A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  “That must be the son,” Deborah murmured to him now. They were at the back of the mourners on a slight slope of land that rose to a wall. Inside this wall a garden grew, separated from the rest of the estate. Paths meandered haphazardly, through carefully trimmed shrubs and flowerbeds, beneath trees that were bare now but thoughtfully placed to shade concrete benches and shallow ponds. Among all this, modern sculptures stood: a granite figure curled foetally; a cupreous elf—seasoned by verdigris—posing beneath the fronds of a palm; three maidens in bronze trailing seaweed behind them; a marble sea nymph rising out of a pond. Into this setting at the top of five steps, a terrace spread out. Along the far end of it, a pergola ran, trailing vines and sheltering a single bench. It was here on the terrace that the grave had been dug, perhaps so that future generations could simultaneously contemplate the garden and consider the final resting-place of the man who had created it.

  St. James saw that the coffin had already been lowered and the final parting prayers had been said. A blonde woman, incongruously wearing sunglasses as if in attendance at a Hollywood burial, was now shooing forward the man at her side. She did it verbally first, and when that didn't work, she gave him a little push towards the grave. Next to this was a mound of earth out of which poked a shovel with black streamers hanging from it. St. James agreed with Deborah: This would be the son, Adrian Brouard, the only other inhabitant of the house aside from his aunt and the Rivers siblings on the night before his father had been murdered.

  Brouard's lip curled in reaction. He brushed his mother off and approached the mound of earth. In the absolute hush of the crowd round the grave, he scooped up a shovelful of soil and flipped it on top of the coffin. The thud as the earth hit the wood below it resounded like the echo of a door being slammed.

  Adrian Brouard was followed in this action by a birdlike woman so diminutive that from the back she could easily have been mistaken for a pre-adolescent boy. She handed the shovel solemnly over to Adrian Brouard's mother who likewise poured earth into the grave. When she herself would have returned the shovel to the mound next to the grave site, yet another woman came forward and grasped the handle before the sunglassed blonde could release it.

  A murmur went through the onlookers at this, and St. James studied the woman more intently. He could see little of her, for she wore a black hat the approximate size of a parasol, but she had a startling figure that she was making the most of in a trim charcoal suit. She did her bit with the shovel and handed it over to a gawky adolescent girl, curve-shouldered and weak-ankled in platform shoes. This girl made her bow at the grave and tried to give the shovel next to a boy round her age, whose height, colouring, and general appearance suggested that he was her brother. But instead of performing his part in the ritual, the boy abruptly turned away and shoved through those standing closest to the grave. A second murmur went up at this.

  “What's that all about?” Deborah asked quietly.

  “Something that needs looking at,” St. James said. He saw the opportunity given to him in the teenager's actions. He said, “D'you feel easy sussing him out, Deborah? Or would you rather head back to China?”

  He hadn't met her yet, this friend of Deborah's, and he wasn't sure he wanted to, although he couldn't quite put his finger on the reason for his reluctance. He knew their meeting was inevitable, however, so he told himself that he wanted to have something hopeful to report to her when they were finally introduced. In the meantime, though, he wanted Deborah to have the freedom to go to her friend. She hadn't done that yet today, and there was little doubt the American and her brother would be wondering what their London friends were managing to accomplish.

  Cherokee had phoned them early in the morning, afire to know what St. James had learned from the police. He'd kept his voice determinedly cheerful at his end of the line as St. James told him what little there was to tell, and from that it was clear that the other man was making the call in the presence of his sister. At the conclusion of their conversation, Cherokee signaled his intention to attend the funeral. He was firm in his desire to be part of what he called “the action,” and it was only when St. James tactfully pointed out that his presence might provide an unnecessary distraction that would allow the real killer to fade into the crowd that he agreed reluctantly to remain behind. He'd be waiting to hear what they were able to uncover, though, he told them. China would be waiting, too.

  “You can go to her if you like,” St. James said to his wife. “I'll be sniffing round here for a while. I can get a ride back into town with someone. It shouldn't be a problem.”

