taken a battering after weddings interrupted by gunshot. And she worried about the missing under footman William, gone from his post for days now, his cheerful face no longer on parade around the Hall. With every passing day she grew more certain that he was dead.

The dogs began barking furiously, shooting ahead of her and racing through the passageway to the long main drive in front of the house. They carried on barking and Georgina heard a voice talking to them now. It was a young man’s voice. He was obviously good with animals. Then she saw him. It was William, emerging from the gloom of a Norfolk dusk to return to his post at Brympton Hall. Georgina smiled with happiness and strode out to meet him. He was kneeling
down with the dogs, stroking them firmly. Georgina knew that she should be cross, angry, the scorned employer, but she couldn’t do it when she looked at the boy’s face. He had been crying and very recently too. She brought him into the drawing room and sent for some tea. William had never actually sat down in this room before.

‘William,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad to see you. I’m sure everybody here will be glad to have you back. But what happened? Why did you not send word? It’s days now you’ve been gone. We thought you might be dead.’

William pulled a crumpled telegram from his pocket and smoothed it out as best he could. ‘This came for me very early in the morning the day I left,’ he said. ‘Nobody else was about. Please read it. I don’t think I could read it again.’

‘Mother severely ill. Please come at once. Father.’ Georgina Nash read it to herself and looked up at the young man.

‘I was in such a state when I got that, I just rushed off. I know now I should have left a note. When I got home, my mother was very ill. There was some terrible influenza going round and she had caught it worse than most. The doctor told me he was so glad I had been able to come. He didn’t think she would last another twenty-four hours.’ William paused while a cup of tea was poured for him. He looked up into the reassuring face of the butler Charlie Healey.

‘William’s just been telling me about the terrible time he’s been having,’ Georgina Nash said to her butler. Charlie Healey smiled at William and withdrew.

William looked close to tears once more. ‘If you’d rather wait and tell me another time, I’m perfectly happy to do that,’ said Georgina.

‘No,’ said William gulping at his tea, ‘it’ll be bad whenever I tell you.’ He paused and looked up at a sumptuous Gainsborough of a previous chatelaine of Brympton, Lady Caroline Suffield. She too seemed to be smiling down at him.

‘Neither my father nor I knew exactly when she passed away, it must have been one or two in the morning. We
thought at first she’d just gone to sleep, she looked so peaceful, as if the pain had been taken away. Then she seemed to lose colour. Then we knew.’

Mrs Nash gave him another cup of tea. ‘I was so upset I never thought of sending word back here,’ William said sadly, ‘and there was so much to do what with the funeral and all. It was the next morning I sent the telegram here saying what had happened. Or at least I think I sent the telegram. I’d never sent one before and I got a bit confused in the post office about the money and that.’

‘It never got here,’ said Georgina Nash. ‘Never mind. The main thing is you’re safe now.’

‘I’ve nearly finished now,’ said the young man. ‘We had the funeral this morning and that was awful. It didn’t seem real, as if it were happening to somebody else. My father seemed to feel a bit better when it was over. “We’re through with it all now, thank God,” he said to me as I was leaving. “Your mother would want us all to get on with our lives.”’ William Stebbings stopped. ‘So here I am,’ he said and burst into tears once more. Georgina Nash comforted the young man as best she could. Then she hurried off to send word to her husband and telegraph to Powerscourt and Pugh to give them the good news.

‘What do you make of all that, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy as they rattled back towards Beaune.

‘It’s the only case I’ve ever come across with a bigamist at the heart of it,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Easy to see how he got caught, I suppose. I’m sure I leave bits of paper and letters hanging out of my pockets all the time. I shall have to be more careful in future. But it doesn’t look as if the bigamy killed him.’

‘Surely it did in a way,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘If he hadn’t been a bigamist he wouldn’t have been in France to come across the pretty young wife down the road. And if he hadn’t had
the tendencies of a bigamist he wouldn’t have carried on with her like that.’ Lady Lucy looked across at her husband and considered some of his qualities. Absent-minded, yes, sometimes selfish when on a case, yes, forgetful, yes, too interested in cricket, yes, bigamist or even capable of bigamy, absolutely not. ‘Do you think her husband the sergeant did it?’

