A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  “What sort of compromise? What are you talking about?”

  “A nocturnal compromise.”

  “Nocturnal? You sleepwalked? She was frightened? She didn't understand that these things—”

  “I peed the bed,” he cut in. His face blazed humiliation. “All right? Happy? I peed the bed.”

  Margaret attempted to keep the aversion from her voice as she said, “That could have happened to anyone. A night of too much drink . . . A nightmare, even . . . The confusion of being in a house not your own . . .”

  “Every night we were here,” he said. “Every night. She was sympathetic, but who can blame her for calling things off? Even a mousy little chess player without a hope in hell of ever having another man draws the line somewhere. She'd been willing to put up with the sleepwalking. The night sweats. The bad dreams. Even my occasional descent into the fog. But she drew the line at having to sleep in my piss, and I can hardly blame her. I've been sleeping in it myself for thirty-seven years, and it gets unpleasant.”

  “No! You were past that. I know you were past that. Whatever happened here in your father's house, it was an aberration. It won't happen again because your father is dead. So I'll phone her. I'll tell her.”

  “That eager, are you?”

  “You deserve—”

  “Let's not lie. Carmel was your best chance of being rid of me, Mother. It just didn't work out the way you hoped.”

  “That isn't true!”

  “Isn't it?” He shook his head in amused derision. “And here I was thinking you wanted no more lies.” He turned back to the door, no mother there any longer to stop him leaving the room. He opened it. He said over his shoulder as he stepped from the drawing room, “I'm finished with this.”

  “With what? Adrian, you can't—”

  “I can,” he said. “And I do. I am what I am, which is, let's face it, exactly what you wanted me to be. Look where that's brought us both, Mother. Right to this moment: the two of us stuck with each other.”

  “Are you blaming me?” she asked him, aghast at how he was deciding to interpret her every loving gesture. No thanks for protecting him, no gratitude for guiding him, no acknowledgement for interceding for him. My God, if nothing else, she was at least owed a nod of his head in the direction of her tireless interest in his affairs. “Adrian, are you blaming me?” she demanded again when he didn't reply.

  But all the answer she received was a bark of laughter. He closed the door upon her and went on his way.

  “China said she wasn't involved with him,” Deborah said to her husband once they were out on the drive. She weighed every word. “But she could be . . . perhaps not wanting to tell me. Embarrassed to have had a fling with him because she's on the rebound from Matt. She can't actually've been proud of that. Not for moral reasons, but because . . . well, it's rather sad. It's . . . it's quite needy in a way. And she'd hate that about herself: being needy. She'd hate what that says about her.”

  “It would explain why she wasn't in her own room,” Simon agreed.

  “And it gives someone else a chance—someone who knew where she was—to pick up her cloak, that ring, a few of her hairs, her shoes . . . It would have been easy.”

  “Only one person could have done it, though,” Simon pointed out. “You see that, don't you?”

  Deborah glanced away. “I can't believe that of Cherokee. Simon, there are others, others with opportunity and, better yet, with motive. Adrian for one. Henry Moullin for another.”

  Simon was silent, watching a small bird darting among the bare branches of one of the chestnut trees. He said her name on a breath—much like a sigh—and Deborah felt the difference in their positions acutely. He had information. She had none. Clearly, he attached it to Cherokee.

  Because of all this, Deborah felt herself harden under his tender gaze. She said, “What's next, then?” with some formality.

  He accepted the shift in her tone and her mood without protest, saying, “Kevin Duffy, I think.”

  Her heart leaped at this alteration in direction. “So you do think there's someone else.”

  “I think he bears talking to.” Simon was holding the canvas he'd taken from Ruth Brouard and glanced down at it now. “In the meantime, will you track down Paul Fielder, Deborah? He's somewhere nearby, I expect.”

  “Paul Fielder? Why?”

  “I'd like to know where he got this painting. Did Guy Brouard give it to him for safekeeping or did the boy see it, take it, and give it to Ruth only when he was caught with it in his rucksack?”

  “I can't imagine he stole it. What would he have wanted with it? It's not the sort of thing one expects a teenager to steal, is it?”

