A Place of Hiding

Advocates, Ms. Crown murmured.

—without first making sure she had her facts straight. As she’d said in the beginning, at least three-quarters of the estate of Guy Brouard was missing, and she meant to do something about it for Adrian Brouard, the scion, the eldest child, the only son of his father. Here Margaret looked to Adrian for some sort of murmur of assent or enthusiasm. He balanced his right ankle on his left knee, displayed an unappealing expanse of fish-white leg, and said nothing. He hadn’t, his mother noticed, put on socks.

Juditha Crown gazed at the lifeless-looking leg-flesh of her potential client and had the grace to keep from shuddering. She returned her attention to Margaret and said that if Mrs. Chamberlain would wait for a moment, she thought she might have something that would help. What would help was backbone, Margaret thought. Backbone to infuse along the cooked noodle that currently went for Adrian’s spine. But she said to the lawyer, Yes, yes, anything that could help them was more than welcome and if Ms. Crown was too busy to take their case, perhaps she’d be willing to recommend...?

Ms. Crown left them as Margaret was making this appeal. She closed her door delicately behind her, and as she did so, Margaret could hear her speaking to the clerk in the anteroom. “Edward, where’ve we got that explanation of Retrait Linager you send out to clients?” The clerk’s reply was muted.

Margaret used this intermezzo in the proceedings to say to her son fiercely, “You might participate. You might make things easier.” For a moment, there in the kitchen of Le Reposoir, she’d actually thought her son had turned a corner. He’d wrestled with Paul Fielder like a man who meant business, and she’d felt a real blossoming of hope...prematurely, however. It had withered on the vine. “You might even seem interested in your future,” she added.

“I can’t possibly top your interest, Mother,” Adrian replied laconically.

“You’re maddening. No wonder your father—” She stopped herself. He cocked his head and offered her a sardonic smile. But he said nothing as Juditha Crown rejoined them. She had a few typed sheets of paper in her hand. These, she told them, explained the laws of Retrait Linager. Margaret wasn’t interested in anything but garnering either the lawyer’s consent or her refusal to work on their behalf so she could be about the rest of her business. There was much to do, and sitting round a solicitor’s office reading explanations of arcane statutes was not high on her list of priorities. Still, she took the papers from the other woman and rustled round in her bag for her spectacles. While she did so, Ms. Crown informed both Margaret and her son of the legal ramifications of either owning or disposing of a large estate while a resident of Guernsey. The law didn’t take lightly to someone disinheriting his offspring on this particular Channel Island, she told them. Not only could one not leave money willy-nilly irrespective of one’s having reproduced, but one also could not simply sell off one’s entire estate in advance of one’s demise and hope to get round the law in that way. Your children, she explained, had the first right to purchase your estate for the same amount you had it on offer should you decide to sell it. Of course, if they couldn’t afford it, you were off the hook and you could then proceed with selling it and giving away every penny or spending it in advance of your death. But in either case, your children had to be informed first that you intended to dispose of what would otherwise be their inheritance. This safeguarded the possession of property within a single family as long as that family could afford to keep it.

“I take it your father didn’t inform you of an intention to sell anytime prior to his death,” Ms. Crown said directly to Adrian.

“Of course he didn’t!” Margaret said.

Ms. Crown waited for Adrian to confirm this statement. She said that if that was indeed the case before them, there was only one explanation for what appeared to be a large chunk of missing inheritance. There was only one very simple explanation, as a matter of fact. And that was? Margaret asked politely.

That Mr. Brouard had never owned any of the property he was suspected to have owned, she replied. Margaret stared at the woman. “That’s absurd,” she said. “Of course he owned it. He owned it for years. That and everything else. He’s owned...See here. He wasn’t someone’s tenant.”