Death of a wine merchant

19

The man at the front desk told Powerscourt that Lady Lucy was in room twenty, at the end of the corridor on the first floor. He was just about to ask his dishevelled visitor a question, but the man had gone, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

When he knocked on the door of the room Lady Lucy thought it must be one of the porters bringing another message. ‘Come in’ she said, rather sadly, standing at the window, looking out over the square. When she turned round she saw that she was looking at a scarecrow. The white coat had long since lost its freshness. There were great stains across the front. The pale green trousers beneath looked as though they might belong to an attendant in a Turkish bath. The hair was tousled and uneven with patches that were almost bare sitting next to the natural curls. The scar on the face, left by Jean Jacques’s scissors, was still there. But if it was a scarecrow it was her scarecrow. She had, after all, married the scarecrow. She had lived with the scarecrow and loved the scarecrow for longer than she cared to remember.

‘Francis!’ she cried and rushed across the floor to embrace him. ‘I am so pleased to see you!’

Powerscourt held her very tight. ‘I hope you haven’t been too worried,’ he said. ‘I usually manage to come back in the end.’

‘What have you been doing, my love? Why are you wearing these dreadful clothes? And what’s happened to your poor hair? It looks as if some wild animal has been pulling lumps out of it!’

Powerscourt explained about Marcel’s gang and his abduction to the pressoir and the lunatic asylum. It was, he told her, all the revenge of the Alchemist for ruining his privacy in London. His hair, he explained, had been cut off by one of the thugs who had virtually no teeth.

‘I’m so pleased you are back,’ she said, holding tightly on to her scarecrow. ‘The hotel people have been very good about things like telegrams, and there’s a helpful young man here from the British Embassy in Paris. And Johnny Fitzgerald is on his way.’

‘Very good,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Could I tell you what I’d like to do, Lucy? Right now, I need a bath. Washing facilities haven’t been too good in the company I’ve been keeping. Then I can get into some decent clothes. And then we can see what the food is like in this hotel. Where I’ve been it was rather primitive. And then I can tell you the rest of what’s happened and we can make our plans for tomorrow.’

As Powerscourt and Lady Lucy slept the church bells marked the passing of another day. There were two days left before Cosmo Colville was due to stand trial in the dock in Court Number Two of the Old Bailey on a charge of murder.

Shortly before three o’clock the next afternoon a cab took Powerscourt and Lady Lucy to the little village of Givray, up in the hills outside Beaune. The house of Monsieur Jean Pierre Drouhin, the Colville wine merchant who had disappeared, was at one end of a pleasant square. Lady Lucy had insisted on sending a note in the morning, saying they had come on Colville business and proposed calling on Madame Drouhin after lunch. The house itself was a handsome eighteenth-century building. Inspecting it as he got down from the cab Powerscourt thought that in England such a house would look masculine, wearing metaphorical braces and starched collars and a smart waistcoat. Here in France the building was feminine, adorned with imaginary ringlets and flounces and bonnets.

Madame Drouhin opened the door. She was a pretty woman in her early thirties with light brown eyes and very dark hair, dressed in sober grey. She led them up to the drawing room on the first floor with a fine view of the boulangerie across the street.

‘It’s very kind of you to spare us the time,’ said Powerscourt, smiling at the lady. ‘As we said in the note, we have come about your husband. Could you tell us how long ago he disappeared?’

‘Of course,’ replied Madame Drouhin. ‘It’s now a month and a half since he vanished.’

‘Did he behave strangely before he went?’ Lady Lucy said. ‘Was there anything odd about him then? Even the best of husbands,’ she glanced loyally at Powerscourt, ‘can have their strange moods, they can withdraw into themselves if you like.’

‘I don’t think there was anything strange about his going. He said he had to go to England on business. There was nothing unusual about that. He went to London a lot. He must have spent nearly half the year there, now I come to think about it. But he never wrote this time – normally he was a good if irregular correspondent. He just got on the train in Beaune one morning and disappeared out of our lives.’

‘And since then, madame,’ said Powerscourt, ‘you haven’t heard anything at all? Not even a letter or a card?’

‘Nothing, monsieur, not a word.’

