Proof by Dick Francis
I pondered. ‘Paul Young was definitely shocked to find so many bottles containing the wrong liquids.’
‘Shocked that they did, or shocked that anyone had discovered it?’
‘Well… at the time I thought it was the first, but now… I don’t know. He was surprised and angry, that’s for sure.’
Wilson rubbed his nose absentmindedly. ‘Anything else, Mr Beach? Any insignificant little thing?’
‘I don’t know…’
A customer came in for several items at that point and wanted a detailed receipted bill, which I wrote for her: and the act of writing jogged a few dormant brain cells.
‘Paul Young,’ I said when she’d gone, ‘had a gold coloured ball point with two wide black bands inset near the top. He wrote with his right hand, but with the pen between his first and second fingers and with the fingers curled round so that the pen was above what he was writing, not below. It looked very awkward. It looked how left-handed people sometimes write… but I’m sure he was right-handed. He wrote with the hand the same side as his hearing aid, and I was wondering why he didn’t have the hearing aid incorporated into the frame of his glasses.’
Wilson incuriously studied the tissue wrapping his waiting bottle.
‘Did Paul Young seem genuine to you, Mr Beach?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘He behaved very definitely as if the Silver Moondance belonged to an organisation of which he was an executive of the highest rank. He seemed at first only to have come himself to deal with the crisis of Larry Trent’s death because the manager was away and the assistant manager had ‘flu. The third in line, the assistant to the assistant, was so hopeless that it seemed perfectly natural that head office should appear in person.’
‘Quite a long string of command, wouldn’t you say?’ murmured Wilson. ‘Trent himself, a manager, an assistant, an assistant to the assistant?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, moderately disagreeing. ‘A place like that, open long hours, half the night sometimes, they’d need that number. And the assistant assistant struck me as just a general dogsbody in togs above his station… poor chap.’
Wilson communed vaguely for a while with the South African sherries and then said, ‘Would you know Paul Young again, Mr Beach? Could you pick him out in a roomful of people?’
‘Yes,’ I said positively. ‘As long as I saw him again within a year. After that… I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘And in a photograph?’
‘Um… it would depend.’
He nodded noncommittally and shifted on his chair.
‘I’ve read Sergeant Ridger’s reports. You’ve been most helpful all along, Mr Beach.’
‘Sergeant Ridger did tell me,’ I said mildly, ‘who you are. I asked him if he knew of you, and he told me. And I’ve been surprised, you know, that you’ve come here yourself both times.’
He smiled patiently. ‘I like to keep my hand in, Mr Beach, now and again. When I’m passing, you might say, for a bottle of wine.’
He stood up slowly, preparing to go, and I asked him the thing that had been on my mind since Tuesday.
‘Was Zarac… the wine waiter… dead… before…?’
I stopped in mid-sentence and he finished it for me. ‘Dead before the plaster was applied? Since you ask, Mr Beach, no, he wasn’t. Zarac died of suffocation.’
‘Oh,’ I said numbly.
‘It is possible,’ Wilson said unemotionally, ‘that he had been knocked unconscious first. You may find that thought more bearable perhaps.’
‘Is it true?’
‘It’s not for me to say before the coroner has decided.’
There was a bleakness, I saw, behind his undemanding face. He had been out there for a long time in the undergrowth and found it easy to believe in all manner of horrors.
‘I don’t think,’ I said, ‘that I would like your job.’
‘Whereas yours, Mr Beach,’ he said, his gaze again roving the bottles, ‘yours I would like very much.’
He gave me the small smile and the unemphatic handshake and went on his way: and I thought of people bandaging all over a live man’s head and then soaking the bandage with water to turn it to rock.
EIGHT
Flora sent Gerard McGregor down to see me: or so he said, that Friday evening, when he came into the shop.
He looked just as he had on Sunday when tunnelling away and hauling trestle tables through under the canvas for roofs. Tall, in his fifties, going grey. Ultra-civilised, with experienced eyes. Gerard with a soft J.
We shook hands again, smiling.
‘My wife and I took Flora home to dinner with us yesterday evening,’ he said. ‘We insisted. She said it was chiefly thanks to you that she was feeling better.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘She talked about you for hours.’
‘How utterly boring. She can’t have done.’
‘You know how Flora talks.’ His voice was affectionate. ‘We heard all about you and Larry Trent and the goings on at the Silver Moondance.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Whatever for? Fascinating stuff.’
Not for Zarac, I thought.
Gerard McGregor was looking around him with interest.
‘We don’t live so far from Flora,’ he said. ‘Five miles or so, but we shop in the opposite direction, not in this town. I’ve never been here before.’ He began to walk down the row of wine racks, looking at labels. ‘From what Flora said of the size of the trade you do, I somehow thought your shop would be bigger.’ His faintly Scottish voice was without offence, merely full of interest.
‘It doesn’t need to be bigger,’ I explained. ‘In fact large brightly-lit expanses tend to put real wine-lovers off, if anything. This is just right, to my mind. There’s room to show examples of everything I normally sell. I don’t keep more than a dozen of many things out here. The rest’s in the storeroom. And everything moves in and out pretty fast.’
