A Place of Hiding

“I’m not suggesting that he was,” Ms. Crown replied. “I’m merely suggesting that what appeared to belong to him—indeed, what he himself no doubt purchased throughout the years or at least throughout the years that he lived on this island—was in fact purchased by him for someone else. Or purchased by someone else at his direction.”


Hearing this, Margaret felt the dawning of a horror she didn’t want to acknowledge, let alone face. She heard herself say hoarsely, “That’s impossible!” and she felt her body surge upwards as if her legs and her feet had declared war on her ability to control them. Before she knew it, she was bending over Juditha Crown’s desk, breathing directly into her face.

“That’s utter lunacy, d’you hear me? It’s idiocy. D’you know who he was?

Have you any idea of the fortune he amassed? Have you ever heard of Chateaux Brouard? England, Scotland, Wales, France, and God only knows how many hotels. What was all that if not Guy’s empire? Who else could have owned it if not Guy Brouard?”

“Mother...” Adrian, too, was on hi s feet. Margaret turned to see that he was donning his leather jacket, preparatory to leaving. “We’ve found out what we—”

“We’ve found out nothing!” Margaret cried. “Your father cheated you all your life and I’m not about to let him cheat you in his death. He’s got bank accounts hidden and property unmentioned and I mean to find them. I mean you to have them, and nothing— d’you hear me?—is going to prevent that from happening.”

“He outsmarted you, Mother. He knew—”

“Nothing. He knew nothing. ” She swung on the lawyer as if Juditha Crown were the person who had foiled her plans. “Who, then?” she demanded. “ Who? One of his little tarts? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

Ms. Crown appeared to know what Margaret was talking about without being told, because she said, “It would have been someone he could trust, I dare say. Someone he could trust implicitly. Someone who would do what he wanted done with the property, no matter whose name it was in.”

There was only one person, naturally. Margaret knew this without that person being identified, and she supposed she’d known from the moment she’d heard the reading of that will in the upstairs drawing room. There was only one soul on the face of the earth whom Guy could have relied upon to have everything gifted to her upon his purchase of it and to have done nothing with it but to hold on to it and disperse it according to his wishes at the time of her own death...or sooner, if that was asked of her. Why hadn’t she thought of this? Margaret demanded of herself. But the answer to that was simple enough. She hadn’t thought of it because she hadn’t known the law. She swept out of the office and into the street, burning up from head to toe. But she was not defeated. She was nowhere close to being defeated, and she wanted to make this clear to her son. She swung round on him.

“We’re going to talk to her at once. She’s your aunt. She knows what’s right. If she hasn’t yet had the injustice of all this spread out in front of her...She could never see anything in him but godlike...Hi s mi nd was unbalanced and he hid that from her. He hid it from everyone, but we shall prove—”

“Aunt Ruth knew,” Adrian said bluntly. “She understood what he wanted. She cooperated with him.”

“She can’t have.” Margaret clutched his arm with a strength designed to make him see and understand. It was time for him to gird for battle whatever loins he had and if he couldn’t do that, she bloody well intended to do it for him. “He must have told her...” What? she asked herself. What had Guy said to his sister to make her believe that what he intended to do was for the best: his good, her good, the good of his children, the good of everyone? What had he said?

“It’s done,” Adrian said. “We can’t change the will. We can’t change the way he worked all this out. We can’t do anything except let it be.” He shoved his hand into his leather jacket and brought out the matchbook once again, along with a packet of cigarettes. He lit up and chuckled, although his expression was far from amused. “Good old Dad,” he said as he shook his head. “He buggered us all.”

Margaret shivered at his emotionless tone. She took another tack.

“Adrian, Ruth’s a good soul. She’s completely fair-hearted. If she knows how much this has hurt you—”

“It hasn’t.” Adrian picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue, inspected it on the end of his thumb, and flicked it into the street.

“Don’t say that. Why must you always pretend that your father’s—”

“I’m not pretending. I’m not hurt. What would be the point? And even if I were wounded by this, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t change a thing.”

“How can you say...? She’s your aunt. She loves you.”

“She was there,” Adrian said. “She knows what his intentions were. And, believe me, she won’t veer an inch from them. Not when she already knows what he wanted from the situation.”