The Scent of Death. Andrew Taylor

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       Chapter Twenty-One

      Shortly before Christmas, I had occasion to become better acquainted with Captain Wintour. We found ourselves alone at supper one day; the ladies had not come down and the Judge was suffering from a head-cold and had kept to his room. It was chilly, and afterwards we drew up our chairs to the parlour fire.

      ‘It is so confoundedly dull here,’ he said, prodding the logs with a poker. ‘My father should entertain more. And we should be seen out and about in the world, where we belong. We are one of the first families of the province. Besides, a man cannot spend all his time at home with his wife, can he?’

      I nodded, acknowledging the remark but not answering it.

      ‘Mark you, sir, Mrs Arabella is an adornment to any assembly or private party. She is wasted in Warren Street, shut up where nobody sees her. The Wintour diamonds are the best in New York, you know, and she looks charming in them. They were my grandmother’s. After the war is over I shall take Mrs Arabella to London and she shall wear them at court.’

      ‘You have visited London before, sir?’

      ‘As a young man, I passed several months there.’ Wintour clicked his fingers. ‘But let us have a game. What shall it be, sir? Cards? Backgammon? We can play by the fire – they will bring us up another bottle and we shall be famously snug.’

      We were drinking an old madeira, pale and golden like watery sunlight. Mr Wintour had put aside a few bottles until the end of the war, so he would have a fitting wine with which to drink the King’s health when victory was declared. But his son argued that if they left the wine much longer, it would be spoiled; it would be better to drink it now.

      ‘Let us make this more interesting,’ he suggested as we were waiting for Josiah to bring up another bottle, and a second one too in case it should be needed. ‘Let us put a trifle on the outcome. I find that a stake concentrates the faculties wonderfully.’

      Josiah brought the wine and Captain Wintour shouted at him for forgetting to bring the cards and the backgammon as well. The old man bowed low and said nothing, though I knew as well as he did that he could not have forgotten because he had not been ordered to bring them in the first place.

      When the slave returned, Wintour had him set up a little table between us. It had flaps that drew out at either end, and we placed a candle on each of them. The Captain opened the backgammon board and laid out the ebony and ivory counters with trembling fingers. The arrows had been painted a delicate shade of green and they rested on a black ground. The board made a pretty sight in flickering light. It was a handsome set, as good as anything I had seen in London apart from the dice, which were clearly of colonial manufacture, being made of bone and crudely painted.

      ‘They say this is a game of chance, sir,’ Wintour said, taking up his glass. ‘But that is all stuff and nonsense, is it not? Chance may dictate the fall of the dice but, taken all in all, it’s skill that counts. When I waited for my ship in Quebec, I paid for my dinners with backgammon.’

      A counter slipped from his hand. His wine glass tilted. Madeira splashed on to the board and formed a small, glistening puddle in one of its corners.

      ‘Goddamn it!’ He stared at the board and slowly shook his head.

      ‘It don’t signify, sir.’ I took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the wine. ‘It is only a drop or two. See – it is gone.’

      Wintour stared at the handkerchief. ‘You’ve cut yourself.’

      ‘What? Where?’

      ‘Your hand, I apprehend – look at the handkerchief.’

      I held the square of cloth to the light of the nearer candle. He was right: the cambric had a reddish tinge resembling blood in one corner. I examined my hand. The skin was unbroken.

      ‘It must be paint, sir, not blood,’ I said.

      ‘Very likely,’ Wintour said, losing interest in the matter as swiftly as he had gained it.

      I frowned. The ground of the board looked black in the candlelight but it was possible that it was really a very dark red.

      He reached for the bottle. ‘Shall we put a guinea on the first game, sir?’

      ‘Or there might have been blood,’ I said slowly. ‘A spot of blood on the board.’

      As I spoke I imagined someone – Mrs Arabella, perhaps – pricking her finger by accident while she was sewing, with the board open before her. Or even suffering an unexpected nosebleed, such as one sometimes had as a result of a heavy cold. A few drops of blood might so easily have fallen on the board and lain there, drying in a moment, and invisible against the dark paint, particularly if the bloodletting had happened in poor light. The madeira had reliquefied the blood, bringing it back to a watery half-life.

      ‘Well, sir – guinea?’ said Wintour, sharply. ‘I find a little wager lends spice to a game, any game at all. Playing СКАЧАТЬ