‘And had your husband, madame,’ Lady Lucy was trying to sound as sympathetic as she could, ‘ever disappeared like this before? Gone to visit his family perhaps?’

‘Often he has left us,’ said Madame Drouhin, ‘but he has always told us where he was going and written to us while he was there. It was usually London or near London that he went to.’

For twenty minutes or more Powerscourt and Lady Lucy questioned Madame Drouhin about her husband and his movements. Finally Powerscourt felt he could delay no longer.

‘Can I ask you a question, Madame Drouhin?’ Powerscourt was leaning forward in his chair. ‘It may seem rather odd if the answer is No. Could your husband write equally well with both hands?’

‘How interesting that you should know that,’ she said with a smile. ‘Yes, he could. The children were always fascinated by it.’

Powerscourt had been looking carefully round the room. On a small table by the window there were some photographs but he couldn’t see them clearly.

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there,’ said Madame Drouhin. ‘That’s why you’re here. There must be something wrong, very wrong.’ She looked at Lady Lucy with pleading eyes.

‘I’m afraid there is,’ she said. ‘Francis will tell you.’

Powerscourt pulled a photograph out of his pocket, the one Mrs Colville had given him while she was still sober. ‘Is that your husband, madame?’

‘Of course it is,’ she said. Randolph Colville was standing next to a punt by the side of the Thames with a boater on his head, smiling happily at the world. By his side was a handsome woman of about forty-five, some years older than Madame Drouhin. In front of them were a couple of children with determined smiles for the camera.

‘How very English,’ said Madame Drouhin with a note of bitterness in her voice. ‘On the outside we have the smiles, inside we have the cold hearts and the betrayal.’

‘Do you know who these other people are in the photograph, madame?’ Powerscourt was speaking very softly.

‘I do not know,’ she replied and her voice was filled with despair, ‘but I can guess. That is the English wife of Mr Drouhin, and those must be two of the children he had with her.’

‘You knew?’ said Powerscourt. ‘You knew your husband had two wives?’

‘I did. I have known for some time.’ Silence fell in the handsome room as Powerscourt and Lady Lucy digested this astonishing piece of information. Bigamy. They had suspected it might be here but to find it in reality was stunning. And terrible. Bigamy. A unique arrangement whereby one man could betray two women at the same time twenty-four hours a day. A clock on the mantelpiece announced that it was half past three. Outside in the square a group of starlings were holding a concert in the trees. Powerscourt felt so very very sorry for Madame Drouhin, so dignified with them this afternoon.

‘When did you find out?’ said Powerscourt, astonished that Madame Drouhin already knew.

‘It must have been about two months ago, maybe more.’

‘May I ask how you found out?’

‘It was silly, really, silly of Jean Pierre, I mean. He left a letter from his first wife in the back pocket of his trousers one day. He left his trousers on the floor as he usually did. The piece of paper virtually fell out when I picked them up. Normally you’d never find anything at all in Jean Pierre’s pockets. He was always very careful. Not surprising really with two different lives to lead. I took the letter to the schoolmaster and he told me what it said. All kinds of things about his life made sense to me then. Those regular trips to England for a start. There are a number of other merchants round here, you see, who have the same sort of business with other houses in London like the Colvilles. They only go to London two or three times in a whole year, these other merchants. My Jean Pierre was going ten or twelve times. Often I have suspected that he must have a woman over there. Only now do I realize that it wasn’t just a wife but a whole family as well.’

‘How did he take it? When you confronted him with the letter, I mean?’ Lady Lucy was feeling full of sympathy for a woman so badly wronged by a member of the opposite sex.

‘His first reaction was to laugh. I found that strange. Then he said that he had always thought he might get caught at some time on either side of the Channel. I think he found that element of danger exciting. He said he still loved me and our children. He wasn’t going to run away from his responsibilities.’

It was one thing, Powerscourt thought, to travel to France and tell somebody they were married to a bigamist. Then you had to tell them that their husband was dead. Not to tell Madame Drouhin would have been too cruel.

‘I fear there is more bad news, madame,’ he said.

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’re going to tell me he’s dead, aren’t you?’

