Death of a Delft Blue

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dinner with Bernardo

‘… and your Family I thank God is very well, and I hope a little time will put an end to this troublesom Affaire…’

Samuel Pepys

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Bernardo and Gavin met at a pub in the City, but Bernardo soon suggested that they should adjourn.

‘My mamma says you want to talk to me,’ he said, ‘and that it is police business. Why don’t I give you dinner somewhere? Then we can discuss matters.’

‘Very good of you,’ said Gavin. ‘I agree that perhaps our business might be better talked over at table, preferably in a crowded sort of place where everybody is intent on his own business. I have my car.’

‘Good,’ said Bernardo. ‘It is unfashionable, I know, but I don’t drive much in Town.’

No table had been booked, as the invitation had been issued on the spur of the moment, but Bernardo appeared to be persona grata with the head waiter and a place was found for them in a crowded grill-room which formed part of the basement of a popular hotel not far from Piccadilly Circus.

Bernardo was a smooth and excellent host and Gavin began to enjoy himself. The case, he was certain by now, was a push-over, but he was canny and careful and did not want to leave any loopholes. Over the hors-d’oeuvres (Bernardo) and his own choice (hare soup) the conversation was polite and general, but when the turbot with Hollandaise sauce had been cleared and a Burgundy substituted for the Barsac, Bernardo got down to business.

‘So the police are after me,’ he said, with his charming smile. ‘Exactly why?’

‘If the police were really after you,’ said Gavin, ‘I should not be accepting your hospitality. One of our old-fashioned but reassuring rules. There are just a few things I would like you to tell me, but that is all. First, what is your attitude towards your cousin, Florian Colwyn-Welch?’

‘My attitude? I don’t really know. I’m engaged to be married to his sister and I don’t think he likes the idea.’

‘Why is that?’

‘He’s inclined to be a sort of member of the Hitler Youth, I think — i.e. a bit anti-Semitic. Then, too, apart from the fact that it’s obvious he doesn’t want her to marry me, I don’t think he wants Binnie to marry at all. Fortunately she takes this attitude mostly as a big joke. She isn’t very intelligent, I’m afraid.’

‘And you don’t find a lack of intelligence a drawback? It doesn’t irritate you, I mean?’

Bernardo hesitated while the waiter poured a little wine into his glass. He sniffed and tasted, as a matter of form, (the wine cellar at the hotel was a noted one), and then replied:

‘There are too many intelligent women in our family. A good-natured fool will be a most pleasant change. Besides, Binnie, apart from possessing fewer brains than our average, is a restful sort of person. She doesn’t make demands on one, she is cheerful and practical and, in contrast to Florian, she’s extroverted to a most refreshing degree. Of course, she’s apt to giggle, but I don’t mind that at all.’

‘Right. Let’s go back to Colwyn-Welch. Do you know why his granduncle quarrelled with him?’

‘Oh, yes. The old man told me. After all, my grandmother, my father and I are all concerned in the marketing of diamonds. There are times when the trade takes precedence even of family affairs. To be in diamonds is to be in love. Everything else is secondary. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Florian (whose allowance from grandpapa has never been spectacularly generous, and whose prospects suffered an eclipse when I became engaged to Binnie), light-fingered some of the old man’s best diamonds — those he kept in the house — and, like the ass he is, let himself be found out. Well, you might get away with murder where a diamond-merchant is concerned, but not with half-inching his pebbles. There was the father and mother of a row and Florian was cast into outer darkness.’

‘But he has been reinstated, as I understand it. How did that come about?’

‘Well, grandpapa took me into his confidence, so my mamma and I talked turkey to him. My Dutch sense of justice took precedence, for once, over my Jewish instinct for hanging on to a good thing so long as it was honestly come by. Mamma was particularly forthright, and was heavily backed by uncles Derde and Sweyn. Florian, of course, is popular in the family.’

Gavin looked up from the roast beef and Yorkshire he had chosen.

‘With every member of it?’ he asked. Bernardo smiled and addressed himself to saddle of mutton and brussels sprouts.

‘Well, with every member except, possibly, my aunt Ruby, my papa and myself,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because it seems fairly certain that while he was in exile in Derbyshire, somebody attempted to poison him with a piece of chocolate-cream which, the evidence indicates, was sent to him from Holland.’

‘I see,’ said Bernardo. He sipped his wine. ‘Yes, indeed.’

‘You read about the two unfortunate girls who were handed the fatal dose?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

The two men ate and drank without speaking during the next few minutes. Gavin was wondering how best to frame another question. He glanced at the Byronic profile and decided upon the direct approach. Bernardo was no hysterical Narcissus, but a well-balanced worldling, older in poise and maturity than his twenty-six years might suggest.

‘Well, it’s like this,’ he said. ‘I have details of Mr van Zestien’s latest will. It is clear that if young Colwyn-Welch could be liquidated, more than one member of the family would stand to gain a pretty substantial sum.’

Bernardo, forestalling the waiter, topped up the wineglasses.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Even, let us say, an eighth share of grandpapa’s worldly goods would be well worth having. So you think Grand-aunt Binnen or Aunts Opal and Ruby, or, failing them, Uncle Derde and/or Uncle Sweyn, sent poor old Florian a lethal dose, do you?’

