‘Tie him up,’ said Scarface. ‘On the lower beam, naturally.’
In less than a minute Powerscourt found himself lying on the bottom beam, secured to the contraption with thick rope. He wondered what they proposed to do with the upper beam. He did not have long to wait. There was a series of grunts and curses as the two men tried to work the levers that would lower the upper section.
‘They’re stuck,’ said Jean Jacques. ‘Nobody’s oiled the damned things for a couple of hundred years.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Barrel, ‘they were working earlier this summer. Damn it, I saw them myself.’
With that he gave a tremendous heave. Powerscourt could see the muscles straining in his face. With a thick squeak the left-hand lever began to work. Looking at the beam descending towards him Powerscourt began to pray. Then, as if working in sympathy, the other one limped slowly into action. The two men looked on as the upper section of the press grew closer and closer to Powerscourt’s chest.
‘Hey, boss,’ said Barrel cheerfully, ‘do you want any juice this morning?’
17
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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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-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.