Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,33

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, because this wasn’t a wine shop before. We had to start from utter scratch.’

‘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…’