Evan and Elle (21 page)

“Then what made Brenda think she was really English?
Certainly not if she spoke with an accent like that.”

Evan shook his head. “I’ve no idea, but this whole thing is getting more and more confusing. Brenda said she idolized her husband and Yvette told me that he was a bastard. That doesn’t make sense either. Get onto HQ and see if they can get her date and place of birth verified. Then we can check that out as well when we’re in France tomorrow.”

“I’d say we have a busy day ahead,” Watkins said. “I just hope we come up with enough useful information to justify the chunnel crossing, or else the chief’s going to blow his top.”

A heavy sea fog draped the South Coast as they arrived at the Channel tunnel early on Thursday morning. The terminal building loomed ominously from the swirling whiteness and added to the surreal quality as they drove their car onto a train.

Half an hour later they emerged into a similar sea fog on the French side.

“Phew, I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic,” Watkins said as Evan drove out of the terminal and onto a French motorway. “It doesn’t bear thinking about—all that water over our heads. I wouldn’t like to think what a breakdown would be like in that tunnel.” He glanced at Evan, then looked at him critically. “You’re sweating like a pig,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you—”

“I’m a mountain man, aren’t I?” Evan demanded, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his forehead. “I’m not designed to go burrowing into the earth like a bloody Rhondda Valley coal miner.” He smiled sheepishly. “I never could
stand being shut in. When I was a little lad the teacher shut me in the cupboard as a punishment for fighting and I got so hysterical that they had to get my mother. I thought I’d grown out of it, but obviously I haven’t.”

“I can see we’ll have to make sure you have a couple of brandies before we make the return trip,” Watkins said, “or maybe champagne. Let’s hope it’s a victory celebration, eh?”

Evan nodded. The clammy nausea was retreating as good fresh air blew into his face from the open window. He felt ashamed of himself for betraying a weakness. He was glad it was Watkins who had seen and not Bronwen—or P.C. Glynis.

“Now I really wish we’d brought young Glynis along,” Watkins said, making Evan wonder if he had been reading his thoughts. “Look at these signs—they’re all in bloody French!”

“Don’t worry about it, Sarge.” Evan felt fully recovered and ready for anything. “You’re dealing with an expert here. I did the navigating when I came over here with the rugby team.”

“Hmm.” Watkins nodded, impressed.

“Actually I was the only one who wasn’t pissed out of his mind and who could still focus on the road signs,” Evan admitted. “We had an awful lot of victory celebrations during that trip. Ah, here we are.” A bank of road signs appeared from the mist. “We need the Dieppe road, I think.”

Fields of stubble lined the road with the dark shapes of hay rolls looking like large reclining beasts. A distant line of poplar trees appeared like eerie sentinels. Now and then they passed a few sorry sunflowers, left to die at the edge of what
must have been an impressive field of gold. They saw no sign of houses until they left the main road and followed the signs to St. Valéry. They began to pass isolated farmhouses, then cottages with slatted shutters over their windows—the first indication that they were in France.

By the time they drove through the narrow cobbled streets of St. Valéry and came out to the sea front, the mist was rising, giving glimpses of a blue sky above.

“It doesn’t look very foreign, does it?” Watkins commented. And indeed it could have been a replica of one of the towns on the English side of the Channel, except for the shutters on the windows, the striped umbrellas at the corner café, and a peeling advertisement for Dubonnet painted on a building wall.

“Hôtel de Ville,” Watkins commented, pointing at a red brick building set back from the street. “That looks quite posh if we have to stay here the night.”

Evan smiled. “That’s the town hall, Sarge.”

“Bloody silly name. What call it a hotel then? Why don’t you park over there and we’ll start at the hôtel de ville. That’s where we’d expect to find records, wouldn’t we?”

Between Evan’s rusty French and a young male clerk with a smattering of English they established that there were no Bouchards currently living in the town. Back records indicated that an elder Monsieur Bouchard had died eight years previously. His wife had followed him the next year.

“His occupation is listed as fisherman, monsieur,” the clerk said. “You could ask down at the harbor. Someone there might know what has become of their children.”