The shop itself was about twenty-five feet by thirteen, or eight by four if one counted in metres. Down the whole of one long side there were wine racks in vertical columns, each column capable of holding twelve bottles (one case), the top bottle resting at a slant for display. Opposite the wine racks was the counter with, behind it, the shelves for spirits and liqueurs.
More wine racks took up the furthest wall except for the door through to the office and storeroom, and on every other inch of wall-space there were shelves for sherries, beers, mixers and coke and all the oddments that people asked for.
At the end of the counter, standing at a slight angle into the main floorspace, was a medium sized table covered to the ground with a pretty swagged tablecloth that Emma had made. A sheet of plate glass protected the top, and on it there stood a small forest of liqueur and aperitif and wine bottles, all opened, all available for customers to taste before buying. Coyly out of sight below the tablecloth stood open cartons of the same wines, ready to hand. We’d always sold a great deal because of the table: impulse buys leading to more and more repeat orders. Gerard fingered the bottles with interest, as so many did.
‘Would you like to see behind the scenes?’ I said, and he answered, ‘Very much.’
I showed him my tiny office and also the tiny washroom, and the not-so-tiny storeroom beyond. ‘That door,’ I said, pointing, ‘opens outward to the yard where we park the cars and load and unload deliveries. I usually keep it bolted. Through here is the storeroom.’ I switched on the lights as the store had no window, and he looked with interest at the columns of cases ranged all round the walls and in a double row down the centre.
‘I didn’t always have as much stock as this,’ I said. ‘It was a terrible struggle to begin with. The storeroom was almost empty. Some weeks I’d buy things one afternoon, sell them the next morning and buy more with the same money again in the afternoon, and so on, round and round. Hair-raising.’
‘But not now, I see.’
‘Well, no. But it took us a while to get known, becau
‘We?’ he said.
‘My wife.’
‘Oh yes… Flora said…’
‘Yes,’ I said flatly. ‘She died.’
He made sympathetic motions with his hands, and we went back to the shop.
‘When do you close?’ he said, and suggested we might have dinner together.
‘Is nine o’clock too late?’
Nine o’clock would do quite well, he said, and he returned at that time and drove me to a restaurant far outside my own catchment area. It seemed a long way to go, but he had reserved a table there, saying the food would be worth it.
We talked on the way about the accident and our excursions in the tent, and over dinner about Flora and Jack, and after that about the Silver Moondance and Larry Trent. We ate trout mousse followed by wild duck and he asked me to choose the wine. It was a pleasant enough evening and seemed purposeless; but it wasn’t.
‘What would you say,’ he said casually over coffee, ‘to a consultant’s fee?’
‘For what?’
‘For what you’re good at. Distinguishing one whisky from another.’
‘I wouldn’t mind the fee,’ I said frankly. ‘But I’m not an expert.’
‘You’ve other qualities.’ His eyes, it seemed to me, were all at once concentrating on my face as if he could read every hidden response I might have. ‘Observation, resource and leadership.’
I laughed. ‘Not me. Wrong guy.’
‘I’d like to hire your services,’ he said soberly, ‘for one particular job.’
I said in puzzlement, ‘What sort of job?’
For answer he felt in an inner pocket and drew out a sheet of paper which he unfolded and spread on the tablecloth for me to read: and it was a photostat copy, I saw in some bewilderment, of a page from the Yellow Pages telephone directory.
DETECTIVE AGENCIES, it said in capital letters at the top. Underneath were several boldly outlined box advertisements and a column of small firms. The word ‘investigation’ figured prominently throughout.
‘I am one of the management team of that concern,’ McGregor said, pointing to one of the bigger boxes.
‘A private detective?’ I asked, astounded. ‘About the last thing I’d have guessed.’
‘Mm.’ McGregor’s tone was dry. ‘We prefer to be known as investigative consultants. Read the advertisement.’
I did as he asked.
‘Deglet Ltd’, it announced. ‘Comprehensive service offered in complete confidence to commercial clients. Experienced consultants in the fields of industrial counter-espionage, fraud detection, electronic security, personnel screening. Business investigations of all sorts. International links.’
At the bottom there was a London box number and telex and telephone numbers, but no plain address. Confidential to the bone, I thought.
‘No divorce?’ I asked lightly.
‘No divorce,’ McGregor agreed easily. ‘No debt collecting and no private clients. Commercial enquiries only.’
Any image one might have of mean streets didn’t fit with McGregor. Boardrooms and country weekends, yes. Fist fights and sleazy night-life, no.
‘Do you yourself personally…’ I flicked a finger at the page, ‘go rootling around in factories?’
‘Not exactly.’ He was quietly amused. ‘When we’re approached by a prospective client I go along to size up what’s happening and what’s needed, and then either alone or with colleagues, according to the size of the problem, I plan how to get results.’
There was a pause while I thought over what he had and hadn’t so far told me. I evaded all the head-on questions and in the end said only, ‘Don’t you have any better business cards than photostats of the ‘phone book?’
Unruffled, he said, ‘We don’t advertise anywhere else. We have no pamphlets or brochures and carry only personal cards ourselves. I brought the photostat to show you that we exist, and what we do.’
