14

After three days Tristram Bennett tired of being the replacement for his murdered cousin Randolph. Life as a wine merchant was not quite what he had expected. Tristram had imagined that Colville retainers would appear at regular intervals throughout the day, bringing tea or coffee or drinks. They did not appear. Instead a wide variety of messengers appeared with things for him to read, things for him to sign, people in the trade he must talk to. These conversations did not go easily. For although Tristram had absorbed a certain amount about the wine business in his time with the firm, he was not capable of an opinion on the likely vintage quality in Burgundy or whether they should change shippers for the delivery of their Sancerre. To all difficult questions he told his visitors he would get back to them. He rather wished he could return to his undemanding position in East Anglia.

He wondered what to do about Emily Colville. If Tristram was going to continue his affair, he would have to find a house or a flat to rent close to Emily’s place in Barnes. He knew she would never yield to him in the house she shared with her husband. In Norfolk the rent on the little cottage with the thatched roof had been tiny. In London it would be rather more, but he knew he did not dare mention money to Emily or she would accuse him of putting gold before love. This, in fact, was a proposition that Tristram would gladly have subscribed to, even if not in female company.

It was the formal invitation that finished his incipient career as a wine merchant. It came shortly before lunch on the third day. It was an invitation to the Annual Dinner of the Wine Merchants and Vintners Society of London, to be held in the Vintners Hall in the City. Formal Dress, it said on the bottom line. Tristram was no puritan in questions of food and drink, but he could imagine the whole scene. Row upon row of tables bedecked with flowers and bottles of wine. The men, all in their fifties and sixties, balding, braying and boasting about their wine business or their wives or their children, growing redder and redder as the evening went on, progressing from the colour of rose to the colour of beetroot. And then the speeches! All too long, all too pompous, all too self-obsessed, all too vain. Whatever else the wine business might hold, this was not for Tristram. He did tell Davis before he left for his club in the middle of his last afternoon that Randolph’s position was not for him. He was going back to Norfolk.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was going to the west London suburb of Ealing on the Piccadilly line. He was thinking as he went about the links between the Necromancer in his warehouse, if that, indeed, was where he lived, Whites Hotel and Piccadilly Wine where he proposed to call later in the day. He found the history of these strange wines, real or faked, absolutely fascinating and he knew he would follow the story with great interest. But for the life of him he could not see how it might lead to murder. Faked wines would easily lend themselves to blackmail. The announcement that Colvilles or Piccadilly had been trafficking in these illicit substances would be bad for a day or two. But a sensible firm would quickly put out a statement that a bad apple had been identified and removed, that business was returning to normal and the loyal customers who had been with Colvilles or Piccadilly all these years could sleep easy in their beds as all Colville wines were now genuine.

Thomas Colville opened the door of 27 Inkerman Avenue in person. He was in his late forties or early fifties with a great beard and a handlebar moustache.

‘Good morning to you, Lord Powerscourt, welcome to 27 Inkerman Avenue. The battle may be long over but the house still stands!’ He laughed lightly at his own joke. ‘Come in and sit down, I’ll rouse Ethel up from wherever she’s hiding!’

A few minutes later they were all seated comfortably in the Colville parlour with prints of famous racehorses on the walls, drinking Ethel’s tea and eating Ethel’s biscuits. ‘You must ask whatever you want, Lord Powerscourt. Randolph and Cosmo might not be my very best friends but I wouldn’t wish their fate on anybody.’

‘I think you knew them as children, Mr Colville. What were they like then?’

‘Pretty bloody, if the truth be told,’ said Thomas Colville. ‘The adults all thought that three cousins roughly the same age should get on together and play nicely, as they used to put it. How little did they know!’

‘What happened, Mr Colville?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘There was a lot of bullying, hair pulling, kicking, various forms of physical and mental torture, really. The odd thing is that Randolph didn’t seem to have any moral sense at all. He thought this kind of behaviour was perfectly normal and that he was only exercising his God-given rights in carrying on like this.’

‘What about Cosmo? Did he take the same view as Randolph?’

‘Well, he was more normal, if I can put it like that. I think he knew the difference between right and wrong. He would tell Randolph every now and then to stop what he was doing.’

‘If it was all so grim, why didn’t you tell your parents? They could have stopped you going to the Colvilles, surely.’

‘You know what small boys are like, Lord Powerscourt. My parents were too much in awe of their richer relations to dare take me away.’

