Page 30 of The French Wife

‘Poor old Étienne,’ Gaston had said. ‘He must be in his eighties now. He’s got very confused in recent years. He wanders about the town, muttering.’

‘He seemed to think I was Amélie,’ she said. ‘I assume he meant Amélie Garnier, who owned the farm – the woman in the photo we found. He must have known her when she lived here. Perhaps he could tell me what happened to her and her husband?’

Gaston had shaken his head. ‘I very much doubt it. He lives in a world of his own, poor old Étienne. The authorities once tried to get him to move into a care home, but he ran away. He lives on his own now, in a cottage on the outskirts of the town. He doesn’t manage very well so neighbours try to help him, but he doesn’t take kindly to that.’

‘Oh dear. Poor man. But I wonder why he hangs around the farm.’

Gaston had shrugged. ‘He shouldn’t be here, it’s private property. Would you like me to have a word with Paul Brodin about him? He could tell him to stop coming.’

‘No, please don’t do that,’ Emma had said, appalled at the thought of the police questioning the frightened, confused old man. ‘He seems harmless enough and I might be able to get him to tell me why he comes here one day.’

Gaston had shaken his head again, smiling, and returned to his work. He made no secret of the fact that he thought it would be a waste of time, but he also clearly thought it was no use trying to persuade Emma of that. She’d watched him working on a new door jamb for one of the cupboards, hoping he didn’t have the impression she was stubborn. Then she’d stopped herself. Why should she care what he thought of her? Why did it matter? He was just a builder engaged to work on her house. She’d sighed. She couldn’t help it. For some reason, she did care.

In the town she stopped and looked around her at the rows of stone cottages, searching for street names. In one hand she had the piece of paper on which the detective had scribbled his grandmother’s address, and in the other a tourist map of the town. There were far more of these rambling, cobbled streets than she’d realised. They all looked similar, lined with picturesque honey-stone cottages, with their colourful shutters and window boxes overflowing with scarlet geraniums, flowering lavender with its beautiful scent, begonia and purple, tumbling lobelia. It would be easy to get lost in this maze of streets, but she could see from the map that the address she was after was in a street that ran beside the River Orbieu, so she headed downhill at every turn, thinking if she did that, she was bound to end up at the river at some point.

At last the road opened in front of her and as she emerged from the narrow streets, she noticed the pale stone walls, arched buttresses and pillars of the abbey on the opposite bank of the river. Checking a street sign, she saw that she was indeed on the road she’d been looking for – the rue des Deux Ponts. Number 2 was a three-storey, terraced cottage with faded yellow shutters, and a front door opening directly onto the street. It was next door to a small café, which had tables set out on a terrace on the opposite side of the road overlooking the river. The terrace was already full of people, both tourists and locals, drinking mid-morning coffee and soaking up the sunshine.

Emma suddenly faltered, feeling a little foolish about the questions she was about to ask an elderly woman she’d never met before. She looked longingly at the café tables, wishing she could just sit by the river and sip coffee and drink in the beauty of the surroundings. But she knew Madame Brodin would be expecting her, so she took a deep breath and knocked on the cottage door.

It was opened almost instantly by an old woman, who stared up at Emma, shading her eyes against the morning sun. She was very short and dressed in black – a blouse and a long skirt – and wore a patterned headscarf over her hair. Her face was nut brown and heavily lined, but her brown eyes were sharp and observant.

‘Madame Brodin?’ Emma asked. ‘I am Emma Hudson. Your grandson, Paul, said you were expecting me this morning.’

The old woman nodded briefly and pulled back the door, beckoning her inside.

‘Entrez, entrez,’ she said impatiently, casting a disapproving eye at the patrons of the café opposite, who were laughing and chatting rather noisily. So far she hadn’t smiled and her wrinkled forehead was pulled up into a disapproving frown.

Emma went into a room that spanned the breadth of the house. It smelled of baking bread and freshly brewed coffee. There was a stove in one corner, a sink under the window, in the middle an old-fashioned round table and chairs, and on the opposite side of the room, beneath another window, a sofa.

‘Come, sit,’ Madame Brodin said, gesturing towards the sofa. ‘Would you like coffee?’

‘Oh, yes please,’ Emma said, relaxing a little. The old woman still hadn’t smiled once, but if she was offering coffee, it was a welcoming gesture. That was something, at least.

Madame Brodin poured out the coffee on the counter beside the sink and put it down on the table in front of Emma together with a bowl of sugar and a spoon.

‘You English like milk, don’t you?’ she asked, hands on hips, scrutinising Emma.

‘If you have any, yes please,’ Emma said.

Madame Brodin produced a jug from a fridge under the counter and brought it to her. Then the old woman fetched herself a cup of black coffee and sat down on a chair beside the sofa. Emma poured a dash of milk into her cup and took a sip. Even with milk it was extremely strong, with a tar-like taste. She tried not to pull a face as she swallowed it.

‘Paul said something about you wanting to know what happened here during the war,’ the woman said.

‘That’s right. I’m interested in finding out about the history of Le Châtaignier, who lived there, what happened there during the war. Do you remember much about that time yourself, madame?’

Madame Brodin hesitated for a moment, holding her cup. Emma noticed her hand was trembling slightly.

She put down the cup on the coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘Not a great deal. I was twelve when war broke out. I remember the German soldiers marching past our house with their tanks and guns in November 1942. We lived on the outskirts of town in those days, so we were one of the first houses they passed. My grandmother had this house then.’

‘Your grandmother? What was her name?’ Emma asked.

‘Argène. Marie Argène,’ Madame Brodin said. ‘She had two sons who had been conscripted into the French army and had gone to war in 1939. My father and my Uncle Olivier. They were both captured by the Germans and sent to prison camps in Germany. Only my father came back.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Emma said. ‘That must have been terrible for all of you.’

The old woman shook her head sadly and shrugged. ‘It was terrible, but we weren’t alone. It happened to many, many families. My poor grandmother never got over it. She hated the Germans until the day she died.’

‘How very sad,’ Emma said.