A Place of Hiding

She eased along the drive beneath the line of chestnuts and thought how good it would be to sleep. Every movement was an effort and had been so for weeks, and she knew that the immediate future held no palliative for what she suffered. Morphine carefully administered might mitigate the misery that ceaselessly occupied her bones, but only complete oblivion would remove from her mind the suspicions that were beginning to plague her.

She told herself that what she’d learned had a thousand and one explanations. But knowing that didn’t alter the fact that some of those explanations might well have cost her brother his life. It didn’t matter that what she’d uncovered about Guy’s final months could have actually alleviated the guilt she felt for her part in the heretofore unexplained circumstances that surrounded his murder. What possessed importance was the fact that she hadn’t known what her brother had been doing, and the existence of that very simple not knowing was enough to begin the process of emptying her of her long-held beliefs. To allow that would bring horror upon horror into Ruth’s life, however. Thus, she knew she had to build bulwarks against the possibility of losing what had given her world its definition. But she didn’t know how to do it.

From Dominic Forrest’s office she’d gone to Guy’s broker and then to his banker. From them, she’d seen the journey that her brother had been on in the ten months that preceded his death. Selling enormous lumps of securities, he’d moved cash into and out of his bank account in such a way that the fingerprints of illegality seemed to be smudged across everything he’d done. The impassive faces of Guy’s monetary advisors had suggested much, but all they would present her with was facts so bare as to beg to be clothed with the garments of her darkest suspicions. Fifty thousand pounds here, seventy-five thousand pounds there, building ever building to an immense two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in early November. There would be some sort of paper trail, of course, but she didn’t want to try to follow it just yet. All she wanted to do was to confirm what Dominic Forrest had told her were the results of the forensic accountant’s exploration into Guy’s monetary situation. He’d invested and reinvested carefully and wisely, as was his wont throughout the nine years since they had come to the island, but suddenly in his final months, money had slipped through his fingers like sand...or had been drawn from him like blood...or had been required...or had been donated...or...what?

She didn’t know. For a risible moment, she told herself that she didn’t care. It wasn’t important—the money itself—and that was true enough. But what the money represented, what the absence of money suggested in a situation in which Guy’s will had seemed to indicate there was plenty to be spread among his children and his two other beneficiaries...This Ruth could not so easily dismiss. Because the thought of all this led her ineluctably to her brother’s murder and how and if it was connected to that money.

Her head ached. There were too many pieces of information swimming round up there, and they seemed to press against her skull, each one of them jockeying for a position in which it would receive the most attention. But she didn’t want to attend to any of them. She wanted only to sleep.

She pulled her car round the side of the house, past the rose garden where the leafless bushes had already been pruned for winter. Just beyond this garden, the drive curved again and led the way to the old stable where she kept her car. When she braked in front of it, she knew she didn’t have the strength to draw the doors open. So she merely turned the key, stilled the engine, and rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt the cold seep into the Rover, but she remained where she was, her eyes closed as she listened to the comforting silence. It soothed her as nothing else could have done. In silence there was nothing else to be learned.

But she knew she couldn’t stay there long. She needed her medicine. And rest. God, how she needed rest.

She had to use her shoulder to open the car door. When she was on her feet, she was surprised to find herself feeling unequal to the task of walking across the gravel in the direction of the conservatory, where she would be able to let herself into the house. So instead, she leaned against the car, which was how she came to notice movement in the area of the duck pond.