David Dickinson - Death of a wine merchant

Marcel came to inspect Powerscourt, lashed to the beam like a prisoner on a galley slave. He tested the knots that held him in place. He motioned for the upper beam to be lowered slightly until it pressed harder on Powerscourt’s chest.

‘I don’t think we want any juice for the moment,’ he told his men. ‘We just need to be sure Monsieur here cannot escape.’ He glances at the ropes again. He patted the upper beam with his right hand.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We can leave Monsieur here for a little while. Have no fear, sir, we shall return.’

Barrel looked closely at Powerscourt as they left. Powerscourt could see the disappointment in his face, disappointment that there had been no juice pressed that afternoon, disappointment that Powerscourt’s blood had not been forced out of his body into the square buckets lined up in rows on either side of the beam. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the torturers in the basement cells of the Russian secret police, the Okhrana, in St Petersburg he had met on a previous case. There the mouths of the victims had been taped up so that the neighbours could not complain about the screams. Barrel, he thought, might have a great future in the Okhrana. But here they hadn’t bothered to tape up his mouth. The barn was miles from anywhere. Nobody in Beaune would hear him scream, nobody at all.

With determined and painful wriggling he found he could move an inch or so to his right. It didn’t do him any good, of course, but it gave him the illusion of control. He wondered yet again who his captors were and where they came from. He tried in vain to establish a link between them and the case of Randolph Colville. He was, however, optimistic on one count. He didn’t think they were going to kill him. If they had been, they would surely have done so by now. Five or six great turns on the levers and he would have been crushed to a pulp. He hoped that if they were going to press him to death they would be quick about it. A real Okhrana man would be able to drag the process out for hours until there was no breath left to scream and no bones in your body left unbroken. He thought of Lady Lucy abandoned in a strange city. He prayed that she was in the hotel, not tracing his movements and running into danger herself. He thought suddenly of the long drawing room on the first floor of Markham Square, the sunlight streaming in on summer days, the books on either side of the fireplace, Lady Lucy’s favourite pictures on the walls, Lady Lucy herself reading a story to the twins. The contrast with his present surroundings was almost too much to bear. He tried to remember some of the worst predicaments he had found himself in on previous cases. If he twisted his head as far as he was able he could just see the light coming in the barn door, but it was beginning to fade and he didn’t like to think about what might happen in the dark.

Lady Lucy was now sitting in a small desk in her room at the hotel. She wrote some letters. She tried once more to make progress with the latest Joseph Conrad but found it difficult. She had taken a photo of her husband she always carried with her and propped it up on the little table by her side of the bed. She prayed that Francis would come back to take his place on the other side. She prayed to God that He would bring Francis back from his time of trouble. She prayed that they might be reunited with their children before too long. She asked for forgiveness for the sins she had committed and any others that she might have committed but not known about. ‘Keep him safe, Oh Lord, please keep him safe.’

Marcel and his thugs returned just as the light was fading. Marcel was carrying a battered suitcase.

‘Take him down,’ he said, ‘quickly, while we can still see what we are doing.’

‘No juice at all, boss?’ asked Barrel. ‘Not even a cupful, or better still, seeing where we are, a bottleful?’

‘No, no,’ said Marcel. ‘We’ve got other plans for our friend here.’ With that he bestowed on Powerscourt a ghastly smile. ‘Get him out of those clothes. I’ve got something appropriate for where he’s going in the bag here.’

Powerscourt needed no assistance. He climbed out of his London suit and put on the clothes of a French peasant, a pair of dark trousers that might once have been blue, a filthy shirt and a sweater with holes in both arms. He managed to conceal about his person a large amount of money that had been in the trousers of his suit. He stood still for inspection.

‘Rub some earth in his hair, would you, please? And scuff up those shoes, we don’t want him looking as though he’s just walked down the Champs-Elysees.’

Jean Jacques produced a pair of scissors and proceeded to chop random tufts out of Powerscourt’s hair. The final result was a bedraggled peasant, complete with a cut on his forehead from the scissors.

‘Good,’ said Marcel. ‘He’ll do. If you try to escape, monsieur,’ he addressed the latest recruit to the French peasantry, ‘I shall shoot you. If you do not try to escape, I shall not shoot you. Do I make myself clear?’

They set off down the little track back towards the main road. At the junction Marcel led them to the right, away from the lights being turned on in Beaune. Powerscourt reflected sadly that they were taking him further away from Lucy. Marcel was in the lead, Powerscourt second, with the other two close behind. On either side of the road the vines stretched far into the distance. Powerscourt wondered if they belonged to the Hospices de Beaune and if their produce had been auctioned in that beautiful courtyard so very long ago that morning. A cart passed them, going towards the city, driven by a silent crone. A dog barked somewhere ahead of them. Looming up ahead on the right Powerscourt could see a large building some distance from the road. As they grew nearer he thought it might be a barracks. Rows and rows of small windows were set back slightly from the walls. Closer still and he noticed that all the windows, without exception, were barred. Was it a prison? There was no sign that he could see on the outside to tell him the building’s function. They turned off the main road and proceeded to the front door, a massive creation that looked to Powerscourt as if its principal purpose was to keep the insiders in rather than the visitors out.

Marcel pulled firmly on the rope. A surly porter who looked as if was expecting them let them in. He showed them to a small waiting area with no chairs. Then Powerscourt knew where he was. A very official-looking sign on the wall welcomed them to the Maison d’Alienes, Departement de Cote d’Or. No visitors, it proclaimed, unless by prior arrangement. This was the local lunatic asylum, also known as Maison de Fous. The Madhouse. Welcome to Bedlam.

The porter indicated that Jean Jacques and Barrel were to remain in the waiting area. He brought Powerscourt and Marcel to an office off on the left of the main corridor. He knocked firmly on the door.

‘Come in,’ said a tired voice on the other side. They were placed on two chairs opposite a wide desk littered with files. The only decoration in the room, apart from the grey paint on the walls, was a great etching of the Palace of Versailles. Perhaps they were all mad in there too, Powerscourt thought, Marie Antoinette playing with her pretend dairy at Le Petit Trianon, the courtiers measuring out their importance across the chateau floors, a court inhabited entirely by lunatics until they were swept aside by the wilder lunacy of the Revolution. A sign facing them announced that they were in the presence of Dr Charles Belfort, Professor of Medicine at the University of Dijon and Director of the Maison d’Alienes. He was a small tubby man with a slim moustache and greying hair. A younger medical man stood sentry behind him.

‘This is the man you spoke of earlier today, monsieur?’ he said to Marcel. The doctor looked Powerscourt up and down distastefully. There was a faint smell of countryside and cow-dung coming from his new clothes.