‘And all your business conies from the Yellow Pages?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘And from word of mouth. Also, of course, once-satisfied clients call upon us again whenever they need us, which believe me the larger corporations do constantly.’
‘You enjoy your job?’
‘Very much,’ he said. I listened to the quiet assurance in his depths and thought that I wasn’t a hunter and never would be. Not I, who ducked through gates to avoid jumping fences, even if the fox escaped.
‘Occasionally,’ he said conversationally, ‘we’re asked to investigate in areas for which none of our regular people are ideal.’
I looked at my coffee.
‘We need someone now who knows whisky. Someone who can tell malt whisky from grain whisky, as Flora says you can.’
‘Someone who knows a grain from the great grey green greasy Limpopo River?’ I said. ‘The Limpopo River, don’t forget, was full of crocodiles.’
‘I’m not asking you to do anything dangerous,’ he said reasonably.
‘No.’ I sighed. ‘Go on, then.’
‘What are you doing on Sunday?’ he said.
‘Opening the shop from twelve to two. Washing the car. Doing the crossword.’ Damn all, I thought.
‘Will you give me the rest of your day from two o’clock on?’ he asked.
It sounded harmless, and in any case I still felt considerable camaraderie with him because of our labours in the tent, and Sundays after all were depressing, even without horseboxes.
‘O.K.’ I said. ‘Two o’clock onwards. What do you want me to do?’
He was in no great hurry, it seemed, to tell me. Instead he said, ‘Does all grain whisky taste the same?’
‘That’s why you need a real expert,’ I said. ‘The answer is no it doesn’t quite, but the differences are small. It depends on the grain used and the water, and how long the spirit’s been aged.’
‘Aged?’
‘Newly distilled scotch,’ I said, ‘burns your throat and scrubs your tongue like fire. It has to be stored in wooden casks for at least three years to become drinkable.’
‘Always in wood?’
‘Yes. Wood breathes. In wooden casks all spirit grows blander but if you put it in metal or glass containers instead it stays the same for ever. You could keep newly distilled spirits a thousand years in glass and when you opened it it would be as raw as the day it was bottled.’
‘One lives and learns,’ he said.
‘Anyway,’ I added after a pause. ‘Practically no one sells pure grain whisky. Even the cheapest bulk whisky is a blend of grain and malt, though the amount of malt in some of them is like a pinch of salt in a swimming pool.’
‘Flora said you told her some of the scotch at the Silver Moondance was like that,’ McGregor said.
‘Yes, it was. They were selling it in the bar out of a Bell’s bottle, and in the restaurant as Laphroaig.’
McGregor called for the bill. ‘This wasn’t my case to begin with,’ he said almost absentmindedly as he sorted out a credit card. ‘One of my colleagues passed it on to me because it seemed to be developing so close to my own doorstep.’
‘Do you mean,’ I asked, surprised, ‘that your firm were already interested in the Silver Moodance?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But how? I mean, in what connection?’
‘In connection with some stolen scotch that we were looking for. And it seems, my dear Tony, that you have found it.’
‘Good grief,’ I said blankly. ‘And lost it again.’
‘I’m afraid so. We’re very much back where we started. But that’s hardly your fault, of course. If Jack’s secretary had been less fond of Laphroaig… if Larry Trent hadn’t invited him to dinner… One can go back and back saying “if”, and it’s profitless. We were treading delicately towards the Silver Moondance when the horsebox plunged into the marquee; and it’s ironic in the extreme that I didn’t know that the Arthur Lawrence Trent who owned that place had hors
‘But you were… um… investigating him?’ I asked.
‘No,’ McGregor said pleasantly. ‘The person we suspected was an employee of his. A man called Zarac’
I’m sure my mouth physically dropped open. Gerard McGregor placidly finished paying the bill, glancing with dry understanding at my face.
‘Yes, he’s dead,’ he said. ‘We really are totally back at the beginning.’
‘I don’t consider,’ I said intensely, ‘that Zarac is a matter of no crocodiles.’
I spent most of Saturday with my fingers hovering over the telephone, almost deciding at every minute to ring Flora and ask her for Gerard McGregor’s number so that I could cancel my agreement for Sunday. If I did nothing he would turn up at two o’clock and whisk me off heaven knew where to meet his client, the one whose scotch had turned up on my tongue. (Probably.)
In the end I did ring Flora but even after she’d answered I was still shilly-shallying.
‘How’s Jack?’ I said.
‘In a vile temper, I’m afraid, Tony dear. The doctors won’t let him come home for several more days. They put a rod right down inside his bone, through the marrow, it seems, and they want to make sure it’s all settled before they let him loose on crutches.’
‘And are you all right?’
‘Yes, much better every day.’
‘A friend of yours,’ I said slowly, ‘came to see me. Er… Gerard McGregor.’
‘Oh yes,’ Flora said warmly. ‘Such a nice man. And his wife’s such a dear. He said you and he together had helped a good few people last Sunday. He asked who you were, and I’m afraid, Tony dear, that I told him quite a lot about you and then about everything that happened at the Silver Moondance, and he seemed frightfully interested though it seems to me now that I did go on and on a bit.’