A Place of Hiding

She made it clear within a moment. Did Mr. St. James, she asked, know anything about the laws of inheritance on the island of Guernsey?

Or, for that matter, was he aware of the restrictions these laws placed upon the disposition of one’s money and property after one’s death? It was rather a byzantine system, she said, one that had its roots in Norman Customary Law. Its primary feature was the preservation of family assets within the family, and its distinguishing mark was that there was no such thing as disinheriting a child, wayward or otherwise. One’s children had the right to inherit a certain amount of property, no matter the condition of their relationship with their parents.

“There were many things my brother loved about the Channel Islands,” Ruth Brouard told St. James. “The weather, the atmosphere, the powerful sense of community. Of course, the tax laws and the access to good banking. But Guy didn’t like being told by a legal system how he was meant to distribute his property after his death.”

“Understandable,” St. James said.

“So he looked for a way round it, a legal loophole. And he found it, as anyone who knew him would have predicted he would.”

In advance of their move to the island, Ruth Brouard explained, her brother had deeded all of his property over to her. He kept for himself a single bank account, into which he deposited a substantial sum of money which he knew he could not only invest but also live on quite nicely. But otherwise his every possession—the properties, the stocks, the bonds, the other accounts, the businesses—had been placed into Ruth’s name. There had been only one proviso: that once on Guernsey she herself should agree to signing a will that he and an advocate would draw up for her. Since she had no husband or children, she could do with her property whatever she wanted upon her death, and in this way her brother would be able to do with his property what he wanted since she would write a will guided by him. It was a clever way to get round the law.

“My brother had been estranged from his two younger children for years, you see,” Ruth explained. “He couldn’t see why he should be forced to leave both the girls a fortune simply because he’d fathered them, which is what the island’s inheritance law required him to do. He’d supported them through into adulthood. He’d sent them to the best schools, pulled strings to get one into Cambridge and the other into the Sorbonne. In return he’d got nothing. Not even a thank-you. So he said enough is enough and he sought a way to give something to those other people in his life who’d given so much to him when his own children hadn’t. Devotion, I mean. Friendship, acceptance, and love. He could give to them generously, those people—as he wished to—but only if he filtered everything through me. So that’s what we did.”

“What about his son?”

“Adrian?”

“Did your brother want to cut him off as well?”

“He didn’t wish to cut any of them off completely. He just wanted to lower the amount he’d be required by law to give to them.”

“Who knew about this?” St. James asked.

“As far as I know, just Guy, Dominic Forrest—that’s the advocate—

and me.” She reached for the manila envelope then, but she didn’t unfasten its metal tabs. Instead, she set it on her lap and smoothed her hands across it as she went on. “I agreed to it in part to give Guy peace of mind. He was terribly unhappy about the sort of relationships his wives allowed him to have with his children, so I thought, Well, why not? Why not allow him to remember those people who’d touched his life when his own family wouldn’t come near him? You see, I didn’t expect...” She hesitated, folding her hands with care, as if considering how much to reveal. Then she appeared to take resolve from a study of the envelope she held, for she went on. “I didn’t expect to outlive my brother. I thought when I finally told him about my...my physical situation, he’d more than likely suggest that we rewrite my will and perhaps leave everything to him. He’d’ve been hobbled by the law again at that point with regards to his own will, but I do think he might have preferred that to being left with only a single bank account, some investments, and no way of replenishing either should he need to do so.”

“Yes, I see,” St. James said. “I see how it was intended to be. But I take it that it didn’t quite work that way?”

“I hadn’t got round to telling him about my...situation. Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me and I’d think, He knows. But he never said. And I never said. I’d tell myself, Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll speak to him about it. But I just never did.”

“So when he died suddenly—”

“There were expectations.”

“And now?”