Death of a Wine Merchant (19 page)

The knot returned to Lady Lucy as she picked her way through a large helping of roast chicken in the hotel dining room. It was slight at first, the knot, then it gathered strength as her lunch progressed. By the time she reached the cheese it was as tight as she had ever known it. Where was Francis? Who were these people who pursued him into the Hôtel Dieu and must be holding him prisoner somewhere by now? Why were they after him? As she reviewed the case of the murdered Colville in her mind she could not think of anybody who might want to harm her husband. Perhaps he had not told her about a whole new raft of enemies. Perhaps he did not know of them himself. Perhaps they had risen up from some old investigation years before, but for the life of her she could not think who such people might be. She wondered if she should go back to the hospital and ask the nuns what they had seen. Then she remembered what Francis had always told her. If I get lost or taken prisoner, he always said, don’t go charging round the place trying to find me. You may be taken prisoner too. Please stay put where I know I can find you. That will be for the best. And so, sipping at a bitter coffee, Lady Lucy sat in the dining room of the Hôtel des Ducs de Bourgogne wondering where her husband was. She wished Johnny Fitzgerald was with him. Somewhere she knew she had the telegraphic address of her brother-in-law William Burke in London. He would be able to find Johnny
but even if she sent the cable first thing in the morning when London offices would be open again it would be at least two days before Johnny Fitzgerald could reach Beaune. The knot seemed to be growing worse. Lady Lucy was determined about one thing. She wasn’t going to cry. Not yet anyway. And certainly not in the hotel dining room.

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-Elysées.’

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’Aliénés, Département de Côte 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 château 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’Aliénés. 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.

‘It is, sir,’ said Marcel.

The doctor rummaged briefly in his papers. ‘And this is the letter from Dr Rives, the distinguished general practitioner from Beaune?’

‘It is,’ said Marcel.

‘Monsieur,’ the doctor turned to Powerscourt, ‘could you please tell us your name?’

‘My name is Francis Powerscourt.’ He was damned if was going to call this ridiculous little man sir.

‘And do you have any titles, monsieur?’

‘Titles?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘What titles?’ Was the man asking him if he was Lord Mayor of London or the Keeper of the Privy Purse?

‘I was wondering if you thought you were a member of the aristocracy perhaps?’

It was now that the severity of his plight struck home. God knows what Dr Rives had said in his letter, written for him by Marcel presumably, but here he was, his hair looking like a scarecrow, his clothes stinking of the farmyard, his flies undone because Marcel had cut the buttons off, a scar across his face, his shoes with holes in them and filthy fingernails, about to announce himself as a Peer of the Realm.

‘My full title,’ said Powerscourt rather sadly, ‘is Lord Francis Powerscourt. I am an Irish peer.’

‘An Irish peer?’ said the doctor, as if this was the most interesting thing he had heard all day. ‘And tell me, pray, how do they differ from English peers or Scottish peers or Welsh peers? We have grown beyond all this nonsense here in France.’

Powerscourt just restrained himself from pointing out that Dr Belfort’s fellow countrymen had cut most of their peers’ heads off on the guillotine. ‘It is a purely honorary title. Irish peers are not allowed to vote in the British House of Lords.’ Powerscourt remembered suddenly the French governess who had lived in his parents’ house when he was aged between two and fifteen. Her mission was to make all the Powerscourt children fluent in French. She succeeded so well that his accent would pass for that of a native. He sounded like a true Frenchman.

‘Really?’ said the doctor in a condescending voice. ‘How very interesting for you all. How unusual. And tell me, do you work for a living? Do you have an occupation?’

‘I am an investigator. People in England employ me to solve cases of mystery and murder.’ Even as he spoke Powerscourt knew he was in real trouble. The man didn’t believe a word he said. The investigating was only going to make it worse.

‘I see,’ said Dr Belfort, casting a meaningful glance at his young companion. ‘So you are Sherlock Holmes, is it not so, leaving Baker Street for the delights of Burgundy?’

‘You could put it like that, I suppose,’ said Powerscourt, wondering desperately if he could find a way out of this horrible place.

‘We have three Sherlock Holmeses in here already,’ said the doctor. ‘An elderly one, a red-headed one, and one who talks to Dr Watson all the time. Perhaps you will be able to hold meaningful conversations with them. No?’

Powerscourt remained silent. ‘And what brings you to Beaune, Mr Investigator? The Case of the Poisoned Meursault? The Curious Affair at the Hôtel Dieu, perhaps?’

Powerscourt sighed. ‘I am looking into a murder case. We
believe the wrong man has been charged. I need to go back to work at once or else an innocent man may be sent to the gallows.’

‘Of course you must go back to work. Of course. I’m sure you’ll be able to work very well on the top floor here.’

With that the doctor began writing furiously in a large black notebook. ‘We have seen cases of the paranoid delusions, the illusions of self-importance like this before, have we not?’ He looked over his shoulder at his young assistant as he spoke. ‘But rarely one where the various fantasies fit so well together, I think.’ He talked about Powerscourt as if he were not in the room. Powerscourt remembered English doctors doing exactly the same thing in London. It was a different form of mental illness. The patients only exist in the minds of the doctors. They have no independent life of their own.

Dr Belfort rang a bell on the side of the desk. Another member of the staff of the Maison d’Aliénés appeared, clad entirely in pale blue smock and trousers.

‘Third floor,’ he pointed to Powerscourt. ‘Solitary. Same medicine as the rest of them up there. Regular observation for now.’

As Powerscourt was led away Marcel stood aside for him at the door. Marcel looked him straight in the eye. ‘The compliments of the Alchemist, monsieur.’ With that he left the room. The warder took him into the reception area and down a long corridor which seemed even longer than it was because of the lack of any decoration on the walls. There were weak electric lights overhead casting feeble shadows on the wooden floor. Weird noises that might have been screams of ecstasy or terror made their way into the corridor.