A Place of Hiding

St. James stopped at the hotel first when he returned to St. Peter Port, but he found their room empty and no message at reception from his wife. So he went on to the police station, where he interrupted DCI Le Gallez in the midst of wolfing down a baguette crammed with prawn salad. The DCI took him to his office, offering a portion of his sandwich (which St. James refused) and a cup of coffee (which St. James accepted). He put chocolate digestives on offer as well, but since they looked as if their coating had melted and reconstituted itself one time too many, St. James declined and made do with the coffee alone. He brought Le Gallez into the picture with regard to the wills of the Brouards, brother and sister. Le Gallez listened as he chewed, and he jotted notes on a legal pad that he snared from a plastic in-and-out box on his desk. As St. James spoke, he watched the DCI underline Fielder and Moullin, adding a question mark next to the second name. Le Gallez interrupted the flow of information to explain that he knew about the dead man’s relationship with Paul Fielder, but Cynthia Moullin’s was a new name to come up. He also jotted down the facts of the Brouard wills and listened politely as St. James posited a theory he’d considered on the way back to town.

The earlier will that Ruth Brouard knew about remembered individuals deleted from the more recent document: Ana?s Abbott, Frank Ouseley, Kevin and Valerie Duffy, along with Guy Brouard’s children as required by law. This being the case, she had asked those individuals to be present when the will was read. If, St. James pointed out to Le Gallez, any of those beneficiaries had known about the earlier will, they had a clear motive to do away with Guy Brouard, hoping to collect sooner rather than later what was coming to them.

“Fielder and Moullin weren’t in the earlier will?” Le Gallez enquired.

“She didn’t mention them,” St. James replied, “and as neither was present when the will was read this afternoon, I think it’s safe to conclude that the legacies they were left came as a surprise to Miss Brouard.”

“But to them?” Le Gallez asked. “They might have been told by Brouard himself. Which puts them in the frame with motives as well. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose it’s possible.” He didn’t think it likely, considering the two were teenagers, but he welcomed any indication that Le Gallez’s thinking was, at least for the moment, encompassing something more than China River’s putative guilt.

Seeing the inspector’s thoughts ranging wider than they had been earlier, St. James hated to do anything that might remind Le Gallez of his previous mindset, but he knew that his conscience would never rest unless he was completely honest with the other man. “On the other hand...” St. James felt reluctant to do so—his loyalty to his wife seemed to call for a similar loyalty to her friends—and despite knowing how the inspector was likely to react to the information, he next handed over the material that Ruth Brouard had passed to him during their last conversation. The DCI flipped through Guy Brouard’s passport first, then went on to the credit card bills and the receipts. He spent a moment studying the receipt from the Citrus Grille, tapping his pencil against it as he took another bite of his sandwich. After some thought, he swung his chair round and reached for a manila folder. He opened this to reveal a set of typed notes, which he fingered through till he found what he apparently wanted.

“Postal codes,” he said to St. James. “They both begin with nine two. Nine two eight and nine two six.”

“One of them is Cherokee River’s, I take it?”

“You knew already?”

“I know he lives somewhere in the area Brouard visited.”

“The second code’s his,” Le Gallez said. “The nine two six. The other is this restaurant’s: the Citrus Grille. What does that suggest to you?”

“That Guy Brouard and Cherokee River passed some time in the same county.”

“Nothing more, then?”

“How can it suggest more? California’s a large state. Its counties are probably large as well. I’m not sure anyone can extrapolate from postal codes that Brouard and River met prior to River’s coming to the island with his sister.”

“You find nothing coincidental in this? Nothing suspiciously coincidental?”

“I would do, yes, if we had only the facts right in front of us at this moment: the passport, the receipts, and Cherokee River’s home address. But a lawyer—no doubt with a similar postal code—hired River to deliver architectural plans to Guernsey. So it seems reasonable to assume that Guy Brouard was in California, meeting that lawyer—as well as the architect, who probably also has a similar postal code—and not with Cherokee River. I don’t expect they knew each other till the moment River and his sister arrived at Le Reposoir. ”

“But you’ll agree that we can’t discount it?”

“I’d say we can’t discount anything.”

Which, St. James knew, included the ring that he and Deborah had found at the bay. He asked DCI Le Gallez about this, about the possibility of there being fingerprints upon it, or at least a partial print that might be useful to the police. The ring’s appearance suggested it hadn’t been lying on the beach for any length of time, he pointed out. But no doubt the DCI had himself already reached that conclusion when he’d examined it. Le Gallez set his sandwich aside and wiped his fingers on a paper napkin. He took up a cup of coffee that he’d been ignoring as he ate, and he cradled it in his palm before he spoke. The two words he said made St. James’s heart sink.

“What ring?”

Bronze, brass, some baser metal, St. James told him. It was fashioned into a skull and crossed bones with the numbers thirty-nine-stroke-forty on the skull’s forehead along with an inscription in German. He’d sent it into the station earlier with instructions that it be handed over to DCI Le Gallez personally.