THE VIETNAMESE GIRL IN the cleaner’s brought me my clothes accompanied by a cheeky grin. “Boss say, next time, drink white wine not red.”
I walked round the square to La Colombe. It was close to lunchtime and I wondered if the enigmatic dowser from Wales, Elwyn Fox, would be here. He had given me the impression that it was a favorite hangout of his. Sure enough, he was sitting in the same place at the end of the bar. I took the stool next to him.
He finished draining his stein and turned casually, then greeted me cordially when he recognized me. “Ah, the journalist! How are ye? What’ll ye have?”
“I’ll join you in a beer,” I said, and the barmaid manipulated the pump handle with a deftness born of long practice.
“Heard anything new about Emil?”
“No,” I said, “but I don’t really expect we will, do you? He was gored by a wild boar and it is hardly likely to confess.”
The barmaid set the two beers in front of us and Fox took a long swig of his as if he were dying of thirst. In addition to being weather-beaten, I noticed that his skin was bad and that he had several small warts. His eyes were alert though, brown and lively as a squirrel’s.
“What about the dowsing? How’s that going? Having any luck?”
“It’s a slow business. Frustrating at times.”
“Must be,” I commiserated. “Go weeks at a time without any success, I suppose?”
“Aye, sometimes.”
“But you’re always successful eventually, I believe you told me.”
He nodded and drank more beer. The Welsh nation has a reputation for being loquacious but Fox wasn’t living up to it. He emptied his beer glass and I watched as the barmaid refilled it. Maybe that was the answer … I waited until he had taken several swallows and tried again.
“I’m always looking for spinoffs,” I said. He gave me an inquiring look.
“I came here to do an article on wine and vineyards. Poor Emil’s death gave me the idea of another article on wild boar in Provence—it would go well in a hunting magazine. Now you’ve given me another idea.”
He looked dubious. “I have?”
“Dowsing. Anything along those lines is popular today—New Age, they call it. People are interested in flying saucers, crop circles, spoon bending, angels, Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis … Dowsing fits right in, could be fascinating.”
He didn’t display any great enthusiasm for the idea. “I suppose so,” he said grudgingly.
“I’ll bet you’ve had all kinds of exciting experiences.”
He drank beer while he thought. I hoped he wouldn’t think as deeply as he was drinking.
“Costa Rica was what you would call exciting.”
“In what way?” This was like pulling teeth. I hoped the beer was strong enough to be effective.
“The Nicaraguan rebels were particularly active at that time. The area I had to work in was under dispute by both countries and in those jungles, nobody really knows where the frontier is.”
“Bad time to be looking for water,” I said, and his muttered “Aye” struck me as being hesitant. I followed it up.
“Costa Rica had a water shortage? With all those rain forests?”
The barmaid came, anxious that Fox’s well wouldn’t run dry for lack of beer. I mentally applauded her timing, wanting to keep the Welshman well lubricated. When he had lowered the level in the new glassful, his reservations about talking to me were evaporating and we were getting to the congenial man inside.
“It wasn’t water I was dowsing that time. It was oil.”
“You dowse for that too? Find any?”
He grinned with satisfaction. “I found it. Trouble was, due to the war, the Costa Ricans couldn’t get equipment in to drill for it—and without oil exports, they couldn’t finance the war.”
“And you were in the middle of the shooting?”
“I was bombed and shot at by both sides,” he smiled proudly.
“I should have realized you dowsed for other things than water,” I said, keeping the conversation moving. “I remember reading about Uri Geller—when he became famous with his spoon bending, people said, ‘If you’re so clever, why can’t you make yourself a millionaire?’ So he did—he located mineral deposits for the mining companies and made a million dollars in less than a year.”
Fox nodded. He seemed relieved at the change of topic.
“I met Geller. Very impressive, he was. Some called him a phony but he wasn’t that. They called him a showman too, and that he certainly was. Funny how people think that if a person is a showman, he can’t be genuine.”
“A legacy of the great Barnum,” I said.
“He had an explanation of his own powers, did Uri,” Fox went on. “He told me he had a very severe electric shock from his mother’s sewing machine when he was a boy. It was only after that his powers were first noticed.”
He was still talking about Geller. I wanted to get back to Fox.
“But you’re primarily a water diviner, aren’t you? You mentioned some work looking for oil as well but with you, isn’t it mainly water?”
My question made him nervous and he fidgeted with his beer glass.
“Water’s more of a challenge, y’see. It’s part of nature, that’s what makes it so difficult. Divining is finding the location of a material that is different from its surroundings. Water is not that different—it’s one of the basics … earth, air, fire, and water, that’s what our ancestors believed our world was made up of and that’s what makes water harder to find.”
He drank the last mouthful of beer and looked wistfully at the glass. “I suppose I should be going.”
“I should too,” I said.
“Back to the vineyard?”
“I can’t wait to have another delightful session with the charming Simone. Is she running for Miss Cordiality again this year?”
Fox chuckled. “She is a bit of a grim girl, isn’t she? O’course, you can get just as much information from Lewis. He’s a smart lad, knows all about the place.”
“Lewis Arundel? Does he? I might try him.”
I put a couple of notes on the bar. We said farewells and I left. A backward glance as I went out the door saw him ordering another beer. His mention of leaving had evidently been a ploy to terminate our conversation. I tried to work out what it was in our conversation that made him edgy. What did he have to hide?
In referring to Geller Fox had said that some people called him a phony. Was that Fox’s sore spot? Did people call him a phony? Was he a phony?
I had said I would meet Veronique at two o’clock because I hadn’t been sure what time I would be back from the truffle market, and it was now one-thirty. I walked to the mairie and near it was the French equivalent of a tea shop—a bakery that sold bread and pastries for takeout as its primary business but also had three or four tables. I decided on a complete change of pace and ordered a glass of tea and a pan bagna. The long bread roll filled with anchovy fillets, onions, and olives mixed with olive oil is one of the staples of vineyard workers during the harvest and is satisfying—but only just. I found myself counting the hours to dinner but I manfully declined anything further despite the wonderful baking smells. I had another glass of tea and watched for Veronique’s arrival.