A Place of Hiding

Deborah couldn’t reply. There were too many ways in which China’s declarations could be applied to herself, not only to her relationship with Tommy that had come so hard upon the heels of her broken-hearted abandoning of London for California all those years ago, but also to her marriage, which fell some eighteen months after the affair with Tommy had ended. On the surface it all looked like something that was the very image of what China was describing: Tommy’s considerable fortune wore the guise of initial lure; Simon’s much lesser wealth still served to allow her freedoms most women her age never had. The fact that none of it was what it seemed...that money and the security it offered sometimes felt like a web that had been spun round her to keep her entrapped...not her own woman...having nothing to contribute anywhere at all...How could that be said to matter when it was placed beside the great good fortune of having once had a wealthy lover and now a husband who was able to support her?

Deborah swallowed all of this down. Her life, she knew, was of her own making. Her life, she knew, was something China had little knowledge of. She said, “Yes. Well. One woman’s true love is another’s meal ticket. Let’s get back to town. Simon should have spoken to the police by now.”





Chapter 24


One benefit of being the close friend of an Acting Superintendent in CID was having immediate access to him. St. James waited only a moment before Tommy’s voice came over the line, saying with some amusement,

“Deb managed to get you to Guernsey, didn’t she? I thought she would.”

“She actually didn’t want me to come,” St. James replied. “I managed to convince her that playing Miss-Marple-Goes-to-St.-Peter-Port was not in the best interests of anyone.”

Lynley chuckled. “And it goes...?”

“Forward but not as smoothly as I’d like.” St. James brought his friend up-to-date with the independent investigation that he and Deborah were attempting to effect while simultaneously staying out of the way of the local police. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to carry on on the dubious strength of my reputation,” he concluded.

“Hence the phone call?” Lynley said. “I spoke to Le Gallez when Deborah came to the Yard. He was perfectly clear: He doesn’t want the Met messing about with his case.”

“It’s not that,” St. James hastened to reassure him. “Just a phone call or two you might make for me.”

“What sort of phone call?” Lynley sounded wary.

St. James explained. When he was done, Lynley told him that the Financial Services Authority was the UK body that truly ought to be involved in any questions about English banking. He would do what he could to wrest information from the bank that had received the wire transfers from Guernsey, but it might come down to a court order, which could take a bit more time.

“This all may be perfectly legitimate,” St. James told him. “We know the money went to a group called International Access in Bracknell. Can you go at it from that end?”

“We may have to. I’ll see what I can do.”

The call concluded, St. James descended to the hotel lobby, where he privately admitted to himself that he was long overdue for a mobile phone as he attempted to impress upon the receptionist the importance of her tracking him down should any phone calls come to him from London. She took down the information and she was none-too-happily assuring him that she’d pass any messages along when Deborah and China returned from their trip to Le Grand Havre.

The three of them went to the hotel lounge, where they ordered morning coffee and exchanged information. Deborah, St. James saw, had made a number of not unrealistic leaps with what she’d gathered. For her part, China did not use these facts to try to mould his thinking about the case, and for that St. James had to admire her. In the same position, he wasn’t sure he could have been so circumspect.

“Cynthia Moullin talked about a stone,” Deborah said in conclusion.

“She said she’d given Guy Brouard this stone. To protect him, she said. And her dad wanted it back from her. Which made me wonder if this was the same stone that was used to choke him. He has a loud-and-clear motive, her dad. He even had her locked up until her period started so he could see she wasn’t pregnant by Guy Brouard.”

St. James nodded. “Le Gallez’s conjecture is that someone may have intended to use the skull-and-crossed-bones ring to choke Brouard but changed course when it turned out that Brouard was carrying that stone.”

“With that someone being Cherokee?” China didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s no why to that any more than there was a why to it when they pinned it on me. And don’t they need a why, Simon? To make it stick?”

“In the best of all worlds, yes.” He wanted to add the rest of what he knew—that the police had found something that would be as important to them as a motive—but he wasn’t willing to share that information with anyone. It wasn’t so much that he suspected China River or her brother of the crime. It was more that he suspected everyone and the way of caution was to hold one’s cards close.

Before he could go on—choosing between temporising and outright prevaricating—Deborah spoke. “Cherokee wouldn’t have known Guy Brouard had that stone.”

“Unless he saw him with it,” St. James said.

“How could he?” Deborah countered. “Cynthia said Brouard carried it with him. Doesn’t that suggest he’d have it in a pocket rather than in the palm of his hand?”

“It could do, yes,” St. James said.