As Tom Sampson’s knowledge of the French language was that of the average British schoolboy, he naturally found himself unable to understand the natives of an obscure port in Brittany. He was with his client in the capacity of adviser; but it behoved his client to do all the work.
‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said Treverton, when they had deposited their travelling bags at the hotel, and were standing in the empty market-place, looking round them somewhat vaguely, ‘here we are, and what is to be our first move now we are here?’
‘I should think about the best plan would be to go to the churches and examine the registers,’ suggested Sampson. ‘I suppose you know your first wife’s real name?’
‘Not unless it was Chicot—I married her under that name.’
‘Chicot,’ repeated Sampson dubiously. ‘It sounds rather barbarous, but it’s nothing to the names over the shops here. I never saw such crack-jaw cognomens. Well, we’d better go and look up all the registers for the name of Chicot.’
‘That would be slow work,’ said Treverton, thinking of the sweet young wife at home, full of fear and trouble, left to brood upon her sorrows at that very time when life ought to have been made bright and happy for her, a time when her mind might be most prone to despondency.
He had written Laura a consoling letter from St. Malo, affecting hopefulness he did not feel; but he knew how poor a consolation any letter must be, and he was longing to finish his business and turn his face homewards.
‘Can you suggest a quicker way?’ asked Sampson.
‘I think it might be a better plan to find out the oldest priest in the parish, and question him. A priest in such a place as this ought to be a living chronicle of the lives of its inhabitants.’
‘Not half a bad idea,’ said Sampson approvingly. ‘The sooner you find your priest the better, say I.’