A Place of Hiding (24 page)

“I wonder why. It looks suitable, doesn't it?”

“I've no idea. My brother didn't tell me.”

“Must have been a disappointment to the local man. He appears to have gone to a lot of work.” St. James bent to the model again.

Ruth Brouard stirred on her seat, shifting her torso as if seeking a more comfortable position, adjusting her glasses, and folding her small hands into her lap. “Mr. St. James,” she said, “how may I help you? You said you've come about Guy's death. As your business is forensics . . . Have you news to give me? Is that why you're here? I was told that further studies of his organs were going to be made.” She faltered, apparently over the difficulty of referring to her brother in parts instead of as a whole. She lowered her head and after a moment, she went on with “I was told there would be studies of my brother's organs and tissues. Other things as well. In England, I was told. As you're from London, perhaps you've come to give me information. Although if something's been uncovered—something unexpected—surely Mr. Le Gallez would have come to tell me himself, wouldn't he?”

“He knows I'm here but he hasn't sent me,” St. James told her. Then he carefully explained the mission that had brought him to Guernsey in the first place. He concluded with “Miss River's advocate told me that you were the witness whose evidence DCI Le Gallez is building his case on. I've come to ask you about that evidence.”

She looked away from him. “Miss River,” she said.

“She and her brother were guests here for several days prior to the murder, I understand.”

“And she's asked you to help her escape blame for what's happened to Guy?”

“I've not met her yet,” St. James said. “I've not spoken to her.”

“Then, why . . . ?”

“My wife and she are old friends.”

“And your wife can't believe that her old friend has murdered my brother.”

“There's the question of motive,” St. James said. “How well did Miss River come to know your brother? Is there a chance she could have known him prior to this visit? Her brother doesn't give any indication of that, but he himself might not know. Do you?”

“If she's ever been to England, possibly. She could have known Guy. But only there. Guy's never been to America. That I know of.”

“That you know of?”

“He might have gone at one time or another and not told me, but I can't think why. Or when, even. If he did, it would have been long ago. Since we've been here, on Guernsey, no. He would have told me. When he traveled in the past nine years, which was rarely once he retired, he always let me know where he could be reached. He was good that way. He was good in many ways, in fact.”

“Giving no person a reason to kill him? No person other than China River, who also appears to have had no reason?”

“I can't explain it.”

St. James moved away from the model of the museum and joined Ruth Brouard, sitting in the second armchair with a small round table between them. A picture stood on this table and he picked it up: an extended Jewish family gathered round a dining table, the men in yarmulkes, their women standing behind them, open booklets in their hands. Two children were among them, a young girl and boy. The girl wore spectacles, the boy striped braces. A patriarch stood at the head of the group, poised to break a large matzo into pieces. Behind him, a sideboard held a silver epergne and burning candles each of which shed an elongated glow on a painting on the wall, while next to him stood the woman who was obviously his wife, her head cocked towards his.

“Your family?” he said to Ruth Brouard.

“We lived in Paris,” she replied. “Before Auschwitz.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Believe me. You can't be sorry enough.”

St. James agreed with that. “No one can.”

This admission on his part seemed to satisfy Ruth Brouard in some way, as perhaps did the gentleness with which he replaced the picture on the table. For she looked to the model in the centre of the room and she spoke quietly and without any rancour.

“I can tell you only what I saw that morning, Mr. St. James. I can tell you only what I did. I went to my bedroom window and watched Guy leave the house. When he reached the trees and passed onto the drive, she followed him. I saw her.”

“You're certain it was China River?”

“I wasn't at first,” she replied. “Come. I'll show you.”

She took him back along a shadowy passage that was hung with early prints of the manor house. Not far from the stairway, she opened a door and led St. James into what was obviously her bedroom: simply furnished but furnished well with heavy antiques and an enormous needlepoint tapestry. A series of scenes comprised it, all of them combining to tell a single story in the fashion of tapestries predating books. This particular story was one of flight: an escape in the night as a foreign army approached, a hurried journey to the coast, a crossing made on heavy seas, a landing among strangers. Only two of the characters depicted were the same in every scene: a young girl and boy.

Ruth Brouard stepped into the shallow embrasure of a window and drew back sheer panels that hung over the glass. “Come,” she said to St. James. “Look.”

St. James joined her and saw that the window overlooked the front of the house. Below them, the drive circled round a plot of land planted with grass and shrubbery. Beyond this, the lawn rolled across to a distant cottage. A thick stand of trees grew round this building and extended up along the drive and back again to the main house.

Her brother had come out of the front door as was his habit, Ruth Brouard told St. James. As she watched, he crossed the lawn towards the cottage and disappeared into the trees. China River came out of those trees and followed him. She was in full sight. She was dressed in black. She was wearing her cloak with its hood drawn up, but Ruth knew it was China.

