A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

“There may have been a misunderstanding.” Or a traffic accident, St. James wanted to add, although he knew this was an impossibility since he'd taken the same route his wife would have taken to return from Le Reposoir and there hadn't been so much as a broken headlamp on the road to suggest a car crash had kept Deborah from fulfilling her duty. Not that anyone drove fast enough on the island for a car crash, anyway. A minor collision, perhaps, with bumpers crunching or wings denting. But that would be the extent of it. Even that wouldn't have kept her from bringing the ring to Le Gallez as he'd instructed her to do.

  “A misunderstanding.” Le Gallez spoke with far less affability now. “Yes. I do see, Mr. St. James. We've got ourselves a misunderstanding.” He looked up as a figure appeared in his doorway, a uniformed officer bearing paperwork in his hand. Le Gallez waved him off for a moment. He got up from his seat and shut the door of his office. He faced St. James with his arms crossed over his chest. He said, “I don't much mind if you nose about, Mr. St. James. It's a free you-know-what, and if you want to talk to this bloke or that bloke and he doesn't mind, it's fine by me. But when you start messing about with evidence, we've got another situation entirely.”

  “I do understand. I—”

  “I don't think so. You've come here with your mind made up, and if you think I'm not aware of that and where it can lead, you'd best think again. Now, I want that ring. I want it at once. We'll deal later with where it's been since you lifted it off the beach. And with why you lifted it, by the way. Because you know bloody damn well what you ought to've done. Have I made myself clear?”

  St. James hadn't been reprimanded since adolescence, and the experience—so similar to being dressed down by an outraged schoolmaster—wasn't pleasant. His skin crawled with the mortification of the moment, made worse because he knew he richly deserved it. But that didn't make the ordeal any less chastening, nor did it go any length to soften the blow this moment could do to his reputation should he not be able to handle the situation expeditiously.

  He said, “I'm not sure what happened. But you have my most profound apologies. The ring—”

  “I don't want your bloody apologies,” Le Gallez barked. “I want that ring.”

  “You'll have it directly.”

  “That, Mr. St. James, damn well better be the case.” The DCI stepped away from the door and swung it open.

  St. James couldn't remember a time he'd been dismissed with so little ceremony. He stepped out into the hall, where the uniformed officer stood waiting with his paperwork in hand. The man averted his eyes, as if with embarrassment, and hurried into the DCI's office.

  Le Gallez slammed the door shut behind him. But not before he snapped, “Sodding little cripple,” as a parting remark.

  Virtually all the dealers in antiques on Guernsey were in St. Peter Port, Deborah found. As one might expect, they were in the oldest part of the town, not far from the harbour. Rather than visit them all, however, she suggested to Cherokee that they begin on the phone. So they retraced their steps down to the market and from there they crossed over to the Town Church. To one side of it stood the public telephone they needed, and while Cherokee waited and watched her earnestly, Deborah fed coins into the phone and rang up the antiques shops till she was able to isolate those that offered militaria. It seemed logical to begin there, broadening the investigation if they found it necessary.

  As things turned out, only two shops in the town had military items among their merchandise. Both of them were in Mill Street, a cobbled pedestrian walkway snaking from the meat market up a hillside, wisely closed to traffic. Not, Deborah thought as they found it, that a car could have possibly passed along the street without running the risk of scraping the buildings on either side. It reminded her of the Shambles in York: slightly wider, but just as redolent of a past in which horse-drawn carts would have lurched along, acting the part of transport.

  Small shops along Mill Street reflected a simpler period, defined by spare decoration and no-nonsense windows and doors. They were housed in buildings that might easily have served as homes, with three trim floors, dormer windows, and chimney pots lined up like waiting schoolboys on their roofs.

  There were few people about in the area, which was some distance from the main shopping and banking precincts of the High Street and its extension, Le Pollet. Indeed, it seemed to Deborah as she and Cherokee looked for the first name and address which she'd scribbled upon the back of a blank cheque, that even the most optimistic of retailers stood a good chance of failure if he opened a shop here. Many of the buildings were vacant, with to let or for sale signs in their windows. When they located the first of the two shops they were seeking, its front window was hung with a droopy going-out-of-business banner that looked as if it had been passed round from shop owner to shop owner for quite some time.

