A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  St. James stopped at the Duffys' cottage first. He was unsurprised when no one was there. In the middle of the day, both Valerie and Kevin would doubtless be at work: he somewhere in the grounds of Le Reposoir and she in the manor house itself. She was the person he wanted to talk to. The undercurrent that he'd felt during his previous conversation with her needed clarifying now that he knew she was the sister of Henry Moullin.

  He found her, as he expected, in the big house, which he was allowed to approach once he identified himself to the police who were still searching the grounds. She answered the door with a bundle of sheets crumpled under her arm.

  St. James didn't waste time with social niceties. They would rob him of the advantage of surprise and allow her to marshal her thoughts. Instead, he said, “Why didn't you mention when we spoke earlier that there's another fair-haired woman involved?”

  Valerie Duffy made no reply, but he could see the confusion in her eyes, followed by the calculation going on inside her head. She shifted her gaze from him as if she wished to seek out her husband. She would have liked his support, St. James surmised, and he was determined that she should not have it.

  She said faintly, “I don't understand.” She set the sheets on the floor inside the doorway and retreated to the interior of the house.

  He followed her into the stone hall, where the air was icy and tinctured with the smell of dead fires. She stopped by the enormous refectory table in the room's centre, and began to gather up dried leaves and fallen berries from an autumnal floral arrangement that was offset with tall white candles.

  St. James said, “You claimed that you saw a fair-haired woman following Guy Brouard to the bay on the morning of his death.”

  “The American—”

  “As you'd like us to believe.”

  She looked up from the flowers. “I saw her.”

  “You saw someone. But there are other possibilities, aren't there? You merely failed to mention them.”

  “Mrs. Abbott's fair.”

  “And so, I suspect, is your niece. Cynthia.”

  To her credit, Valerie didn't move her gaze from his face. Also to her credit, she said nothing till she made certain she knew how much he himself knew. She was nobody's fool.

  “I've spoken to Henry Moullin,” St. James said. “I believe I've seen your niece. He'd like me to think she's on Alderney with her grandmother, but something tells me that if there's a grandmother living, Alderney isn't where I'd find her. Why does your brother have Cynthia hidden away in the house, Mrs. Duffy? Does he have her locked in her room as well?”

  “She's going through a difficult stage,” Valerie Duffy finally said, and she went back to the flowers, the leaves, and the berries as she spoke. “Girls her age go through them all the time.”

  “What sort of stage requires imprisonment?”

  “The sort where there's no talking to them. No talking sense, that is. They don't want to hear it.”

  “Talking sense about what?”

  “Whatever their current fancy is.”

  “And hers is . . . ?”

  “I wouldn't know.”

  “Not according to your brother,” St. James pointed out. “He says she confided in you. He gave me the impression the two of you are close.”

  “Not close enough.” She took a handful of the leaves over to the fireplace and tossed them in. From a pocket in the apron she wore, she drew out a rag and used it to dust off the top of the table.

  “So you approve of his locking her in the house? While she's in this stage of hers?”

  “I didn't say that. I wish Henry wouldn't . . .” She paused, stopped her dusting, and seemed to be trying to gather her thoughts once again.

  St. James said, “Why did Mr. Brouard leave her money? Her and not the other girls? A seventeen-year-old being left a small fortune at the expense of her benefactor's children and her own siblings? What was the purpose of that?”

  “She wasn't the only one. If you know about Cyn, you've been told about Paul. They both have siblings. He has even more than Cyn. None of them were remembered. I don't know why Mr. Brouard did it like that. Perhaps he fancied the thought of the disruption a load of money could cause among young people in a family.”

  “That's not what Cynthia's father claims. He says the money was meant for her education.”

  Valerie dusted a spotless area on the table.

  “He also says Guy Brouard had other fancies. I'm wondering if one of them led to his death. Do you know what a fairy wheel is, Mrs. Duffy?”

  Her dusting hand slowed. “Folklore.”