“There was a son,” Evan said. “His name was Jean. He
was lost at sea five years ago. Have you no record of that?”

“
Hélas
, no, monsieur. If he was no longer living in the community, how should we know of this?” the man demanded with a sad shrug of the shoulders. “I show no Jean Bouchard registered here. I can only conclude he did not live here. I am sorry.”

“Oh well, down to the docks,” Watkins said. “How do you think your French will stand up to talking to fisherman?”

“We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Evan said.

They left the car in the central Place de la République and walked down a narrow cobbled alleyway back to the seafront. The town might have looked like its English counterpart, but now that they were out of the car, their nostrils were assailed by distinctly non-British smells. Newly baking bread competed with roasting coffee. From an open kitchen window came the heady smell of garlic. And as they came out of the alley the salty, seaweedy tang of the Channel came to greet them, tinged with a slight fishiness.

A distinctly French voice was singing on somebody’s radio. The barrow at the waterfront was selling crêpes instead of candy floss.

At one end of the promenade, brightly painted fishing boats were bobbing behind a sturdy concrete harbor wall. Several old men were sitting up on the wall with faded blue fisherman’s caps on their heads. One was mending a net.

“I’ll leave you to do the talking,” Watkins muttered to Evan as they approached the old men.

“You’ll have to, won’t you?” Evan shot him a quick grin. “Unless you’re really good at hand signals.”

“Cheeky monkey,” Watkins muttered. “Go on, then. Dazzle me with your French.”

Evan took a deep breath.
“Bonjour,”
he said. Then he tried to explain that they were inquiring about the family Bouchard. Blank faces met him. The old men looked at each other and shrugged in the way that makes the speaker feel that what he said probably wasn’t worth saying.

The old men exchanged a few words with each other. Then one of them got up and shuffled off.

“Oh, you really seem to have got through to them,” Watkins muttered sarcastically. “Now they’re all bloody escaping. They must think we’re lunatics.”

Evan shrugged and started to walk away. One of the old men grabbed his arm.

“Attendez, monsieur,”
he said, and gestured toward the promenade.

“He wants us to wait,” Evan said.

“What for?”

“I’m not sure.”

A few minutes passed. Gulls screamed overhead. A boat chugged out of the harbor.

At last the old man could be seen returning with a young girl at his side.

“Ma petite fille,”
he announced.

The girl looked at them shyly. “My grandfazzer,” she said, pointing at him. “I learn English in zee school. Please tell me what ees you want?”

Evan told her. She listened solemnly, nodded, then let out an explosion of rapid French.

“Aah!” The old men looked at each other, nodding and smiling.

Evan heard the word
Bouchard
repeated many times. Then torrents of rapid French came flying back at the child.

“Monsieur Bouchard ees dead—many years now,” she said. “His wife, she ees also dead, five or six years ago. Zere was one son, but he is gone away.”

“Can they tell us about the son?” Evan asked.

Another quick exchange.

“He went away. He worked on the ferry boats from Calais. Nobody has seen him for many years now.”

“Do they remember his wife?” Evan asked.

The old men couldn’t seem to agree on this one. There was a lot of gesturing and shrugs.

“Zey sink he marry zee local girl but zey do not know her name. Zis man say he meet her once . . . she was very pretty, but zee ozzer men say at ees age he sink zat all young girls are very pretty, no?” She smiled shyly at Evan.

The old man who was mending the net said something else.

“He sinks zat she come from zee
orpheline
. . . orphanage in Abbeville, but maybe no.”

“Would they have heard if Jean Bouchard had died?” Watkins asked.

More shrugs greeted this question.

“They have not seen him for several years. Not since his mozzer die. He not come ’ere no more.”

“So he had no friends in the town who might know about him?”

“Zey do not know. Perhaps he ’ave zee friend. They can only say zat they do not see him ’ere no more.”

“Do they know if any members of the family are still alive in this area?” Evan asked.

They debated this with animation until Evan caught the word
imbécile
.

“What was that about an imbecile?” he asked.

She shrugged, a perfect imitation of the elders’ gesture. “Zere ees nobody alive now but possibly zee imbecile ees still living. Zee brozzer of Madame Bouchard. He went—how you say—crazy?”