‘So what happened when the two others went away to school?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Life must have been somewhat easier then.’

‘During term-time it was, but the holidays were worse, much worse. Randolph had come across all kinds of bullying at school so he simply brought the techniques home with him. I was hung up on trees in the garden. The two of them took great pleasure holding me upside down and forcing my head in the lavatory bowl and then flushing it. Any animals or insects they could catch were given a hard time – birds had their wings pulled off, butterflies cut in two, that sort of thing.’

‘Great God!’ said Powerscourt. ‘How dreadful. Could I ask you, Mr Colville, why it was after all this humiliation that you went to work for the family firm? Surely you must have known that there might well be more grief, years more grief from these two.’

‘Once a Colville, always a Colville,’ said Thomas with a smile. ‘My parents wanted me to join the firm. They still suffered from the illusion that Randolph and Cosmo and I got on very well. So they thought I would be well looked after and would prosper in the business.’

‘Not so?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Not well looked after? Not prospering?’

‘Very little prospering,’ said Thomas, ‘very little indeed. You see, the one thing I had always shown an aptitude for was maths. Adding up, dividing, algebra, all those equations with 2x + 4 = 3y – 2 were all meat and drink to me. So I asked to work in the accounts department. Randolph, who had manoeuvred himself into a position where he was in charge of my future, sent me to the bottling plant instead. When I’d learnt all there was to know there I applied for a transfer, to the accounts department, naturally. This time I was sent to the labelling section and very boring it was too. After ten or twelve years I’d been round every department bar one, and that was where they did the sums.’

‘And what was Cosmo doing while all this was going on? Was he aiding and abetting his brother?’

‘That’s the curious thing,’ said Thomas. ‘As Randolph turned into more and more of a bully, Cosmo became a more normal member of the human race. He wasn’t Francis of Assisi or anything like that but he was decent and kind and sometimes considerate.’

‘Before we talk about why you left, Mr Colville, could I ask if you were the only one singled out for horrible treatment by Randolph? Or were there others?’

‘I was not alone. No, sir. There were plenty more singled out for bullying, some of it much worse than what I received.’

‘Could I ask Mrs Colville how she coped with all these difficult times?’ said Powerscourt.

‘We got through, Lord Powerscourt. We got through. There were times when I just wanted to walk into the Head Office and tell everybody I saw what a brute Randolph Colville was.’

‘You left, Mr Colville, ten years ago, I think. Do you keep up with any of the people you knew when you were working for the firm?’

‘One or two close friends, that’s all. Oddly enough there’s one chap come to work in the brewery where I do the accounts, Fuller’s in Chiswick. But I hear bits and pieces every now and then.’

‘I want to ask you both a question, and I want you to think very carefully about the answer. Do you think that the bullying could get so bad that somebody might decide to kill Randolph?’

Thomas ate a couple of biscuits and then a couple more. It was Ethel who answered first.

‘I do think it is possible, Lord Powerscourt. I think Thomas is a fairly even-tempered sort of man in spite of everything he has had to put with. But if you were a redhead with a temper, like my younger brother, you could well decide to kill him. I just wonder about the timing, though. If he had been really horrible to you, and you had a gun to hand somewhere in the offices, you could go and kill him in a fit of fury, so incensed you scarcely knew what you were doing. But leave the office, take a train to Norfolk, get your hands on a gun, I’m not sure. I think common sense would intervene somewhere along the way.’

‘I think what you say is very sensible, Ethel,’ said Thomas Colville, ‘but I’ve been trying to remember exactly how I felt after some of these outrages. I think there are, maybe, different sorts of anger. There’s the hot anger Ethel was talking about but there’s also a kind of cold anger which can last for days or weeks. I’m sure there were times when I could have got on the Norfolk train and killed Randolph Colville.’

‘You’ve both been very honest with me,’ said Lord Powerscourt. ‘Could I ask you one last favour? If you or your friends can think of anybody who might have gone to kill Randolph, could you let me know? I would be most grateful.’

As Powerscourt left, Thomas Colville handed him a bottle of beer. Fuller Smith and Turner, 1845, it said on the label. ‘This is the beer from the place where I work now,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s a bloody sight better than any of the rubbish you can buy in Colvilles off-licences!’

