David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

Formez vos bataillons,

Marchons, marchons!

Qu’un sang impur

Abreuve nos sillons . . .

Powerscourt sang along in French to raise his spirits. He remembered that the soldier who wrote the words in a single night was a captain of engineers. Maybe some of his skills could be transferred to Powerscourt’s hands.

To arms, citizens!

Form up your battalions,

Let us march, let us march!

That their impure blood

Should water our fields . . .

Lady Lucy felt cold when she heard about her husband’s trip to the vineyard. She could sense danger. She thought of the road between the hotel and the vineyard. She remembered the words of the Inspector – ‘We’re only letting the pilgrims out one at a time. No pairs, no groups. If they want to kill themselves instead of one of the others, so much the better.’ The killer might be lying in the wait for her Francis. She remembered all the times in the past when Francis had gone out on potentially dangerous missions accompanied by Johnny Fitzgerald as friend and protector. Now he was on his own. And they were up against one of the most ruthless murderers they had ever encountered. If the murderer began to see Powerscourt as a threat, she felt sure that he too would be killed. She remembered Sherlock Holmes’s advice to Dr Watson when he was telling him how to cross London without falling into the clutches of the evil Professor Moriarty: ‘in the morning you will send for a hansom, desiring your man to take neither the first nor the second that may present itself’. Francis, she thought, had jumped heedlessly into the first one.

She rushed to find Inspector Leger. Together they ran up the road to Monsieur Leon’s with Lucy praying as she went that her husband would still be alive when she got there.

The wine was well over his knees now. Powerscourt thought that he had only five or ten minutes left. The music box, obviously a deeply patriotic machine, had worked its way through all seven verses of the Marseillaise. Now it was playing ‘God Save the King’ at a very rapid speed. Powerscourt wondered if he would die happy and glorious. His hands were still hacking feverishly at the wood. His indentation was about an eighth of an inch deep. He didn’t know how thick the planks were but he doubted he had enough time. He realized suddenly how difficult it would be to effect a rescue mission. Anybody walking into the cave would think everything was normal, the bottles parked neatly in their rows, the great vats standing to attention at the end. Nobody would ever know he was inside one of them. He hoped the music box would carry beyond the curved walls of his prison. He thought of Lucy and the years ahead they might never enjoy together. He thought of his children growing up without a father. He thought of his first wife Caroline, drowned with their little son in a shipwreck on the Irish Sea. He thought about the murderer in his present case and that drove him to yet more furious efforts with knife and corkscrew. If there was one thing that made him angry, it was the thought of being beaten. This bloody murderer, he said to himself, is not going to kill me. I won’t have it. As the wine rose to his waist and filled his pockets he began shoving the corkscrew into the wood as if it was a cork in a bottle. He thought he could drive it in another eighth of an inch. There was still a long way to go. There was now a musty smell in the vat of death, heady fumes rising from the liquid. Powerscourt realized he might be forced to drink the stuff at the end. An imaginary waiter appeared before him. Would Monsieur like to try the wine?

Inspector Leger and Lady Lucy were halfway there now. The hill had slowed them to a walking pace. Inspector Leger was mopping his brow with a blue handkerchief, freshly ironed, Lady Lucy observed, wondering about Madame Leger and life in the Leger household. Some of her anxiety had transmitted itself to the policeman. He patted his pocket from time to time, making sure his gun was still there. A small group of clouds passed overhead, obscuring the sun. A cart, laden with manure, passed them going the other way. On either side the vines were ripening slowly.

The wine was at Powerscourt’s heart now, The musical box had moved back to the American national anthem. He was beginning to feel dizzy. His clothes were sticking tightly to his body. He could feel the energy ebbing away from him as his fingers still hacked at the wood of his prison. He cursed the murderer. He thought he was about to cry.

Lady Lucy and the Inspector were only a couple of hundred yards away. Lady Lucy was panting, holding on to her side. She knew she couldn’t slow down. A terrible memory came back to her, of her husband lying wounded, shot by a killer in the Wallace Collection in London’s Manchester Square and hovering close to death. He lay in a coma, and she recalled all too vividly the thought that he was going to pass away in front of her and she wouldn’t even know he had gone. Perhaps he’s dead already, Lady Lucy said to herself, for her anxieties had grown on the journey, and I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Very quietly she began to weep.

Powerscourt thought he was making progress at last: the wood at the end of his corkscrew felt slightly different. It began to yield a little. He though of prisoners in their cells in the Tower of London in Elizabethan times trying to saw away at the bars of their prison. The wine was by his shoulders now. Every time he rammed his corkscrew into the wood there was a swell in the liquid around him. At its height the red tide washed up to his ears. His music box was back on ‘God Save the King’. Powerscourt thought the Dead March from Saul might be more appropriate. Very quietly he began to sing the last verse:

From every latent foe,

From the assassin’s blow,

God save the King!

O’er him thine arm extend

For Britain’s sake defend,

Our father, prince and friend,

God save the King!

Inspector Leger and Lady Lucy had reached the winemaker’s house. They took a lightning tour. They peered into the darkness of the cellar and the Inspector went back into the kitchen to search for matches. God only knows, he said to himself, where the bloody light switch is. Lady Lucy stood halfway down the steps straining for a noise or a cry or the sound of some stray dog barking by a human body.

One more attack with this corkscrew and I might be through, Powerscourt said to himself, bracing himself for a mighty effort. The music box now gave forth a rather high-pitched rendering of the Marseillaise. Maybe the fumes of the wine were affecting its inner workings. In went the corkscrew, Powerscourt turned it as hard as he could. It was getting somewhere. Then it was through. There was a tiny hole in the side of the vat. Powerscourt began to smile. But as he watched the wine trickle out, he knew that it was no good. His trickle was less, far less than the flow coming in from above. He might have postponed his doom but only for a few seconds. And then he saw that something else had gone terribly wrong. In his last round of pushing, turning and twisting he had broken the corkscrew. The vital part of it must be lying on the floor outside. The wine was up to his neck. The fumes were much worse. He thought he would pass out before he died. He would never see Lucy again.

After what seemed an eternity Inspector Leger found some matches. He left the winemaker’s kitchen looking as if it had been ransacked by a burglar in a hurry, drawers thrown on the floor, cupboards emptied, a whole row of saucepans tossed aside. Lady Lucy clutched his arm as they made their way down the steps, enormous shadows flickering now across the sides of the cave.

At the bottom the Inspector paused to light another match.