Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,31

extending his hand.

‘Mr Wilson,’ I said, trying to smother my surprise and no doubt not succeeding.

‘A bottle of wine,’ he said with a small smile. ‘For dinner. What do you suggest?’

He liked full-bodied red, he said, and I offered him a Rioja of distinction.

‘Spanish?’ he murmured dubiously, reading the label.

‘Very well made,’ I said. ‘It’s excellent.’

He said he would take my word for it and punctiliously paid. I rolled the bottle in tissue and stood it on the counter, but he was not, it appeared, in a hurry to pick it up and depart.

‘Your chair…’ he murmured. ‘Would it be available?’

I fetched it at once from the office and he sat gratefully as before.

‘A question or two, Mr Beach…’ His gaze unhurriedly rested on my face and then wandered as if vaguely round the shop. ‘I heard that you called in at the Silver Moondance last Tuesday morning, Mr Beach.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And wrote a list of the stolen goods.’

‘As much as I could remember, yes.’

‘And on Monday last you went there with Detective Sergeant Ridger and tasted various whiskies and wines?’

‘Yes,’ I said again.

‘And you saw a certain Paul Young there?’

‘Yes.’

His slow gaze finished its wandering and came to rest tranquilly on my face. ‘Can you describe him, Mr Beach?’

That’s why he’s here, I thought. For that.

‘Sergeant Ridger…’ I began.

‘Sergeant Ridger made a full description,’ he said, nodding. ‘But two sets of eyes… Mr Beach?’

I thought back and told him what I could remember of the man from the head office that didn’t exist.

‘A businessman,’ I said. ‘About fifty. Thickset, rather short, dark haired, pale skin. Big fleshy hands. No rings. He wore glasses with black frames, but narrow frames, not heavy. He had… um… the beginnings of a double chin… and a hearing aid behind his right ear.’

Wilson received the description benignly without giving me any indication of whether or not it was a carbon copy of Ridger’s. ‘His voice, Mr Beach?’

‘No special accent,’ I said. ‘Plain English. I doubt if he’d been deaf from birth… he didn’t sound toneless. He spoke ordinarily and heard everything anyone said. One wouldn’t have known he was deaf without seeing the hearing aid.’

‘And his manner, Mr Beach?’

‘A bull,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Used to having people jump when he said so.’ I thought back. ‘He didn’t seem like that at first sight, though. I mean, if he came in here now, he wouldn’t seem aggressive… but he developed aggression very fast. He didn’t like Sergeant Ridger’s authority… he wanted to diminish him somehow.’ I smiled faintly. ‘Sergeant Ridger was pretty much a match for him.’

Wilson lowered his eyes briefly as if to avoid showing whatever comment lay there and then with a few blinks raised them again. ‘Other impressions, Mr Beach?’

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