Emily Colville enjoyed the secrecy involved in meeting her lover. Now she had escaped the boring and the humdrum into the mysterious world of romance. Her cab took her from Norwich station, the blinds tightly closed in case she should meet her relations, and round the back of Brympton Hall to the tiny cottage in the woods behind the lake. It looked as though it came from a fairy tale with a round shape and a thatched roof on the top. From such a place elves or fairies might have ventured forth to dance in the woods at midnight, lit by the moon and the stars.

Emily took out her key and settled in the tiny living room to wait for her lover. She busied herself with preparing a fire, for the tiny cottage was cold from lack of use. Her heart sang as she carried in the logs and began arranging them in the grate. Surely, this was real life. Surely this was far better then organizing tiresome elements of domestic duty, asking the servants to polish the spoons or checking that there were enough pillowcases in the linen cupboard. She checked her watch and remembered the picture of ‘Shine On Harvest Moon’ on the front of the sheet music, the code that had brought her here. He must come soon. Emily had brought the sheet music with her. It sat in a heap of other popular songs by the window. The code was very simple. Emily thought she should offer it to the Foreign Office where she was sure they had need of codes and ciphers of every description in the intelligence war with the Germans. The code was based on the musical keys. A meant Monday, B meant Tuesday, C meant Wednesday and so on. Flat meant morning and sharp meant afternoon. It was such a lovely secret. Emily liked secrets. She was the only person in the country who knew the secret behind Tristram’s mild blackmail of Randolph Colville and she was never going to tell that to anybody.

Tristram Bennett, the man Emily was waiting for, was in no hurry to find his lady. Keep them waiting, that was his motto. After the first success, Tristram believed, the women would be more ardent if they had to sit around wondering if he was ever going to come. So he stretched his legs out in the front parlour of the Nelson Arms a couple of hundred yards from the tiny cottage and ordered a second glass of brandy and another large cigar.

Tristram Bennett was the eldest son of Beatrice, daughter of Walter Colville, younger sister of Randolph and Cosmo. His parents had sent him to Harrow where he had one of those middling sort of school careers, middle of the class, middling in athletics, middling popular with his fellows. The one thing his contemporaries could have told you about him was that he had a passion, some might have called it a mania, for gambling. Tristram’s doting mama had great hopes of him entering the Church and rising through the lower ranks to become a bishop. He would look so handsome, she thought, in bishop’s robes and a mitre. Her husband put a stop to all that by repeating what Tristram’s housemaster had said, that of course the Church of England was a broad church which would take all manner of persons into its bosom, but a man who might take as the text for his sermon the list of runners and riders in the three-thirty at Sandown Park might not be welcomed with open arms. Beatrice took a violent dislike to the housemaster and continued her policy of secret subventions to her sons’s already generous allowance. It was decided that the Army might prove a better career than the Church Militant and Tristram joined the Blues and Royals. It might have been his charm, it might have been his good looks, it might have been the way those two qualities combined in his dashing uniform, but at this stage Tristram discovered he was very attractive to women. The ones dearest to his heart were the rich ones who would think nothing of helping him out with his gambling debts in return for his helping them into their beds.

Just into his thirties now there was still no sign of a wife. Or rather, there were plenty of signs of wives, but they all belonged to other people. Tristram’s father wondered sometimes if the boy might never marry at all but turn into one of those ageing rakes who frequented the less reputable London clubs. His mother, devoted to the last, thought it was only a matter of time before Tristram marched up the aisle with a daughter of the aristocracy perhaps, or the daughter of some great trading concern with innumerable investments in the Funds.

Tristram’s job was as East Anglia development manager for the family firm of Colville. He was to seek out possible areas of expansion for the company. So far Tristram had enjoyed only limited success. He had persuaded Fakenham Racecourse to make Colvilles their chief supplier of wines and spirits. Recommending the change to the Committee the Secretary told them that Tristram had lost so much money gambling at the racecourse that losing his custom would cause an outcry if not a revolt among the bookmaking fraternity. He had similar success with the Norfolk Club, a rather stuffy establishment in Upper King Street, Norwich where gentlemen were encouraged to play cards for money on Fridays and Saturdays. Once again the size of his losses was instrumental in obtaining the commission.

Now it was time to go. Tristram finished his cigar and strolled down the road to Emily’s cottage. He was glad to see she had bothered to light a fire.

‘Tristram,’ she said, looking at him carefully, ‘you’re so late. I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you’d forgotten.’

‘How could I forget you?’ said Tristram, taking her in his arms. ‘That simply wouldn’t be possible.’

