Stuck between All Saints' Day and the holidays, the month of November is undoubtedly the quietest of the year in Porquerolles. In general, the conversations are mainly about mushroom picking. Sensitive activity on the largest of the Hyères islands.
In just a few days, however, two current events are on everyone's minds and are part of the chatter at the Tour fondue pier in the village square.
First, the great white shark, observed last week a few fathoms from the shore. Then – and above all – the robbery, as improbable as it is daring, of the postal agency.
On Wednesday morning, two individuals molested the municipal official responsible for providing public service and made off with several thousand euros. “Since then, we have heard everything and its opposite, we sigh at the tobacco press. One time they are hooded and another time not. Once they are armed… and then not anymore!”
Conflicting information
Since Wednesday, in fact, contradictory information has been leaking from the investigation. “In any case, we were all surprised by the deployment of police officers immediately sent to the island. We even had the police helicopter “, wonders a customer of the bakery. A deployment of forces which did not prevent the thieves – perhaps too early considered as oddballs – from slipping through the cracks.
On Friday, the pressure had eased a little and the desire to joke about this extravagant episode took over again around the central square of the village.
“Especially since we were worried about Agnès but we know that she has now left the hospital. She is shocked, but we hope she will recover quickly ” slips a fellow civil servant, emphasizing – because it is not a detail on the island – that it is a “real Porquerollaise”.
“We never lock”
For the approximately 300 inhabitants of the island, the attack is all the more incomprehensible as it had never been imagined. “Here, we never lock, sighs a pure-blooded islander who recalls as his last misdeed a burglary at his parents' house in the 80s! “This tranquility is also what makes Porquerolles so charming. And then the postal agency is in the same building as the municipal police. You still have to be pretty pumped up to pull off a stunt like that.”
Behind the jokes between colleagues who wonder what they are going to do with the 20,000 euros and those about the effectiveness of the investigators in front of a file almost behind closed doors, the inhabitants of the island admit to having countless questions still to discuss.
Who and where?
First of all, who are the authors? Straight away dismissing the idea of islanders, they first consider the hypothesis of the numerous workers who disembark daily. “In this season, there are construction sites everywhere. Public roads or housing renovations “. Result, in the morning shuttles, 150 to 200 faces to compare with the description given by the victim. “And many can matchsighs a Porquerollaise. I hope that the investigation will not be reduced to facial checks on the shuttles.”
All these residents who are one with their beloved stone also wonder about the information available to the robbers, in particular about the completely unusual amount of cash available at that time. “They had some great pipes! And it seems that they fled through the back of the building. But it’s a real maze in that direction!”
Another question: have the authors left Porquerolles or are they still hidden on the island with their loot? “We don’t know, and if in doubt, I admit to having given up on a walk in the woods”admits a resident. “I had to insist on having their description. I simply wanted to know what they looked like if I ever came across them on a path,” adds her husband.
The ultimate subject of galejade on the village square, the imagined modes of escape. They could still occupy the entire weekend of imaginative Porquerolles:
– “I think they went through the sealine!”
– “But, no, they swam away… but the shark was waiting for them!”
(1) The underwater pipe inaugurated this year which supplies the island with drinking water.
