A Place of Hiding

“There are understandable resentments.”


St. James nodded. He looked to the great wall-hanging and its depiction of a vital part of their lives. He saw that the mother packing suitcases was weeping, that the children clung to each other in fear. Through a window, Nazi tanks rumbled across a distant meadow and a division of goose-stepping troops advanced down a narrow street.

“I don’t expect you’ve asked me here to advise you what to do next,”

he said. “Something tells me you already know.”

“I owe my brother everything, and I’m a woman who pays her debts. So yes. I haven’t asked you here to tell me what to do about my own will now that Guy’s dead. Not at all.”

“Then may I ask...? How can I help you?”

“Until today,” she said, “I’d always known exactly the terms of Guy’s wills.”

“In the plural?”

“He rewrote his will rather more often than most people do. Every time he had a new one drawn up, he’d arrange a meeting for me with his advocate so that I knew what the terms of that will were going to be. He was good that way and he was always consistent. On the day the will was meant to be signed and witnessed, we went to Mr. Forrest’s office. We’d go over the paperwork, see if any changes were required in my own will as a result, sign and witness all the documents, and afterwards go to lunch.”

“But I take it that didn’t happen with this last will?”

“It didn’t happen.”

“Perhaps he hadn’t got round to it yet,” St. James suggested. “He clearly didn’t expect to die.”

“This last will was written in October, Mr. St. James. More than two months ago. I’ve gone nowhere off the island in that time. Neither has —

had— Guy. For this last will to be legal, he had to have gone into St. Peter Port to sign the paperwork. The fact that he didn’t take me with him suggests he didn’t want me to know what he planned to do.”

“Which was?”

“Cut out Ana?s Abbott, Frank Ouseley, and the Duffys. He kept that as a secret from me. When I realised that, I saw how it was possible he’d kept other things from me as well.”

They’d come to it now, St. James saw: the reason she’d asked to see him again. Ruth Brouard unclasped the fasteners of the envelope on her lap. She brought forth its contents and St. James saw that among them was Guy Brouard’s passport, which was the first thing the man’s sister handed over.

“This was his first secret,” she said. “Look at the last stamp, the most recent one.”

St. James flipped through the little booklet and found the relevant immigration markings. He saw that, in contradiction to what Ruth Brouard had told him during their earlier conversation that day, her brother had entered the state of California in the month of March, through Los Angeles International Airport.

“He didn’t tell you about this?” St. James asked her.

“Of course not. I would have told you otherwise.” She next handed him a pile of documents. St. James saw that these comprised credit card bills as well as hotel bills and receipts from restaurants and car hire firms. Guy Brouard had stayed five nights in the Hilton in a town called Irvine. He’d eaten at a place called Il Fornaio there, as well as at Scott’s Seafood in Costa Mesa, and the Citrus Grille in Orange. He’d met with someone called William Kiefer, attorney-at-law, in Tustin, to whom he’d paid just over one thousand dollars for three appointments in five days, and he’d kept that lawyer’s business card along with a receipt from an architectural firm called Southby, Strange, Willows, and Ward. Jim Ward had been scrawled on the bottom of this credit slip along with mobile and the relevant phone number.

“He seems to have made his museum arrangements in person, then,”

St. James noted. “This fits in with what we know his plans were.”

“It does,” Ruth said. “But he didn’t tell me. Not one word about this trip at all. Don’t you see what that means?”

Ruth’s question was fraught with a sinister undertone, but St. James saw only that the information meant her brother might well have wanted a bit of privacy. Indeed, he could possibly have taken a companion with him and not wished his sister to know about that. But when Ruth went on, he realised that the new facts she had come across were not so much disconcerting her as they were confirming what she already believed. She said, “California, Mr. St. James. She lives in California. So he had to have known her before she got to Guernsey. She came here having planned it all.”

“I see. Miss River. But she doesn’t live in this part of California,” St. James pointed out. “She’s from Santa Barbara.”