The Vintage Caper

to the nearside edge of the road that it was like driving through a jagged, twisting tunnel. And here it was darker still. It could have been a million miles from anywhere; not a place to break down. Sam snored gently through it all.
    He was shaken from sleep when the van turned onto the deeply rutted dirt track that led to the old house. Philippe cut the engine but left the headlights on. He had parked facing the remains of a well, now a tumbledown circular wall of stones supporting a lopsided framework of iron, with a chain hanging from the rusty crossbar. After several unsuccessful tries, accompanied by head-scratching and curses, he finally found the stone concealing the venerable six-inch key to the front door of the house.
    Sam followed him inside, where there were more curses while Philippe looked among festoons of cobwebs for the fuse box and the main power switch. With a grunt of triumph, he turned on the electricity, which produced a dribble of light coming from a forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling.
    “ Voilà! Welcome to the family château.” He wiped a strand of cobweb from his nose and clapped Sam on the shoulder. “You slept well?”
    “Like a baby.” In fact, Sam felt surprisingly fresh after his nap: clearheaded and cheerful, as he always was when a job had gone well. He followed Philippe through a series of small, low-ceilinged rooms carpeted with dust, empty except for the odd ramshackle chair or table pushed into a corner.
    “What happened to the furniture?”
    Philippe had come to a stop in what had once been a kitchen, now stripped of anything useful. A bird’s nest had fallen down the chimney and into the hearth of the stone fireplace. Propped on the mantelpiece was a faded, stained calendar from the Cavaillon fire department, dated 1995. “Ah, the furniture,” Philippe said. “There were one or two really nice pieces. But the minute the old lady was in her coffin, the relatives came with a truck and cleaned the place out. I’m surprised they left the lightbulbs. They’re probably still arguing about who gets what. But at least they couldn’t take the cellar.” He pushed open a low door in the corner and reached for the light switch, causing whatever it was in the cellar to scurry back to its hole. “We’ll have to put rat poison down, or they’ll eat the labels off the bottles. I think it’s the old glue they like.”
    As in the rest of the house, the cellar had been subjected to the acquisitive attentions of the relatives, and not a single bottle remained. After the vast magnificence of Reboul’s cellar, it seemed decidedly humble. A short flight of steep stairs led to the storage facilities, which were no more than shelves made from old planks resting on iron bars driven into the walls. The surface of the walls was black with mold, and the coating of gravel on the floor had worn thin, exposing patches of beaten earth. But, as Philippe pointed out, it was cool, it was humid, and it was the last place in the world one would expect to find three million dollars’ worth of wine.
    Bringing the cartons in from the van was a slow business, made awkward by doorways and ceilings which had been designed, it seemed to Sam, for dwarves. Were people that much shorter and smaller two hundred years ago? By the time the last carton had been put in place, both men had skinned their knuckles against the rough stone edges of the narrow doorways, and their backs ached from stooping. They had hardly noticed that while they’d been working a new day had arrived.
    “What do you think?” said Philippe. “I’m not a country boy, but this is special.” They were standing outside the house, looking east, where the first splinter of sunlight had just appeared above the horizon. Sam made a slow, 360-degree turn. There was no other house in sight. They were surrounded by fields that would turn purple later in the year, the clumps of lavender looking like rows of green hedgehogs. Behind them was the mass of the Luberon, misty blue in the early light.
    “You know what?” said Sam. “It’ll look even better after we’ve had breakfast. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”
    They drove down to Apt, found a café with a terrace in the sun, and raided a nearby bakery for croissants. Big, thick-rimmed cups of café crème were set in front of them. Sam closed his eyes and sniffed the fragrant steam. Only in France did it smell like this; it must have something to do with French