‘I haven’t seen you since before my wedding, Tristram. You didn’t come. Why was that?’

‘I thought I might spoil it for you,’ said Tristram, who had, in fact, spent Emily’s wedding day in the arms of a rich widow in Cromer.

Emily thought of saying that he had spoiled her wedding already but she desisted. It wouldn’t do to upset Tristram, he could turn very moody. ‘How long have you got here today? How is business?’

Tristram propelled her gently up the stairs. ‘I’ve got plenty of time today, Emily, and in a minute I’m going to tell you the latest news on the problems of the Colville family. After all, you’re part of us now.’

Early the same afternoon Powerscourt presented himself at the offices of Piccadilly Wine once more. He thought a villainous-looking tramp winked at him from across the street but he couldn’t be sure. Vicary Dodds was still pursuing the firm’s numbers through his account books and Septimus Parry was making notes about recent vintages in Bordeaux. ‘Lord Powerscourt,’ said Septimus, ‘how good to see you again. Now then, somewhere here is a list of the pre-phylloxera wines we propose to marry up with your own list for your elderly relative’s celebration. He’s still well, I take it? Not succumbing to the flu or anything like that? Brain still working normally? Able to stand up unaided?’

Powerscourt knew from this inquiry that Septimus believed the aged relation in the depths of Somerset was an invention, a Bunbury. He produced a sheet of paper with his requests. ‘Now then,’ Septimus said, ‘let’s see, you’d like some Bordeaux. We don’t offer much choice on these occasions. We do have Chateau Figeac, a grand cru from Bordeaux with a delightful fragrance and gentleness of texture, and Chateau Gazin, a Pomerol from Bordeaux, grown next to the legendary Chateau Petrus. From Burgundy you would like the old gentleman’s favourite Nuits St Georges and Aloxe Corton from the village of that name at the northern end of the Cote de Beaune, we can supply both of those. White burgundy you would like, well, we have some Meursault from one of the bigger villages in the Cote d’Or and Puligny Montrachet, two of the most famous wine names in the world, and we can throw in a Sancerre and a Pouilly Fume from the Loire Valley, if you like. If those seem agreeable to you we need to know the quantities for each bottle and we shall send you the bill after the wines have been enjoyed, not before.’

Powerscourt marked a number next to each type of bottle asking for two of everything on offer except for four of the Nuits St Georges and four of the Puligny Montrachet.

Septimus handed him another sheet with details of the normal offerings of Piccadilly Wine for him to take home. ‘The pre-phylloxera ones should be ready tomorrow. We’ll send them round to your house,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime, let us present you with a sample.’ Parry bent down behind his desk and came up with a couple of bottles. ‘We thought these might whet you appetite, Lord Powerscourt, pre-phylloxera Nuits St Georges and pre-phylloxera Pouilly Fume. I hope you enjoy them.’

Septimus Parry watched Powerscourt walk to the end of the street and turn left towards Chelsea.

‘I wonder what he wants,’ he said, ‘the man who calls himself Lord Powerscourt. Do you think that’s his real name, Vicary?’

‘I don’t think that’s his real name for a moment,’ said Vicary. ‘If you were a Lord Powerscourt, even an Irish peer Lord Powerscourt, what on earth are you doing grubbing around in the world of pre-phylloxera wine? The man must be an impostor. We’d better watch our step, Septimus.’

‘Even the Customs wouldn’t investigate a suspicious business with a man pretending to be a peer,’ said Septimus. ‘But he’s going to get a shock when he opens the bottles, our fraudulent friend. I took the labels off and put some of ours on instead. But what he thinks is going to be fake pre-phylloxera wine isn’t going to be anything of the kind. They may not be pre-phylloxera, but they’re the oldest bottles of those two wines from one of London’s oldest wine merchants. When Lord Powerscourt and his friends get the corkscrew working they’ll find they’re drinking Justerini amp; Brooks’ finest. That should confuse them just a bit.’

A few moments after Powerscourt’s departure Septimus Parry stepped out briskly into the London streets to deliver the order. His mind was too busy to notice the stooped figure of the tramp with the dirty hair who followed him fifty yards behind. As Septimus boarded a Bakerloo line train going south at Piccadilly Circus the tramp was two carriages away, looking closely at the exits when the train pulled in at a station. At Embankment Septimus changed on to the District and Circle line, again pursued by the faithful tramp. Johnny thought he knew the general area they were going to now. It seemed unlikely to him that wine forgers would be operating in the heart of the City of London. Their terrain would be further east, somewhere in the sprawling docks. They passed Tower Hill. The tramp almost missed Septimus alighting rapidly from his train at Shadwell but he caught sight of him half a minute later striding up one side of Shadwell Basin, and disappearing into an enormous warehouse on Newlands Quay.

