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machine will be out as well.’
    As he followed the winemaker into his
chai
, Enzo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I read in Raffin’s notes that Petty’s body was discovered during a night pick. Why on earth do you harvest grapes in the dark?’
    ‘Usually just the white ones, Monsieur Macleod. They generate more heat during fermentation, so it’s better to pick them when they’re cool. Also, at night, the sap rises in the vine and the grapes are fatter, juicier.’ He grinned. ‘More alchemy. Tonight, though, we’ll be bringing in the red as well. With the big harvester. The weather is forecast to break in a few days, so I want to strip the vines before it rains.’
    They passed the tasting room, and a tall wooden table littered with bottles and notes. There were used oak barrels, stained red from the wine, stacked up against the wall behind it.
    ‘If you want to wait for me here,’ Bonneval said, ‘I just need to have a few words with my foreman.’ And he headed off into the roar of pumps and
pressoir
in the adjoining sheds. If the harvester was going to be out in the dark, clearly that meant that grapes would be coming into the sheds all night. Enzo glanced at some of the paperwork on the desk. A jotter was filled with notes made in a small, tight hand. They looked like mathematical equations. But Enzo could make no sense of them. There was an official leaflet on new hygiene practices in winemaking, an analytical report on grapes sent to the Laboratoire Oenologique Départmentale in Gaillac, a
feuille de vinification
from the Centre Technique du Vin, with graphs charting levels of sugar and alcohol. There was a great deal more to winemaking, Enzo reflected, than simply crushing grapes.
    He heard a thump that seemed to come from a room off the dark end of the shed. He listened for a few moments, wondering if there was someone there. But there were no further sounds. The door to the room lay ajar, and there was a light burning faintly from somewhere within. Curiosity got the better of him, and Enzo crossed the shed and pushed the door open to look inside.
    Along the right-hand wall was a row of what looked like six ceramic chimneys rising out of a concrete apron, flexible pipes feeding into them from black tubing around the walls. Cold water. And Enzo realised that these were the tops of
cuves
which had been sunk into the ground. To the left of them, a red staircase went down at angles into a square pit below, where sealed hatches gave access to the bottoms of the tanks, presumably for cleaning. A railing ran around the top of the pit, and steps led up half a metre to another level where several more ceramic chimneys were sunk in concrete. There were hoses strewn everywhere, and tubing ran from a pump above the pit to an open door leading out to the castle courtyard, as well as into the pit itself. The source of the light was down in the pit, and the rest of the room was in darkness.
    Enzo could not see what had made the thumping sound, but he was drawn in by his curiosity nonetheless. He made his way along the top edge of the pit, holding on to the rail, until he reached the staircase. He peered down into it, but could see no sign of life. ‘Hello?’ he called, and moved on to the top step.
    ‘For Christ’s sake man, don’t move!’
    Enzo turned, startled, to see Bonneval silhouetted in the doorway.
    ‘Just step away from the stairs and come towards me.’
    Bewildered, Enzo did as he was told, and Bonneval flicked on a light switch, flooding the room with a harsh, cold light.
    ‘If you’d gone down there, you’d be dead before you reached the bottom of the stairs. There are accidents like that in wine cellars every year.’
    Enzo was still none the wiser. ‘I don’t understand.’
    Bonneval crouched to remove the lid from the nearest
cuve
. It was filled almost to the top with white, frothing grape juice. The top of a cold water radiator broke the surface, but the liquid looked as if it were boiling.