  “Island folklore, I expect,” St. James said. “You were born here, weren't you? Both you and your brother?”

  She raised her head. “Henry isn't the one, Mr. St. James.” She said it quite calmly. A pulse fluttered in her throat, but she gave no other indication of being bothered by the direction St. James's words were taking.

  “I wasn't actually thinking of Henry,” St. James said. “Has he a reason to want Guy Brouard dead?”

  She flushed completely at that and bent back to her needless task of dusting.

  “I noticed that he was involved in Mr. Brouard's museum project. In the original project, by the look of the drawings in his barn. I'm wondering if he was supposed to be involved in the revised project as well? Do you know?”

  “Henry's good with glass” was her reply. “That brought them together in the first place. Mr. Brouard needed someone to do the conservatory here. It's large, complicated. An off-the-peg conservatory wouldn't do. He needed someone for the greenhouses as well. And the windows when it came down to it. I told him about Henry. They spoke to each other and found common ground. Henry's worked for him ever since.”

  “Is that how Cynthia came to Mr. Brouard's attention?”

  “Lots of people came to Mr. Brouard's attention,” Valerie said patiently. “Paul Fielder. Frank Ouseley. Nobby Debiere. Henry and Cynthia. He even sent Jemima Abbott to modeling school in London and gave her mum a helping hand when she needed it. He took an interest. He invested in people. That was his way.”

  “People usually expect a return on their investments,” St. James pointed out. “And not always a financial one.”

  “Then you'd be wise to ask each of them what Mr. Brouard was expecting in return,” she said pointedly. “And p'rhaps you can start with Nobby Debiere.” She balled up her duster and returned it to the pocket of her apron. She moved back in the direction of the front door. There she scooped up the linen she'd deposited on the floor, and she balanced it on her hip and faced St. James. “If there's nothing else . . .”

  “Why Nobby Debiere?” St. James asked her. “That's the architect, isn't it? Did Mr. Brouard ask something special from him?”

  “If he did, Nobby wasn't looking too inclined to give it to him on the night before he died,” Valerie announced. “They were arguing by the duck pond after the fireworks. ‘I won't let you ruin me,' Nobby was saying. Now, I wonder what he meant by that?”

  This was too obvious an effort to direct him away from her own relations. St. James wasn't about to let matters go so easily. He said, “How long have you and your husband worked for the Brouards, Mrs. Duffy?”

  “Since the first.” She shifted the bed linen from one arm to the other and looked at her watch meaningfully.

  “So you were familiar with their habits.”

  She made no immediate reply to this, but her eyes narrowed a millimetre as she sorted through the possibilities that were implied by this statement. “Habits,” she said.

  “Like Mr. Brouard's morning swim, for example.”

  “Everyone knew about his swim.”

  “About his ritual drink as well? The ginkgo and green tea? Where was that kept, by the way?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Where?”

  “In the pantry cupboard.”

  “And you work in the kitchen.”

  “Are you suggesting that I . . . ?”

  “Where y
our niece came to chat? Where your brother—at work on the conservatory, perhaps—came to chat as well?”

  “Everyone friendly with Mr. Brouard would've been in and out of the kitchen. This isn't a formal house. We don't make pretty distinctions between those who work behind the green baize door and those who loll round in front of it. We don't have a green baize door or anything that could possibly signify one. The Brouards aren't like that, and they never were. Which was why—” She stopped herself. She gripped the sheets more firmly.

  “Which was why . . . ?” St. James repeated quietly.

  “I've work to do,” she said. “But if you wouldn't mind a suggestion?” She didn't wait for him to welcome whatever thoughts she wished to share. “Our family matters have no bearing on Mr. Brouard's death, Mr. St. James. But I expect if you dig around a bit more, you'll find someone else's family matters do.”

