A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  Finding a solicitor—Margaret Chamberlain refused to think of or call them advocates because she didn't intend to employ one for longer than it took to strong-arm her former husband's beneficiaries out of their inheritances—turned out to be a simple matter. After leaving the Range Rover in the car park of a hotel on Ann's Place, she and her son walked down one slope and up another. Their route took them past the Royal Court House, which assured Margaret that lawyers were going to be quite easy to come by in this part of town. At least Adrian had known that much. On her own, she would have been reduced to the telephone directory and a street map of St. Peter Port. She would have had to ring and do her importuning without having seen the situation into which her phone call was received. This way, however, she had no need to ring at all. She could storm the citadel of her choosing, satisfactorily on the controlling end of employing a legal mind to do her bidding.

  The offices of Gibbs, Grierson, and Godfrey ended up as her selection. The alliteration was an annoyance, but the front door was imposing and the lettering on the brass plate outside was of a stark nature that suggested a ruthlessness which Margaret's mission required. Without an appointment, then, she entered with her son and requested to see one of the eponymous members of the organisation. As she made her request, she stifled her desire to tell Adrian to stand up straight, assuring herself it was enough that he had—for her benefit and protection—earlier arm-wrestled that little hooligan Paul Fielder into submission.

  As luck would have it, none of the founders were in their offices on this afternoon. One of them had apparently died four years earlier and the other two were out on some sort of quasi-important lawyerly business, according to their clerk. But one of the junior advocates would be able to see Mrs. Chamberlain and Mr. Brouard.

  How junior? Margaret wanted to know.

  It was a loose term only, she was assured.

  The junior advocate turned out to be junior in title alone. She was otherwise a middle-aged woman called Juditha Crown—“Ms. Crown,” she told them—with a fat mole beneath her left eye and a mild case of halitosis that appeared to have been brought on by a half-eaten salami sandwich which sat on a paper plate on her desk.

  As Adrian slouched nearby, Margaret disclosed the reason for their call: a son cheated out of his inheritance and an inheritance that was absent at least three-quarters of the property it should have comprised.

  That, Ms. Crown informed them with an archness that Margaret found a little too condescending for her liking, was highly unlikely, Mrs. Chamberlain. Had Mr. Chamberlain—

  Mr. Brouard, Margaret interrupted. Mr. Guy Brouard of Le Reposoir, Parish of St. Martin's. She was his former wife, and this was their son, Adrian Brouard, she announced to Ms. Crown and added pointedly, Mr. Guy Brouard's eldest and his only male heir.

  Margaret was gratified to see Juditha Crown sit up and take notice of this, if only metaphorically. The lawyer's eyelashes quivered behind her gold-framed spectacles. She gazed upon Adrian with heightened interest. It was a moment during which Margaret found she could finally feel grateful for Guy's relentless pursuit of personal accomplishment. If nothing else, he had name recognition and, by association, so did his son.

  Margaret laid out the situation for Ms. Crown: an estate divided in half, with two daughters and a son sharing the first half of it and two relative strangers—strangers, mind you, in the person of two local teenagers practically unknown to the family—sharing the other half equally between them. Something needed to be done about this.

  Ms. Crown nodded sagely and waited for Margaret to continue. When Margaret didn't, Ms. Crown asked if there was a current wife involved. No? Well, then—and here she folded her hands on the desk top and formed her lips into a glacially polite smile—there didn't seem to be anything irregular about the will. The laws of Guernsey dictated the manner in which property could be bequeathed. Half of it had to go by law to the legal progeny of the testator. In cases where there was no surviving spouse, the other half could be dispersed according to the whimsy of the deceased. This was apparently what the gentleman in question had done.

  Margaret was aware of Adrian next to her, of the restlessness that prompted him to dig through his pocket at this point and bring out a matchbook. She thought he intended to smoke despite there being no ashtray evident anywhere in the room, but instead he used the edge to clean beneath his fingernails. Seeing this, Ms. Crown made a moue of distaste.

