Young Petrella

by Michael Gilbert

  The warm sun was tempered by a breeze which rippled the water. The tide was on the ebb, and a single, battered, tramp steamer was coming up against it.

  Petrella settled himself more comfortably and fell into a trance which was part happiness, part the feel of the sun on his back and part genuine tiredness.

  It was during the evenings that he did his work, and he had not seen his bed until the very small hours of that morning.

  “Garçon trés sympathique,” declared Madame Jolliot of the Pension Maritime. “One can observe from his accent that he is not a Frenchman. A Belgian, perhaps.”

  “His passport is British,” said Monsieur Jolliot.

  “There are all sorts of foreigners in Britain,” said Madame. “It proves nothing. To my way of thinking, he is not British. A Pole, perhaps. He is not reserved.”

  He was certainly not reserved. He took his evening drink at one or more of the four main riverside cafés. He joined in all public arguments. If there was a party, he could usually be relied on to make one of it. He was young and free with his money, and as soon as the ice had broken there had been no lack of parties. It was a fortunate moment, being the last few days before the vintage. Soon everyone would be too tired at the end of the day to do more than eat and tumble into bed. At the moment there was an interval of leisure. The last row had been weeded, the gear overhauled, the casks scrubbed. So there was time for parties.

  It was a social routine which left Petrella a little fatigued, but all was compensated for by the long, dreamlike mornings beside the river.

  The tramp steamer was abreast of him now. It was alone on the wide reach. Boats usually came in with the flood, instead of battling up against the ebb. She must, he reflected, be running to a schedule which brooked no delay.

  A man appeared on the lower well deck. Petrella saw a dark face above white overalls. The man was some sort of galley hand. He was humping a scuttle of rubbish, which he emptied over the side of the boat down wind. Refuse, boxes, paper, tins, flew out. A bag burst as it hit the water and Petrella saw potato peelings. He grinned. You couldn’t litter up the sea the same way as you could the land. There were too many scavengers about. Seagulls were already wheeling over the trove.

  Soon only one large cardboard carton was visible. It floated high in the water, with a sort of lopsided dignity, and the wind was driving it across the current. Petrella wondered if it would sink before it hit the reeds. At that moment, he became aware that there were other parties interested. Out of a creek, a hundred yards downstream, came a dinghy. There were two boys in it. They handled the boat skilfully, pulling into the current and judging their distance. Another type of scavenger, thought Petrella. Seagulls and boys. He didn’t think they would get much for their pains. The way the box floated, he imagined it was empty.

  The boat was alongside now. The two boys shipped oars and leaned over. The boat dipped as the box came over the side.

  Petrella started to wind in his line. His mind was no longer on fishes. He was trying to work out how a light-looking cardboard carton, which floated high out of the water, could need two strong boys to handle it; and how it could cause a boat to dip when taken aboard; unless it was much heavier than it looked, in which case why had it not sunk? Unless, of course, it had been scientifically buoyed, say with cork or kapok or compressed air.

  He packed up his fishing gear, folded his mackintosh over his arm, and walked back down the river path. When he came to the head of the creek, he saw that the dinghy was already back at its moorings, and empty. The boys were lashing a tarpaulin over a small handcart. He could see that there were nets on the cart. Since there was no sign of the carton, he felt safe in assuming that it was under the nets.

  Petrella passed on. He had no intention of following them. Such a course would have been worse than stupid. It was, moreover, quite unnecessary.

  After luncheon he fell into conversation with M. Jolliot. Every inhabitant of the commune knows to whom every inch of land belongs. The fields and vineyards, with their infinite divisions and subdivisions, are spread out for all to see, like a living family tree – a record of marriage, birth, patrimony and descent.

