‘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.
‘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 Hotel 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’Alienes 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.
Back in his office Dr Belfort dismissed Marcel and thanked him for performing his public duty. ‘The really irritating thing,’ he said to his assistant, ‘about these poor patients of ours is how fervently they believe in their own fantasies. The man’s real name, according to the doctor, is Albert Bouchet. Lived around Beaune all his life apparently. But if that peasant who thought he was an Irish peer had been dressed up in fancy clothes we might, we just might have believed him.’