  Margaret wanted to rail at her son, but she settled on nudging his foot with hers. He moved his away. She cleared her throat.

  The division of inheritance prescribed by the will was only part of what concerned her, she told the lawyer. There was the more pressing matter of all that was missing from what should have legally been the inheritance, no matter who received it. The will made no mention of the estate itself—the house, the furnishings, and the land that comprised Le Reposoir. It made no mention of Guy's properties in Spain, in England, in France, in the Seychelles and God only knew where else. It mentioned no personal possessions like cars, boats, an aeroplane, a helicopter, nor did it detail the significant number of miniatures, antiques, silver, art, coins, and the like that Guy had collected over the years. Surely all this belonged in the will of a man who was after all a successful entrepreneur to the tune of several significant multi-millions. Yet his will had consisted of one savings account, one chequing account, and one investment account. How, Margaret inquired with a deliberate play on the words, did Ms. Crown account for that?

  Ms. Crown looked thoughtful but only for the space of some three seconds, after which she asked Margaret if she was certain of her facts. Margaret told her huffily that of course she was certain. She didn't run about attempting to employ solicitors—

  Advocates, Ms. Crown murmured.

  —without first making sure she had her facts straight. As she'd said in the beginning, at least three-quarters of the estate of Guy Brouard was missing, and she meant to do something about it for Adrian Brouard, the scion, the eldest child, the only son of his father.

  Here Margaret looked to Adrian for some sort of murmur of assent or enthusiasm. He balanced his right ankle on his left knee, displayed an unappealing expanse of fish-white leg, and said nothing. He hadn't, his mother noticed, put on socks.

  Juditha Crown gazed at the lifeless-looking leg-flesh of her potential client and had the grace to keep from shuddering. She returned her attention to Margaret and said that if Mrs. Chamberlain would wait for a moment, she thought she might have something that would help.

  What would help was backbone, Margaret thought. Backbone to infuse along the cooked noodle that currently went for Adrian's spine. But she said to the lawyer, Yes, yes, anything that could help them was more than welcome and if Ms. Crown was too busy to take their case, perhaps she'd be willing to recommend . . . ?

  Ms. Crown left them as Margaret was making this appeal. She closed her door delicately behind her, and as she did so, Margaret could hear her speaking to the clerk in the anteroom. “Edward, where've we got that explanation of Retrait Linager you send out to clients?” The clerk's reply was muted.

  Margaret used this intermezzo in the proceedings to say to her son fiercely, “You might participate. You might make things easier.” For a moment, there in the kitchen of Le Reposoir, she'd actually thought her son had turned a corner. He'd wrestled with Paul Fielder like a man who meant business, and she'd felt a real blossoming of hope . . . prematurely, however. It had withered on the vine. “You might even seem interested in your future,” she added.

  “I can't possibly top your interest, Mother,” Adrian replied laconically.

  “You're maddening. No wonder your father—” She stopped herself.

  He cocked his head and offered her a sardonic smile. But he said nothing as Juditha Crown rejoined them. She had a few typed sheets of paper in her hand. These, she told them, explained the laws of Retrait Linager.

  Margaret wasn't interested in anything but garnering either the lawye
r's consent or her refusal to work on their behalf so she could be about the rest of her business. There was much to do, and sitting round a solicitor's office reading explanations of arcane statutes was not high on her list of priorities. Still, she took the papers from the other woman and rustled round in her bag for her spectacles. While she did so, Ms. Crown informed both Margaret and her son of the legal ramifications of either owning or disposing of a large estate while a resident of Guernsey.

  The law didn't take lightly to someone disinheriting his offspring on this particular Channel Island, she told them. Not only could one not leave money willy-nilly irrespective of one's having reproduced, but one also could not simply sell off one's entire estate in advance of one's demise and hope to get round the law in that way. Your children, she explained, had the first right to purchase your estate for the same amount you had it on offer should you decide to sell it. Of course, if they couldn't afford it, you were off the hook and you could then proceed with selling it and giving away every penny or spending it in advance of your death. But in either case, your children had to be informed first that you intended to dispose of what would otherwise be their inheritance. This safeguarded the possession of property within a single family as long as that family could afford to keep it.

