Death from the Claret Jug Read online

  James Y. Bartlett

  Death

  from the

  Claret Jug

  A Hacker Golf Mystery

  Copyright © 2018 by James Y. Bartlett

  Yeoman House Books Original Paperback

  All rights reserved.

  This Yeoman House e-book edition of Death from the Claret Jug is an original publication. It is published by arrangement with the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the events, characters, names and places depicted in this novel are entirely fictitious or are used fictitiously. No representation that any statement made in this novel is true or that any incident depicted in this novel actually occurred is intended or should be inferred by the reader.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address:

  Yeoman House Books

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  Cover Design: YH Studio

  Printed in the USA.

  ISBN 978-0-9852537-2-1

  Library of Congress PCN: 2018941048

  To Susan

  “Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey.

  At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.”

  -- Vera Nazarian

  Carl T. Abercrombie roused himself and his wife Priscilla early that morning. Priscilla groaned: Having been married to the man for thirty years, she knew that when he had a schedule to keep, she would not be able to sleep late.

  Schedules, plans and checklists ruled Abercrombie’s life. He was a partner in the bluestocking Wall Street law firm of Somerset and Soames. His life was lived according to schedules. Daily, he caught the 6:12 train from the station at Dobbs Ferry, debarked at Grand Central at 6:55 (unless it was raining or some wino had decided to sleep on the tracks and get run over) and arrived on the 44th floor of the office building at Broadway and Exchange Place no later than 7:30 sharp. His mug of coffee and a neatly folded copy of the day’s Wall Street Journal would be waiting on his antique walnut writing desk. At eight, the ever-faithful, ever-efficient Mrs. Patterson would enter the office and they would begin the daily routine of working through Abercrombie’s checklist. Everything on his schedule was numbered, and he never varied how he tackled his tasks: Item Number One was taken care of first, followed by Item Number Two, and so on.

  The rest of his life was similarly ordered. There were their two children, a boy and a girl. The golden Labrador retriever. The fund-raising and cultural events that he and Priscilla attended every year. Charity galas at the country club. The holiday schedules: Thanksgiving with his family; Christmas with hers. The February vacation to the Caribbean; they rented the same villa on St. John every year. August spent at the family cabin on the lake in the Adirondacks. And in May, the golf vacation.

  Usually the Abercrombies went with friends to the Greenbrier resort, in the West Virginia mountains, because they liked the way that place never seemed to change. They counted on booking the same suite, seeing the same bellman, greeting the same golf professional, and ordering the same roast duck with blueberry compote in the same immense, rococo dining room.

  But this year the other couples in their golf group had dropped out. Charley Pyle’s company had been acquired by some French conglomerate and he was spending an inordinate amount of time shuttling back and forth to Lyons. The Chesters had divorced, an event not entirely unexpected given Ken Chester’s well-known wandering eye. And Barton Pickwick III, known as Trippy, was on an extended stay at the federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey, due to some unfortunate insider-trading events involving his hedge fund. He had not been represented by Somerset and Soames.

  So Abercrombie, abandoned by his golfing pals and by fate, had decided to strike out, uncharacteristically, on his own this year, breaking new ground. He had decided to take his wife to visit the Home of Golf: Scotland. Mrs. Patterson had called a tour company and made all the arrangements. They had started with a few days at Gleneagles, driven up to the north to play Nairn along the Moray Firth and Royal Dornoch in Sutherland, and then made their way back down to the Kingdom of Fife for a visit to St. Andrews, which is where they had awakened that morning. They were staying in the Old Course Hotel, in a lovely suite on the golf course side, overlooking the dogleg of the famous Road Hole on the Old Course. Carl had played the Old Course, which he didn’t warm to, thinking it rather flat and featureless; Carnoustie, where he had shot an embarrassing 97; and the American-designed course at Kingsbarns, which he liked because they allowed him to ride in a cart. Priscilla, who was an unenthusiastic golfer at best, had played only the latter course; the rest of the time she shopped, walked and, while reading English mystery novels, drank herself into an afternoon stupor every day in the hotel’s quiet and well-appointed bar.

