by Rhys Bowen
“Yvette Hétreau, did you say? Yes, here she is.” She pulled out a single typed sheet with a passport-size photo clipped to the top and handed it to them.
Evan looked over Sergeant Watkins’s shoulder.
“Wait a second,” he said. “That’s not her.”
“Didn’t I give you the right one?” the Dutch girl asked. “You said Yvette Hétreau, didn’t you?”
“Someone must have mixed up the photos,” Evan said. “This isn’t Madame Yvette.”
“Are you sure?” Watkins peered more closely at the photo. “It was taken a long time ago, remember.”
“It’s not unlike her,” Evan said, trying to bring a picture of Madame Yvette into his mind. “Same kind of hairstyle, same Roman nose but . . .”
“People change and put on weight,” Watkins pointed out. “And she was burned in a fire, remember.”
Evan shook his head. “There’s something about the shape of the face—this one is more heart shaped. Madame Yvette has a longer face. And look at the way she’s smiling. You can’t change your smile, Sarge.”
“This isn’t the person you’re looking for?” The Dutch girl looked confused.
“It’s not the person whose photo we saw in the entrance hall,” Evan said. “We recognized her there easily enough.”
“Is it possible the photos got mixed up?” Watkins asked.
“I suppose it’s possible, although I can’t see how or why,” the girl said. “Student chefs have to submit a photo with their application and it stays attached to it. No one would have any reason to remove it.” She put the folder on top of the filing cabinet. “Please, look through these applications and see if you can find the person whose photo you saw in the hallway.”
They went through the applications one by one. Then there she was—a younger, prettier version of Madame Yvette smiling at them. “This is her,” Watkins and Evan said at the same time.
The name on the form was Janine Laroque.
“Yes, they do look a little alike,” the Dutch girl said. “They both do their hair in the same way. So you say this is really Yvette Bouchard? I should put the pictures back where they belong.” She unclipped the photo, then stopped with the photo lying in the palm of her hand.
“I think you gentlemen are mixed up,” she said. “Look at this.”
On the back of the photo a spidery French hand had written, “Janine Laroque, Paris, 17 Feb. 1988.”
“I don’t understand,” Watkins said.
“Unless . . .” Evan began.
“Unless what?”
“There’s only one explanation,” Evan said. “That the person up in Wales right now isn’t really Yvette Bouchard.”
Chapter 19
“Who the hell is she?” Watkins demanded, as soon as they were back on the crowded Paris street “And what has happened to the real Madame Yvette?”
Evan was wrestling with probabilities and he didn’t like any of them. In his heart he had wanted to find that the woman he knew as Madame Yvette was an innocent victim. Part of his eagerness to come with Watkins and solve the mystery had been the desire to clear Yvette’s name. He realized he had cast himself as the knight in shining armor again, ready to rescue the damsel in distress, or what Bronwen would call his boy scout syndrome.
And now it appeared that he had been duped—taken in by a pretty, helpless woman. Sweet, gentle, abandoned Madame Yvette, appealing for his help, had been using him—hoping to keep the police from delving deeper into a shady past. She had identified him correctly as the softhearted village constable. Had she also added “not too bright” to that description? Now Evan saw that she had probably planned the whole thing—the threatening notes, the phony seduction, too.
“No wonder she didn’t recognize her husband when he came into the restaurant,” Watkins said, chuckling. He was beginning to enjoy himself, clearly looking forward to going home with the riddle solved and the criminal apprehended. “Boy, what a shock that must have been for her.”
“He must have told her who he was,” Evan continued the scenario, “which was why she was so upset when she came to our table and nearly set fire to us when she tried to cook the crêpes suzette.”
“What are they? Pardon my ignorance but I don’t go eating at posh places like you.”
“Crêpes suzette, you mean? They’re little pancakes. You flambe them in liqueur—you set them on fire.”
“I know flambé. I’m not that much of an ignoramus. I’ve flambéed in my time.”