Why? St. James wanted to know. It seemed clear that anyone could have put his hands on China's cloak. Its very nature made it suitable for either a man or a woman to wear. And didn't the hood suggest to Miss Brouard—

“I didn't depend on that alone, Mr. St. James,” Ruth Brouard told him. “I thought it odd that she would follow Guy at that hour of the morning because there seemed to be no reason for it. I found it unsettling. I thought I might be mistaken about what I'd seen, so I went to her room. She wasn't there.”

“Perhaps elsewhere in the house?”

“I checked. The bathroom. The kitchen. Guy's study. The drawing room. The upstairs gallery. She wasn't anywhere inside, Mr. St. James, because she was following my brother.”

“Did you have your glasses on when you saw her outside in the trees?”

“That's why I checked the house,” Ruth said. “Because I didn't have them on when I first looked out of the window. It seemed to be her—I've learned to become good with sizes and shapes—but I wanted to be sure.”

“Why? Did you suspect something of her? Or of someone else?”

Ruth put the sheer curtains back in place. She smoothed her hand over the thin material. She said as she did this, “Someone else? No. No. Of course not,” but the fact that she spoke as she saw to the curtains prompted St. James to go on.

He said, “Who else was in the house at the time, Miss Brouard?”

“Her brother. Myself. And Adrian, Guy's son.”

“What was his relationship with his father?”

“Good. Fine. They didn't see each other often. His mother long ago put that into effect. But when they did see each other, they were terribly fond. Naturally, they had their differences. What father and son don't? But they weren't serious, the differences. They were nothing that couldn't be repaired.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Of course I'm sure. Adrian is . . . He's a good boy but he's had a difficult life. His parents' divorce was bitter and he was caught in the middle. He loved both of them but he was made to choose. That sort of thing causes misunderstanding. It causes estrangement. And it isn't fair.” She seemed to hear an undercurrent in her own voice and she took a deep breath as if to control it. “They loved each other in the way fathers and sons love each other when neither of them can ever get a grasp on what the other one is like.”

“Where do you suppose that kind of love can lead?”

“Not to murder. I assure you of that.”

“You love your nephew,” St. James observed.

“Blood relatives mean more to me than they do to most people,” she said, “for obvious reasons.”

St. James nodded. He saw the truth in this. He also saw a further reality, but he didn't need to explore it with her at that moment. He said, “I'd like to see the route your brother took to the bay where he swam that morning, Miss Brouard.”

She said, “You'll find it just east of the caretaker's cottage. I'll phone the Duffys and tell them I've given you permission to be there.”

“It's a private bay?”

“No, not the bay. But if you pass by the cottage, Kevin will wonder what you're up to. He's protective of us. So is his wife.”

But not protective enough, St. James thought.

Chapter 10

S
T.
J
AMES CONNECTED WITH
Deborah once again as she was emerging from beneath the chestnuts that lined the drive. In very short order, she related her encounter in the Japanese garden, indicating where it was with a gesture towards the southeast and a thicket of trees. Her earlier irritation with him seemed to be forgotten, for which he was grateful, and in this fact he was reminded once again of his father-in-law's words describing Deborah when St. James had—with amusing and what he had hoped was endearing antique formality—asked for permission to marry her. “Deb's a red-'ead and make no mistake about it, my lad,” Joseph Cotter had said. “She'll give you aggro like you've never 'ad, but at least it'll be over in a wink.”

She'd done a good job with the boy, he discovered. Despite her reticence, her compassionate nature gave her a way with people that he himself had never possessed. It had long suited her choice of profession—subjects far more willingly posed for their pictures if they knew the person behind the camera shared a common humanity with them—just as his even temperament and analytical mind had long suited his. And Deborah's success with Stephen Abbott underscored the fact that more than technique and skill in a laboratory were going to be needed in this situation.

“So that other woman who came forward for the shovel,” Deborah concluded, “the one with the enormous hat? She was the current girlfriend, apparently, not a relation. Although it sounds as if she was hoping to be one.”

“‘You saw what she's done,' ” St. James murmured. “What did you make of his saying that, my love?”

“What she's done to make herself appealing, I expect,” Deborah said. “I did notice . . . well, it was difficult not to, wasn't it? And you don't see them often here, not like in the States, where large breasts seem to be something of a . . . a national fixation, I suppose.”

“Not that she's ‘done' something else?” St. James asked. “Like eliminated her lover when he favoured another woman?”

“Why would she do that if she hoped to marry him?”

“Perhaps she needed to be rid of him.”

“Why?”

“Obsession. Jealousy. Rage that can only be quelled in one way. Or perhaps something simpler altogether: Perhaps she was remembered in his will and she needed to eliminate him before he had a chance to change it in favour of someone else.”

