Part 14 (1/2)

In the end they had eaten at a nearby pub. The food had been cheap and well prepared, the waitress friendly. They had asked her if she remembered a French couple who had run a restaurant just outside of the town, but she shook her head. ”We never eat in places like that. And Eastbourne's a big town, you know. There are always new restaurants opening up and closing again.”

After breakfast they tried the borough council offices, but the clerk couldn't come up with anything that sounded remotely like the place they were looking for.

”She said it was just outside of the town,” Evan pointed out. ”Would those records be kept somewhere else?”

”If it wasn't actually in Eastbourne proper, they'd be kept in the county offices at Lewes, wouldn't they?” the girl said.

They drove half an hour to the old town of Lewes, nestled in the South Downs.

”Nice place,” Evan commented, looking with approval at the green hills that ringed the town.

”Can't do without your b.l.o.o.d.y mountains, can you?” Watkins chuckled.

At county hall a young girl in the records office eyed Evan with interest and became instantly helpful. She helped them check through ledgers until finally Evan pointed at an entry halfway down a page. ”Here it is. Chez Yvette in Alfriston. License granted . . . let's see . . . six years ago.”

”We're not much the wiser, are we? It just gives the owners' names as Jean-Jacques and Yvette Bouchard. Residence address at the restaurant.” He beckoned the young clerk over. ”Do you have any details on when this place closed?”

She shrugged. ”Sorry, that's all we have. All we can tell is that the license wasn't renewed. Restaurants come and go all the time, I'm afraid.”

”So where exactly is this place?” Watkins asked.

”Alfriston?” the girl asked. ”It's not far from Newhaven. Sort of between Eastbourne and Newhaven. It's a little village on the Downs-very pretty, actually.”

”Between Eastbourne and Newhaven, eh?” Watkins asked as they left the building. ”Is that where the ferries go from to France?”

”Right. Newhaven-Dieppe. I went that way once.”

”Very convenient, I'd say-near a major port if you wanted to smuggle drugs into the country.”

”Maybe they needed to pop across to France to get supplies they couldn't get in England,” Evan suggested. ”Or they liked to visit the family.”

”Okay, I won't say any more until we know some details,” Watkins said with a smile. ”I'll drive and you navigate or we'll take all day to get there.”

Alfriston was a pretty village with old-world charm. Some of the cottages were thatched and it looked as if it might appear on a calendar of Beautiful Britain Beautiful Britain.

”Nice spot,” Watkins said. ”But I don't see any restaurants. A couple of tea rooms and the pub. Let's ask in the Copper Kettle over there. They look as if they've been around since the year one, and I could do with a coffee.”

They crossed the street and took a table by the wall. Watkins waited until the girl had brought two coffees before he asked, ”Do you happen to remember a French restaurant that used to be in this village?”

”Chez Yvette, you mean?” She had a pleasing country burr to her voice and a fresh-scrubbed, red-cheeked face. ”It's been gone about two years now.”

”Where was it? We couldn't find where it might have been.”

”Well, you wouldn't, would you?” She looked puzzled. ”The new bank's on the site now. The Westminster on the corner over there.”

”Oh, I see. Did they pull it down?”

A shocked look came over her face. ”Oh no, sir. It burned down, didn't it? Burned to the ground.”

Chapter 16.

”Two restaurants burning down!” Sergeant Watkins stood in the village street, staring at the modern gla.s.s and concrete structure of the Westminster Bank. It looked completely out of place next to an old-world white-washed antique shop and a solid Georgian redbrick house with a bra.s.s plate outside, announcing it as a doctor's surgery. ”Now that's too much of a coincidence, wouldn't you say?”

Evan nodded. ”I'd say there were pretty high odds against it happening twice, unless she was a very careless cook who was always leaving pans of hot fat on the stove unattended.”

”And you don't think she was a careless cook?”

”The kitchen was spotless when I saw it,” Evan said. ”She strikes me as the sort of person who always knows exactly what she's doing.”

”I reckon now's a good time to go and talk to the local police,” Watkins said. ”I'll be very interested to hear what conclusions they reached about the fire.”

They returned to their car and drove slowly down the village street until they were back among the green hills again.

”Oh, and Evans, let me do the talking, okay?” Watkins said. ”You know how touchy some people can be if they think you're treading on their turf. They'll want to know why we didn't call them and ask them to take over this investigation.”

”And why didn't we?” Evan asked.

”Because we don't know what we're b.l.o.o.d.y well looking for yet,” Watkins growled.

The closest police station turned out to be in Seaford, a small town on the coast, about five miles away. The desk sergeant shook hands as Watkins introduced himself and Evan. ”North Wales Police, eh? You're a long way from home. What brings you down to this part of the world?”

”We're following up on a restaurant fire that happened earlier this week,” Watkins said. ”The restaurant owner was a Madame Yvette Bouchard. We've just discovered that she was involved in a restaurant fire down here, in the village of Alfriston.”

The sergeant's face suddenly showed interest. ”A couple of years ago in Alfriston? Yes, I remember it.”

”Would you happen to have the incident report lying around? We'd appreciate it if we could take a look at it.”

The sergeant got up. ”I'll just go and check,” he said, ”but it's my recollection that we don't have anything on that fire.”

”Wasn't it your station that would have handled it?”

”Oh yes. It was our CID man that was sent out right enough, but if I recall correctly, the fire was deemed to be accidental in nature, so there were no criminal charges to follow up on.”

”The fire was an accident? Were they sure?” Evan asked, forgetting that Watkins had warned him to keep quiet.

”As far as they could tell,” the sergeant said. ”It was a listed building, dating from the sixteenth century. Thatched roof, half timbered, very quaint but a real tinderbox. G.o.d knows what rubbish was stuffed into those walls. Of course it went up like a torch. There was nothing left by the time they put it out-burned right to the ground. I saw it myself. The fire had been so hot that the stove and the fridge looked like melted lumps of metal. Horrible it was. But they couldn't find any evidence of an outside agent being used to start it, and they couldn't come up with any kind of motive either.”

”Madame Yvette hadn't received any kind of threatening letters?” Evan asked, making Watkins look sharply in his direction. ”She hadn't come to you for protection?”

”Threatening letters? Nothing like that, as far as I can remember.” The sergeant looked a little baffled. ”Hold on and I'll go and check. I think the inspector's in his office. He'd know more than I would.”

He returned a few minutes later with a hollow, tired-looking man with graying hair and a bristly mustache. ”This is Detective Inspector Morris. He was in charge at the time of the incident.”

Inspector Morris shook hands. ”I don't know if I can be of much help,” he said in an accent that betrayed a long-ago stint at a public school. ”We all took it to be a simple accident-the 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?”