Evan grinned. “I remember. Hamburgers on that new barbecue last year, wasn’t it?”
Watkins gave him a withering glare. “Okay, so the husband showed up at the restaurant and found out she wasn’t his wife . . . She panicked when she realized she’d been found out, lured him into her flat, stabbed him and then set fire to the place to cover up the crime.”
“It certainly looks that way.”
“What other explanation could there be?” Watkins asked.
Evan thought, then shook his head. “I don’t know. It all seems to tie in, doesn’t it?”
“There are still a lot of things we don’t know and we’ll have to find out. Why did he decide to show up then, after having been missing all that time?”
“I thought he’d already decided that—he’s been missing long enough to be declared legally dead. If they had taken out an insurance policy, his wife could now legally collect. They probably planned this whole thing between them, either for the money or because it was prudent for him to vanish.”
“But if the wife was no longer around—if she’d died in the meantime, after that fire maybe, and Janine Whatsher-name was her friend . . .” Watkins continued, looking to Evan to take this one step further.
“Janine knew about the insurance policy and decided to impersonate Yvette and collect the money. She opened a restaurant where nobody would remember the real Yvette—who spoke English as well as a native, remember—and worked on establishing her credibility.”
“So you think the real Yvette died?”
“She was badly burned in that fire, wasn’t she?” Evan said. “Maybe she’s too disfigured to go out in public again.”
“Either way, it doesn’t look good for our friend Janine,” Watkins said. “It’s a premeditated crime, even if the murder was spur-of-the moment panic.”
Evan nodded. “She couldn’t have known that the husband was still alive, could she? She didn’t know him when he came in and she certainly wasn’t expecting him to show up again . . .”
They had reached the metro station. Evan looked up and glimpsed the shape of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. “Eiffel Tower, Sarge,” he said.
“So it is. Oh well, so much for the grand tour of Paris,” Watkins sighed. “I don’t think we’ve even got time for a quick lunch at Maxim’s, have we? It will have to be a sandwich on the autoroute if we want to get home tonight.”
He headed down the steps into the gusty darkness. Evan gave the Eiffel Tower one more glance before he followed. “The first thing to do is to find out if the real Yvette is still in any kind of hospital. That should be easy enough . . .”
“Oh no, boyo,” Watkins said, his voice echoing from the tiled walls. “The first thing to do is to have the phony Yvette brought into custody before she decides to do a bunk on us.”
“Do you think we should visit the police here in Paris before we go?” Evan asked. “We should find out if Janine Laroque has a criminal record.”
Watkins looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think I want to go that far. Contacting the French police would be something for the D.I., wouldn’t it? Especially as we’re not officially over here. We’ll phone HQ as soon as we get back to England. I’m not messing with French phones. I did that once. Never again. We’ll suggest they bring in Janine What-sit and let Glynis find out about her record. With any luck we’ll know everything we need to when we get home. And I think they’ll have to say we did a bloody good job over here, don’t you?”
They
took the chunnel back to England at five that evening. Evan had hoped the crossing would be easier the second time, now that he knew what to expect, but he still found himself drenched in a cold sweat and wished he’d taken Watkins’s advice.
“I told you to have a couple of brandies before we started,” Watkins said as they came out into twilight near Folkstone. “You look green around the gills.”
“I’ll be all right,” Evan said. “And I could hardly risk being pulled over and breathalyzed, could I? It wouldn’t look good for the North Wales Police.”
“I could drive,” Watkins said.
“Yes, and we’d spend the night going around the ring road trying to get away from London.” Evan managed a grin. He was recovering quickly now that they were on the open road.
“What time do you reckon we’ll be home?”
“In the middle of the night if we drive nonstop,” Evan said. “But we should pull off at the first place we see and make our phone call to HQ before they all go home for the night.”
“Good idea,” Watkins said, “and it would be a good excuse to stop for a pint and a bite of good English food at the same time.” He chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear myself saying the words good English food—but I’d kill for a plate of bangers and mash or even a warmed-over meat pie.”
