‘I see.’ The scarred table felt suddenly damp beneath my splayed fingers.
‘But what was it you needed to know, about the tunnels?’ he asked, his glass trailing moisture on the table as he leaned forward in his own chair, helpfully.
Paul played his part extremely well, I thought. Having only just left school himself he made a most convincing student – even borrowed pen and paper to make notes, his face attentive, serious. I tried to listen to what Victor Belliveau was telling Paul about the history of the tunnels, but my mind kept wandering off to other things.
Like gypsies, for example. Of course it was coincidence, and nothing more, that Victor Belliveau let gypsies on his land. There must be half a dozen other people living in these parts who had a gypsy caravan parked down their back lane. And besides, I reminded myself, the gypsy with the little dog who haunted the fountain square had nothing at all to do with me. Nothing at all.
‘… up to the Chapelle Sainte Radegonde,’ Belliveau was saying, ‘but that has long since fallen in. One has to use imagination …’
His mention of the chapelle set my mind wandering again, this time to Harry. Bloody Harry. I ought to have that printed on a T-shirt, I thought. He’d probably be quite amused by all the trouble I was going to, just because I’d found that King John coin. There was bound to be a simple reason why the coin was here and Harry wasn’t.
‘He died last Wednesday,’ Victor Belliveau said, shrugging, and I came back to the conversation with a jolt.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A friend of Monsieur Belliveau’s,’ explained Paul, for my benefit.
‘Well, I knew him, let us say,’ the poet qualified drily. ‘We were not friends. But this is why the gypsies left, you see. We’d had the police round a few times, asking questions, and gypsies don’t much care for that. Not that I was a suspect, or anything,’ he said, smiling at his own joke, ‘but as I said, I knew the man quite well. It was a sad case. He drank too much.’ He shrugged and raised his own glass, which I noticed had been filled again.
Paul raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t mean Martine Muret’s husband, do you?’
‘Yes, Didier Muret. You know them, then?’
‘Only Martine,’ said Paul. ‘I never met her husband. Ex-husband, I should say.’
‘Ah, she is a lovely woman, Martine, don’t you think? I believe I wrote a sonnet to her, once. But she chose Muret. God knows why,’ he said, smiling above his wine glass. ‘He was an idiot.’
I frowned. ‘Didier Muret – that was his name?’
‘Yes, why?’
Didier … I turned it round again, concentrating. It rang a bell, that name. I was sure it was the name Harry had mentioned – either that, or something very like it. It was a common enough name. There were probably dozens of Didiers living in Chinon. Still, I thought, it never hurt to try …
‘He wasn’t a historian, by any chance?’ I asked.
The poet laughed at that. ‘God, no. Didier? He took no interest in such things. He was a clever man, don’t get me wrong – he worked once for a lawyer, so he must have had a brain. But I don’t think I ever saw him read a book. Now me,’ he confessed, ‘I have too many books.’
Paul turned to admire the shelves. ‘There’s no such thing.’
‘I have some books, old books, about the history of Chinon, that make some mention of the tunnels. I’m afraid I can’t lend them, but if you’d like to look …’
It was a good excuse to stand, to bring our rather pointless visit to a close, and I loitered patiently to one side as Paul leafed through the offered books with polite interest.
It was too bad, I thought, that Harry hadn’t known about Victor Belliveau. My cousin would have coveted this collection of books – old memoirs, bound in leather rubbed bald at the edges; some odd assorted plays and books of poems; an old edition of Cyrano de Bergerac, a copy of a British history journal …
I blinked, and peered more closely at the shelf. The journal was a recent one, with a revisionist slant. And there upon the cover, bold as brass, I read my cousin’s proper name: Henry Yates Braden, PhD.
‘What’s that?’ asked Paul, behind my shoulder. I tilted the cover to show him.
Victor Belliveau leaned in to look as well. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘that talks about the tunnels, too. I had forgotten …’ He looked a little closer, and his eyebrows lifted. ‘Braden … isn’t that the man you asked me about? The man from your university?’
Paul nodded. ‘Harry Braden, yes.’
‘Then I’m sorry he didn’t come to visit me,’ the poet said, his tone sincere. ‘I enjoyed his article very much. He has an interesting mind, I think.’
I put the journal down again, frowning faintly. ‘I don’t suppose that Didier Muret would have read this article as well?’
The poet shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t think it likely.’
‘Because he didn’t read much, you mean?’
‘Because he knew no English.’ The poet’s smile was gentle. He walked us to the door and shook our hands. ‘You must come back again, if I can be of any help,’ he said. But he didn’t linger for a goodbye wave. He closed the door behind us as we stepped onto the grass, and I heard the bolt slide home. The sound seemed to echo back from the abandoned barn opposite, where a padlocked door creaked in the slight wind as Paul and I trudged thoughtfully across the pitted overgrown yard.