‘I’m afraid I am.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve known he was dead for about three weeks now. I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Always before there were letters. Always. This time there were none. That bastard from up the road has got to him at last. I knew it, I knew it!’ Madame Drouhin paused for a moment while she contemplated the bastard from up the road.

‘My wife and I extend to you our most sincere condolences.’ said Powerscourt.

Madame Drouhin folded her hands over and over again in her lap. She looked at them both in turn, as if in supplication.

‘Can you tell me how he died?’

Powerscourt gave a heavily censored version of what had happened. The unfortunate event, he said, took place at a house in Norfolk. He did not say that there was a wedding in progress. He made no mention of wedding guests either. Jean Pierre had been shot, he told her. He decided to mention the dead man’s brother being found in the same room with a gun in his hand, and that the brother Cosmo was about to stand trial for murder in London any day now, and that he, Powerscourt, was trying to secure the release of Cosmo. Madame Drouhin only asked one question. The killing itself, the arrest of the brother did not seem to interest her very much.

‘What was he called? In England, I mean. My husband.’

‘He was called Colville, madame, Randolph Colville.’

That seemed to please her. ‘Colville.’ She rolled the strange English word round her tongue. ‘Randolph Colville. So he was one of the family. No wonder he always seemed to have so much money. He bought an enormous amount of land over here, you know. Vineyards, mostly.’

Powerscourt wondered if this was where the missing Colville money had gone, beautiful houses on the edge of the Burgundy hills, another wife to maintain, another life to lead, another family to feed and support.

‘Forgive me, madame, we have no wish to disturb you any more at this time. We shall make our departure in a moment. Just now you referred to somebody as that bastard down the road who has got him at last. Could I ask who that somebody is?’

Madame Drouhin got up and walked over to the windows. ‘This is difficult for me, very difficult,’ she began, still facing the square. ‘I’m sure you can understand that any man with two wives is going to have an eye for the ladies. That’s how he got into marital difficulties in the first place, being unable to resist the charms of another woman. Jean Pierre or Randolph in the English version was a relentless pursuer of women. I imagine he had been like that since he was about sixteen years old. Chase anything in a skirt, as my grandmother used to put it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he was committing adultery all the way from here to Dijon. It was just a kiss here, an embrace there and he was on his way. Sometimes I’m sure he would have liked to go further. Anyway, the point of this story is that in the street that runs into the bottom of the square here there lives a very pretty young wife of about twenty-five years. Yvette is her name, Yvette Planchon. It was she who told me this story.’

Powerscourt thought suddenly that Randolph’s targets seemed to drop ten years each time.

‘Jean Pierre was very struck with this girl. Her husband was believed to be away in North Africa. He was a soldier, a sergeant in the Army. Eventually the young wife gives in to Jean Pierre’s flirting. She gives him a kiss in their kitchen. She told me later that she thought he might go away after one kiss and leave her in peace, But then, dear me, in the middle of the kiss the husband walks in. He has unexpected leave from his regimental duties. He swears that he will take the traditional Frenchman’s revenge against my husband. He does not believe Yvette when she tells him it was only a kiss. They were never in the bedroom upstairs, never. Yvette’s husband does not believe her. He is very jealous. He is consumed with jealousy. He tells my Jean Pierre he is going to kill him. Jean Pierre flees out the kitchen door pursued by the jealous husband with a poker in his hand.’

‘What is the traditional Frenchman’s revenge, madame?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘Why, in some parts of the country it still holds good. The French male believes he has the right to kill a man who has interfered with his wife without penalty. You can’t be sent to jail or the guillotine, you get off scot free. It’s as simple as that.’

‘God bless my soul,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘It does seem rather extreme.’

‘Does it still apply in these parts?’ asked Powerscourt, wondering about court cases where defendants could be given a sort of automatic acquittal for murdering their wives’ lovers.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that,’ said Madame Drouhin. Powerscourt thought there was no chance he would be able to persuade any of these women to cross the Channel with him and give evidence in an English court. Could he, perhaps, find a lawyer who would take a signed statement from them? But first they had to meet Yvette.

‘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.

‘Could you sort out the cost of this glass with the barman, Francis? Haven’t been able to finish it yet, damned thing’s so big it must hold about the same amount as a bloody bottle.’