A Place of Hiding

Because of all this, Deborah felt herself harden under his tender gaze. She said, “What’s next, then?” with some formality. He accepted the shift in her tone and her mood without protest, saying, “Kevin Duffy, I think.”


Her heart leaped at this alteration in direction. “So you do think there’s someone else.”

“I think he bears talking to.” Simon was holding the canvas he’d taken from Ruth Brouard and glanced down at it now. “In the meantime, will you track down Paul Fielder, Deborah? He’s somewhere nearby, I expect.”

“Paul Fielder? Why?”

“I’d like to know where he got this painting. Did Guy Brouard give it to him for safekeeping or did the boy see it, take it, and give it to Ruth only when he was caught with it in his rucksack?”

“I can’t imagine he stole it. What would he have wanted with it? It’s not the sort of thing one expects a teenager to steal, is it?”

“It’s not. But on the other hand, he doesn’t seem to be an ordinary teenager. And I’ve got the impression the family’s struggling. He might have thought the painting was something he could sell to one of the antiques shops in the town. It bears looking into.”

“D’you think he’ll tell me if I ask him?” Deborah said doubtfully. “I can’t exactly accuse him of taking the painting.”

“I think you can manage to get people to talk about anything,” her husband replied. “Paul Fielder included.”

They parted then, Simon heading for the Duffys’ cottage and Deborah remaining at the car, trying to decide which direction to go in her search for Paul Fielder. Considering what he’d been through already that day, she reckoned he’d want a bit of peace and quiet. He’d be in one of the gardens, she suspected. She would have to check them one by one. She began with the tropical garden since it was nearest to the house. There, a few ducks swam placidly in a pond, and a chorus of larks chattered in an elm, but no one was either watching or listening, so she checked the sculpture garden next. This held the burial spot of Guy Brouard, and when Deborah found its weather-worn gate standing open, she was fairly certain she would find the boy inside. This turned out to be the case. Paul Fielder sat on the cold ground next to his mentor’s grave site. He was gently patting round the bases of a score of pansies that had been planted along the edge of the grave. Deborah wove her way through the garden to join him. Her footsteps crunched along the gravel and she did nothing to mute the sound of her approach. But the boy didn’t raise his head from the flowers. Deborah saw that his feet were sockless, that he wore slippers instead of shoes. A smudge of earth was on one of his thin ankles, and the bottoms of his blue jeans were dirty and frayed. He was inadequately dressed for the coolness of the day. Deborah couldn’t believe he wasn’t shivering. She mounted the few moss-edged steps to the grave. Instead of joining the boy, however, she went to the arbor just beyond him, where a stone bench stood beneath winter jasmine. The yellow flowers cast a mild fragrance in the air. She breathed it in and watched the boy minister to the pansies.

“I expect you miss him awfully,” she finally said. “It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love. A friend, especially. We never seem to have enough of them. At least, that’s how it’s always seemed to me.”

He bent over a pansy and pinched off a wilted blossom. He rolled it between his thumb and his index finger.

Deborah saw from a flicker of his eyelids that he was listening, though. She continued. “I think the most important thing about friendship is the freedom it gives you to be who you are. Real friends just accept you, with all of your warts. They’re there in good times. They’re there in bad times. You can always trust them to speak the truth.”

Paul tossed the pansy away. He pulled at nonexistent weeds among the rest of the plants.

“They want the best for us,” Deborah said. “Even when we don’t know what’s best for ourselves. I expect that’s the sort of friend Mr. Brouard was to you. You’re lucky to have had him. It must be awful with him gone.”

Paul got to his feet at this. He wiped his palms down the sides of his jeans. Afraid he might run off, Deborah plunged ahead speaking, trying to find a way into the silent boy’s confidence.

“When someone’s gone like that—especially like...I mean the terrible way he left...the way he died—we’d do just about anything to bring them back to us. And when we can’t and when we know that we can’t, then we want to have something of theirs, as a means of holding on to them for just a while longer. Till we can let them go.”