‘We’ll have to ask her tomorrow where the husband is based. Then we can send a cable asking when he was there and when he wasn’t. Pretend for a moment, Lucy, that they now have women on juries. It’s a triumph for the suffragette cause. You’re on the jury trying Cosmo Colville. The defence come along with a story about a flirtation in France, a stolen kiss, a promise to kill our bigamist friend, who is indeed murdered. A Frenchman came to Norfolk, stayed overnight in a hotel the day before the wedding, set off in the morning to attend said nuptials. The contention of the defence is that Yvette Planchon’s husband was that hotel guest. He didn’t attend the wedding service in case he was noticed and remembered, but he managed to make his way into the house and kill Randolph before the wedding lunch. Would you believe it, Lucy?’

‘We come back to the gun, surely, Francis.’ Lady Lucy was frowning at her new responsibilities as a jurywoman. ‘How did the Frenchman get hold of the gun?’

‘There’s an answer to that, surely. Randolph remembers the death threat from this volatile French person. Randolph brings the gun in case the Frenchman turns up. But the point here is this, Lucy. Would you believe the story about the Frenchman from Burgundy? Or rather would you believe it enough not to believe in the prosecution version, if you see what I mean?’

‘I’m not sure, Francis. I’m not sure at all. I think I wouldn’t really believe either of them, which means I’d be for an acquittal, I suppose. The evidence against the Frenchman is pretty flimsy when you think about it. Nobody remembers actually seeing him at the wedding. It would be different surely if they
had. None of those people on the seating plan you wrote to remembered seeing a Frenchman either, did they?’

‘No, they didn’t, but I don’t think that’s conclusive. Nobody ever knows all the guests at weddings.’

‘One more question, Francis. Why did Randolph Colville change his name in France? Why didn’t he just carry on being Colville? There are plenty of English people with English names living in France after all.’

‘I don’t know the answer to that, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I can guess. Plenty of English people pass through Burgundy for one reason or another. Randolph Colville, they say to themselves? I was at school with the fellow. I’ve bought a lot of wine from him. I wonder how he’s getting on. Fancy him ending up here of all places. I’ll pop over and see him this evening. One or two of those and you’re finished. A visitor from the Home Counties – one is enough – reports back to his friends that he’s seen Randolph Colville in France when they saw him only last week at the races in Epsom. Too risky, I’d say. That’s why I think he changed his name.’

They had now reached their hotel. As they walked up the steps to the entrance they were greeted by a loud shout from a figure holding the largest glass of red wine that Powerscourt had ever seen.

‘Francis! Lucy! How very nice to see you!’ Looking completely unruffled from his hectic charge across France, Johnny Fitzgerald had come to pay his respects. There was a good deal of mutual embracing and kissing on both cheeks.

‘Johnny,’ said Powerscourt, ‘stay here a moment for me. Don’t move.’

He shot into the hotel and communed with the man at reception for some minutes.

‘Johnny,’ he said, returning to join his friend, ‘I hope you haven’t unpacked or anything.’

‘Course I haven’t unpacked yet,’ said Johnny, ‘I’m not a bloody butler, for God’s sake. What’s all this about, Francis?’

‘It is now six forty-five, my friend. At twenty minutes past seven the last Paris express stops in Beaune. There is a night train to Calais, for some reason. Most irregular but never mind.’

‘And why, pray, do I have to get on another train and then another one after that? I’ve only just got off the last one.’

‘While you fetch your bag, Johnny, I am going to write down for you the main points of what we have discovered here. It is most germane to the trial of Cosmo Colville. We don’t know when the trial starts. It could have started already. It is most important that Charles Augustus Pugh receives my note at the earliest possible moment. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat. It’s too sensitive to entrust it to the cable companies. The information could fall into the wrong hands. Lucy will go with you and tell you what we’ve found out while you fetch your bags.’

Five minutes later Johnny Fitzgerald was tucked up in another cab, bound for the station. The cabbie was astonished for it was the same man who had brought him from the station to the hotel less than an hour before. In his breast pocket he had two pages of Powerscourt’s finest handwriting with the details of their discoveries. He leant out of the window as he left, waving his enormous glass at them.