“But that doesn't take into consideration the problem we've already faced,” Deborah noted. “How could a woman actually have forced a stone into Guy Brouard's throat, Simon? Any woman.”

“We go back to DCI Le Gallez's kiss,” St. James said, “as unlikely as it is. ‘She'd lost him.' Is there another woman?”

“Not China,” Deborah asserted.

St. James heard his wife's determination. “You're quite certain, then.”

“She told me she's recently broken off from Matt. She's loved him for years, since she was seventeen. I can't see how she'd get involved with another man so soon after that.”

This, St. James knew, took them into tender territory, one that was occupied by Deborah herself as well as by China River. Not so many years had passed since Deborah had parted from him and found another lover. That they had never discussed the alacrity of her involvement with Tommy Lynley did not mean it wasn't the result of her sorrow and increased vulnerability. He said, “But she'd be more vulnerable now than ever, wouldn't she? Couldn't she possibly need to have a fling—something Brouard might have taken more seriously than she herself took it—to bolster herself up?”

“That's not really what she's like.”

“But supposing—”

“All right. Supposing. But she certainly didn't
kill
him, Simon. You have to agree she'd need a motive.”

He did agree. But he also believed that a preconceived notion of innocence was just as dangerous as a preconceived notion of guilt. So when he related what he'd learned from Ruth Brouard, he concluded carefully with “She did check for China in the rest of the house. She was nowhere to be found.”

“So Ruth Brouard
says,
” Deborah pointed out reasonably. “She could be lying.”

“She could indeed. The Rivers weren't the only guests in the house. Adrian Brouard was also there.”

“With reason to kill his dad?”

“It's something we can't ignore.”

“She
is
his blood relative,” Deborah said. “And given her history—her parents, the Holocaust?—I'd say it's likely she'd do anything to protect a blood relative first and foremost, wouldn't you?”

“I would.”

They were walking down the drive in the direction of the lane and St. James guided them through the trees towards the path that Ruth Brouard had told him would lead to the bay where her brother had taken his daily swim. Their way passed by the stone cottage he'd observed earlier, and he noted that two of the building's windows looked directly onto the path. This was where the caretakers lived, he'd been told, and the Duffys, St. James concluded, might well have something to add to what Ruth Brouard had already told him.

The path grew cooler and more damp as it dipped into the trees. Either the land's natural fecundity or a man's determination had created an impressive array of foliage that screened the trail from the rest of the estate. Nearest to the path, rhododendrons flourished. Among them half a dozen varieties of ferns unfurled their fronds. The ground was spongy with the fall of autumn leaves left to decompose, and overhead the winter-bare branches of chestnuts spoke of the green tunnel they'd create in summer. It was silent here, save for the sound of their footsteps.

That silence didn't last, however. St. James was extending his hand to his wife to help her across a puddle, when a scruffy little dog bounded out of the bushes, yapping at both of them.

“Lord!” Deborah started and then laughed. “Oh, he's awfully sweet, isn't he? Here, little doggie. We won't hurt you.”

She held her hand out to him. As she did so, a red-jacketed boy darted out the way the dog had come and scooped the animal up into his arms.

“Sorry,” St. James said with a smile. “We appear to have startled your dog.”

The boy said nothing. He looked from Deborah to St. James as his dog continued to bark protectively.

“Miss Brouard said this is the way to the bay,” St. James said. “Have we made a wrong turn somewhere?”

Still the boy didn't speak. He looked fairly the worse for wear, with oleaginous hair clinging to his skull and his face streaked with dirt. The hands that held the dog were grimy and the black trousers he wore had grease crusted on one knee. He took several steps backwards.

“We haven't startled you as well, have we?” Deborah asked. “We didn't think anyone would be . . .”

Her voice faded as the boy turned on his heel and crashed back in the direction he'd come. He wore a tattered rucksack on his back, and it pounded against him like a bag of potatoes.

“Who on earth . . . ?” Deborah murmured.

St. James wondered himself. “We'll want to look into that.”

They reached the lane through a gate in the wall some distance from the drive. There they saw that the overflow of cars from the burial had departed, leaving the way unobstructed so that they easily found the descent to the bay, some one hundred yards from the entrance to the Brouard estate.

This descent was somewhere between a track and a lane—wider than one and too narrow to actually be considered the other—and it switched back on itself numerous times as it steeply dropped to the water. Rock walls and woodland sided it, along with a stream that chattered along the rough stones of the wall's base. There were no houses or cottages here, just a single hotel that was closed for the season, surrounded by trees, tucked into a depression in the hillside, and shuttered at every window.

