While he was chattering like this Bouzille had finished the job set him by mother Chiquard, who meanwhile had peeled some potatoes and poured the soup on the bread. He wiped his brow, and seeing the brimming pot, gave a meaning wink and licked his tongue.
“I’ll make the fire up, mother Chiquard; I’m getting jolly hungry.”
“So you ought to be, at half-past eleven,” the old woman replied. “Yes, we’ll have dinner, and you can get the rushes out afterwards.”
Mother Chiquard was the proud freeholder of a little cottage that was separated from the bank of the Dordogne by the high road between Martel and Montvalent. Round the cottage she had a small orchard, and opposite, through a gap in the trees, was a view of the yellow waters of the Dordogne and the chain of hills that stood up on the far side of the river. Living here summer and winter, with her rabbits and her fowls, mother Chiquard earned a little money by making baskets; but she was crippled with rheumatism, and was miserable every time she had to go down to the river to pull out the bundles of rushes that she put there to soak; the work meant not merely an hour’s paddling in mud up to the knees, but also a fortnight’s acute agony and at least a shilling for medicine. So whoever wanted to make a friend of the old woman only had to volunteer to get the rushes out for her.
As he ate, Bouzille told mother Chiquard of his plans for the coming spring.
“Yes,” he said, “since I’m not doing any time this winter I’m going to undertake a long journey.” He stopped munching for a second and paused for greater effect. “I am going to Paris, mother Chiquard!” Then, seeing that the old lady was utterly dumbfounded by the announcement, he leant his elbows on the table and looked at her over his empty plate. “I’ve always had one great desire—to see the Eiffel Tower: that idea has been running in my head for the last fifteen years. Well, now I’m going to gratify the wish. I hear you can get a room in Paris for twopence-halfpenny a night, and I can manage that.”
“How long will it take you to get there?” enquired the old woman, immensely impressed by Bouzille’s venturesome plan.
“That depends,” said the tramp. “I must allow quite three months with my train. Of course if I got run in on the way for stealing, or as a rogue and vagabond, I couldn’t say how long it would take.”
The meal was over, and the old woman was quietly washing up her few plates and dishes, when Bouzille, who had gone down to the river to fetch the rushes, suddenly called shrilly to mother Chiquard.
“Mother Chiquard! Mother Chiquard! Come and look! Just fancy, I’ve earned twenty-five francs!”
The summons was so urgent, and the news so amazing, that the old lady left her house and hurried across the road to the river bank. She saw the tramp up to his waist in the water, trying, with a long stick, to drag out of the current a large object which was not identifiable at a first glance. To all her enquiries Bouzille answered with the same delighted cry, “I have earned twenty-five francs,” too intent on bringing his fishing job to a successful issue even to turn round. A few minutes later he emerged dripping from the water, towing a large bundle to the safety of the bank. Mother Chiquard drew nearer, greatly interested, and then recoiled with a shriek of horror.
Bouzille had fished out a corpse!
It was a ghastly sight: the body of a very young man, almost a boy, with long, slender limbs; the face was so horribly swollen and torn as to be shapeless. One leg was almost entirely torn from the trunk. Through rents in the clothing strips of flesh were trailing, blue and discoloured by their long immersion in the water. On the shoulders and back of the neck were bruises and stains of blood. Bouzille, who was quite unaffected by the ghastliness of the object and still kept up his gay chant “I have fished up a body, I’ve earned twenty-five francs,” observed that there were large splinters of wood, rotten from long immersion, sticking in some of the wounds. He stood up and addressed mother Chiquard who, white as a sheet, was watching him in silence.
“I see what it is: he must have got caught in some mill wheel: that’s what has cut him up like that.”
Mother Chiquard shook her head uneasily.
“Suppose it was a murder! That would be an ugly business!”
“It’s no good my looking at him any more,” said Bouzille. “I don’t recognise him; he’s not from the country.”
“That’s sure,” the old woman agreed. “He’s dressed like a gentleman.”
The two looked at each other in silence. Bouzille was not nearly so complacent as he had been a few minutes before. The reward of twenty-five francs prompted him to go at once to inform the police; the idea of a crime, suggested by the worthy woman, disturbed him greatly, and all the more because he thought it was well founded. Another murder in the neighbourhood would certainly vex the authorities, and put the police in a bad temper. Bouzille knew from experience that the first
