Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,82

Bell’s rang true. Not a cracked note among them.

One of the barmen gave us short change, slapping down coins in a handful while sloshing water onto the counter top, so that I should snatch them up without checking, but Ridger said that that didn’t rate a clipboard entry. He produced his badge, however, and warned the barman, who scowled. As the high spot of the morning it didn’t rate much, but one couldn’t expect a Mrs Alexis every day of the week.

Some of the pubs had two bars. One had three. My friend John insisted on making sure of every Bell’s bottle in sight.

Awash with tomato juice he returned me to my shop at two-thirty and I sat heavy-headed in my office regretting the whole enterprise. I would simply have to take something to spit into, I thought, even if spitting alerted the barman and disgusted the other customers. Getting half cut every lunch-time was no joke.

Mrs Palissey drove Brian away with a big load of deliveries and between each sporadic afternoon customer I sat down and felt thick with sleep. When the door buzzer roused me for the fifth time I went into the shop yawning.

‘That’s no way to greet manna from heaven,’ my customer said.

Mrs Alexis stood there, larger than life, bringing out her own sun on a wet afternoon. I shut my mouth slowly, readjusted it to a smile, and said, ‘I was coming to see you again at the first opportunity.’

‘Were you now?’ she said, mockery in full swing. ‘So this is where our little wine merchant dwells.’ She peered about her good-humouredly, oblivious to the fact that her ‘little’ wine merchant stood a fraction under six feet himself and could at least look her levelly in the eyes. Nearly all men, I guessed, were ‘little’ to her.

‘I was passing,’ she said.

I nodded. Amazing, the number of people who said that.

‘No, I bloody well wasn’t,’ she amended explosively. ‘I came here on purpose.’ She lifted her chin almost defiantly. ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Yes,’ I said truthfully.

‘I liked the look of you.’

‘That surprises me too.’

‘Bloody cool, aren’t you?’

I was still half drunk, I thought. Almost a third of a bottle of scotch on an empty stomach, whichever way you looked at it. Ulcer land.

‘How’s the chimney?’ I asked.

She grinned, showing teeth like a shark.

‘Bloody Wilfred hasn’t forgiven me.’

‘And the fire?’

‘Burning like Rome.’ She eyed me assessingly. ‘You’re young enough to be my bloody son.’

‘Just about.’

‘And do you want to know about those bloody wines or don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do indeed.’

‘I wasn’t going to tell that police sergeant. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Pompous little killjoy.’

I said ‘Mm’ non-committally.

‘I bought them, all right,’ she said. ‘But I damn soon sent them back.’

I breathed in deeply, trying to do nothing to distract her.

‘I ran short of Bell’s,’ she said. ‘So I ‘phoned across to the pub opposite to borrow some. Nothing odd in that, we always help each other out. So he brings a whole unopened bloody case over, saying it came from a new supplier who offered good discounts, especially on wine, which was more my sort of thing than his. He gave me a ‘phone number and told me to ask for Vernon.’

I looked at her.

‘Should have known better, shouldn’t I?’ she said cheerfully.

‘Should have suspected it had all fallen off the back of a bloody lorry.’

‘But you telephoned?’

‘That’s right. Very good wines, just under normal price. So I said right, shunt along a case of each, I’d put them on the wine list and see if anyone liked them.’

‘And did they?’

‘Sure.’ She gave me the shark smile. ‘Shows how much some of these so-called buffs really know.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then I got someone in the bar one day kicking up a fuss and saying he’d been given the wrong whisky. I’d given it to him myself out of a Bell’s bottle, one I’d got from my neighbour. I tasted it but I don’t like the stuff, can’t tell one from another. Anyway I gave him some Glenlivet free to placate him and apologised and when he’d gone I rang up my neighbour pretty damn quick, but he said he was certain it was O.K., Vernon worked for a big firm.’

‘Which big firm?’

‘How the hell do I know? I didn’t ask. But I’ll tell you, I wasn’t taking any risks so I poured the rest of the case of Bell’s down the drain and chalked it up to experience. Damn good thing I did, because the next bloody