  The creek and the landing stage belonged to the owner of Château Maurice-Epinard. The château itself stood some three kilometres away. No, said M. Jolliot, it had not a classified cru, but produced a very good patrician wine, of the second class. Two boys? Undoubtedly they would be the sons of Clairambaud, the facteur, who acted also as maître de chai, or cellar master. In a big château, like Latour or Mouton Rothschild, the offices would be separate, but not in a small one. Both boys were well known.

  “Full of espièglerie,” said Madame Jolliot.

  “Full of impertinence,” amended M. Jolliet. “Out at all seasons in their little boat. Some day they will come to no good.”

  Petrella agreed with him and retired to his room for an afternoon nap. What he had to do next needed careful thought.

  He got up at half past four, had a cup of chocolate, and then strolled out towards the château. After a short walk, he left the main road and followed a broad track, between rows of vines.

  When he reached his destination, he saw that “château” was only a courtesy title. It was a large, flat house, overshadowed by trees, with a stuccoed front and sham turrets. The long windows were shuttered, and there was no smoke coming from the chimneys. The cellarage buildings, almost as large as the château, formed a separate block, with their own entrance and forecourt. There was some life here. Two men were lounging in the front of the court, and a woman, standing in a kitchen doorway, was talking to a third man, a bulky red-faced person, with the look more of a Gascon than a Bordelaise.

  Petrella guessed that he would be the maître de chai, and went up to him. He knew that it was not uncommon for visitors to come to a château at vintage time.

  “Monsieur Clairambaud?”

  “The same,” said the red-faced man.

  “I wondered if—”

  “You wish to see our cellars. Certainly. This way, if you please.”

  They passed up the courtyard. “You have walked out from Pauillac? You are staying there, perhaps?”

  “Yes.”

  “From England?”

  Petrella agreed he was from England. They had reached the door leading down into the cellar. Clairambaud held it open. As Petrella turned to go in, he noticed, pressed to a nearby window, the face of a boy. The expression was an unpleasant mixture of malice and anticipation. The woman had gone inside and the other two men had closed up silently behind him.

  He realised that he had not been quite as careful as he imagined.

  “Go ahead,” said Clairambaud. His face was still smiling, but Petrella saw, for the first time, his great red butcher’s hands. He walked down the steps. “Straight ahead.” It was an order. The three men followed him closely. They were walking down an aisle, dimly lit, between rows of barrels. At the far end there was a grating. Clairambaud pushed past him, took out a key, and opened the door.

  “Our inner cellar,” he said, “where we keep some of our most precious vintages. It is useful also for a multitude of other purposes. Please go in.”

  “I suppose you know what you are doing,” said Petrella.

  “Of a certainty,” said the man calmly.

  “My friends at the hotel will be enquiring after me when I do not return. I informed them, of course, where I was going.”

  “I think that is a lie,” said Clairambaud. “My son tells me that you spoke to no one before leaving. In any event, when you do not return, they will think, no doubt, that you are at some party – busy asking questions. That seems to have been your occupation on all other evenings. To ask questions.”

  Petrella had nothing to say to that.

  “By tomorrow morning, no doubt, some enquiry will start. Believe me, my little detective, they will have to search long and closely if they wish to find you then.”

  The two men standing behind M. Clairambaud laughed.<
br />
  “One other thing. If you shout and scream it may be necessary to tie you up with cords. That will be very uncomfortable for you. And you will, in any event, have wasted your time. At this point you are three metres below the ground and the walls are of great thickness.”

  “I shall not shout,” said Petrella.

  “I was sure of it,” said Clairambaud. He walked out, snapped shut the lock of the grille with his big key, and turned out the light. Then he turned it on again for a moment to say: “Look out for the spiders. They grow, in this darkness, to the size of a man’s hand.” Then he turned it out again. The three men tramped away. When they reached the steps, the cellar light went out as well, and Petrella heard the heavy outer door being shut and bolted.

  He sat still for some minutes. It was not that he was afraid of the spiders, whose existence he doubted, but he decided to wait until his flickerings of panic had died down. Then he could start to work things out.

