A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  “And it would have taken years more to find it,” St. James said. “Not to mention an army of art historians, conservationists, museums, auction houses, and investigators.” Plus a small fortune, he added to himself.

  “He was lucky to find it at all,” Duffy said. “Some pieces went missing during the war and never turned up again. Others are still being argued over. I can't think how Mr. Brouard proved this was his.”

  “He appears to have bought it back rather than attempted to prove anything,” St. James explained. “There's an enormous amount of money that's gone missing from his accounts. It's been wired to London.”

  Duffy raised an eyebrow. “That's the case?” He sounded doubtful. “I suppose he could have picked it up through an estate auction. Or it could have turned up in an antiques shop in a country village or in a street market. Hard to believe no one would have known what it was, though.”

  “But how many people are experts in art history?”

  “Not so much that,” Duffy said. “But anyone can see it's old. You'd think they'd've taken it to be valued somewhere along the line.”

  “But if someone actually nicked it at the end of the war . . . ? A soldier picks it up . . . where? Berlin? Munich?”

  “Berchtesgaden?” Duffy offered. “Nazi bigwigs all had homes there. And it was crawling with Allied soldiers at the end of the war. Everyone went for the pickings.”

  “All right. Berchtesgaden,” St. James agreed. “A soldier picks this up there when the plundering's going on. He takes it home to Hackney and hangs it up above the sofa in the semidetached and never thinks another thing of it. There it stays till he dies and it gets handed on to his kids. They've never thought much about anything their parents own, so they sell up. Auction. Car boot sale. Whatever. This gets bought at that point. It ends up in a stall. On Portobello Road, for example. Or Bermondsey. Or a shop in Camden Passage. Or even in the country, as you suggested. Brouard's had people looking for it for years, and when they see it, they snatch it up.”

  “I suppose it could have happened that way,” Duffy said. “No. Truth is, it has to have happened that way.”

  St. James was intrigued by the decisive quality of Duffy's statement. He said, “Why?”

  “Because it's the only way Mr. Brouard could have ever got this back. He had no way to prove it was his. That meant he had to buy it back. He couldn't've have got it from a Christie's or Sotheby's, could he, so it would have had to be—”

  “Hang on,” St. James said. “Why not a Christie's or Sotheby's?”

  “He would have been outbid. Some place like the Getty with bottomless pockets. An Arab oil magnate. Who knows who else.”

  “But Brouard had money . . .”

  “Not money like this. Not money enough. Not with Christie's or Sotheby's knowing exactly what they had their hands on and the whole art world bidding to get it.”

  St. James looked at the painting: eighteen inches by twenty-four inches of canvas, oil paint, and undeniable genius. He said slowly, “Exactly how much money are we talking about, Mr. Duffy? What d'you reckon this painting's worth?”

  “At least ten million pounds, I'd say,” Kevin Duffy told him. “And that's before the bidding opens.”

  Paul took Deborah round the back of the manor house, and at first she thought he was heading for the stables. But he didn't give these a second glance. Instead, he continued across the yard that separated the stables from the house and gave way to some shrubbery, which he plunged through as well.

  Following him, she found herself on a wide expanse of lawn beyond which a woodland of elms stood. Paul ducked into these and Deborah increased her pace so as not to lose him. When she got to the trees, she saw there was an easy path to follow, the ground made spongy by the heavy fall of leaves that lay upon it. She wound along this until ahead of her in the distance she caught a glimpse of a rough stone wall. She saw Paul clambering up. She thought she might lose him for good at this point, but when he reached the top, he paused. He glanced back as if to see if she was still following him, and he waited until she'd reached the bottom of the wall herself, at which point he extended his hand to her and helped her over to the other side.

  There Deborah saw that the careful forms and details of Le Reposoir gave way to a large but disused paddock, where weeds, bushes, and brambles grew rampant nearly to waist height and a path beaten through them led to a curious mound of earth. She wasn't surprised when Paul dropped from the wall and scurried along this path. At the mound of earth, he headed right and skirted its base. She hastened to follow.

  She was wondering how an odd lump of land could hide a painting, when she saw the carefully placed stones that ran along the bottom of the mound. She realised then that she was looking at no natural hillock, but, rather, something that had been built by man in prehistory.

  The path to the right was as beaten down as had been the access from the wall, and a short distance round the perimeter of the mound, she found Paul Fielder working the combination on a lock that held closed a worn and crooked oak door, which would allow them inside. He appeared to hear her, for he used his shoulder to shelter the lock's combination from her view. With a click and a snap he had it off, and he used his foot to shove the door open while he carefully put the lock in his pocket. The resulting opening into the mound was no more than three and a half feet high. Paul crouched, crab-walked through it, and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

  There was nothing for it but to run off and report back to Simon like a dutiful little wife or to follow the boy. Deborah did the latter.

