A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(127)

I’ve seen his model, by the way. Your drawings look suitable for his design.”

Moullin ticked off another item on his paper-napkin list and said, “Did you come here to talk about windows?”

“Why only one?” St. James asked.

“One what?”

“Daughter. You’ve three but Brouard remembered only one in his will. Cynthia Moullin. Your...what? Is she your oldest?”

Moullin got another sheet of glass and made two more cuts. He used the tape measure to confirm his result and said, “Cyn’s my oldest.”

“Any thoughts why he singled her out? How old is she, by the way?”

“Seventeen.”

“Finished school yet?”

“She’s doing Further Education in St. Peter Port. University’s what he suggested for her. She’s clever enough, but there’s nothing like that here. She’d need England for it. England costs money.”

“Which you didn’t have, I take it. Nor did she.”

Till he died hung between them like smoke from an unseen cigarette.

“Right. It was all about money. Yeah. Lucky us.” Moullin turned from the workbench to face St. James. “ ’S that all you want to know, or is there more?”

“Any thoughts about why only one of your daughters was remembered in the will?”

“None.”

“Surely the other two girls would benefit from higher education as well.”

“True.”

“Then...?”

“They weren’t the right age. Not set to go to university yet. All in good time.”

This remark pointed the way to an overall illogic in what Moullin was suggesting, and St. James seized upon it.

“But Mr. Brouard couldn’t have expected to die, could he? At sixtynine, he wasn’t a young man, but to all reports, he was fit. Isn’t that the case?” He didn’t wait for Moullin to answer. “So if Brouard meant your oldest daughter to be educated with the money he left her...When was she supposed to be educated, by his account? He might not have died for twenty years. Or more.”

“Unless we killed him, of course,” Moullin said. “Or isn’t that where you’re heading?”

“Where is your daughter, Mr. Moullin?”

“Oh, come on, man. She’s seventeen years old.”

“She’s here, then? May I speak with—”

“She’s on Alderney.”

“Doing what?”

“She’s caring for her gran. Or hiding out from the coppers. Have it which way you will. It’s no matter to me.” He went back to his work, but St. James saw that the vein in his temple throbbed, and when he made his next cut on the sheet of glass, it went off the mark. He muttered a curse and flung the resulting ruined pieces in a rubbish bin.

“Can’t afford to make too many errors in your line of work,” St. James noted. “I suppose that could get expensive.”

“Well, you’re something of a distraction, aren’t you?” Moullin rejoined. “So if there’s nothing else, I’ve work to do and not a hell of a lot of time to do it.”

“I understand why Mr. Brouard left money to a boy called Paul Fielder,” St. James said. “Brouard was a mentor to him, through an established organisation on the island. GAYT. Have you heard of it? So they had a formal arrangement for their relationship. Is that how your daughter met him as well?”

“Cyn had no relationship with him,” Henry Moullin said, “GAYT or otherwise.” And despite his earlier words, he apparently decided to work no more. He began returning his cutting tools and measures to their appropriate storage places, and he grabbed up a whiskbroom and swept the workbench clear of minuscule fragments of glass. “He had his fancies, and that’s what it was with Cyn. One fancy today, another tomorrow. A bit of I can do this, I can do that, and I can do whatever I want because I’ve the funds to play Father Christmas Come to Guernsey if I decide to do it. Cyn just got lucky. Like musical chairs with her in the right spot when the tune dried up. Another day, it might’ve been one of her sisters. Another month and it probably would’ve been. That was it. He knew her better than the other girls because she’d be on the grounds when I was working. Or she’d stop by to visit her aunt.”

“Her aunt?”

“Val Duffy. My sister. She helps out with the girls.”

“How?”

“What do you mean, how?” Moullin demanded, and it was clear that the man was reaching his limit. “Girls need a woman in their lives. Do you want the ABC’s on why, or can you figure it out for yourself? Cyn’d go over there and the two of them would talk. Girl business this was, all right?”

“Changes in her body? Problems with boys?”

“I don’t know. I kept my nose where it’s meant to be, which is on my face and not in their affairs. I just blessed my stars that Cyn had a woman she could talk to and that woman was my sister.”

“A sister who’d let you know if there was something amiss?”

“There was nothing amiss.”

“But he had his fancies.”

“What?”

“Brouard. You said he had his fancies. Was Cynthia one of them?”

Moullin’s face purpled. He took a step towards St. James. “God damn. I ought to—” He stopped himself. It looked like an effort. “We’re speaking of a girl, ” he said. “Not a full-grown woman. A girl.”