The inevitable seagulls were performing their ritual pavane around the shipping in the basin. Men could be seen loading and unloading different-sized vessels. The enormous warehouse betrayed no sign of ownership. It was six storeys high and had small barred windows at regular intervals. Johnny Fitzgerald crouched down by the door and strained to hear any conversation between Septimus and the Necromancer, for he was sure the Necromancer was the man Septimus had come to see. However hard he tried he could hear nothing. The door looked solid. Suddenly it was flung open and he was dragged inside the warehouse and pulled unceremoniously into a small section in the corner. Johnny saw that there were rows and rows of shelves lined with bottles of every size known to the wine trade. The two men tied him roughly to a chair.

‘This is the fellow I told you about,’ said Septimus, ‘the one who followed me from the office down here.’

‘You must be Mr Septimus Parry,’ said Johnny, staring intently at the muzzle of a gun in his companion’s hand, pointing directly toward his stomach. ‘And you, sir, you with the gun,’ Johnny turned his gaze up from the gun to the face, ‘must be the Necromancer.’

The mention of the word necromancer seemed to cause fury. ‘I am not known as the Necromancer!’ he snarled. ‘They are mere conjurers, penny magicians on minor feast days, fortune tellers by the hedgerows, soothsayers of the future for simple minds. I am known as the Alchemist. Alchemists were famed for transmuting base metals into gold as I do with crude wines being converted into noble vintages with great names. And you,’ he began waving the gun about in what Johnny thought was a rather dangerous fashion, ‘who the hell are you?’

Johnny made no reply. Septimus was looking rather nervous now. What had begun as a lark could turn very nasty at any moment. ‘Are you by any chance an associate of the man who calls himself Powerscourt?’

Johnny thought that Septimus would be unlikely to resort to violence on his own. But he wasn’t sure about the other one. Above everything else, he realized, he had to remain as a tramp. If they thought he was an intimate colleague of Powerscourt he might be in great danger from the man with the gun.

‘Look here,’ said the Alchemist, ‘I don’t think you fully understand your position. I am perfectly happy to put a bullet into any part of your filthy anatomy I choose if you don’t co-operate. Tramps disappear all the time. In this part of London,’ he waved the gun airily in the direction of the river, ‘nobody even knows they’ve gone. Now, you’d better start telling us the truth. Are you employed by the man who calls himself Powerscourt?’

‘Every now and then,’ said Johnny.

‘What does that mean?’ snapped the Alchemist. ‘Once a week, once a month, once a year?’

‘More than once a year, less than once a month,’ said Johnny, ‘three or four times a year maybe. It’s always when he wants somebody followed.’

‘So when, before today, was the last time you worked for him?’

‘Just before Easter,’ said Johnny, observing that the gun now seemed to be pointing at his knees.

‘Very well,’ said the Alchemist. ‘There is nothing I can do, short of killing you, to prevent you telling your master what you have seen. I do not want you here any more. The man they call Powerscourt is ruining my life. My entire life depends on secrecy, on nobody knowing what I look like or where I work. You and your employer have ruined that. Don’t think I won’t get my own back. Now get out and don’t come back. And tell your master,’ the Alchemist snarled as he shoved Johnny towards the door, ‘that he hasn’t heard the last of me.’

The Alchemist was shaking with fury as he kicked Johnny out of the warehouse and into the street. He sat down on a stool by one of his great shelves and put his head in his hands. ‘Everything I’ve worked for, gone. My work. My anonymity which I have done so much to preserve, blown away like gossamer down. My office, the very place where I do my work, now known to the tramp who must surely work for the authorities. I am finished, Septimus, finished! Just tell me, tell me before you go, what is this Powerscourt’s address?’