  “It's not. But on the other hand, he doesn't seem to be an ordinary teenager. And I've got the impression the family's struggling. He might have thought the painting was something he could sell to one of the antiques shops in the town. It bears looking into.”

  “D'you think he'll tell me if I ask him?” Deborah said doubtfully. “I can't exactly accuse him of taking the painting.”

  “I think you can manage to get people to talk about anything,” her husband replied. “Paul Fielder included.”

  They parted then, Simon heading for the Duffys' cottage and Deborah remaining at the car, trying to decide which direction to go in her search for Paul Fielder. Considering what he'd been through already that day, she reckoned he'd want a bit of peace and quiet. He'd be in one of the gardens, she suspected. She would have to check them one by one.

  She began with the tropical garden since it was nearest to the house. There, a few ducks swam placidly in a pond, and a chorus of larks chattered in an elm, but no one was either watching or listening, so she checked the sculpture garden next. This held the burial spot of Guy Brouard, and when Deborah found its weather-worn gate standing open, she was fairly certain she would find the boy inside.

  This turned out to be the case. Paul Fielder sat on the cold ground next to his mentor's grave site. He was gently patting round the bases of a score of pansies that had been planted along the edge of the grave.

  Deborah wove her way through the garden to join him. Her footsteps crunched along the gravel and she did nothing to mute the sound of her approach. But the boy didn't raise his head from the flowers.

  Deborah saw that his feet were sockless, that he wore slippers instead of shoes. A smudge of earth was on one of his thin ankles, and the bottoms of his blue jeans were dirty and frayed. He was inadequately dressed for the coolness of the day. Deborah couldn't believe he wasn't shivering.

  She mounted the few moss-edged steps to the grave. Instead of joining the boy, however, she went to the arbor just beyond him, where a stone bench stood beneath winter jasmine. The yellow flowers cast a mild fragrance in the air. She breathed it in and watched the boy minister to the pansies.

  “I expect you miss him awfully,” she finally said. “It's a terrible thing to lose someone you love. A friend, especially. We never seem to have enough of them. At least, that's how it's always seemed to me.”

  He bent over a pansy and pinched off a wilted blossom. He rolled it between his thumb and his index finger.

  Deborah saw from a flicker of his eyelids that he was listening, though. She continued. “I think the most important thing about friendship is the freedom it gives you to be who you are. Real friends just accept you, with all of your warts. They're there in good times. They're there in bad times. You can always trust them to speak the truth.”

  Paul tossed the pansy away. He pulled at nonexistent weeds among the rest of the plants.

  “They want the best for us,” Deborah said. “Even when we don't know what's best for ourselves. I expect that's the sort of friend Mr. Brouard was to you. You're lucky to have had him. It must be awful with him gone.”

  Paul got to his feet at this. He wiped his palms down the sides of his jeans. Afraid he might run off, Deborah plunged ahead speaking, trying to find a way into the silent boy's confidence.

&nbs
p; “When someone's gone like that—especially like . . . I mean the terrible way he left . . . the way he died—we'd do just about anything to bring them back to us. And when we can't and when we know that we can't, then we want to have something of theirs, as a means of holding on to them for just a while longer. Till we can let them go.”

  Paul shuffled his slippered feet in the gravel. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his flannel shirt and shot Deborah a wary look. He turned his head hastily and fixed his eyes on the gate some thirty yards away. Deborah had shut it behind her and she silently berated herself for having done so. He would feel trapped by her. As a result, he wouldn't be very likely to speak.

  She said, “The Victorians had the right idea. They made jewellery from dead people's hair. Did you know that? It sounds macabre, but when you think about it, there was probably great comfort in having a brooch or a locket that contained a small part of someone they loved. It's sad that we don't do that any longer, because we still want something, and if a person dies and doesn't leave us a part of them . . . what can we do but take what we can find?”

  Paul stopped the movement of his feet. He stood perfectly still, like one of the sculptures, but a smudge of colour appeared on his cheek like a thumbprint against his fair skin.

