A Place of Hiding

“What use would it have in a barn, Ruth?”


Ruth looked up from the needlework she’d been occupied with when Margaret had located her in the morning room. It was an enormous piece of canvas stretched on a wooden frame that was itself on a stand before which Ruth sat, an elfin figure in black trousers and an overlarge black cardigan that had probably once been Guy’s. Her round-framed spectacles had slid down her nose, and she knuckled them back into place with one of her childlike hands.

“It’s not used inside the barn,” she explained. “It’s used on a ring with the keys to the barn. At least, that’s what it once was used for. There are few enough barns on Guernsey now. It was for keeping the barn safe from witches’ familiars. Protection, Margaret.”

“Ah. A charm, then.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” What Margaret thought was These ridiculous islanders. Charms for witches. Mumbo-jumbo for fairies. Ghosts on the cliff tops. Devils on the prowl. She’d never considered her former husband a man who’d fall for that sort of nonsense. “Did they show you the stone? Was it something you recognised? Did it belong to Guy? I ask only because it doesn’t seem like him to carry round charms and that sort of thing. At least, it doesn’t seem like the Guy I knew. Was he hoping for luck in some venture?”

With a woman was what she didn’t add, although both of them knew the phrase was there. Aside from business—at which Guy Brouard had excelled like Midas and needed no luck at all—the only other venture he had ever engaged in was the pursuit and conquest of the opposite sex, a fact that Margaret hadn’t known until she’d found a pair of woman’s knickers in her husband’s briefcase, playfully tucked there by the Edinburgh flight attendant he’d been shagging on the side. Their marriage had ended the instant Margaret had found those knickers instead of the chequebook she’d been looking for. All that had remained for the next two years was her solicitor meeting with his solicitor to hammer out a deal that would finance the rest of her life.

“The only venture he was involved with recently was the wartime museum.” Ruth bent back over the frame that held her needlepoint and she expertly worked the needle in and out of the design she’d rendered there. “And he didn’t carry a charm for that. He didn’t really need to. It was going well enough, as far as I know.” She looked up again, her needle poised for another plunge. “Did he tell you about the museum, Margaret?

Has Adrian told you?”

Margaret didn’t want to get into Adrian with her sisterin-law or anyone else, so she said, “Yes. Yes. The museum. Of course. I knew about that.”

Ruth smiled, inwardly and fondly it seemed. “It made him terribly proud. To be able to do something like that for the island. Something lasting. Something fine and meaningful.”

Unlike his life, Margaret thought. She wasn’t there to listen to encomia on the subject of Guy Brouard, Patron of Everything and Everyone. She was present only to ensure Guy Brouard had in death established himself additionally as Patron of His Only Son.

She said, “What will happen now? To his plans?”

“I suppose it all depends on the will,” Ruth replied. She sounded careful. Too careful, Margaret thought. “Guy’s will, I mean. Well, of course, who else’s? I haven’t actually had a meeting with his advocate yet.”

“Why not, dearest?” Margaret asked.

“I suppose because talking about his will makes everything real. Permanent. I’m avoiding that.”

“Would you prefer I talk to his solicitor...hi s advocate, then? If there are arrangements to be made, I’m happy to make them for you, dear.”