  Abercrombie wanted to get an early start on the day because they were driving back across Scotland to the Ayr coast, where he had a mid-afternoon tee time at Old Prestwick. They would then stay at the Turnberry Resort for a long weekend before heading home.

  “C’mon, Pree,” he said, throwing the covers back and heading for the bathroom. “They say there’s a lot of history in this old town. We’ve got to visit Young Tommy Morris’ grave, spend an hour at the Scottish Golf Museum, and take a tour of the Castle.”

  Priscilla turned her throbbing head back into the pillow and tried to ignore him.

  It was a blustery day with the sun ducking in and out of fast-moving clouds. The wind ranged from very hard to ridiculous gusts that threatened to carry away anything not bolted down. “Good thing we’re not playing in this, eh old girl?” Carl said as they wandered down Market Street towards the towering transept that guarded the churchyard, where row after row of monuments and weathered headstones leaned against the howling wind. Priscilla noticed that the green of the grass—such a deep, lovely green!—was dotted with tiny white daisies with yellow eyes the size of BBs. She smiled—they really were pushing up daisies here!

  They found Young Tommy’s marker, an elaborate Victorian memorial set against a brick wall. “Dead at twenty-four,” Carl mused, standing there with his hands in his pockets. “They say he perished of a broken heart after his wife died in childbirth. He’d already won the British Open three times by then. Imagine how many more he could have won if he’d lived.” Priscilla could only think of the poor dead wife and the poor dead baby. She wanted a drink. Carl read the inscription aloud: “Deeply regretted by numerous friends and all golfers, he thrice in succession won the Championship belt and held it without envy, his many amiable qualities being no less acknowledged than his golfing achievements.”

  “’Many amiable qualities,’” Abercrombie mused aloud. “Isn’t that an interesting thing to say about someone?” Priscilla wished for an amiable quality, but all she really wanted was to get out of the infernal wind and knock back a couple fingers of one of those golden whiskeys they knew how to make in this otherwise godforsaken place.

  They wandered back into the town and on a busy corner ducked into the humid warmth of a Starbucks. Perhaps Abercrombie was hoping to hear a friendly American voice, but he knew, when he saw the rosy red cheeks of the curly haired lass behind the counter, that there were no Americans working here. He ordered a latte, and a chai tea for Priscilla, and they sat near the window looking out at the street. Carl heard the two men sitting at the next table talking about golf, and when he was sure they were Americans, he leaned over and spoke to them. Before long, the three of them were rehashing shots and courses and exchanging cards and planning a lat
e-summer get together at one or all of their golf clubs back home. Priscilla picked idly through a worn copy of Horse and Hounds she had found on one of the tables. If I lived the kind of life these people do, all tweeds and leather and romping about in manure and windy moors, dogs underfoot everywhere, I would kill myself, she thought to herself.

  “Right,” Abercrombie said when the coffee was done and they were standing on the sidewalk again. “It’s getting late,” he glanced at his watch. “We only have time for either the golf museum or the castle. Which would you rather see?” He looked at Priscilla, who was gazing longingly at the Central Pub across the street.

  “I guess the Castle,” she said, wondering why “none of the above” was not a possible choice.

  Abercrombie, reverently holding a city map in front of himself like it was Dante’s Guide to the Seven Circles of Hell, led the way through the twisting, narrow streets past some of the quadrangles of the University of St. Andrews, down the hill and out to the rocky promontory on the sea, where the crumbling ramparts of an ancient castle clung to the edge of a cliff. What had once been a moat was now a grassy depression that followed the walls around, with a heavy wooden plank bridge leading through an arch carved out of the thick stone wall and into the inner courtyard.

