A Place of Hiding

“Had Mr. Brouard told you you’d have the commission?” St. James asked.


“Told me directly? No. That w-w-” He looked pained. When he was ready, he tried again. “That wasn’t Guy’s way. He never promised. He merely suggested. He made you think of possibilities. Do this, my man, and the next thing you know, that will happen.”

“In your case, what did that mean?”

“Independence. My own firm. Not a minion or a drone, working for someone else’s glory, but my own ideas in my own space. He knew that’s what I wanted and he encouraged it. He was an entrepreneur, after all. Why shouldn’t the rest of us be?” Debiere examined the bark of the sycamore tree and gave a bitter laugh. “So I left my job and forged out on my own, started my own firm. He’d taken risks in his life. I would, too. Of course, it was easier for me, thinking I was secure with an enormous commission.”

“You said you wouldn’t let him ruin you,” St. James reminded him.

“Words overheard at a party?” Debiere said. “I don’t remember what I said. I just remember having a look at that drawing instead of drooling over it like everyone else. I could see how wrong it was and I couldn’t understand why he’d chosen it when he’d said...when he’d...he’d as much as promised. And I remember f-f -feeling—” He stopped. His hand was white at the knuckles from the grip he had upon the tree.

“What happens with his death?” St. James asked. “Does the museum get built anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Frank Ouseley told me the will didn’t allow for the museum. I can’t imagine Adrian would care enough to fund it, so I expect it’s going to be up to Ruth, if she wants to go forward.”

“I dare say she might be amenable to suggestions at this point.”

“Guy made it clear that the museum was important to him. She’s going to know that without anyone telling her, believe me.”

“I didn’t mean amenable to building the museum,” St. James said. “I meant amenable to changes in the design. Amenable in ways her brother wasn’t, perhaps. Have you spoken to her? Do you intend to?”

“I intend to,” Debiere said. “I’ve not much choice.”

“Why is that?”

“Look around, Mr. St. James. I’ve two boys and a baby on the way. A wife I talked into leaving her job to write her novel. A mortgage here and a new office in Trinity Square, where my secretary expects to be paid now and then. I need the commission and if I don’t get it...So I’ll talk to Ruth. Yes. I’ll argue my case. I’ll do anything it takes.”

He apparently recognised the wealth of meaning in his final statement because he moved away from the tree abruptly and returned to the pile of timber at the edge of the lawn. He pulled the sides of the blue tarpaulin up round the neat stack of boards, revealing rope precisely coiled on the ground. This he took up and used to tie the polythene sheet protectively over the wood, whereupon he began to gather up his tools. St. James followed him when he took his hammer, nails, level, tape measure, and saw into a handsome shed at the bottom of the garden. Debiere replaced these items above a workbench, and it was on this bench that St. James set the plans he’d taken from Le Reposoir. His main intention had been to learn whether Henry Moullin’s elaborate windows could be used on the building design that Guy Brouard had chosen, but now he saw that Moullin wasn’t the only person whose participation in the construction of the wartime museum might have been crucial to him. He said, “These are what the American architect sent over to Mr. Brouard. I’m afraid I know nothing about architectural drawings. Will you look at them and tell me what you think? There appear to be several different kinds.”

“I’ve already told you.”

“You might want to add more when you see them.”

The papers were large, well over a yard long and nearly as wide. Debiere sighed his agreement to inspect them and reached for a hammer to weigh the edges down.

They were not blueprints. Debiere informed him that blueprints had gone the way of carbon paper and manual typewriters. These were blackand-white documents that looked as if they’d come off an elephantine copying machine, and as he sorted through them, Debiere identified each for what it was: the schematic of every floor of the building; the construction documents with labels indicating the ceiling plan, the electrical plan, the plumbing plan, the building sections; the site plan showing where the building would sit at its chosen location; the elevation drawings.

Debiere shook his head as he fingered through them. He murmured,