kind of thing that tends to happen to old buildings. Are you saying it wasn’t?”
“We don’t know yet,” Watkins said. “But Madame Bouchard’s restaurant in North Wales has just burned down—which is a coincidence, don’t you think?”
The inspector was now clearly interested. “I’d say so,” he agreed.
“Of course, it could have been the latest in a string of arson fires,” Watkins continued. “The others appear to be the work of an extremist group—you know, Wales for the Welsh, that kind of thing. But this one doesn’t seem to fit the pattern.” He paused, glanced at Evan and then said, “And there was another element involved. A body was found in this fire.”
“A body? So it’s a murder investigation, then?”
“It looks that way,” Watkins said.
The inspector looked at them with new respect. “I see. Well, there was no suspicion of anything like that down here. We had our arson boys check it over and they came to the conclusion that it was probably faulty wiring. The owners had been told to replace the wiring when they first took over the building. Apparently they didn’t do so. And they didn’t have a working sprinkler system in place, which was a violation of code, but we didn’t cite them, considering the circumstances.”
“Circumstances? Was there any loss of life involved in your fire?” Evan asked.
“Luckily no. There could well have been if the firemen hadn’t responded so quickly. They found the owner just inside the door. She’d collapsed, overcome with smoke, trying to get out. Another couple of minutes and she’d have been a goner. As it was she was pretty badly burned. I remember seeing her—God she was a mess. Hair all burned off . . . I think she spent a long time in the burn trauma unit at the Brighton infirmary and she had to have a lot of plastic surgery.”
An image swam into Evan’s head—Yvette’s luxuriant hair piled on her head and no sign of burns. She’d apparently made a remarkable recovery.
“Was she the only person in there?” Watkins asked. “Nobody else was trapped inside”
The inspector shook his head. “It was the middle of the night, luckily. She ran the place alone after her husband died. A lot of work, if you ask me. I think she got a local girl in to help wait on tables at weekends, but she did all the cooking and clearing up herself.” He paused, then asked, “Look, do you want to come into my office and sit down? I don’t know what else I can tell you. As I say, the report stated that there were no signs of the fire being deliberately set, so that was pretty much that. We sent the report on to her insurance company and they paid out as far as I know.”
“And Madame Yvette never came to you before the fire? She never mentioned that she’d been threatened?”
“No. She never came to us. Are you saying that she received threats where she is currently?”
“She got two threatening letters and she felt she was being watched,” Evan said.
“Was she the one killed in the fire?”
“No, she’s alive and well. She got out in time,” Watkins said. “Our body is an unidentified male, probably French. And he was dead before the fire started—stabbed.”
“Fascinating,” the inspector said. “What does she have to say about it?”
“She claims to have no knowledge of anyone else being in the place. She’d already locked up for the night. She has no idea who he was.” Watkins said. “Essentially she’s given us her name, rank, and serial number, nothing more. If she knows anything, she’s not talking. That’s why we decided to come down here and see if we could unearth any skeletons in her closet.”
“I’m afraid not,” Inspector Morris said. “Not with us, at least. Of course, we’re just the local chaps. The highlight of our week is usually a breaking and entering, or a drunk and disorderly.”
“So if we were dealing with something on a bigger scale,” Watkins said cautiously, “importation of drugs from across the channel, for instance . . . you wouldn’t have any ideas on that score?”
“I think you’d have to ask HQ about that,” Inspector Morris said. “But we’d have received a directive to be on the lookout if they’d had any suspicions about this area. Of course drugs are probably coming in all the time in dribs and drabs, but it’s so easy these days, who can check? You can go across on the morning ferry, do your