  Slowly, the darkness cleared to a dim, shadowy dusk. There was no direct source of light in his cage, but it was not quite black. There must be ventilators, up near the roof, to let in the necessary air, and they let in some light as well. He could see the bars of his door black against the lesser darkness beyond. The atmosphere was quite fresh.

  What a fool he had been. And he had imagined he was being clever. He had only succeeded in being obvious. They had suspected him all along. They had not minded – that was the galling part. They had not even minded his seeing how the goods came ashore from the steamer. They had known, only too well, that he would come to the château. Everything was arranged. He had no doubt at all that a long, limp bundle would go back on the handcart that night, and that in the early hours of the morning a heavily loaded dinghy would pull out from the jetty into midstream.

  That, or something like it, was their intention. One thing mattered: would they visit him again before night? Even if they intended to kill him that night they would hardly dare to move him before midnight. More probably it would be later than that. Would they visit him first? In the circumstances they would be unlikely to waste food and drink on him.

  All the same, he thought they would look in once – just to make sure that all was well. Perhaps at about nine or ten o’clock. That gave him three hours to make his preparations.

  He was confident that he could open the door. It would take time, but it could be done. The lack of light did not bother him, because you always have to open a lock by touch, and not by sight. He would need two strong, thinnish pieces of iron, bent to the correct angle.

  In a clumsy great lock like this one the retaining spring would be very powerful. It would be the sort of spring that needed a thick key with a long shaft and a wide handle to lift it at all. Little pieces of bent wire were going to be no use. In his hip pocket he had a relic of his Egyptian experiences, a pair of pliers with a fine saw edge in one handle and a triangular file in the other.

  There was plenty of metal in the wire racks around him. He selected a cross-strut of half-inch angle iron, out of sight of the door, and started to work on it.

  It took him two hours to make the necessary tools. When he had perfected them, and knew that he could open the door quickly, he hid them in the dust at the foot of the cellar wall. Then he waited. The waiting was the hard part.

  He might be making a stupid mistake by waiting at all. Equally, he could spoil everything by starting too early. He decided to compromise. He would give them until eleven o’clock.

  It was ten minutes to eleven when they came again – the same three men. This time they searched him. They found the pliers, but made no comment on them. Petrella got the idea that they were emptying his pockets less to deprive him of chances to escape than as a first step in stripping all marks of identity from him. His tailors’ tabs would go next. Then, perhaps, his fingers and his face. One man had brought a can of coffee.

  “You had better drink it,” said Clairambaud.

  “Later,” said Petrella.

  “As you wish.”

  When they had gone, he sniffed at the contents of the can and decided that there was more in it than coffee. He emptied it out into the corner.

  At eleven fifteen he opened the grating, and stepped out into the cellar. The door at the head of the steps offered him nothing. It was massive and was bolted on the outside.

  There was an inner door, at the top of a ramp, in the left-hand wall, and this was unlocked. It led into the chambre-des-cuviers, where the fermenting vats stood, stretching from floor to ceiling. They were empty now, scrubbed and ready for the coming vintage, but the room stank of bygone grape harvests. Unfortunately, its outer door was bolted, too.

  He made another circuit of the two cellars and confirmed that there were only two ways out. Then he sat down again to think.

  He might hide in the cellar. But for how long? Or he might conceal himself behind the door and try to slip out, or fight his way out, when the men came for him. It seemed a slender chance. And, at the back of his mind, maddening him . . . he knew that there was a way out.

  It was a chance thought about scrubbing the vats that brought it back to him.

  In olden days they had, literally, to be scrubbed: by men with brushes, who were lowered from the opening at the top. In modern vats there was often a device in the back at ground level enabling a man to get through. He would drag a pressure hose with him, and so the work would be done in a tenth of the time.

