Death from the Claret Jug by James Y. Bartlett

Author:James Y. Bartlett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yeoman House Books
Published: 2019-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

I went back to the flat and had lunch with Mary Jane. I filled her in on what I’d learned.

She stuck a thumb in her book. “Commander Dalgleish would say that you have stumbled upon a clue,” she said. “Not to mention a recurring theme.”

“The Russkis,” I said, nodding.

“Quite so,” she said. “Johnny Swift is being chased by them, Lord Cheape of Wormwood employs them and now we find that the dead guy—”

“Colin Kincaid of the Links Trust,” I said helpfully.

“—whatever…he was apparently fluent in the Russki tongue. That’s a lot of coincidences gathered together in one smallish, if auld, grey toon.”

“I wonder if Commander Dalgleish would call it the Russki tongue,” I said.

“Perhaps not,” she said, opening her book and beginning to read again. “But he’d sure as hell grab onto it and start shaking until something came out.”

I kissed her on the top of her head and left her to the fictional world of New Scotland Yard, where murder and mayhem always get neatly explained in the penultimate chapter, the murderer is always imprisoned for life and truth and justice is always served.

I walked through the busy streets of town on my way down to the golf course, guided by the occasional bursts of cheers and applause erupting from the giant bleachers and the rings of fans standing along the ropes. From a distance, one could tell the difference between the percussive sounds of joy elicited by birdie putts or great shots and the slow welling of applause that sounded like rainfall on a tin roof, building in crescendo as a famous golfer walked down the last fairway towards the last green.

The weather for this first day of the Open was near perfect: the skies were clear but for a few scudding clouds, the sun was warm and the wind was fitful and mostly calm. It was a good day for going low. The crowds were ten-deep behind the first tee, where golfers were still being sent off every ten minutes. The R&A’s iconic tee-box announcer Ivor Robson, known to most of us as The Man with the Iron Bladder, sent each player off with his usual cheerful announcement. “Now on the tee, from Denmark, Hans Büller!” Robson stood on that tee for ten hours a day, four days in a row, flawlessly pronouncing everyone’s name—including the growing contingent of players from Asia—without stopping for food, drink or a bathroom break. He ought to get an endorsement contract from Depends.

I glanced at the tall yellow scoreboards to see that Zach Johnson, Germany’s Heinrich Gruber, and somebody from South Korea named Park had all had good mornings and were currently tied for the lead at four-under-par; closely trailed by the young Spaniard Enrico Paz and the Irish boy wonder, Conor Kelly, who were among a passel of golfers at three-under. The afternoon rounds were just getting underway, so it was far too soon to tell what names might yet appear in the black letters on the board.

Then I turned

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