  Deborah said, “I'm wondering if that's what happened with the painting you gave to Miss Brouard. I'm wondering if Mr. Brouard showed it to you because he meant to surprise his sister with it. Perhaps he said it was a secret that only the two of you would keep. So you knew that no one else was aware he had it.”

  The smudges of colour flamed unevenly towards the boy's ears. He glanced at Deborah, then away. His fingers clutched at the tail of his shirt, which hung limply out of his blue jeans at one side and which was just as worn.

  Deborah said, “Then when Mr. Brouard died so suddenly, perhaps you thought you'd have that picture as a memento. Only he and you knew about it, after all. What would it hurt? Is that what happened?”

  The boy flinched as if struck. He gave an inarticulate cry.

  Deborah said, “It's all right. We've got the painting back. But what I wonder—”

  He spun on his toe and fled. He shot down the steps and along the gravel path as Deborah rose from the stone bench and called his name. She thought she'd lost him, but midway across the garden he stopped next to a huge bronze nude of a squatting, heavily pregnant woman with a melancholy expression and great, pendulous breasts. He turned back to Deborah, and she saw him chew on his lower lip and watch her. She took a step forward. He didn't move. She began to walk towards him the way one would approach a frightened fawn. When she was some ten yards from him, he took off again. But then he stopped at the garden gate and looked back at her another time. He pulled the gate open and left it open. He struck off to the east, but he didn't run.

  Deborah understood that she was meant to follow.

  Chapter 26

  ST. JAMES FOUND KEVIN Duffy round the side of the cottage, labouring in what appeared to be a dormant vegetable garden. He worked the earth with a heavy pitchfork but stopped what he was doing when he saw St. James.

  He said, “Val's gone to the big house. You'll find her in the kitchen.”

  “It's you I'd like to talk to, actually,” St. James said. “Do you have a moment?”

  Kevin's gaze went to the canvas St. James was holding, but if he recognised it, he gave no sign. “Take your moment, then,” he said.

  “Did you know Guy Brouard was your niece's lover?”

  “My nieces are six and eight years old, Mr. St. James. Guy Brouard was many things to many people. But pedophilia wasn't among his interests.”

  “Your wife's niece, I mean. Cynthia Moullin,” St. James said. “Did you know Cynthia was having a relationship with Brouard?”

  He didn't answer, but his glance moved over to the manor house, which was answer enough.

  “Did you speak to Brouard about it?” St. James asked.

  No answer again.

  “What about the girl's father?”

  “I can't help you with any of this,” Duffy said. “Is that all you've come to ask me?”

  “No, actually,” St. James said. “I've come to ask you about this.” Carefully, he unrolled the old canvas.

  Kevin Duffy drove the tines of the pitchfork into the ground, but he left the implement standing upright in the soil. He approached St. James, wiping his hands on the seat of his jeans. He looked at the painting, and a deep breath whistled between his lips.

  “Mr. Brouard apparently went to a great deal of trouble to get this back,” St. James said. “His sister tells me it's been missing from the family since the nineteen-forties. She doesn't know where it came from originally, she doesn't know where it's been since the war, and she doesn't know how her brother got it back. I'm wondering if you can shed light on any of this.”

  “Why would I—”

  “You've two shelves of art books and videos in your sitting room, Mr. Duffy, and a degree in art history hanging on your wall. That suggests you might know more about this painting than the average groundskeeper.”

  “I don't know where it's been,” he replied. “And I don't know how he got it back.”

  “That leaves the last,” St. James pointed out. “So you do know where it came from originally?”

  Kevin Duffy hadn't stopped looking at the painting. After a moment he said, “Come with me,” and he went into the cottage.

  By the door, he kicked off his muddy boots and took St. James through to the sitting room. He flipped on a set of overhead lights that shone directly upon his books and he reached for a pair of spectacles that lay on the arm of a threadbare chair. He moved along his collection of art volumes until he had the one he wanted. He pulled this from the shelf, sat, and turned to its index. Finding what he was looking for, he riffled through pages till he had the appropriate one. He looked at it long before he turned the volume round on his lap to face St. James. He said, “See for yourself.”

