A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(60)

St. James saw that the coffin had already been lowered and the final parting prayers had been said. A blonde woman, incongruously wearing sunglasses as if in attendance at a Hollywood burial, was now shooing forward the man at her side. She did it verbally first, and when that didn’t work, she gave him a little push towards the grave. Next to this was a mound of earth out of which poked a shovel with black streamers hanging from it. St. James agreed with Deborah: This would be the son, Adrian Brouard, the only other inhabitant of the house aside from his aunt and the Rivers siblings on the night before his father had been murdered. Brouard’s lip curled in reaction. He brushed his mother off and approached the mound of earth. In the absolute hush of the crowd round the grave, he scooped up a shovelful of soil and flipped it on top of the coffin. The thud as the earth hit the wood below it resounded like the echo of a door being slammed.

Adrian Brouard was followed in this action by a birdlike woman so diminutive that from the back she could easily have been mistaken for a pre-adolescent boy. She handed the shovel solemnly over to Adrian Brouard’s mother who likewise poured earth into the grave. When she herself would have returned the shovel to the mound next to the grave site, yet another woman came forward and grasped the handle before the sunglassed blonde could release it.

A murmur went through the onlookers at this, and St. James studied the woman more intently. He could see little of her, for she wore a black hat the approximate size of a parasol, but she had a startling figure that she was making the most of in a trim charcoal suit. She did her bit with the shovel and handed it over to a gawky adolescent girl, curve-shouldered and weak-ankled in platform shoes. This girl made her bow at the grave and tried to give the shovel next to a boy round her age, whose height, colouring, and general appearance suggested that he was her brother. But instead of performing his part in the ritual, the boy abruptly turned away and shoved through those standing closest to the grave. A second murmur went up at this.

“What’s that all about?” Deborah asked quietly.

“Something that needs looking at,” St. James said. He saw the opportunity given to him in the teenager’s actions. He said, “D’you feel easy sussing him out, Deborah? Or would you rather head back to China?”

He hadn’t met her yet, this friend of Deborah’s, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason for his reluctance. He knew their meeting was inevitable, however, so he told himself that he wanted to have something hopeful to report to her when they were finally introduced. In the meantime, though, he wanted Deborah to have the freedom to go to her friend. She hadn’t done that yet today, and there was little doubt the American and her brother would be wondering what their London friends were managing to accomplish. Cherokee had phoned them early in the morning, afire to know what St. James had learned from the police. He’d kept his voice determinedly cheerful at his end of the line as St. James told him what little there was to tell, and from that it was clear that the other man was making the call in the presence of his sister. At the conclusion of their conversation, Cherokee signaled his intention to attend the funeral. He was firm in his desire to be part of what he called “the action,” and it was only when St. James tactfully pointed out that his presence might provide an unnecessary distraction that would allow the real killer to fade into the crowd that he agreed reluctantly to remain behind. He’d be waiting to hear what they were able to uncover, though, he told them. China would be waiting, too.

“You can go to her if you like,” St. James said to his wife. “I’ll be sniffing round here for a while. I can get a ride back into town with someone. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I didn’t come to Guernsey just to sit and hold China’s hand,”

Deborah replied.

“I know. Which is why—”

She cut him off before he could finish. “I’ll see what he has to say, Simon.”

St. James watched her stride away in pursuit of the boy. He sighed and wondered why communicating with women—particularly with his wife—was frequently a case of speaking about one thing while trying to read the subtext of another. And he pondered how his inability to read women accurately was going to affect his performance here on Guernsey, where it was looking more and more as if the circumstances surrounding Guy Brouard’s life and his death were crawling with significant females. When Margaret Chamberlain saw the crippled man approach Ruth near the end of the reception, she knew he wasn’t a legitimate member of the congregation who’d been at the funeral and the burial. First of all, he hadn’t spoken to her sister-in-law earlier at the grave site as had everyone else. Besides that, he’d spent the reception afterwards wandering from open room to open room in the house in a manner that suggested speculation. Margaret had at first thought he was a burglar of some sort, despite the limp and the leg brace, but when he finally introduced himself to Ruth—going so far as to hand her his card—she realised he was something else altogether. What that something was had to do with Guy’s death. If not that, then with the distribution of his fortune which they were finally going to learn about as soon as the last of the mourners left them. Ruth hadn’t wanted to see Guy’s solicitor before then. It was as if she was aware that there was bad news coming, and she was trying to spare everyone from having to hear it. Everyone or someone, Margaret thought shrewdly. The only question was who.