  John Steven Mitchell Antiques offered little in the way of military memorabilia. Perhaps owing to its imminent closure, the shop contained only a single display case whose contents had a military origin. These comprised mainly medals, although three dress daggers, five pistols, and two Wehrmacht hats accompanied them. While Deborah found this a disappointing show, she decided that since everything in the case was German in origin, matters might actually be more hopeful than they appeared.

  She and Cherokee were bent over the case, studying its merchandise, when the shop owner—presumably John Steven Mitchell himself—joined them. They'd apparently interrupted his washing up after a meal, if his stained apron and damp hands were any indication. He offered his help pleasantly enough as he wiped his hands on an unappealingly dingy dishcloth.

  Deborah brought forth the ring that she and Simon had found on the beach, careful not to touch it herself and asking John Steven Mitchell not to touch it either. Did he recognise this ring? she asked him. Could he tell them anything about it?

  Mitchell fetched a pair of spectacles from the top of a till and bent over the ring where Deborah had placed it on the case of military items. He took up a magnifying glass as well, and he studied the inscription on the forehead of the skull.

  “Western bulwark,” he murmured. “Thirty-nine, forty.” He paused as if considering his own words. “That's the translation of die Festung im Westen. And the year . . . Actually, it suggests a memento of some sort of defensive construction. But it could be a metaphorical reference to the assault on Denmark. On the other hand, the skull and crossed bones were specific to the Waffen-SS, so there's that connection as well.”

  “But it's not something from the Occupation?” Deborah asked.

  “It would have been left then, when the Germans surrendered to the Allies. But it wouldn't have been directly connected to the Occupation. The dates aren't right for that. And the term die Festung im Westen doesn't have any meaning here.”

  “Why's that?” Cherokee had kept his eyes on the ring while Mitchell was examining it, but he raised them now.

  “Because of the implication,” Mitchell answered. “They built tunnels, of course. Fortifications, gun emplacements, observation towers, hospitals, the lot. Even a railway. But not an actual bulwark. And even if they had done, this is commemorating something from a year before the Occupation began.” He bent to it a second time with his magnifying glass. “I've never actually seen anything like it. Are you considering selling?”

  No, no, Deborah told him. They were only trying to find out where it had come from since from its condition it was obvious it hadn't been lying out in the open since 1945. Antiques shops had seemed the logical place for them to start looking for information.

  “I see,” Mitchell told them. Well, if information was what they wanted, they'd be wise to speak to the Potters just up the street. Potter and Potter Antiques, Jeanne and Mark, a mother and son, he clarified. She was a porcelain expert and wouldn't be much help. But there was very little about the German army in the Second World War that he didn't know.

  In short order, Deborah and Cherokee were in Mill Street again, this time climbing higher, past a shadow
y opening between two buildings that was called Back Lane. Just beyond this alley, they found Potter and Potter. Unlike the previous shop, this one looked like a viable enterprise.

  Potter the mother was in attendance, they found as they went in. She sat in a rocking chair with her slippered feet on a tufted hassock, and she gave her attention to the screen of a television no bigger than a shoe box. On it she was watching a film: Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney driving in the countryside in a vintage MG. A car not unlike Simon's, Deborah saw, and for the first time since making the decision to bypass the police station in favour of seeking out China River, she felt a twinge. It was like a string pulling at her conscience, a thread that might unravel if tugged upon too strongly. She couldn't call it guilt, exactly, because she knew she had nothing about which she ought to be feeling guilty. But it was definitely something unpleasant, a bad psychic taste that wanted getting rid of. She wondered why she felt it at all. How maddening, really, to be in the middle of something important and to have something else make an unreasonable attempt to claim one's attention.