Powerscourt was annoyed that he hadn’t managed to get any closer to the Necromancer. Maybe Johnny would pull it off this very day. He remembered Johnny saying that the man valued his privacy above everything else. What did he have to hide? Powerscourt had a deep suspicion of forgers, fakers and counterfeiters of every sort. In one of his previous cases he had encountered a forger called Orlando Blane who had caused chaos in the London art world with the accuracy of his reproductions. Orlando too had links with Norfolk, producing his Gainsboroughs or his Joshua Reynoldses or his Giovanni Bellinis in an abandoned Jacobean mansion close to Cromer and the sea. He felt that the fakers and the forgers debased the natural order, that they brought something squalid and sordid into a world where beauty should reign supreme, that their works poisoned the art world. Not that Powerscourt had any illusions about the art dealers and the auctioneers and the art experts. Many of them, he knew, were little better than the forgers when it came to morality. And what of his own first offering from the Necromancer, those two bottles nestling in their bag? Should he taste them immediately he reached home? Probably not, he decided. He would wait until tomorrow when the rest of the consignment arrived. He would summon Sir Pericles Freme and his finest palate to join him and Lady Lucy in the first tasting of the pre-phylloxera wines.

A hundred miles to the north Georgina Nash was walking up her drive with its massive yew hedges towards the main road that skirted round Brympton Hall. Every day now she performed this melancholy ritual five or six times during the hours of daylight. When she reached the main road, with the church on her left where the doomed marriage took place a month or so before, she would stand and stare, now to the left, now to the right. Sometimes she would walk for half a mile or so in either direction, hoping desperately that the next person to come round the bend would be young William Stebbings. It was now three days since his disappearance, and the Nash family were, if anything, even more upset than they had been on the day he went missing. Inspector Cooper continued with his searches but he had informed them sadly that morning that he and his men could only search for one more day. Then they would be reassigned to other duties. Looking at the Inspector’s face in the kitchen at nine o’clock that day Georgina Nash could see that the Inspector thought William was dead. Her husband Willoughby continued his searches with some of the gardeners when he could spare the time from his legal business in Norwich. He too, she felt, was losing faith in William being alive.

Georgina turned round and made her way back towards the Hall. The afternoon light was beginning to fade. She had thought and thought about what William might have seen in her Long Gallery on the day of the murder. Had he seen the murderer leave the state bedroom and press the gun into Cosmo’s hand? Had he seen something which he didn’t think was important, but which was of vital importance for the murderer? Had one or other of those possibilities led to his death, the murderer creeping into the Hall under cover of darkness and luring the boy outside to strangle him by the lake and throw the body into the water, pockets filled with stones? Her butler, Charlie Healey, a man with wide experience of violent death in the Boer War, didn’t think much of these theories. Somehow Georgina Nash didn’t believe in them either. Her permanent image of William was of the boy, five or six weeks ago, standing behind one of the guests’ chairs at one of the rare formal dinner parties she and Willoughby gave, holding himself perfectly still, looking very handsome in his black suit and white shirt, ready to help with the serving or removal of dishes as required. Hidden away in William’s cupboard they had found a magazine full of pictures and engravings of the great transatlantic liners where he hoped to serve as a steward sometime in the future. Looking through the illustrations of the state cabins with their unimaginable luxury on the top deck, the vast and ornate drawing rooms and libraries and dining rooms, Georgina could see where the appeal lay for the young man. She was back by the Hall now. She heard footsteps coming, loud footsteps, coming on the road from Aylsham. Perhaps it was William. Her heart leapt. She was sure it was him! He was back at last!

But when the figure came round the bend she saw it was only the vicar, come to open up the Church for evensong.

Lady Lucy had organized the Powerscourt dining room with considerable care. Three places were laid at the top end of the table nearest the hall. There were no knives or spoons, but half a dozen glasses, three for red wine and three for white, and a tumbler for water. By the side of each place was a large French saucepan for the participants to spit their wine into. Lady Lucy didn’t feel they were perfect, the large saucepans, but they would suffice. She wondered if somewhere in London you could buy special glasses for the special substances of the man they called the Necromancer. Francis had put the list of pre-phylloxera wines in the centre of the table.

As they took their places with Powerscourt at the head of the table, Sir Pericles on his right and Lady Lucy on his left, Freme was rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

‘I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this. So many times in my life I have drunk wine that I knew to be fake. Undrinkable stuff composed of water and raisins and elder berries from some slum in the East End, diluted claret, watered down with low-grade red from Languedoc brewed up in some warehouse in the south of France, unspeakable burgundy made with apple juice and brandy cooked up in a seedy cellar in Hamburg, I think I’ve seen them all. But to know every bottle is a fake before you start tasting, that is a great joy. Powerscourt, how to you intend to proceed?’

‘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.”’

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