‘Such things have been known before,’ said Gavin. There was a longer pause this time. They cleared their plates.

‘Yes,’ said Bernardo, leaning back, ‘but there’s one thing you’ve left out of your calculations. I’ll have pheasant,’ he added to the waiter. ‘Same for you, Gavin?’

Gavin thanked him, and then said,

‘I think I know what you mean. You mean that the position of those members of the family you have mentioned would be exactly the same if you, and not Colwyn-Welch, were liquidated.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Which brings me to my next point. Have you ever had any reason to suppose that an attempt, however misdirected, has been made on your life?’

Bernardo inspected his portion of pheasant and pushed aside the game chips with which it was garnished. He poured out more wine.

‘No,’ he said. ‘For one thing, I’ve never thought about it, so, of course, I haven’t suspected anything. But I’m perfectly certain I’ve never been in the slightest danger. Apart from anything else, you see, to do me in would be to deprive poor little Binnie of the chance of becoming wife to a comparatively wealthy man. My parents and my very formidable grandmother are far from poor, and what with my expectations there, and a half-share in grandpapa’s leavings — if you see what I mean—’

‘Yes, I do see. What else do you deduce?’

‘Well,’ said Bernardo, ‘all I can see is that the money may have nothing to do with it. I suppose…’ he hesitated.

‘You’re going to suggest to me that perhaps the deaths of those two girls were not, after all, accidental, aren’t you? You’ve been wondering whether the poisoned chocolate-cream went where it was intended to go. But that would implicate Colwyn-Welch to the hilt. He admits he gave them the sweet-stuff.’

‘I’ve always thought Florian had nine lives,’ said Bernardo, with apparent irrelevance, ‘but I can’t see him doing in barmaids and such, unless he’d got them into trouble. He hadn’t, had he?’

‘Nobody had. The post-mortem settled that.’

‘Odd, in these indiscriminate, lax and experimental times. Well, where has the conversation got us?’ He polished off the last of the pheasant, again pushed the game chips aside and added, ‘Why will they serve up these nasty little bits of wooden potato? Does anybody bother to eat them?’

‘I don’t think the conversation has got us very far,’ said Gavin. ‘We can’t even be sure, beyond possibility of doubt, that the chocolate-cream wasn’t purchased over here. Plenty of Dutch chocolate is imported. We tried all the local shops about and around the area — a pretty wide area, too — but, of course, it could have been bought in London.’

‘London? I see. That could bring my immediate family into the picture, and, of course, myself.’

‘Or you could have bought the stuff in Amsterdam or Rotterdam and sent it to Colwyn-Welch in Derbyshire. You visit Holland pretty frequently in connection with your job?’

‘I do, yes.’ He looked politely interested and not at all apprehensive.

‘Did you — were you accustomed to visit Mrs Colwyn-Welch and her daughters when you were there?’

‘Oh, I usually looked in on them. They expected it, you know.’

‘Did you ever see a cylinder from a barrel-organ lying about in their apartment?’

‘A cylinder from a barrel-organ?’

‘Yes, one of those things with holes in them (I think) which makes the tunes when the fellow turns the handle, or, in this case (so my wife tells me), the big wheel.’

‘Oh, so that’s what it was!’

‘What what was?’

‘Why, the last time I was there, Aunt Ruby pushed a cardboard box on to me and asked me to throw it into the canal. She said she had broken something belonging to Aunt Opal (of whom, as I’ve always known, she’s scared stiff). She said that, if time elapsed before Aunt O. discovered her loss, it would be all right, but if the sad remains were left lying about waiting to be disposed of by the authorities, there might be the devil to pay. She mentioned a tigress bereft of her cubs, I remember — all this in Dutch, which my mamma has brought me up to speak and to understand, but the speed of Aunt R’s delivery made mostly nonsense of her arguments. Still, I got the main points.’

‘And where is the cylinder now? Did you throw it into the canal?’

‘I did not. I shouldn’t think the authorites encourage people to throw their rubbish into the canals. Anyway, I didn’t risk it. I left it under a seat at the airport. It may be there still, for all I know.’

‘And you didn’t know what was in the parcel?’

‘No. Aunt Opal’s household gods wouldn’t interest me. I walked out with the parcel under my arm and nobody asked any questions, so that was that. Why, is the cylinder important?’

‘I don’t know. My wife and Dame Beatrice seemed to think it had some kind of special significance, but I don’t pretend to guess what kind it would be, if any.’

‘Going back a bit—’ said Bernardo — ‘I’ll have cheese and celery, waiter. What for you, Gavin? A sweet or an ice or something?’

‘Angels on horseback, please. Yes, going back a bit?’

‘This suggestion that one of us may have bought the chocolate-cream in London. Well, I admit we could have done, but I don’t think any of us knew that Florian had gone into Derbyshire.’

‘According to my information, Professor Derde or Professor Sweyn van Zestien must have known, and it is possible that Miss Opal Colwyn-Welch knw it, too — or even Miss Ruby.’

‘Oh, did they?’ said Bernardo. He selected a piece of celery with considerable care. ‘Did they?’ he repeated. ‘So, if all four of them knew, one of them could have told me. Is that it? And now, what shall we drink with our coffee?’