A Place of Hiding

“It’s a private bay?”


“No, not the bay. But if you pass by the cottage, Kevin will wonder what you’re up to. He’s protective of us. So is his wife.”

But not protective enough, St. James thought.





Chapter 10


St. James connected with Deborah once again as she was emerging from beneath the chestnuts that lined the drive. In very short order, she related her encounter in the Japanese garden, indicating where it was with a gesture towards the southeast and a thicket of trees. Her earlier irritation with him seemed to be forgotten, for which he was grateful, and in this fact he was reminded once again of his father-in-law’s words describing Deborah when St. James had—with amusing and what he had hoped was endearing antique formality—asked for permission to marry her. “Deb’s a red-’ead and make no mistake about it, my lad,” Joseph Cotter had said.

“She’ll give you aggro like you’ve never ’ad, but at least it’ll be over in a wink.”

She’d done a good job with the boy, he discovered. Despite her reticence, her compassionate nature gave her a way with people that he himself had never possessed. It had long suited her choice of profession—

subjects far more willingly posed for their pictures if they knew the person behind the camera shared a common humanity with them—just as his even temperament and analytical mind had long suited his. And Deborah’s success with Stephen Abbott underscored the fact that more than technique and skill in a laboratory were going to be needed in this situation.

“So that other woman who came forward for the shovel,” Deborah concluded, “the one with the enormous hat? She was the current girlfriend, apparently, not a relation. Although it sounds as if she was hoping to be one.”

“ ‘You saw what she’s done,’ ” St. James murmured. “What did you make of his saying that, my love?”

“What she’s done to make herself appealing, I expect,” Deborah said.

“I did notice...well, it was difficult not to, wasn’t it? And you don’t see them often here, not like in the States, where large breasts seem to be something of a...a national fixation, I suppose.”

“Not that she’s ‘done’ something else?” St. James asked. “Like eliminated her lover when he favoured another woman?”

“Why would she do that if she hoped to marry him?”

“Perhaps she needed to be rid of him.”

“Why?”

“Obsession. Jealousy. Rage that can only be quelled in one way. Or perhaps something simpler altogether: Perhaps she was remembered in his will and she needed to eliminate him before he had a chance to change it in favour of someone else.”

“But that doesn’t take into consideration the problem we’ve already faced,” Deborah noted. “How could a woman actually have forced a stone into Guy Brouard’s throat, Simon? Any woman.”

“We go back to DCI Le Gallez’s kiss,” St. James said, “as unlikely as it is. ‘She’d lost him.’ Is there another woman?”

“Not China,” Deborah asserted.

St. James heard his wife’s determination. “You’re quite certain, then.”

“She told me she’s recently broken off from Matt. She’s loved him for years, since she was seventeen. I can’t see how she’d get involved with another man so soon after that.”

This, St. James knew, took them into tender territory, one that was occupied by Deborah herself as well as by China River. Not so many years had passed since Deborah had parted from him and found another lover. That they had never discussed the alacrity of her involvement with Tommy Lynley did not mean it wasn’t the result of her sorrow and increased vulnerability. He said, “But she’d be more vulnerable now than ever, wouldn’t she? Couldn’t she possibly need to have a fling—something Brouard might have taken more seriously than she herself took it—to bolster herself up?”

“That’s not really what she’s like.”

“But supposing—”

“All right. Supposing. But she certainly didn’t kill him, Simon. You have to agree she’d need a motive.”

He did agree. But he also believed that a preconceived notion of innocence was just as dangerous as a preconceived notion of guilt. So when he related what he’d learned from Ruth Brouard, he concluded carefully with “She did check for China in the rest of the house. She was nowhere to be found.”

“So Ruth Brouard says, ” Deborah pointed out reasonably. “She could be lying.”

“She could indeed. The Rivers weren’t the only guests in the house. Adrian Brouard was also there.”

“With reason to kill his dad?”

“It’s something we can’t ignore.”

“She is his blood relative,” Deborah said. “And given her history—her parents, the Holocaust?—I’d say it’s likely she’d do anything to protect a blood relative first and foremost, wouldn’t you?”