They pulled off at the first pub that they saw. Watkins conveyed his message to headquarters and they had a satisfying plaice and chips before heading back to Wales. It was two-fifteen in the morning when Evan drove up Llanfair High Street. The floodlights outside the pub and the Everest Inn had been turned off and the street was in almost total darkness. Llanfair felt like an abandoned, gloomy sort of place, and Evan shivered. He let himself in silently and took off his shoes before he tiptoed up the stairs. His eyes were prickling with tiredness.
Suddenly he gasped as an apparition in white loomed in front of him. At the same moment the apparition gave a scream. Evan recognized the powerful lungs.
“It’s only me, Mrs. Williams,” he said.
“Deed to goodness, Mr. Evans!” Mrs. Williams gasped, leaning against the banister and clutching at her ample bosom. “You nearly scared the daylights out of me.”
“Sorry I scared you, Mrs. Williams, but I just got back from France,” Evan said. His own heart had been racing, too.
“From France? Whatever next. And I don’t suppose you’ve had a decent meal in days if you’ve been in France. I’ve got some veal and ham pie downstairs . . .”
Evan put out a hand to stop her from going downstairs.
“No thanks. I don’t need anything except a good night’s sleep, Mrs. Williams. Go on back to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You’re sure you don’t want a nice cup of cocoa?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’ve been driving for twelve hours straight. All I need is sleep.”
“Well, I hope it was worth it,” she said. “I hope you found out who set fire to poor Madame Yvette’s restaurant and killed that man.”
“I think we might have done, Mrs. Williams. We’ll just have to see in the morning if we were right,” Evan said.
He continued down the hallway and collapsed onto his bed, falling asleep before he had time to undress.
In his dream he was in a dark place—he wasn’t sure if it was a coffin or a tunnel, but he could sense the roof pressing down on him and feel the sweat trickling down his back. Whatever it was, there was no way out. Then a bell started to ring. “My funeral bell,” he said to himself. But funeral bells were usually slower and more somber.
He opened his eyes and realized that it was the telephone. The morning sun was painting stripes of light on his wall. Heart still pounding, he ran downstairs and got to the phone before Mrs. Williams could emerge from the kitchen.
“Did I wake you?” Watkins demanded.
“Of course you bloody woke me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s only just seven, isn’t it, and I didn’t get to bed until after two.”
“Well, the D.I. woke me and I saw no reason why you shouldn’t share the news.”
“What is it?”
“Madame Yvette has vanished. She left the pub two days ago without telling anyone where she was going.”
“Damn,” Evan muttered. “So we were right. She did get the wind up.”
“The D.I.’s got an all points bulletin out for her but she could have slipped across the channel, or taken the ferry to Ireland. She could be anywhere by now. I blame myself. We should have taken her into custody before we left.”
“On what grounds, Sarge? You know very well we had no good reason to bring her in before we went to France. She could just as easily have been the victim as the criminal.”
“Well, I suppose it’s not up to us any longer,” Watkins said. “There’s nothing more we can do until they catch her—which I don’t think is very likely, if you want my opinion. You can go back to working on your serial arsonist and I can see if they’ll let me come aboard onto Operation Armada again. But thanks for all your help, boyo. You win some and you lose some, I suppose.”
Evan put the phone down and stood there in the dark, narrow front hall, staring at the flowery wallpaper.
“Damn,” he muttered again.
“Mr. Evans! Such language! It’s not like you.” Mrs. Williams’s head poked disapprovingly from the kitchen.
Evan grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Mrs. Williams.”
“You’re obviously overtired. A nice cup of tea will set you right.”
He followed her into the kitchen, where warm, inviting smells were coming from the stove. He sat musing, with the cup cradled in his hands. What Watkins said was probably true. There was little likelihood of catching Madame Yvette. She had probably fled back to France—in which case it was out of their hands. It was frustrating not to be able to see it through. Maybe he’d never know whether she killed Jean Bouchard and maybe even started the fire that killed the real Yvette, too. Funny—but she still hadn’t seemed like a murderer to him.