  “I take it your father didn't inform you of an intention to sell anytime prior to his death,” Ms. Crown said directly to Adrian.

  “Of course he didn't!” Margaret said.

  Ms. Crown waited for Adrian to confirm this statement. She said that if that was indeed the case before them, there was only one explanation for what appeared to be a large chunk of missing inheritance. There was only one very simple explanation, as a matter of fact.

  And that was? Margaret asked politely.

  That Mr. Brouard had never owned any of the property he was suspected to have owned, she replied.

  Margaret stared at the woman. “That's absurd,” she said. “Of course he owned it. He owned it for years. That and everything else. He's owned . . . See here. He wasn't someone's tenant.”

  “I'm not suggesting that he was,” Ms. Crown replied. “I'm merely suggesting that what appeared to belong to him—indeed, what he himself no doubt purchased throughout the years or at least throughout the years that he lived on this island—was in fact purchased by him for someone else. Or purchased by someone else at his direction.”

  Hearing this, Margaret felt the dawning of a horror she didn't want to acknowledge, let alone face. She heard herself say hoarsely, “That's impossible!” and she felt her body surge upwards as if her legs and her feet had declared war on her ability to control them. Before she knew it, she was bending over Juditha Crown's desk, breathing directly into her face. “That's utter lunacy, d'you hear me? It's idiocy. D'you know who he was? Have you any idea of the fortune he amassed? Have you ever heard of Chateaux Brouard? England, Scotland, Wales, France, and God only knows how many hotels. What was all that if not Guy's empire? Who else could have owned it if not Guy Brouard?”

  “Mother . . .” Adrian, too, was on his feet. Margaret turned to see that he was donning his leather jacket, preparatory to leaving. “We've found out what we—”

  “We've found out nothing!” Margaret cried. “Your father cheated you all your life and I'm not about to let him cheat you in his death. He's got bank accounts hidden and property unmentioned and I mean to find them. I mean you to have them, and nothing—d'you hear me?—is going to prevent that from happening.”

  “He outsmarted you, Mother. He knew—”

  “Nothing. He knew nothing.” She swung on the lawyer as if Juditha Crown were the person who had foiled her plans. “Who, then?” she demanded. “Who? One of his little tarts? Is that what you're suggesting?”

  Ms. Crown appeared to know what Margaret was talking about without being told, because she said, “It would have been someone he could trust, I dare say. Someone he could trust implicitly. Someone who would do what he wanted done with the property, no matter whose name it was in.”

  There was only one person, naturally. Margaret knew this without that person being identified, and she supposed she'd known from the moment she'd heard the reading of that will in the upstairs drawing room. There was only one soul on the face of the earth whom Guy could have relied upon to have everything gifted to her upon his purchase of it and to have done nothing with it but to hold on to it and disperse it according to his wishes at the time of her own death . . . or sooner, if that was asked of her.

  Why hadn't she thought of this? Margaret demanded of herself.

  But the answer to that was simple enough. She hadn't thought of it because she hadn't known the law.

  She swept out of the office and into the street, burning up from head to toe. But she was not defeated. She was nowhere close to being defeated, and she wanted to make this clear to her son. She swung round on him.

  “We're going to talk to her at once. She's your aunt. She knows what's right. If she hasn't yet had the injustice of all this spread out in front of her . . . She could never see anything in him but godlike . . . His mind was unbalanced and he hid that from her. He hid it from everyone, but we shall prove—”

  “Aunt Ruth knew,” Adrian said bluntly. “She understood what he wanted. She cooperated with him.”

