A Place of Hiding

If he’d lied to her about having spoken to his father, he’d lied about other things as well.

After his conversation with Bertrand Debiere, St. James arrived back at the hotel in a pensive frame of mind. The young receptionist in the lobby handed him a message, but he didn’t open it as he climbed the stairs to his room. Instead, he wondered what it meant that Guy Brouard had gone to considerable trouble and expense to obtain a set of architectural documents which apparently weren’t legitimate. Had he known this or had he been the dupe of an unscrupulous businessman in America who took his money and handed over a design for a building that no one would be able to build because it wasn’t an official design in the first place? And what did it mean that it wasn’t an official design? Was it thus plagiarised? Could one plagiarise an architectural design?

In the room, he went for the telephone, digging out of his pocket the information he’d gleaned earlier from Ruth Brouard and DCI Le Gallez. He found the number for Jim Ward and punched it into the phone while he organised his thoughts.

It was morning still in California, and the architect had apparently just arrived at his office. The woman who answered the phone said, “He’s just walking in...” and then “Mr. W., someone with a way cool accent is asking for you...” and then into the phone, “Where’re you calling from anyway? What’d you say your name was?”

St. James repeated it. He was phoning from St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, he explained. She said, “Wow. Hang on a sec, okay?” And just before she sent him into limbo, St. James heard her say, “Hey. Where’s the English Channel, you guys?”

Forty-five seconds passed, during which time St. James was entertained by lively reggae music through the ear piece of the phone. Then the music clicked off abruptly and a man’s pleasant voice said, “Jim Ward. How can I help you? Is this more about Guy Brouard?”

“You’ve spoken to DCI Le Gallez, then,” St. James said. He went on to explain who he was and what he was doing involved in the situation on Guernsey.

“I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you,” Ward said. “As I told that detective when he called, I had only one meeting with Mr. Brouard. His project sounded interesting, but I hadn’t gotten further than arranging to have those samples sent over. I was waiting to hear if he wanted something else. I’d dropped a few new pictures in the mail so he could look over several other buildings I have going up in north San Diego. But that was it.”

“What do you mean by samples?” St. James asked. “What we have here—and I’ve been looking at them today—appear to be an extensive set of drawings. I’ve gone over them with a local architect—”

“They are. Extensive, that is. I gathered up one project’s paperwork from start to finish for him: a big spa that’s going up here on the coast. I put together everything but the eight-and-a-half-by-elevens, the bound book. I told him they would give him an idea of how I work, which was what he wanted before he’d ask me to do anything more. It was a strange way of going at it, if you ask me. But it wasn’t any real problem to accommodate him, and it saved me time to—”

St. James cut in. “Are you saying that what was couriered over here wasn’t the set of plans for a museum?”

Ward laughed. “Museum? No. It’s a high-end spa: head-to-foot pampering for the cosmetic-surgery crowd. When he asked me for a sample of my work—for as complete a set of plans as I could get to him—that was the easiest to lay my hands on. I told him that. I said that what I’d send wouldn’t reflect what I’d do for a museum. But he said that was fine by him. Anything would do, just as long as it was complete and he’d be able to understand what he was looking at.”

“So that’s why these aren’t official plans,” St. James said, more to himself than to Ward.

“Right. Those are just copies from the office here.”

St. James thanked the architect and rang off. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the tops of his shoes.

He was experiencing a decidedly down-the-rabbit-hole sort of moment. It was appearing more and more that the museum had been something Brouard was using as a blind. But as a blind for what? And in any case the nagging question was: Had it been a blind from the very beginning? And if that turned out to be the case, had one of the principals involved in its development—someone, perhaps, depending upon its creation and having invested in it in any number of ways—discovered this fact and struck out in an act of revenge for having been ill-used by Brouard?