A Place of Hiding

“If the River woman did it,” St. James said, “she would have had to bring the narcotic with her from the States, wouldn’t she? She couldn’t have hoped to find it here on Guernsey. She wouldn’t have known what the place was like: how big the town, where to make the score. And even if it was her hope to get a drug here and she brought it off by asking round St. Peter Port till she found it, the question still remains, doesn’t it? Why did she do it?”


“There’s nothing among her belongings that she could have used to transport it in,” Le Gallez said as if St. James had not just brought up an extremely cogent point. “No bottle, jar, vial. Nothing. That suggests she tossed it out. If we find it—when we find it—there’ll be residue. Or fingerprints. Even one. No one allows for every possibility when they kill. They think they will. But killing doesn’t come naturally to people if they’re not psychopaths, so they get unhinged when they bring it off and they forget. One detail. Somewhere.”

“But you’re back to the why of it,” St. James argued. “China River has no motive. She gains nothing by his death.”

“I find the container with her prints on it, and that’s not my problem,”

Le Gallez returned.

That remark reflected police work at its worst: that damnable predisposition of investigators to assign guilt first and interpret the facts to fit it second. True, the Guernsey police had a cloak, hair on the body, and eyewitness reports of someone following Guy Brouard in the direction of the bay. And now they had a ring purchased by their principal suspect and found at the scene. But they also had an element that should have thrown a spanner directly into their case. The fact that the toxicology report wasn’t doing that explained why innocent people ended up serving prison terms and why the public’s faith in due process had long ago altered to cynicism.

“Inspector Le Gallez,” St. James began carefully, “on one hand we have a multimillionaire who dies and a suspect who gained nothing from his death. On the other hand, we have people in his life who might well have had expectations of an inheritance. We have a disenfranchised son, a small fortune left to two adolescents unrelated to the deceased, and a number of individuals with disappointed dreams that appear to be related to plans Brouard made to build a museum. It seems to me that motives for murder are falling out of the trees. To ignore them in favour of—”

“He was in California. He would have met her there. The motive comes from that time.”

“But you’ve checked into the others’ movements, haven’t you?”

“None of them went to—”

“I’m not talking about their going to California,” St. James said. “I’m talking about the morning of the murder. Have you checked to verify where the rest of them were? Adrian Brouard, the people connected to the museum, the teenagers, relatives of the teenagers eager for some cash, Brouard’s other associates, his mistress, her children?”

Le Gallez was silent, which was answer enough.

St. James pressed on. “China River was there in the house, it’s true. It’s also true that she may have met Brouard in California, which remains to be seen. Or her brother may have met him and introduced them to each other. But other than that connection—which may not even exist—is China River acting like a murderer? Has she ever acted like one? She made no attempt to flee the scene. She left as scheduled with her brother that morning and didn’t bother to disguise her trail. She gained absolutely nothing by Brouard’s death. She possessed no reason to want him dead.”

“As far as we know,” Le Gallez inserted.

“As far as we know,” St. James agreed. “But to pin this on her based on evidence that anyone could have planted...If nothing else, you’ve got to see that China River’s advocate is going to tear your case to pieces.”

“I don’t think so,” Le Gallez said simply. “In my experience, Mr. St. James, if you follow the smoke, you find the fire.”





Chapter 15