Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,61
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