“Was his name du Bois?”

No reaction from the old men. They had never met him personally. They could only repeat what they had heard. But if he was crazy, they said, he would surely be in the hospital in Abbeville because that was where all the crazy people went.

“At least we’ve established one thing.” Watkins looked pleased as they drove out of St. Valéry. “Philippe du Bois could have been his uncle. His mother might have had guardianship over him.”

“Which meant she would have opened his mail, signed his checks . . .” Evan continued the train of thought.

“Applied for a passport in his name?” Watkins finished.

The two men exchanged a grin. It felt good to be getting somewhere at last. It was a small fact, but it was the first sliver of proof of what had been all conjecture until now.

“And if Jean’s wife came from the orphanage in the same
town, we can kill two birds with one stone and find out more about her background,” Watkins went on, sounding really animated now.

“He could have married more than once,” Evan pointed out. “Yvette could be his second wife.”

“Do we know her maiden name?” Watkins asked.

“She put something like Hétreau on the form she filled in for us.”

“Yvette Hétreau.” Watkins repeated the words. “We’ll see if that rings a bell with anyone at the orphanage, but let’s start with the hospital first. We know where to find that.”

The Hôpital St. Bernard was a square brick building at the edge of the town. It was surrounded by neat, leafless plane trees and wide sandy paths, newly raked. They went inside and were met by a nun in full habit, who understood a little English and listened politely.

“Philippe du Bois? We have had other inquiries about him.”

“Yes, that was us. North Wales Police. Somebody rented a car using Philippe du Bois’s name. We’re still trying to find out who might have done that.”

“You had better talk to Mozzer,” she said and swept down a wide corridor to an office at the far end. The elderly mother superior welcomed them graciously. Yes, she had received their inquiries but she regretted she could tell them nothing. “Poor Monsieur du Bois. He was in his own world. Such a shame. A clever man once—a mathematics teacher. But then the illness struck, and now he doesn’t know where he is or who he is.” She shrugged. “And to see him—he
still looks healthy—handsome, big, lots of dark curls . . .”

“Does he ever get letters or visitors from the outside?” Watkins asked.

“Not anymore. What point would there be?” She smiled sadly. “And now his family is all gone, I believe. His sister used to come, but she died years ago now.”

“So who would his guardian be?”

“The state is his guardian, monsieur.”

“And he never goes out, ever?” Evan asked. “Would he be able to get out if he wanted to?”

The mother superior looked surprised. “He does not wish to leave, monsieur . . . but to answer your question, it would be possible to get out, if he desired. Of course, we would soon notice he was missing and bring him back, but he has never wanted to wander. Some of our patients—we have to keep a very close eye on them, but not Philippe. He is happy in his room.”

“Would it be possible to visit him?” Evan asked suddenly.

Watkins looked surprised. So did the mother superior.

“I suppose, yes. But I do not think he will speak with you, monsieur.”

“All the same, I’d appreciate it,” Evan insisted.

“Very well.” She put her hands together, then rose from her seat. “Zis way, please. Follow me. And I must warn you that you may hear sounds zat are not very pleasant. Not all of our patients are docile.”

She swept ahead of them down the hallway and unlocked a door at the far end. The odor was the first thing that assailed them—a strong smell of disinfectant that didn’t
entirely mask other, more unpleasant, smells. Someone screamed. There were distant moans. The nun kept walking until she came to a door at the far end of the hall. She took out a large key and put it in the lock.

“We may go in. He is of no danger.”

She opened the door and went into the room ahead of them. “Bonjour Monsieur Philippe. How are you today? I bring you some visitors.”

The man was sitting on a chair, staring out the window. He turned around briefly at the sound of her voice but his eyes registered no interest in the two men and he turned back to the window.

“He does that all day, messieurs,” the nun said. “He likes to watch the birds. It is the only thing that gives him pleasure now.”

Evan watched the man carefully. The nun was right. He did still look strong and healthy with his black curly hair and his dark complexion.

“Ask him if he remembers Jean Bouchard, his nephew,” Evan suggested.