  “She can't have.” Margaret clutched his arm with a strength designed to make him see and understand. It was time for him to gird for battle whatever loins he had and if he couldn't do that, she bloody well intended to do it for him. “He must have told her . . .” What? she asked herself. What had Guy said to his sister to make her believe that what he intended to do was for the best: his good, her good, the good of his children, the good of everyone? What had he said?

  “It's done,” Adrian said. “We can't change the will. We can't change the way he worked all this out. We can't do anything except let it be.” He shoved his hand into his leather jacket and brought out the matchbook once again, along with a packet of cigarettes. He lit up and chuckled, although his expression was far from amused. “Good old Dad,” he said as he shook his head. “He buggered us all.”

  Margaret shivered at his emotionless tone. She took another tack. “Adrian, Ruth's a good soul. She's completely fair-hearted. If she knows how much this has hurt you—”

  “It hasn't.” Adrian picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue, inspected it on the end of his thumb, and flicked it into the street.

  “Don't say that. Why must you always pretend that your father's—”

  “I'm not pretending. I'm not hurt. What would be the point? And even if I were wounded by this, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't change a thing.”

  “How can you say . . . ? She's your aunt. She loves you.”

  “She was there,” Adrian said. “She knows what his intentions were. And, believe me, she won't veer an inch from them. Not when she already knows what he wanted from the situation.”

  Margaret frowned. “‘She was there.' Where? When? What situation?”

  Adrian stepped away from the building. He turned up the collar of his jacket against the chill, moving off in the direction of the Royal Court House. Margaret saw all this as a way to avoid replying to her questions, and her antennae went up. As did a pernicious sense of dread. She stopped her son at the foot of the war memorial and she accosted him beneath the sombre gaze of that melancholy soldier.

  “Don't walk away from me like that. We're not finished here. What situation? What haven't you told me?”

  Adrian tossed his cigarette towards a score of motor scooters that stood in disorganised ranks not far from the memorial. “Dad didn't intend me to have money,” he said. “Not now. Not ever. Aunt Ruth knew that. So even if we appeal to her—to her sense of loyalty or fair play or whatever else you want to call it—she's going to remember what he wanted and that's what she's going to do.”

  “How could she possibly know what Guy intended at the time of his death?” Margaret scoffed. “Oh, I see how she could have known what he intended when
this mess was set up. She would have had to know then in order to cooperate with him then. But that's just it. Then. It's what he wanted then. People change. Their wishes change. Believe me, your aunt Ruth will see that when it's put to her.”

  “No. It was more than just then,” Adrian said, and he began to push past her, to move towards the car park where they'd left the Range Rover.

  Margaret said, “Damn it. Stay where you are, Adrian,” and she heard the trepidation in her voice, which annoyed her, which in turn directed her annoyance onto him. “We've plans to lay and an approach to map out. We're not about to accept this situation as your father created it: like good little Christians with our cheeks averted. For all we know, he made his arrangements with Ruth in a fit of pique one day and he regretted it afterwards but never expected to die before he had a chance to put it all right.” Margaret drew a breath and considered the implication behind what she was saying. “Someone knew that,” she said. “That has to be it. Someone knew that he intended to change everything, to favour you the way you were meant to be favoured. Because of that, Guy had to be eliminated.”

  “He wasn't going to change a thing,” Adrian said.

  “Stop it! How can you know—”

  “Because I asked him, all right?” Adrian shoved his hands into his pockets and looked generally miserable. “I asked him,” he repeated. “And she was there. Aunt Ruth. In the room. She heard us talking. She heard me ask him.”

  “To change his will?”

  “To give me money. She heard the whole thing. I asked. He said he didn't have it. Not what I needed. Not that much. I didn't believe him. We rowed. I left him in a rage and she stayed behind.” He looked back at her then, his expression resigned. “You can't think they didn't talk everything through afterwards. She'd've said, What should we do about Adrian? And he would've said, We let things be.”

  Margaret heard all this like a cold wind calling. She said, “You asked your father again . . . ? After September? You'd asked him for money again since September?”