A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(72)

was given by Deborah some fifteen minutes into the final part of their search.

“Here!” she called. “Simon, look here.”

He turned and saw that she’d reached the far end of the bulwark at the point where the slipway dipped down to the water. She was gesturing to the corner where the bulwark and the slipway met, and when St. James moved in her direction, she squatted to have a better look at what she’d found.

“What is it?” he asked as he came alongside her.

“Something metallic,” she said. “I didn’t want to pick it up.”

“How far down?” he asked.

“Less than a foot, I dare say,” she replied. “If you want me to—”

“Here.” He handed her a handkerchief.

To reach the object, she had to wedge her leg into a ragged opening, which she did enthusiastically. She crammed herself down far enough to grasp and then rescue what she’d seen from above.

This turned out to be a ring. Deborah brought it forth and laid it cushioned by the handkerchief on the palm of her hand for St. James’s inspection. It looked made of bronze, sized for a man. And its decoration was man-sized as well. This comprised a skull and crossed bones. On the top of the skull were the numbers 39/40 and below them four words engraved in German. St. James squinted to make them out: Die Festung im Westen.

“Something from the war,” Deborah murmured as she scrutinised the ring herself. “But it can’t have been here all these years.”

“No. Its condition doesn’t suggest that.”

“Then what...?”

St. James folded the handkerchief round it, but he left the ring resting in Deborah’s hand. “It needs to be checked,” he said. “Le Gallez will want to have it fingerprinted. There won’t be much on it, but even a partial could help.”

“How could they have not seen it?” Deborah asked, and St. James could tell she expected no answer.

Nonetheless he said, “DCI Le Gallez considers the evidence of an ageing woman not wearing her spectacles sufficient unto the day. I think it’s a safe bet to conclude he isn’t looking as hard as he could for anything that might refute what she’s told him.”

Deborah examined the small white bundle in her hand and then looked at her husband. “This could be evidence,” she said. “Beyond the hair they found, beyond the footprint they have, beyond witnesses who might be lying about what they saw in the first place. This could change everything, couldn’t it, Simon?”

“It could indeed,” he said.

Margaret Chamberlain congratulated herself for insisting upon the reading of the will directly after the funeral reception. She’d earlier said, “Call the solicitor, Ruth. Get him over here after the burial,” and when Ruth had told her Guy’s advocate would be present anyway—yet another of the man’s tedious island associates who had to be accommodated at the funeral—she thought this was far more than just as well. It was decidedly meant. Just in case her sister-in-law intended to thwart her, Margaret had cornered the man himself as he stuffed a crab sandwich into his face. Miss Brouard, she informed him, wanted to go over the will immediately after the last of the guests left the reception. He did have the appropriate paperwork with him, didn’t he? Yes? Good. And would it present any difficulty to go over the details as soon as they had the privacy to do so? No?

Fine.

So now they were gathered. But Margaret wasn’t happy about who constituted the group.

Ruth had evidently done more than merely contact the solicitor upon Margaret’s insistence. She’d also made sure that an ominous collection of individuals were present to take in the man’s remarks. This could mean only one thing: that Ruth was privy to the details of the will and that the details of the will favoured individuals other than family members. Why else would she have taken it upon herself to invite an assembly of virtual strangers to join the family for this serious occasion? And no matter how fondly Ruth greeted and seated them in the drawing room, they were strangers, defined—according to Margaret’s thinking—as anyone not directly related by blood or marriage to the deceased. Ana?s Abbott and her daughter were among them, the former as heavily made up as she’d been on the previous day and the latter as gawky and slump-shouldered as she’d been as well. The only thing different about them was their clothing. Ana?s had managed to pour herself into a black suit whose skirt curved round her little bum like cling film on melons, while Jemima had donned a bolero jacket that she wore with all the grace of a dustman in morning dress. The surly son had apparently disappeared, because as the company assembled in the upstairs drawing room beneath yet another of Ruth’s tedious needlepoint depictions of Life As A Displaced Person—this one apparently having to do with growing up in care...as i f she’d been the only child who’d had to endure it in the years following the war—Ana?s kept wringing her hands and telling anyone who’d listen that “Stephen’s gone off somewhere...He’s been inconsolable...” and then her eyes would fill yet again in an irksome display of eternal devotion to the deceased.

Along with the Abbotts, the Duffys were present. Kevin—estate manager, groundsman, caretaker of Le Reposoir, and apparently whatever else that Guy had needed him to be at a moment’s notice—hung back from everyone and stood at a window where he made a study of the gardens below him, adhering to what was evidently his policy of never doing more than grunting at anyone. His wife Valerie sat by herself with her hands gripped together in her lap. She alternated between watching her husband, watching Ruth, and watching the lawyer unpack his briefcase. If anything, she looked utterly bewildered to be included in this ceremony. And then there was Frank. Margaret had been introduced to him after the burial. Frank Ouseley, she’d been told, longtime bachelor and Guy’s very good friend. His virtual soul mate, if the truth be told. They’d discovered a mutual passion for things relating to the war and they’d bonded over that, which was enough to make Margaret observe the man with suspicion. He was behind the whole benighted museum project, she had learned. This made him the reason that God only knew how many of Guy’s millions might well be diverted in a direction that was not her son’s. Margaret found him particularly repugnant with his ill-fitting tweeds and badly capped front teeth. He was heavy as well, which was another mark against him. Paunches spoke of gluttony which spoke of greed. And he was speaking to Adrian at the moment, Adrian who obviously didn’t have the sense to recognise an adversary when he was standing in front of him breathing the same air. If things worked out the way Margaret was beginning to fear they might work out in the next thirty minutes or so, she and her son could very well be at legal loggerheads with this dumpy man. Adrian might be wise enough to realise that, if nothing else, and to keep his distance as a result.