  Cherokee, she saw, had found the military section of the shop, and it was considerable. Unlike John Steven Mitchell Antiques, Potter and Potter offered everything from old gas masks to Nazi napkin rings. They even had an anti-aircraft gun for sale, along with an ancient cine projector and a film called Eine gute Sache. Cherokee had gone straight for a display case with electric shelves that rose and fell on a tumbler one after another upon the push of a button. In here the Potters kept medals, badges, and insignia from military uniforms. China's brother was scanning each shelf. One foot nervously tapping the floor told the tale of how intent he was on finding something that might prove useful to his sister's situation.

  Potter the Mother roused herself from Audrey and Albert. She was plump, with thyroid-troubled eyes that were nonetheless friendly when she spoke to Deborah. “Can I help, love?”

  “With something military?”

  “It'll be my Mark you want.” She padded to a half-closed door, which she opened to reveal a stairway. She walked like a woman who needed a hip replacement, one hand holding on to whatever she happened to pass. She called upstairs for her son, and his disembodied voice replied. She told him there were customers below and he'd have to leave off the computer for now. “Internet,” she said to Deborah confidentially. “I think it's as bad as heroin, I do.”

  Mark Potter clattered down the stairs, looking very little like an addict of anything. Despite the time of year, he was very tanned, and his movements radiated vitality.

  What could he do for them? he wanted to know. What were they looking for? He was getting in new items all the time—“People die, but their collections remain, all the better for the rest of us, if you ask me”—so if there was something they were looking for that he didn't have, chances were quite good he could get it for them.

  Deborah brought forth the ring again. Mark Potter's face brightened when he saw it. “Another one!” he cried. “How extraordinary! I've seen only one of those in all the years I've been dealing. And now another. How'd you come upon it?”

  Jeanne Potter joined her son on the other side of the cabinet, where Deborah had placed the ring with the same request she'd made at the other shop that they not touch it. She said, “That's just like the one you sold, love, isn't it?” And to Deborah, “We had it here ever so long. Bit grim, it was, just like that one. Never thought we'd sell it. Not everyone likes that sort of thing, do they?”

  “Did you sell it recently?” Deborah asked.

  The Potters looked at each other. She said, “When . . . ?”

  He said, “Ten days? Perhaps two weeks?”

  “Who bought it?” Cherokee asked. “D'you remember?”

  “Definitely,” Mark Potter said.

  And his mother, with a smile, “You would, love. Always the eye, you have.”

  Potter grinned, said, “That's not it, and you know it. Stop teasing me, you silly old cow.” Then he spoke to Deborah. “An American lady. I remember because we get few enough Americans on Guernsey and never any at this time of year. Well, why would we? They've got bigger places on their minds for travel than the Channel Islands, haven't they?”

  Next to her, Deborah heard Cherokee's intake of breath. She said, “You're certain she was American?”

  “California lady. I heard her accent and asked. Mum did as well.”

  Jeanne Potter nodded. “We talked about movie stars,” she said. “I've never been myself, but I always thought if you lived in California you saw them walking about the streets. She said no, that wasn't the case.”

  “Harrison Ford,” Mark Potter said. “Don't tell fibs, Mum.”

  She laughed and looked flustered. “Go on with you, then.” And then to Deborah, “I quite like Harrison. That little scar on his chin? Something so manly about him.”

  “You're very naughty,” Mark told her. “What would Dad've thought?”

  Cherokee interposed, saying hopefully, “What did she look like? The American lady? Do you remember?”

  They didn't see much of her, as things turned out. She had a head wrap on—Mark thought it was a scarf; his mother thought it was a hood—and it covered her hair and dropped over the top part of her face. As the light wasn't all that bright inside the shop, and as it was likely raining that day . . . They couldn't add much about what she looked like. She was all in black, though, if that was any help. And she was wearing leather trousers, Jeanne Potter recalled. She remembered them especially, those leather trousers. Just the sort of thing she would've liked to wear at that age had they existed then and had she ever had the figure for them, which she had not.

  Deborah didn't look at Cherokee, but she didn't have to. She'd told him where she and Simon had found the ring, so she knew he was despairing at this new bit of information. He did try to make the best of it, though, because he asked the Potters if there was any place else on the island where a ring like this—another ring like this, he emphasised—might have come from.

