A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(132)
“You may inform your parents that we’re hiring a solicitor about this business of the will,” Viking Woman told him. “If your imagination has led you to believe you’re walking off with one penny of Adrian’s money, you’re very much mistaken. I intend to battle you in every court I can find, and by the time I’m finished, whatever money you schemed to have off Adrian’s father will be gone. Do you understand? You will not win. Now, get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again. If I do, I’ll have the police after you. And that bloody mongrel of yours I’ll have put down.”
Paul didn’t move. He wouldn’t leave without his rucksack, but he wasn’t sure how to get to it. It lay where he’d kicked it, by the leg of the table at the centre of the room. But between him and it stood both the Brouards. And nearness to them spelled certain danger to himself.
“Did you hear me?” Viking Woman demanded. “I said get out. You’ve no friends here despite what you apparently think. You are not welcome in this house.”
Paul saw that one way he could get to the rucksack was to scramble beneath the table for it, so that was what he did. Before Adrian’s mother finished what she was saying, he was on his hands and knees and scuttling across the floor like a crab.
“Where’s he going?” she demanded. “What’s he doing now?”
Adrian seemed to realise Paul’s intention. He snatched the rucksack at the same moment Paul’s own fingers closed about it.
“My God, the little beast’s stolen something!” Viking Woman cried.
“This is the limit. Stop him, Adrian.”
Adrian attempted to do so. But all the images that the word stolen planted within Paul’s brain—the rucksack gone through, the discovery, the questions, the police, a cell, the worry, the shame—gave him a strength he otherwise would not have possessed. He yanked so hard that he pulled Adrian Brouard off balance. The man crashed forward into the table, fell to his knees, and smacked his chin against the wood. His mother cried out, and that gave Paul the opening he needed. He jerked the rucksack away and leaped to his feet.
He charged in the direction of the corridor. The vegetable garden was walled but its gate gave onto the estate grounds. There were places to hide at Le Reposoir that he wagered neither of the Brouards were aware of, so he knew that if he made it to the fallow garden, he’d be completely safe. He dashed down the corridor to the sound of Viking Woman crying out, “Darling, are you all right?” And then, “Chase him, for God’s sake. Adrian! Get him.” But Paul was faster than both mother and son. The last thing he heard was “He’s got something in that pack!” before the door closed behind him and he fled with Taboo towards the garden gate. Deborah was surprised by the Talbot Valley. It looked like a miniature dale transported from Yorkshire, where she and Simon had honeymooned. A river had carved it eons in the past, and one side consisted of rolling green slopes where the fawn-coloured cattle of the island grazed, sheltered from sunlight and the occasional harsh weather by stands of oaks. The road coursed along its other side, a steep hill held back by granite walls. Along them grew ashes and elms and beyond them, the land rose to hilltop pastures. The area was as different to the rest of the island as Yorkshire was to the South Downs.
They were looking for a little lane called Les Niaux. Cherokee was relatively certain where it would be, having already paid a visit there. Nonetheless, he had a map spread out on his knees, and he acted as navigator for their journey. They nearly overshot the mark on their approach, but he said, “Here! Turn,” when they came upon an opening in a hedgerow. He added, “I swear. These streets look like our driveways at home.”
Calling the stretch of paved trail a street was certainly giving it more than its due. It dipped off the main road like the entrance to another dimension, one that was defined by thick vegetation, damp air, and the sight of water passing through the cracks in boulders nearby. Not fifty yards along this lane, an old water mill appeared to their right. It stood less than five yards off the road, topped by an old sluice from which greenery draped.
“This is it,” Cherokee said, folding the map and storing it in the glove compartment. “They live in the cottage at the end of the row. The rest . . .”—he gestured to the dwellings they passed as Deborah pulled the car into the wide yard in front of the water mill—“this is where he keeps all his war stuff.”
“He must have a lot of it,” Deborah said, for there were two other cottages besides the one which Cherokee indicated that Frank Ouseley used as his home.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Cherokee replied. “That’s Ouseley’s car. We could be in luck.”
Deborah knew they would need it. The presence of a ring on the beach where Guy Brouard had died—one identical to the ring China River had purchased, one that was also identical to the ring that was apparently now missing from her belongings—didn’t help the cause of her proclaimed innocence. She and Cherokee needed Frank Ouseley to recognise a description of that ring. Moreover, they needed him to realise that one just like it had been nicked from his collection. A log fire burned somewhere nearby. Deborah and Cherokee took in its scent as they approached the front door of Ouseley’s cottage. “Makes me think of the canyon,” Cherokee said. “Middle of winter there, you never even know you’re in Orange County. All the cabins and the fires. Snow on Saddleback Mountain sometimes. It’s the best.” He looked around. “I don’t think I knew that till now.”