  Chapter 19

  FRANK HADN'T BEEN ABLE to take the pie tin to Betty Petit and effect a return to Moulin des Niaux with anything close to the alacrity he'd been hoping for. The childless and widowed farmwife had few visitors and when one dropped by, coffee and fresh brioches were called for. The one factor that enabled Frank to make his escape in under an hour was his father. Can't leave Dad alone for long served him well when he needed it to do so.

  When he made his turn into the mill yard, the first thing he saw was the Escort parked next to his Peugeot, a large Harlequin sticker plastered across its rear window identifying it as an island rental. He looked immediately to the cottage, where the front door hung open. He frowned at this and began to hurry towards it. At the threshold, he called out, “Dad?” and “Hullo?” but a moment sufficed to tell him no one was there.

  Only one place, then, was the alternative. Frank beat a hasty path to the first of the cottages where their war memorabilia were stored. As he passed the small sitting room window what he saw within made his head fill with the sound of rushing water. The River woman's brother was standing at one side of the filing cabinet with a red-headed woman at his side. The top drawer gaped open and Frank's father stood before it. Graham Ouseley clutched onto the side of this drawer with one hand to keep himself upright. With the other hand he wrestled with a batch of documents that he was trying to prise out.

  Frank moved without pause. Three strides took him to the cottage door, and he threw it open. Its swollen wood shrieked against the old floor. “What the hell,” he said sharply. “What the hell're you doing? Dad! Stop it! Those documents are fragile!” Which asked the question in the mind of anyone reasonable, of course, of what they were doing crammed into the filing cabinet higgledy-piggledy. But this was not the moment for worrying about that.

  As Frank plunged across the room, Graham looked up. “It's time, boy,” he said. “I've said it and said it. You know what we've got to do.”

  “Are you mad?” Frank demanded. “Get out of that stuff!” He took his father's arm and tried to ease him a step backwards.

  His father jerked away. “No! Those men're owed. There're debts to be paid and I mean to pay them. I survived, Frank. Three of them dead and me still alive. All these years later when they could have been. Granddads, Frank. Great-granddads by now. But all of that come to nothing because of a God damn quisling who needs to face the music. You got that, son? Time for people to pay.”

  He fought Frank like a teenager being disciplined, but without a teenager's youthful agility. His frailty made Frank reluctant to get rough with him. At the same time, however, it served the purpose of making the effort to control him so much more difficult.

  The red-head said, “I think he believes we're journalists. We did try to tell him . . . We've actually come to talk to you.”

  “Just get out,” Frank said over his shoulder to her, and he tempered the order with “For a minute. Please.”

  River and the red-head left the cottage. Frank waited till they were safely outside. Then he pulled his father away from the filing cabinet and slammed the drawer home, saying, “You God damn fool,” between his teeth.

  This curse got Graham's attention. Frank rarely swore, and never at his father. His devotion to the man, the passions they shared, the history that bound them, and the lifetime they'd spent together had always obviated any inclination he might have had towards either anger or impatience when it came to his father's stubborn will. But this circumstance constituted the absolute limit of what Frank was willing to endure. A dam burst inside him—despite having been so meticulously constructed in the last two months—and he let forth a stream of invective that he hadn't known was part of his vocabulary.

  Graham shrank back from the sound of it. His shoulders fell, his arms dropped to his sides, and behind his thick spectacles, his vague eyes filled with frustrated and frightened tears.

  “I meant . . .” His stubbled chin dimpled. “I meant to do good.”

  Frank hardened his heart. “Listen to me, Dad,” he said. “Those two are not journalists. Do you understand me? They are not journalists. That man . . . He's . . .” God. How to explain? And what would be the point of explaining? “And the woman . . .” He didn't even know who she was. He thought he'd seen her at Guy's funeral, but as to what she was doing at the water mill . . . and with the River woman's brother . . . He needed to have the answer to that question at once.

  Graham was watching him in utter confusion. “They said . . . They've come to . . .” And then dismissing this entire line of thinking, he grabbed Frank's shoulder and cried, “It's time, Frank. I could die any day, I could. I'm the only one left. You see that, don't you? Tell me you see. Tell me you know. An' if we're not to have our museum . . .” His grip was tighter than Frank would have thought possible. “Frankie, I can't let them die in vain.”