  “I didn't come to Guernsey just to sit and hold China's hand,” Deborah replied.

  “I know. Which is why—”

  She cut him off before he could finish. “I'll see what he has to say, Simon.”

  St. James watched her stride away in pursuit of the boy. He sighed and wondered why communicating with women—particularly with his wife—was frequently a case of speaking about one thing while trying to read the subtext of another. And he pondered how his inability to read women accurately was going to affect his performance here on Guernsey, where it was looking more and more as if the circumstances surrounding Guy Brouard's life and his death were crawling with significant females.

  When Margaret Chamberlain saw the crippled man approach Ruth near the end of the reception, she knew he wasn't a legitimate member of the congregation who'd been at the funeral and the burial. First of all, he hadn't spoken to her sister-in-law earlier at the grave site as had everyone else. Besides that, he'd spent the reception afterwards wandering from open room to open room in the house in a manner that suggested speculation. Margaret had at first thought he was a burglar of some sort, despite the limp and the leg brace, but when he finally introduced himself to Ruth—going so far as to hand her his card—she realised he was something else altogether. What that something was had to do with Guy's death. If not that, then with the distribution of his fortune which they were finally going to learn about as soon as the last of the mourners left them.

  Ruth hadn't wanted to see Guy's solicitor before then. It was as if she was aware that there was bad news coming, and she was trying to spare everyone from having to hear it. Everyone or someone, Margaret thought shrewdly. The only question was who.

  If it was Adrian whose disappointment she was hoping to postpone, there was definitely going to be hell to pay. She'd drag her sister-in-law to court and shake out every piece of dirty laundry there was if Guy had disinherited his only son. Oh, she knew there'd be excuses aplenty coming from Ruth if that's what Adrian's father had done. But let them just try to accuse her of undermining the relationship between father and son, let them just make a single attempt to depict her as the responsible party for Adrian's loss . . . There'd be a real season in hell coming when she trotted out all the reasons she'd kept them apart. They each had a name and a title, those reasons, although not quite the kind of title that redeems one's transgressions in the eyes of the public: Danielle the Air Hostess, Stephanie the Pole Dancer, MaryAnn the Dog Groomer, Lucy the Hotel Maid.

  They were the reason that Margaret had kept the son from the father. What sort of example was the boy to see? she could easily demand of anyone who asked her. What sort of role model did she have a duty to provide an impressionable lad of eight, or ten, or fifteen? If his father lived a life that made lengthy visits from his son unsuitable, was it the son's fault? And should he now be deprived of what he was owed by blood because his father's daisy chain of mistresses throughout the years had gone unbroken?

  No. She had been within her rights to keep them well apart, doomed to quick or interrupted visits only. After all, Adrian was a sensitive child. She owed him the protection of a mother's love, not exposure to a father's excess.

  She watched her son now as he lurked at the edge of the stone hall, where most of the post-burial reception was being conducted in the warmth of two fires that burned at either end of the room. He was trying to edge his way to the door,
either to escape altogether or to duck along to the dining room where an enormous buffet spread across the fine mahogany table. Margaret frowned. This would not do. He should have been mingling. Rather than creeping along the wall like an insect, he should have been doing something to act like the scion of the wealthiest man the Channel Islands had ever seen. How could he expect his life to be anything more than it already was—confined and described by his mother's house in St. Albans—if he didn't put himself out, for God's sake?

  Margaret wove her way through the remaining guests and intercepted her son at the door to the passage that led to the dining room. She put her arm through his and ignored his effort to pull away, saying with a smile, “Here you are, darling. I knew there was someone who could point out the people I've still to meet. One can't hope to know them all, of course. But surely there are important individuals I ought to meet for future reference?”

  “What future?” Adrian put his hand on hers to disengage her, but she caught his fingers, squeezed them, and continued smiling as if he weren't trying to escape.

  “Yours, of course. We must set about making certain it's secure.”

  “Must we, Mother? How d'you propose to do that?”

  “A word here, a word there,” she said airily. “It's amazing the kind of influence one can have once one knows the proper person to talk to. That glowering gentleman over there, for instance? Who is he?”