Well, he was up and awake now, so he’d better get on with his day, back to the old routine and probably a pile of complaints from Mrs. Powell-Jones about the van. He showered and put on his uniform, then decided he might have time to see Bronwen before school started.
As he walked up the village street, Llanfair was coming to life. Evans-the-Milk was heading toward a doorstep, milk bottles rattling in his hands. “ ’ello, Evan bach,” he called. “Back from your jaunt to the South then, are you?”
Evans-the-Post came out of the post office, extracted a postcard from his mail bag and stood in the middle of the street, studying it. He jumped guiltily when he saw Evan.
“It’s from Mrs. Jones, Number 24’s sister,” he said, waving the postcard in Evan’s face. “She’s on holiday in Bournemouth. Look, see the picture? That’s the pier. They say you went down south, too. Did you go on the pier when you were down there, Mr. Evans?”
“Your snooping is going to get you in trouble one day,” Evan said. “That’s personal stuff you’re reading there.”
“I don’t do no harm,” Evans-the-Post protested. “I don’t read letters from the income tax or the pensions, do I?”
“Only because you can’t open them,” Evan said with a grin. Evans-the-Post grinned too and loped off down the street.
Evan moved on. Even Evans-the-Post, with his limited brainpower, knew of his secret mission. No wonder Madame Yvette had heard about it and fled.
He was deep in thought as he continued up the street. Maybe Madame Yvette had even heard somehow that he’d gone to France. Nothing seemed to escape the Llanfair spies. Suddenly he looked up and found himself confronted with a large green bus. It was parked outside Chapel Beulah and painted on its side were the words
CELESTIAL OMNIBUS. CHAPEL BEULAH. LLANFAIR.
And in smaller letters underneath, We pray in Welsh, we sing in Welsh, we preach in Welsh!
It completely dwarfed the plain gray van parked across the street outside Chapel Bethel.
>
Evan started to laugh. What next? Would Rev. Parry Davies have to indulge in a helicopter? A fleet of limousines? He looked forward to having a good chuckle with Bronwen about it. He felt a sudden thrill of anticipation about seeing her again. He had only been away three days, but he had missed her. That was a sign that he must be serious about her, wasn’t it?
But as he put his hand on the playground gate and looked across at the schoolhouse with the smoke curling from its chimney, he felt suddenly hesitant. She’d obviously be busy preparing for the school day and probably wouldn’t have time to talk to him. And it was absurd to be missing her when he’d only been gone such a short time. He’d come back when school was over this afternoon.
He turned and began to walk away, half hoping that he’d hear his name called and see her standing there. But he reached the police station door without being stopped.
Inside, the green light was blinking on his answering machine and a pile of letters lay on the mat. He picked up the letters and noted the top one. It was on good stationary paper, headed Grantley, Straughan and Grantley, Solicitors in Buxton, Derbyshire. He couldn’t make a connection until he began to read. The letter was written on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Paxton-Smith, owners of cottage Ty Bryn. Evan nodded to himself. The English couple—so that was their name. He’d bet it wasn’t really hyphenated, but just plain Smith. Obnoxious prigs! Mr. and Mrs. Paxton-Smith were not satisfied with the original police report . . . possible negligence . . . understood he was the officer on duty . . . wanted his firsthand account of the handling of the fire . . .
Evan put it down in disgust. They’d collect on the insurance but it sounded as if they were preparing to sue somebody as well. He’d pass it on to HQ and let them handle it. He put on the electric kettle for tea, then sat at his desk and punched Replay on the answering machine.
“Constable Evans?” The voice was soft and Welsh. “This is Mrs. Parry Davies at Chapel Bethel. There is a large bus blocking the entire street. It’s creating quite a traffic hazard. Please have it moved immediately.”