  Inside the door, a narrow and musty passage pressed down on her, less than five feet from stone floor to stone ceiling. But after some six yards the passage opened and heightened to a central vault, dimly illuminated from the daylight outside. Deborah stood upright, blinked, and waited for her eyes to adjust. When they did, she realised she was within a large chamber. It was tightly constructed entirely of granite—floor, walls, and ceiling—with what looked like a sentry stone at one side in which one's imagination could almost see the ancient carving of a warrior with his weapon ready to ward off interlopers. An additional piece of granite raised off the floor some four inches seemed to serve as a form of altar. A candle stood near it, but this was not lit. Nor was the boy anywhere inside.

  Deborah had a bad moment. She pictured herself locked up in this place with no one knowing exactly where she was. She allowed herself a fervent curse for having blithely followed Paul Fielder, but then she stilled her nerves and she called Paul's name. In reply she heard the scratch of a match. Light flared from a fissure to her right in a misshapen stone wall. She saw that it indicated the presence of yet another chamber, and she went in this direction.

  The aperture that she found was not more than ten inches wide. She slid through it, brushing close to the damp coolness of the exterior stone wall, and saw that this secondary chamber had been fitted out with plenty of candles and a small folding camp bed. At its head was a pillow; at its foot was a carved wooden box; in the middle Paul Fielder was sitting with a book of matches in one hand and a lit candle in the other. This he set about fixing into a niche formed by two of the stones in the external wall. When he'd managed this, he lit a second candle and dripped wax from it to fix it to the floor.

  “Is this your secret place?” Deborah asked him quietly. “Is this where you found the picture, Paul?”

  She thought it unlikely. It seemed more reasonable to assume this was a hiding place for something else entirely, and she was fairly certain what that something else was. The camp bed gave mute testimony to that, and when Deborah reached for the wooden box at the foot of this bed and opened its top, she had affirmation for what she'd assumed.

  The box contained condoms of various types: ribbed, smooth, coloured, and flavoured. There were enough to suggest that regular use was made of this place for sex. Indeed, it was the perfect spot for assignations: hidden from view, probably forgotten, and suitably fanciful for a girl who though
t of herself and her man as potentially star-crossed. This, then, would be where Guy Brouard had brought Cynthia Moullin for their trysts. The only question was why he had apparently brought Paul Fielder here as well.

  Deborah glanced at the boy. In the candlelight she couldn't help noticing the cherubic quality to his smooth-skinned face and the way his fair hair curled round his head like something from a Renaissance painting. There was a decidedly feminine quality to him, one that was emphasised by his delicate features and fine-boned body. While it had seemed true that Guy Brouard was a man whose interests appeared to confine itself to the ladies, Deborah knew she couldn't discount the possibility that Paul Fielder, too, had been the object of Brouard's fancy.

  The boy was looking at the open box on Deborah's lap. Slowly, he took up a handful of the little foil packages and looked at them as they lay in his palm. Then as Deborah said gently, “Paul, were you and Mr. Brouard lovers?” he shoved the condoms down into the box and slammed its carved top home.

  Deborah looked at him and repeated her question.

  The boy turned away abruptly, blew out the candles, and disappeared through the fissure through which they'd both just come.

  Paul told himself that he wouldn't cry because it didn't mean anything. Not really. He was a man and, from what he'd learned from Billy, his own dad, the telly, the occasional nicked Playboy, and the lads at school—when he actually went to school—a man did these things all the time. That he'd done it here in their special place . . . Because he had to have done it here, hadn't he? What else could those shiny little packets mean if not that he'd brought someone else here, brought a woman here, brought another person here who was important enough to him to share his secret place?

  Can you keep this our special secret, Paul? If I take you inside, can you promise me never to tell anyone that this place is here? I expect it's been completely forgotten over time. I'd like to keep it that way as long as I can. Are you willing . . . ? Can you promise?

  Of course he could. He could and he did.

  He'd seen the camp bed, but he'd thought Mr. Guy had used it for naps, for camp-outs, maybe meditating or praying. He'd seen the wooden box as well, but he'd not opened it because he'd been taught from childhood and from rough experience never to put his mitts on something that wasn't his. Indeed, he'd nearly stopped the red-headed lady from opening it herself just now. But she'd had it on her lap and had its lid lifted before he could snatch it from her. When he'd seen what was in it . . .

  Paul wasn't stupid. He knew what they meant. He'd reached for them anyway because he'd actually thought they might disappear like something one would reach for in a dream. But they remained decidedly real, concrete little declarations of what this place had really meant to Mr. Guy.

  The lady had spoken but he'd not heard the words, just the sound of her voice as the room spun round him. He had to get away and not be seen, so he'd blown out the candles and fled.

  But of course, he couldn't leave. He had the lock and if nothing else, he was responsible. He couldn't leave the door hanging open. He had to lock up because he'd promised Mr. Guy . . .

  And he wouldn't cry because it was bloody stupid to cry. Mr. Guy was a man and a man had needs and he got them filled somewhere and that was the end of it. This had nothing to do with Paul or with his friendship with the man. They were mates from the first and mates to the end, and even the fact that he'd shared this place with someone else didn't change that, did it? Did it?