  Instead of replying, Adrian started to move away from his mother. But she had the advantage of height over him—of weight as well—and she held him where he was. “Darling?” she asked him brightly. “The gentleman? The one with the patches on his elbows? Attractive in an overnourished-Heathcliff sort of way?”

  Adrian gave the man a cursory glance. “One of Dad's artists. The place is crawling with them. They're all here to grease the way with Ruth on the chance she's been left most of the bundle.”

  “When they should be greasing the way with you? How very strange,” Margaret said.

  He gave her a look that she didn't like to interpret. “Believe me. No one's that stupid.”

  “About what?”

  “About where Dad left his money. They know he wouldn't have—”

  “Darling, that makes no difference at all. Where he may have wanted his money to go and where it shall end up might very well be two different places. Wise is the man who realises that and acts accordingly.”

  “Wise is the woman as well, Mother?”

  He sounded hateful. Margaret couldn't understand what she had done to deserve that sort of tone from him. She said, “If we're speaking of your father's latest dalliance with this Mrs. Abbott, I think I can safely say that—”

  “You know damn well we're not.”

  “—your father's bent for younger women being what it was—”

  “Yeah. That's just bloody it, Mother. Would you God damn listen to yourself for once?”

  Margaret stopped, confused. She tracked back through their last exchange. “What I was saying? About what?”

  “About Dad. About Dad's women. About his younger women. Just think, all right? I'm sure you can put the pieces together.”

  “Darling, what pieces? I honestly don't know—”

  “‘Take her to meet your father so she sees, my darling,' ” her son recited tersely. “‘No woman will walk away from that.' Because she'd started to have second thoughts about me and you saw that clear enough, didn't you? God knows you probably even expected it. You thought if she knew just how much money was on the horizon if she played her cards right, she'd decide to stay with me. As if I'd bloody want her then. As if I bloody want her now.”

  Margaret felt an icy wind chill her neck. “Are you saying . . . ?” but she knew that he was. She glanced round them. Her smile felt like a death mask. She drew her son out of the hall. She led him down the passage and beyond the dining room to the butler's pantry, where she shut the door upon them. She didn't like to think where their conversation was heading. She didn't want to think where their conversation was heading. Less did she like or want to think what where it was heading might imply about the recent past. But she couldn't stop the force of things she herself had brought into motion, so she spoke.

  “What are you telling me, Adrian?” She kept her back to the door of the butler's pantry so he couldn't escape her. There was a second door—this one to the dining room—but she felt confident that he wouldn't go there. The murmur of voices beyond it told them both that the room was occupied. And he'd started to twitch—his eyes beginning to unfocus—which heralded a state he wouldn't want strangers to observe. When he didn't reply at once, Margaret repeated her question. She spoke more gently now because, despite her impatience with him, she could see his suffering. “What happened, Adrian?”

  “You know,” he answered dully. “You knew him so you know the rest.”

  Margaret clasped his face between her palms. She said, “No. I can't believe . . .” She tightened her hold on him. “You were his son. He would have drawn the line at that. Because of that. You were his son.”

  “As if that mattered.” Adrian jerked away from her. “Just like you were his wife. That didn't matter a whole hell of a lot either.”

  “But Guy and Carmel? Carmel Fitzgerald? Carmel who never had ten remotely amusing words to say to anyone and probably wouldn't have known a clever comment from—” Margaret brought herself up short. She looked away.

  “Right. So she was perfect for me,” Adrian said. “She wasn't used to anyone clever so she was easy pickings.”

  “That's not what I meant. That's not what I was thinking. She's a lovely girl. You and she together—”

  “What difference does it make what you were thinking? It's the truth. He saw it. She was going to be easy. Dad saw that and he had to make his move. Because if he ever left one patch of ground unploughed when it was right in front of him just begging for it, Mother—” His voice cracked.

