A Place of Hiding

Caroline Debiere looked relieved at this, doubtless happy that she would be able to continue her work without having her sons handed over to her. She showed St. James the way to the back door and left him to his meeting with her husband.

Bertrand Debiere turned out to be one of the two men St. James had seen duck out of the procession to Guy Brouard’s grave site and engage in intense conversation in the grounds of Le Reposoir on the previous day. He was a crane of a man, so tall and gangly that he looked like a character from a Dickens novel, and at the moment he was in the lowest branches of a sycamore tree, pounding together the foundation of what was clearly going to be a tree house for his sons. There were two of them, and they were helping in the way of small children: The elder was passing nails to his father from a leather waist pouch that he wore round his shoulders while the younger was employing a plastic hammer against a piece of wood at the base of the tree, on his haunches and chanting, “I am pounding, I am nailing,” and being no use to his father whatsoever.

Debiere saw St. James crossing the lawn, but he finished pounding his nail before he acknowledged him. St. James noticed that the architect’s gaze took in his limp and fixed on its cause—the leg brace whose cross piece ran through the heel of his shoe—but then it traveled upwards and fixed, like his wife’s, on the roll of papers beneath St. James’s arm. Debiere lowered himself from the tree limbs and said to the older boy, “Bert, take your brother inside please. Mum’ll have those biscuits for you now. Mind you have only one each, though. You don’t want to ruin your tea.”

“The lemony ones?” the elder boy asked. “Has she done the lemony ones, Dad?”

“I expect so. Those are what you asked for, aren’t they?”

“The lemony ones!” Bert breathed the words to his little brother. The promise of those biscuits prompted both boys to drop what they were doing and scamper to the house, shouting, “Mummy! Mum! We want our biscuits!” and bringing an end to their mother’s solitude. Debiere watched them fondly, then scooped up the nail pouch that Bert had haphazardly discarded, spilling half of its contents onto the grass. As the other man collected the nails, St. James introduced himself and explained his connection to China River. He was on Guernsey at the request of the accused woman’s brother, he told Debiere, and the police were aware that he was making independent enquiries.

“What sort of enquiries?” Debiere asked. “The police already have their killer.”

St. James didn’t want to go in the direction of China River’s guilt or innocence. Instead, he indicated the roll of plans beneath his arm and asked the architect if he wouldn’t mind having a look at them.

“What are they?”

“The plans for the design Mr. Brouard selected for the wartime museum. You’ve not seen them yet, have you?”

He’d seen only what the rest of the islanders at Brouard’s party had seen, Debiere informed him: the detailed, three-dimensional drawing that was the American architect’s rendering of the building.

“A total piece of crap,” Debiere said. “I don’t know what Guy was thinking about when he decided on it. It’s about as suitable as the space shuttle for a museum on Guernsey. Huge windows in the front. Cathedral ceilings. The place would be impossible to heat for less than a fortune, not to mention the fact that the entire structure looks like something designed to sit on a cliff and take in the view.”

“Whereas the museum’s actual location...?”

“Down the lane from St. Saviour’s Church, right next door to the underground tunnels. Which is about as far inland and away from any cliff as you can get on an island this size.”

“The view?”

“Sod all. Unless you consider the car park for the tunnels a worthy view.”

“You shared your concerns with Mr. Brouard?”

Debiere’s expression became cautious. “I talked to him.” He weighed the nail pouch in his hand as if considering whether he would put it on and resume his work on the tree house. A quick glance at the sky, taking in what little remained of daylight, apparently prompted him to forgo further building. He began to gather the pieces of timber he’d assembled on the lawn at the base of the tree. He carried them to a large blue polythene tarpaulin at one side of the garden, where he neatly stacked them.

“I was told that things between you went a bit further than talking,”

St. James said. “You argued with him, apparently. Directly after the fireworks.”

Debiere didn’t reply. He merely continued carrying timber to the pile, a patient log man like Ferdinand doing the magician’s bidding. When he had this task completed, he said quietly, “I was m-m-meant to get the bloody commission. Everyone knew it. So when it w-w-w-went to someone else...” He returned to the sycamore where St. James waited and he put one hand on its mottled trunk. He took a minute during which it seemed that he worked to be the master of his sudden stammer. “A tree house,” he finally said in derision of his own efforts. “Here I am. A bloody tree house.”