  Abercrombie paid the admission fees and purchased a souvenir booklet giving the history of the ancient castle and the occupants who had lived and died there. Built around 1100, when St. Andrews was one of the ecclesiastical centers of the British Kingdom, the Castle had been the home of the powerful bishops and archbishops of the day. The ruined walls, green lawns and one towered parapet were all that remained after the Protestant Reformation in 1560 temporarily eliminated the power of the Roman church in Scotland.

  They climbed the parapet and looked out at the cold gray ocean until the wind chased them back down the roughhewn stairs. Priscilla suggested they visit the dungeons, thinking they, at least, would be out of reach of that cold, relentless wind. They learned that the castle was undermined by two tunnels that had been carved out of the rocky base during one or another sieges from centuries past. The attackers had carved out one tunnel to get into the castle, while the defenders carved out one just a bit higher to surprise the first group. Abercrombie, who had a slight case of claustrophobia, shuddered at the thought of all that digging and hacking and crawling around underground in the dark.

  Just before climbing the stairs back to the courtyard, they entered a triangular chamber and peered down into the entrance of the Bottle Dungeon, a 24-foot-deep hole in the rock below. A plaque on the stone wall said that the dungeon, carved out of the rock in the shape of a bottle of claret, had held prisoners during the Reformation, including most likely the unfortunate Protestant preacher George Wishart, burned at the stake by Cardinal Beaton in 1546 at the height of the religious wars. Abercrombie leaned over the thick metal grating and peered down into the hole, where a single light bulb illuminated the dankness of the stone cave. Priscilla, feeling a bit dizzy in the close air, did not look.

  “Humph,” he said.

  Up in the courtyard, where the thick stone walls blocked the worst of the wind, Abercrombie spotted a man wearing a phosphorescent neon slicker with reflective tape markings. He had been in the country long enough to know that this uniform signified some kind of official. He went up to the man and tapped his shoulder.

  “It’s none of my business, of course,” he said, “But I think if you’re going to put a figure in the dungeon, you should make it easier to see. It’s awfully dark down there and there’s no lighting at all. Can’t you get more light down there?”

  The man, who was a waste services engineer, which is to say the garbage man emptying the trash bins, looked at Abercrombie as if he were mad. “I dinnae unnerstan’ wha’ y’mean,” he stammered.

  “The dummy … the figure … the mannikin,” Abercrombie said, enunciating his words carefully and pointing down the stairs toward the dungeon. “In the bottle dungeon. It’s too dark down there to see the figure of the prisoner. That’s all I’m saying. Just my opinion.”

  Luckily for the poor man, one of the museum docents was walking past on her way to the office and overheard Abercrombie. Seeing the rank confusion on the face of Willie McTavish—the garbage man—the woman stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are no figures in the dungeon. We used to have some, but took them out long ago—they tend to get moldy down there.”

  Abercrombie stared at her. “What are you talking about?” he said. “I was just down there and saw one with my own eyes. Though it’s really too dark to make out much detail. That’s all I’m saying...”

  Priscilla, embarrassed, tried to pull on her husband’s arm, to get him to come away and forget all this nonsense about figures in dungeons. The things that get into Carl’s head, she thought. Once lodged in there, they never come out.

  The woman, who had worked at the castle museum for years, long enough to have ages ago gotten sick and tired of pushy, self-righteous Americans, decided for once to do something. She crooked her finger at the man standing there, red in the face. “Come along then,” she said, “We’ll just go have a wee look.”

  Abercrombie followed the woman back down the stairs to the dungeon. Priscilla decided to take a look through the gift shop. She wished she had thought to slip into her purse some of the tiny bottles from the well-stocked minibar in their suite. One or two of those would have helped the morning immensely.

  When Abercrombie reached the small low-ceilinged chamber to the dungeon, he stood out of the way, and allowed the woman to pass by. She smiled at him grimly, bent over the edge and peered down through the grating into the dank, dark chamber below.