  Beyond them in the dining room, the clink of plates and cutlery suggested that the caterers were beginning to clear away the food as the reception drew to a close. Margaret glanced at the door behind her son and knew that it was only a matter of moments before they were interrupted. She couldn't bear the thought that he should be seen like this, with his face gone greasy and his chapped lips trembling. He was reduced to childhood in an instant and she was reduced to the woman she'd always been as his mother, caught between telling him to get a grip on himself before someone saw him as a puling sniveler and crushing him to her bosom to comfort him while vowing to be avenged on his adversaries.

  But it was the thought of vengeance that brought Margaret quickly round to seeing Adrian as the man he was today, not as the child he once had been. And the chill on her neck turned to frost in her blood as she considered the ways that vengeance might have played out here on Guernsey.

  The door handle rattled behind her son and the door swung open, hitting him in the back. A grey-haired woman popped her head inside, saw Margaret's rigid face, said, “Oh! Sorry,” and disappeared. But her intrusion was sign enough. Margaret hustled her son out of the room.

  She led him upstairs and into her bedroom, thankful that Ruth had placed her in the western half of the house, away from her own room and away from Guy's. She and her son would have privacy here, and privacy was what they needed.

  She sat Adrian down on the dressing table's stool and she fetched a bottle of single malt from her suitcase. Ruth was notoriously niggardly with the drink, and Margaret thanked God for this as otherwise she wouldn't have thought to come supplied. She poured a full two fingers and shot them down, then poured again and handed the glass to her son.

  “I don't—”

  “You do. This will steady your nerves.” She waited until he had obeyed her, draining the glass and then holding it loosely between his palms. Then she said to him, “Are you certain, Adrian? He liked to flirt. You know that. It may have been nothing more. Did you see them together? Did you—” She hated to ask for the grisly details but
she needed the facts.

  “I didn't need to see them. She was different with me afterwards. I guessed.”

  “Did you speak to him? Accuse him?”

  “Of course I did. What do you take me for?”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He denied it. But I forced him to—”

  “Forced him?” She could scarcely breathe.

  “I lied. I told him she'd confessed. So he did as well.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. We went back to England, Carmel and I. You know the rest.”

  “My God, then why did you come back here again?” she asked him. “He'd had your fiancée right under your nose. Why did you—”

  “I was badgered into coming back, as you might recall,” Adrian said. “What did you tell me? He'd be so pleased to see me?”

  “But if I'd known, I never would have even suggested, let alone insisted . . . Adrian, for the love of God. Why didn't you tell me this happened?”

  “Because I decided to use it,” he said. “If reason couldn't get him to make me the loan I needed, then I thought guilt could. Only, I forgot Dad was immune to guilt. He was immune to everything.” Then he smiled. And at the moment, the chill-turned-frost went to ice in Margaret's blood when her son next said, “Well, practically everything, as things turned out.”

  Chapter 9

  DEBORAH ST. JAMES FOLLOWED the adolescent boy at a distance. She wasn't at her best striking up conversations with strangers, but she wasn't about to leave the scene without at least putting her fingers into the situation. She knew that her reluctance did nothing more than confirm her husband's earlier trepidation about her coming to Guernsey by herself to look into China's difficulties, Cherokee's presence apparently not counting with Simon. So she was doubly determined that her natural reticence wouldn't defeat her in the present circumstance.

  The boy didn't know she was behind him. He didn't appear to have any particular destination in mind. He forced his way out of the crowd in the sculpture garden first and then headed across a crisp oval lawn that lay beyond an ornate conservatory at one end of the house. At the side of this lawn, he leaped between two tall rhododendrons and scooped up a thin bough from a chestnut tree growing near a group of three outbuildings. At these, he veered suddenly to the east where, in the distance and through the trees, Deborah could see a stone wall giving on to fields and meadows. But instead of heading in that direction—the surest way to leave behind him the funeral and everything that went with the funeral—he began to trudge along the pebbly road that led back towards the house again. As he walked, he roughly used his bough like a switch against the shrubbery that grew lushly along the drive. This bordered a series of meticulously kept gardens to the east of the house, but he didn't enter any of these either. Instead, he forged off through the trees beyond the shrubbery and picked up his pace when he apparently heard someone approaching one of the cars that were parked in this area.