  Both of the Potters considered the question, and ultimately Mark was the one to answer. There was only one place, he informed them, that another ring like this might have come from. He named the place, and when he did so, his mother seconded the notion at once.

  Out in the Talbot Valley, Mark said, lived a serious collector of wartime lumber. He had more items than the rest of the island put together.

  He was called Frank Ouseley, Jeanne Potter added, and he lived with his father in a place called Moulin des Niaux.

  Speaking to Nobby Debiere about the potential demise of the plans to build a museum hadn't been easy for Frank. He'd done it, though, out of a sense of obligation to the man whom he'd failed in so many ways as a youth. Next he was going to have to speak to his father. He owed Graham Ouseley much as well, but it was lunacy to think that he could forever pretend their dreams were being incarnated just down the lane from St. Saviour's Church, as his father expected.

  He could, of course, still approach Ruth about the project. Or, for that matter, he could speak with Adrian Brouard, his sisters—providing he could find them—and Paul Fielder and Cynthia Moullin as well. The advocate hadn't named any actual sum of money these individuals stood to inherit since that would be in the hands of bankers, brokers, and forensic accountants. But there had to be a huge amount involved because it was impossible to believe that Guy might have disposed of Le Reposoir, its contents, and his other properties in whatever way he'd disposed of them, without assuring his own future with an enormous bank account and a portfolio of investments with which to replenish that account if necessary. He was far too clever for that.

  Speaking to Ruth would be the most efficacious method of moving the project forward. She was the likeliest candidate to be the legal owner of Le Reposoir—however this manoeuvre had been effected—and if that was the case, she might be manipulated into feeling a duty to fulfill her brother's promises to people, perhaps agreeing to build a humbler version of the Graham Ouseley Wartime Muse
um in the grounds of Le Reposoir itself, which would allow the sale of the land they'd acquired for the museum near St. Saviour's, which would in turn help to fund the building. On the other hand, he could speak to Guy's heirs and try to wring the funding from them, persuading them to construct what would in effect be a memorial to their benefactor.

  He could do that, Frank knew, and he should do that. Indeed, had he been another sort of man altogether, he would do that. But there were other considerations beyond the creation of a structure to house more than half a century's amassment of military goods. No matter how much such a structure might have enlightened the people of Guernsey, no matter what such a structure could have done to establish Nobby Debiere as an architect in the public arena, the truth of the matter was that Frank's personal world was going to be a far better place without a wartime museum in it.

  So he wouldn't be speaking to Ruth about carrying on her brother's noble work. Nor would he corral any of the others with the hope of squeezing funds from them. As far as Frank was concerned, the matter was over. The museum was as dead as Guy Brouard.

  Frank squeezed his old Peugeot into the track that led to Moulin des Niaux. As he jolted the fifty yards to the water mill, he noted how overgrown the way had become. The brambles were fast overtaking the asphalt. There would be plenty of blackberries in the coming summer, but no road to get to the mill or its cottages if he didn't do something to cut back the branches, ivy, holly, and ferns.

  He knew he could do something about the undergrowth now. Having made his decision, having drawn the metaphorical line in the nonexistent sand at long last, he had bought himself a degree of freedom that he hadn't even realised he'd been missing. That freedom opened up his world, even to thinking about something as ordinary as trimming bushes. How odd it was, he thought, to be obsessed. The rest of the world simply faded away when one submitted oneself to the constricting embrace of single fixation.

  He turned in the gate just beyond the water wheel and crunched over the gravel on the drive. He parked at the end of the cottages, the Peugeot's bonnet pointing towards the stream that he could hear but not see through a thicket of elms long since overgrown with ivy. This trailed from branches nearly to the ground like an invitation from Rapunzel. It provided a useful screen from the main road through the Talbot Valley, but at the same time it hid a pleasant burbling stream from the garden where deck chairs in spring and summer could have allowed one to enjoy it. More work needing done round the cottages, Frank realised. Yet another indication of how much he'd let everything go.