  Frank felt pierced by this remark, as if it lanced his spirit as well as his flesh. He said, “Dad, for God's sake,” but he couldn't finish. He pulled his father to him and hugged the old man hard. Graham let a sob escape against his son's shoulder.

  Frank wanted to cry with him but he didn't have the tears. And even if a well of them had been stored within him, he could not have let that well overflow.

  “I got to do it, Frankie,” his father whimpered. “It's important, it is.”

  “I know that,” Frank said.

  “Then . . .” Graham stepped away from his son and wiped his cheeks on the sleeve of his tweed jacket.

  Frank put his arm round his father's shoulders and said, “We'll talk about it later, Dad. We'll find a way.” He urged him towards the door and, the “journalists” being gone from his sight, Graham cooperated as if they were completely forgotten as, indeed, they probably were to him. Frank took him back to their own cottage where the door still stood open. He assisted his father inside and to his chair.

  Graham leaned fully against him as Frank turned him towards the chair's comfortable seat. His head drooped as if it had grown too heavy, and his spectacles slid to the end of his nose. “Feeling a bit queer, lad,” he said in a murmur. “P'rhaps best to have a bit of a kip.”

  “You've overdone it,” Frank told his father. “I mustn't leave you alone any more.”

  “'M not a dirty-arsed infant, Frank.”

  “But you get up to no good if I'm not here to watch you. You're as stubborn as gum on a shoe sole, Dad.”

  Graham smiled at the image, and Frank handed him the remote for the television. “Can you keep yourself out of trouble for five minutes?” Frank asked his father kindly. “I want to see what's what out there.” He indicated the sitting room window, and hence the out-of-doors, with a tilt of his head.

  When his father was absorbed once again by the television, Frank tracked down River and the red-head. They were standing near the tattered deck chairs on the overgrown lawn behind the cottages. They appeared to be in deep discussion. As Frank approached them, their conversation ceased.

  River introduced his companion as a friend of his sister's. She was called Deborah St. James, he said, and she and her husband had come over from
London to help China. “He deals with this kind of thing all the time,” River said.

  Frank's main concern was his father and not leaving him alone to get up to further mischief, so he replied to the introduction with as much courtesy as he could muster. “How may I help you?”

  They answered him in concert. Their visit apparently had to do with a ring that was associated with the Occupation. It was identified by an inscription in German, by a date, and by its unusual design of skull and crossed bones.

  “D'you have anything like that in your collection?” River sounded eager.

  Frank looked at him curiously, then at the woman, who was watching him with an earnestness that told him how important the information was to them both. He thought about this fact and about every possible implication of every possible answer he might give. He finally said, “I don't believe I've ever seen anything like that.”

  To which River said, “But you can't be sure, can you?” When Frank didn't affirm this, he went on, gesturing to the two additional cottages that grew out from the water mill. “You've got a hell of a lot of stuff in there. I remember your saying not all of it's even catalogued yet. That's what you guys were doing, right? You and Guy were getting it ready to show, but first you had to have lists of what you have and where it is right now and where to put it in the museum, right?”

  “That's what we were doing, yes.”

  “And the kid helped out. Paul Fielder. Guy brought him along now and then.”

  “As well as his son once and the Abbott boy as well,” Frank said. “But what's this got to do with—”

  River turned to the red-head. “See? There're other ways to go. Paul. Adrian. The Abbott kid. The cops want to think every road leads to China, but it damn well doesn't, and here's our proof.”

  The woman said gently, “Not necessarily. Not unless . . .” She looked pensive and directed her next remarks to Frank. “Is there a chance you've catalogued a ring like the one we've described and merely forgotten it? Or a chance that someone besides yourself catalogued it? Or even that you had one among your things and have forgotten you have it?”