  What St. James saw was not a photo of the painting—as he'd thought he'd be seeing, considering Duffy's reaction to it—but instead it was a drawing, a mere study for a future painting. It was partially coloured, as if the artist had intended to check which hues would work best together in the final piece. He'd done only her gown, though, and the blue he'd chosen for it was the same as that which had ended up on the painting. Perhaps, having made a quick decision about the rest of the work and finding it unnecessary to colour the drawing in further, the artist had simply gone on to the actual canvas itself, the canvas St. James now held in his hands.

  The composition and figures in the drawing in the book were identical to the painting that Paul Fielder had given to Ruth Brouard. In them both, the pretty lady with the book and the quill sat placidly in the foreground while in the background a score of workers heaved round the stones that formed a massive Gothic cathedral. The only thing different between the study and the finished work was that someone along the line had given the former a title: It was called St. Barbara and anyone wishing to see it would find it among the Dutch masters in Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Art.

  “Ah,” St. James said slowly. “Yes. When I saw it, I thought it was significant.”

  “Significant?” Kevin Duffy's tone blended reverence with incredulity. “That's a Pieter de Hooch you've got in your hands. Seventeenth century. One of the three Delft masters. Until this moment, I don't expect anyone knew that painting even existed.”

  St. James looked down at what he held. He said, “Good God.”

  “Look at every art history volume you can get your hands on and you'll never find that painting,” Kevin Duffy said. “Just the drawing, the study. That's all. Far's anyone knew, de Hooch never made the painting itself. Religious subjects weren't his thing, so it's always been assumed he was just dabbling and then put the effort aside.”

  “As far as anyone knew.” St. James saw how Kevin Duffy's assertion corroborated Ruth's claim. The painting, she had said, had always been in
her family, as long as anyone could remember. Generation after generation, each father had passed it on to his children: a family heirloom. Because of this fact, probably no one had thought of taking the painting to an expert to learn exactly what it was. It was simply, as Ruth herself had said, the family's picture of the pretty lady with the book and the quill. St. James told Kevin Duffy what Ruth Brouard had called it.

  “Not a quill,” Kevin Duffy said. “She's holding a palm. It's the symbol of a martyr. You see it in religious paintings.”

  St. James examined the painting more closely and saw that indeed it appeared to be a palm frond, but he also saw how a child, uneducated in the symbols that were used in paintings of this period and looking upon the picture over time, could have interpreted it as a long and elegant quill pen. He said, “Ruth told me her brother went to Paris when he was old enough, after the war. He went to collect the family's belongings but everything they'd owned was gone. I assume that would have included the painting.”

  “That would have gone first,” Duffy agreed. “The Nazis were intent on grabbing up what they deemed Aryan art. ‘Repatriating' was what they called it. Truth was the bastards were taking everything they could get their hands on.”

  “Ruth seems to think the family's neighbour—a Monsieur Didier Bombard—had access to their belongings. As he wasn't Jewish, if he was the one who had the painting, why would it have ended up in German hands?”

  “Lots of ways art ended up with the Nazis. Not just outright theft. There were French go-betweens, art dealers who acquired for them. And German dealers who put adverts in Paris newspapers, asking for art to be brought round for prospective buyers in this or that hotel. Your Monsieur Bombard could have sold the painting that way. If he didn't know what it was, he might have taken it along to one of them and been grateful to get two hundred francs in exchange.”

  “From there, though? Where would it have gone?”

  “Who's to know?” Duffy said. “At the end of the war, the Allies set up investigation units to get art back to their owners. But it was everywhere. Göring alone had trainloads of it. But millions of people were dead—entire families wiped out with no one left to claim their possessions. And if you were left alive but you couldn't prove something belonged to you, you were out of luck.” He shook his head. “That's what happened to this, I expect. Or someone with sticky fingers from one of the Allied armies stashed it in his duffel and took it home as a souvenir. Or someone in Germany—a single owner perhaps—bought this from a French dealer during the war and managed to keep it hidden when the Allies invaded. The point is if the family was dead, who was to know who owned what? And how old was Guy Brouard at the time? Twelve? Fourteen? At the end of the war he wouldn't have been thinking of getting back his family's belongings. He would have thought of that years later, but by then this would have been long gone.”