Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,55

be the world over but for the multiple faces of Cain.

‘Gerard,’ I said.

‘Mm?’

‘Where does my consultancy start and end?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well… there wasn’t a tankerful of scotch at the Silver Moondance. That Rannoch scotch is still about somewhere… masquerading perhaps as Laphroaig but more likely as Bell’s.’

Gerard saw the smile twisting the corners of my mouth and gave another painful chuckle.

‘You mean you might find it,’ he said, ‘if you drank at every hostelry from here to John o’Groats?’

‘Just Berkshire and Oxfordshire and all the way to Watford. Say fifty thousand places, for starters… A spot of syncopation. Syncopation, as you know, is an uneven movement from bar to bar.’

‘Please be quiet,’ he said. ‘Laughing hurts.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Cirrhosis, I love you.’

‘All the same…’

‘I was only joking.’

‘I know. But… as you said.’

‘Yeah. Well, I’ll drink scotch at every opportunity, if not every bar. But I won’t find it.’

‘You never know. Some dark little pub in a Reading back-street…’

I shook my head. ‘Somewhere like the Silver Moondance with smoke and noise and dancing and a huge turnover.’

His glance grew thoughtful. ‘It depends how much Kenneth Charter wants to spend. As you say, it’s an incredibly long shot… but I’ll put it to him. Incredibly long shots sometimes pay off, and I’ve known them happen at worse than fifty thousand to one.’

I hadn’t expected him to take me seriously and it made what I had chiefly been going to say sound unimportant. I said, all the same, ‘I persuaded Sergeant Ridger to let me have one of the Silver Moondance wine bottles. The label might be informative. I know it’s nothing on the face of it to do with Kenneth Charter’s tankers, but… er, if you found out more about the wine it might lead you back to the scotch.’

He looked at the photostat lying on the sheet. ‘To Paul Young, do you mean?’

I suppose so… yes.’

He said calmly, ‘Information about wine labels very definitely comes under the heading of consultancy. Getting too close to Paul Young does not.’

TWELVE

Henri Tavel in his robust French asked me to give his felicitations to my dear mother.

I said I would.

He said he was delighted to hear my voice after so many months and he again regretted infinitely the death of my so dear Emma.

I thanked him.

He said I would have enjoyed the harvest, it had been an abundant crop of small excellent grapes full of flavour: everyone in Bordeaux was talking of equalling 1970.

I offered congratulations.

He asked if I could spare time to visit. All his family and my many friends would welcome it, he said.

I regretted that my shop prevented an absence at present.

He understood. C’est la vie. He hoped to be of help to me in some way, as I had telephoned.

Thus invited and with gratitude I explained about the substitute wine and the existence of various labels.

‘Alas,’ he said. ‘This is unfortunately too common. A matter of great annoyance.’

if I describe one of the labels, could you find out for me if it’s genuine?’ I asked.

‘Certainly,’ he agreed. ‘Tomorrow, my dear Tony.’

I was telephoning from the office in the shop with the St Estèphe bottle in front of me.

I said, ‘The label is of a château in the region of St Estèphe, a village you know so well.’

‘The home of my grandparents. There is no one there of whom I cannot enquire.’

‘Yes… Well, this label purports to come from Château Caillot.’ I spelled it out for him. ‘Do you know of it?’

‘No, I don’t but don’t forget there must be two hundred small châteaux in that part of Haut Médoc. I don’t know them all. I will find out.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘The rest of the label reads: “Mis en bouteilles par W. Thiery et Fils, négotiants à Bordeaux.” ’

Henri Tavel’s suspicions came clearly down the line. ‘1 know of no W. Thiery et Fils,’ he said. Monsieur Tavel, négotiant à Bordeaux himself, was more likely to be aware of a fellow wineshipper than of a château seventy kilometres to the north. ‘I’ll find out,’ he said.

‘Also the label bears the year of vintage,’ I said.

‘Which year?’

‘1979.’

He grunted. ‘Plentiful and quite good.’

‘It’s an attractive label altogether,’ I said. ‘Cream background with black and gold lettering, and a line drawing of an elegant château. The château reminds me of somewhere… I wish you could see it, you might recognise it.’

‘Soak it off, my dear Tony, and send it.’

‘Yes, I might.’

‘And the wine under the label?’ he asked. ‘What of the wine?’

‘At a guess,