  After all, what had Mr. Guy said? It shall be our secret, then.

  Had he said no one else would ever share that secret? Had he indicated that no one else would ever have enough importance to be included in the knowledge of this place? He hadn't, had he? He hadn't lied. So to be upset now . . . to be in a tizzy . . .

  How d'you like it, arse bandit? How's he give it to you, then?

  That's what Billy thought. But that had never been the case. If Paul had ever longed to be closer, it was a longing that sprang from wanting to be like, not wanting to be one. And being like came from sharing, which was what they'd done here.

  Secret places, secret thoughts. A place to talk and a place to be. That's what this is for, my Prince. That's how I use it.

  He'd used it for more than that, apparently. But that didn't have to make it less sacred unless Paul allowed that to happen.

  “Paul? Paul?”

  He heard her coming round the end of the inner chamber. She was feeling her way as she would have to do with the candles suddenly extinguished. She'd be all right once she got into the main chamber, though. There were no candles lit here, but the daylight outside filtered in, creating a shaft of illumination down the main passage that eased within like an encroaching fog bank when it reached the interior of the mound.

  “Are you here?” she asked. “Ah. There you are. You gave me a real fright. I thought . . .” She laughed quietly, but Paul could tell she was nervous and ashamed of being nervous. He knew how that felt.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she asked him. “Is it . . . well, is it about that picture?”

  He'd nearly forgotten. The sight of that box, open and displaying and telling him things . . . He'd nearly forgotten. He'd wanted her to know and to understand because someone had to. Miss Ruth didn't think he'd stolen anything from Le Reposoir, but there would always be suspicion in everyone else's eyes if he didn't somehow explain where he'd got the painting. He couldn't bear seeing it among them—that suspicion—because Le Reposoir was his sole refuge on the island and he didn't want to lose it, couldn't bear to lose it, couldn't face having to be home with Billy or at school listening to taunts and jeers with no hope of escape and nothing on earth ever to look forward to again. But to tell someone from the estate itself about this place would be to betray the secret he'd sworn to keep forever: where this dolmen was. He couldn't do that so all he could do was to tell a stranger who wouldn't care and wouldn't ever come here again.

  Only now . . . He couldn't show her the exact spot. He had his own secret to protect. Yet he needed to show her something, so he went to the low altar stone and he knelt just in front of the crevice at its base behind it, which ran along its length. He brought the candle out from that crevice and lit it. He gestured downward so the lady could see.

  “Here?” she said. “The painting was here?” She looked from the shallow depression to him and it felt like she was studying his face, so Paul nodded solemnly. He showed her how it might have lain in the depression and how, if it had done so, it would not have been visible to anyone who did not come to the far side of the altar stone and kneel as Paul himself was kneeling.

  “How odd,” the lady said quietly. She offered him a kind smile, however. She said, “Thank you, Paul. You know, I don't think you were ever going to keep that painting for yourself, were you? I've a feeling you're not that type of person at all.”

  “Mr. Ouseley, it's our job to make this transition as easy for you as we can,” the girl said to Frank. She sounded more sympathetic than he would have thought possible in someone her age. “We're here to help you through your loss. So anything you'd like us to handle from the mortuary, we can handle from the mortuary. We're here for your convenience. I encourage you to take advantage of that.”

  What Frank thought of all this was that she was far too young to be the person who did the meeting and greeting, the arrangement making, and the selling of talents provided by Markham & Swift Funeral Services. She looked about sixteen, although she was probably somewhere in her twenties, and she had introduced herself as Arabella Agnes Swift, oldest great-granddaughter of the founder. She'd clasped his hand warmly and had taken him into her office which, with consideration for the grief-stricken people with whom she generally met, was as unofficelike as possible. It was fitted out like a grandmother's sitting room with a three-piece suite and a coffee table and family pictures on the mantel of a faux fireplace in which an electric fire glowed. Arabella's picture was among them. In it, she wore the robes of a university grad
uate. Hence, Frank's conclusion about her real age.

  She was waiting politely for him to reply. She'd discreetly positioned a leather volume on the coffee table, within which were doubtless photographs of the coffins from which the bereaved could choose. She held a flip-up spiral notebook on her lap, but she didn't pick up the pen that she'd laid neatly across it when she'd joined him on the sofa. She was every inch the modern professional and not a single inch the lugubrious Dickensian character that Frank had expected to find behind the doors of Markham & Swift Funeral Services.

  “We can also do the ceremony here in our chapel, if that's what you prefer,” she said, her tone quite kind. “Some people aren't regular churchgoers. Some prefer a more agnostic approach to a funeral.”

  “No,” Frank finally said.

  “So you will be holding the service in a church? If I could make a note of the name? The minister as well?”

  “No ceremony,” Frank said. “No funeral. He wouldn't want that. I want him . . .” Frank stopped himself. I want was not the way to put it. “He preferred cremation. You handle that, don't you?”