A Place of Hiding

She thought at once of Paul Fielder and that thought led her in the direction of someone’s having to break the news to him that his inheritance wasn’t going to be as immense as Dominic Forrest had earlier led him to believe. Not that it would matter greatly. His family was impoverished, his father’s business ruined by the relentless pressures of modernisation and convenience on the island. Anything that came into his hands was going to be a vast amount more than he could ever have hoped to have...i f he’d known about Guy’s will in the first place. But that was another speculation that Ruth didn’t wish to entertain.

The walk to the duck pond took an effort of will. But when Ruth got there, emerging between two rhododendrons so that the pond spread out in front of her like a pewter platter that took its colour from the sky, she found that she hadn’t seen Paul Fielder at all, busy building duck shelters to replace those that had been destroyed. Instead, it was the man from London who stood at the pond’s edge. He’d taken a position a yard from some discarded tools. But the focus of his attention appeared to be the duck graveyard across the water.

Ruth would have turned to go back to the house in the hope of escaping his notice. But he glanced her way and then back at the graves. He said, “What happened?”

“Someone didn’t like ducks,” she replied.

“Who wouldn’t like ducks? They’re harmless enough.”

“One would think so.” She didn’t say more, but when he looked at her, she felt as if he read the truth on her face.

He said, “The shelters were destroyed as well? Who was rebuilding them?”

“Guy and Paul. They’d built the originals. The whole pond was one of their projects.”

“Perhaps someone didn’t like that.” He directed his gaze at the house.

“I can’t think who,” she said, although she herself could hear how artificial her words sounded, and she knew—and feared—that he didn’t believe her for a moment. “As you said, who could dislike ducks?”

“Someone who disliked Paul? Or the relationship Paul had with your brother?”

“You’re thinking of Adrian.”

“Is he likely to have been jealous?”

Adrian was likely, Ruth thought, to be anything. But she didn’t intend to talk about her nephew to this man or to anyone else. So she said, “It’s damp here. I’ll leave you to your contemplation, Mr. St. James. I’m going inside.”

He accompanied her, unbidden. He limped next to her in silence and there was nothing for it but to allow him to follow her back through the shrubbery and into the conservatory whose door, as ever, remained unlocked. He took note of this. Was it always so? he asked her. Yes. It was. Living in Guernsey was not like living in London. People felt more secure here. Locks were unnecessary.

She felt him gazing at her as she spoke, felt his grey-blue eyes boring into the back of her head as she moved before him along the brick path in the humid air beneath the glass. She knew what he was thinking about an unlocked door: access and egress for anyone wishing to harm her brother. At least this was a better direction for his thoughts to be taking than where they’d been heading when he spoke about the deaths of the innocent ducks. She didn’t believe for a moment that an unknown intruder had anything to do with her brother’s death. But she would allow this speculation if it kept the Londoner from considering Adrian. He said, “I spoke to Mrs. Duffy earlier. You’ve been to town?”



Ruth said, “I saw Guy’s advocate. His bankers and his brokers as well.”

She took them into the morning room. Valerie, she saw, had already been there. The windows were uncovered to let in the milky December daylight and the gas fire burned to cut the chill. A carafe of coffee stood on a table next to the sofa, with a single cup and saucer at its side. Her needlepoint box was open in anticipation of her working upon the new tapestry, and the post lay stacked upon her drop-front desk.

Everything about the room declared this a normal day. But it wasn’t. Nor would any day be normal again.

This thought spurred Ruth to speak. She told St. James exactly what she had learned in St. Peter Port. She lowered herself to the sofa as she spoke and gestured him to one of the chairs. He listened in silence and when she was done, he offered her an array of explanations. She’d considered most of them on the drive from town. How could she not when murder sprawled at the end of the trail they appeared to lay?

“It suggests blackmail, of course,” St. James said. “That sort of depletion of funds, with the amounts increasing over time—”

“There was nothing in his life he could have been blackmailed over.”

“So it might seem at first. But he apparently had secrets, Miss Brouard. We know that much from his trip to America when you thought he was elsewhere, don’t we?”

“He had no secret to call for this. There’s a simple explanation for what Guy did with the money, one that’s completely aboveboard. We just don’t know what it is yet.” Even as she spoke, she didn’t believe herself, and she could see by the sceptical expression on his face that St. James didn’t believe her either. He said—and she could tell he was trying to be gentle with her—“I expect you know at heart that the way he was moving money about probably wasn’t legitimate.”

“No, I don’t know—”