  Petrella prayed that the march of science had reached the Château Maurice-Epinard. It had, and a minute later he was inside the vat itself. He had armed himself with a pole from the cellar, and with it he pushed at the big trapdoor in the ceiling of the vat. It swung up under his pressure. So far, so good. The chance existed, but at the moment it was three clear feet out of reach of his fingertips. He needed something to stand on.

  The empty barrels in the main cellar would be tall enough to set on end, but they were too wide to get into the vat. He stumbled around in the dark for ten minutes and discovered two brooms and a rake, but nothing more.

  Twelve o’clock.

  Sweating now, he went back into his prison and took all the bottles from one of the racks. Then he set to work at loosening a section. It was a very bad time indeed before it came away from the wall. But it was thin enough to be squeezed through the opening in the vat, and just strong enough to take his weight.

  The last piece was a nightmare. He dared place very little weight on the rack, and he had to stand on it and lift a heavy trapdoor, using a thin wooden pole. That done, he had to pull himself up through the opening. His arms were trembling with fatigue, and twice he thought he would drop. It was only the realisation that if he failed he would never be able to try again that got him through on to the floor of the loft.

  And that was almost the end of his difficulties. The loft door was bolted, but on the inside. Five minutes later, he was in the open, creeping between the vines, heading for the main road.

  It was seven o’clock in the morning, in London. Superintendent Costorphine had been dragged from his bed at six, but he seemed neither surprised nor excited. He listened silently to the outline of Detective Petrella’s adventures.

  “How did you get back, then?” he said.

  “I got a lift in a lorry to Bordeaux,” said the battered young man. “I got in touch with Commissaire Michel and he took me to the airport. We were lucky. The plane from Marrakesh had to touch down and he got me a seat in her. Did you get my telephone message?”

  “I got nothing.”

  “There’s a forest fire south of Paris. A lot of the lines are down.”

  “I expect that’s it,” said the Superintendent.

  He pondered for a moment. “Let me have your ideas about it,” he said. “What do you think these people do with the stuff – after they’ve picked it up out of the water?”

  “I found out,” said Petrella, “that a lot of the vineyards – particularly the smaller ones which don’t go in for château-bottled wi
nes – will sell you a barrel or more at a time. They arrange the shipping and the customs clearance. You just pay the money and in due course the barrel or barrels are delivered. It’s new wine, of course – not very drinkable.”

  “I see,” said the Superintendent. “Your idea is that they hide the stuff in the wine and export a barrel or two to a contact on this side?”

  “Yes, sir. If they used a Perspex container – or something of the sort – they could regulate the weight so that it wouldn’t either float or sink. It would be suspended, so to speak. It would be almost impossible to detect without actually draining the cask.”

  “You would appear to have a natural talent for smuggling. Perhaps you can tell me why the man who received it leaves it alone for two years. Just plain caution, would you think?”

  Petrella said earnestly: “Oh, no, sir. Once a claret is in cask you must never touch it for two years. You’d do endless harm to the fermentation. After two years you draw it off and bottle it. That would be the time to get the stuff out, without hurting either it or the claret. In 1952 you get a 1950 heroin. . .”

  “Hmph,” said the Superintendent. “We’re in the realms of guesswork there. The first thing to do will be to ask the customs people to give us a list of private buyers from this château. It can’t be a very long list. You’d better go to bed.”

  “You wouldn’t like me to—”

  “No, no,” said the Superintendent testily. “I can handle it now.”

  Which brings us to a lovely house of rose-coloured brick in the hills above Maidenhead, and a portly man with a white face and red lips, who started by protesting, then screamed with rage, and ended by whimpering.

  And promotion recommended for Detective Constable Petrella.

  And one more neat red line in Superintendent Costorphine’s drug book.

  The Night the Cat Stayed Out

  Matrix Street is an outpost. On both flanks rise the advancing tide of bedsitting rooms and shops; behind it, in the open space caused by a landmine in 1940, office blocks have risen. In Matrix Street the little houses, with their three white steps leading to their gay front doors, still belong to people. People live in them.