  “Good Lord,” she said.

  I pulled the door closed on the Vauxhall Omega, inserted the key and turned it on. I clipped my seat belt in, adjusted the mirrors all around and revved her up. As with most modern-day cars, instead of the deep throaty growl I was looking for, the Vauxhall responded with a whiny, tinny sound in protest. But I didn’t care. In my sleep-deprived and over-imaginative state, it sounded just like an Aston Martin.

  I glanced over to my left at Mary Jane Cappelletti, who was holding a cardboard cup of coffee and looking confused, trying to figure out why the steering wheel and pedals were on the wrong side of the car. It took her a moment or two before she remembered we were in Scotland. They make the cars backwards here.

  It was a little before seven in the morning in early July, and we had just flown into Glasgow on the overnight from Boston. The weather was like it always is in Scotland: brisk, showery and due to change in a moment’s time. In a little over a week, my presence was required in St. Andrews, when the Royal and Ancient Golf Club would once again stage the tournament to decide “the Champion Golfer of the Year.” To the rest of us, it is known as the British Open. Or just The Open, as the snobby Brits prefer.

  I’d be there chronicling the action for the readers of my paper back in Boston, most of whom would be more interested in how many games behind the Yankees the Red Sox were, or whether the Patriots would sign their high-priced, newly drafted running back before training camp opened in another month. But I’ve long since gotten used to writing about golf in our baseball- and football-crazy town. There are still enough newspaper readers left who like to get in 18 holes before the Sox come on TV to keep me employed, if just barely. How much longer, I have no idea, what with the number of newspaper readers declining faster than John Daly’s bank account after a long weekend in Vegas.

  But this year, I had invited Mary Jane along. I have discovered that traveling with her is far superior to traveling alone, even if I occasionally have to wait a few minutes for her to “put on her face” or perform one of the other mysterious ablutions that women seem to have. There is, of course, the warm body to snuggle with at night. But it was more than just that with Mary Jane. She had rather quickly become a constant presence in my life, and it felt more right being with her than not. Once again, M
ary Jane had been able to get someone to look after her precocious ten-year-old daughter Victoria; this time with some cousins who were spending the summer at their camp on a lake in Maine. The idea of Vickie spending a couple of weeks in the fresh air, swimming and boating, and having a gaggle of kids to hang around with overcame the knowledge that the family she was staying with was part of The Family. Victoria’s grandfather is the capo in Boston’s Italian North End, and many of her uncles and cousins are your typical bent-nose hoodlums. Victoria, thankfully, had never really known her father, now dearly departed, who had been a small-time leg-breaker and your basic bum, despite his impressive parentage, and had finally bought it one fine morning in the hallway of a dingy Charlestown tenement.

  I revved the car again. Mary Jane cocked an eye at me sleepily.

  “Hacker,” I said in my best Sean Connery brogue. “James Hacker.”

  “Are you sure you know how to drive this thing?” Mary Jane asked, doubt creeping into her voice. “And when did you change your name from Peter?”

  “Miss Moneypenny never doubts her man,” I said.

  “Miss Moneypenny died a lonely spinster,” Mary Jane said. “There’s a moral there somewhere.”

  I threw the car into gear and eased out of the parking lot. I had specifically requested that my rental come with manual transmission, because I know of few things more fun than driving along Scotland’s twisty roads, shifting up and down the gears, imagining smersh agents hot on my trail. I know: I should grow up. But I can’t help it.

  After negotiating a series of roundabouts getting out of the airport—there wasn’t much traffic this early in the morning, so I could zoom through them a bit too fast, which is always fun—I slowed down and followed the signs onto the M8 motorway that took us past the sooty gray downtown of Glasgow and onto the A80 heading to the north. I like driving on the “wrong” side, and shifting with the “wrong” hand. It’s fun. And because everyone else is doing it too, it’s not too hard to get with the flow.