In the distance below St. James and his wife, the English Channel appeared, speckled by what little sun was able to break through the heavy cover of clouds. With the sight of it came the sound of gulls. They soared among the granite outcroppings at the top of the cliffs, which formed the deep horseshoe that was the bay itself. Gorse and English stonecrop grew in undisturbed abundance here, and where the soil was deeper, tangled thickets of bony branches marked the spots where blackthorn and bramble would prosper in spring.

At the base of the lane a small car park made a thumbprint on the landscape. No cars stood in it, nor would any be likely to do so at this time of year. It was the perfect spot for a private swim or for anything that called for activity without witnesses.

A bulwark fashioned from stone protected the car park from tidal erosion, and to one side of this a slipway slanted down to the water. Dead and dying seaweed knotted thickly across this, just the sort of decaying vegetation that at another time of year would be infested with flies and gnats. Nothing moved or crawled within it in the middle of December, however, and St. James and Deborah were able to pick their way through it and thus gain access to the beach. The water lapped against this rhythmically, marking a gentle pulse against the coarse sand and the stones.

“No wind,” St. James noted as he observed the mouth of the bay some distance from where they stood. “That makes it very good for swimming.”

“But terribly cold,” Deborah said. “I can't understand how he did it. In December? It's extraordinary, don't you think?”

“Some people like extremity,” St. James said. “Let's have a look around.”

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

“Something the police may have missed.”

The actual spot of the murder was easy enough to find: The signs of a crime scene were still upon it in the form of a strip of yellow police tape, two discarded film canisters from the police photographer, and a globule of white plaster that had spilled when someone took a cast of a footprint. St. James and Deborah started at this spot and began working side by side in an ever-widening circumference round it.

The going was slow. Eyes fixed to the ground, they wheeled round and round, turning over the larger stones that they came upon, gently moving aside seaweed, sifting through sand with their fingertips. In this manner, an hour passed as they examined the small beach, uncovering a top to a jar of baby food, a faded ribbon, an empty Evian bottle, and seventy-eight pence in loose change.

When they came to the bulwark, St. James suggested that they begin at opposite ends and work their way towards each other. At the point at which they would meet, he said, they would just continue onwards so each of them would have separately inspected the entire length of the wall.

They had to go carefully, for there were heavier stones here and more crevices in which items could fall. But although each of them moved at earthworm pace, they met at the middle empty-handed.

“This isn't looking very hopeful,” Deborah noted.

“It isn't,” St. James agreed. “But it was always just a chance.” He rested for a moment against the wall, his arms crossed on his chest and his gaze on the Channel. He gave consideration to the idea of lies: those people tell and those people believe. Sometimes, he knew, the people in both cases were the same. Telling something long enough resulted in belief.

“You're worried, aren't you?” Deborah said. “If we don't find something—”

He put his arm round her and kissed the side of her head. “Let's keep going,” he told her but said nothing of what was obvious to him: Finding something could be even more damning than having the misfortune of finding nothing at all.

They continued like crabs along the wall, St. James slightly more inhibited by his leg brace, which made moving among the larger stones more difficult for him than it was for his wife. Perhaps this was the reason the cry of exultation—marking the discovery of something hitherto unnoticed—was given by Deborah some fifteen minutes into the final part of their search.

“Here!” she called. “Simon, look here.”

He turned and saw that she'd reached the far end of the bulwark at the point where the slipway dipped down to the water. She was gesturing to the corner where the bulwark and the slipway met, and when St. James moved in her direction, she squatted to have a better look at what she'd found.

“What is it?” he asked as he came alongside her.

“Something metallic,” she said. “I didn't want to pick it up.”

“How far down?” he asked.

“Less than a foot, I dare say,” she replied. “If you want me to—”

“Here.” He handed her a handkerchief.

To reach the object, she had to wedge her leg into a ragged opening, which she did enthusiastically. She crammed herself down far enough to grasp and then rescue what she'd seen from above.

This turned out to be a ring. Deborah brought it forth and laid it cushioned by the handkerchief on the palm of her hand for St. James's inspection.

It looked made of bronze, sized for a man. And its decoration was man-sized as well. This comprised a skull and crossed bones. On the top of the skull were the numbers 39/40 and below them four words engraved in German. St. James squinted to make them out:
Die Festung im Westen.

“Something from the war,” Deborah murmured as she scrutinised the ring herself. “But it can't have been here all these years.”

“No. Its condition doesn't suggest that.”

“Then what . . . ?”

St. James folded the handkerchief round it, but he left the ring resting in Deborah's hand. “It needs to be checked,” he said. “Le Gallez will want to have it fingerprinted. There won't be much on it, but even a partial could help.”

“How could they have not seen it?” Deborah asked, and St. James could tell she expected no answer.

Nonetheless he said, “DCI Le Gallez considers the evidence of an ageing woman not wearing her spectacles sufficient unto the day. I think it's a safe bet to conclude he isn't looking as hard as he could for anything that might refute what she's told him.”