A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(88)

“This last will was written in October, Mr. St. James. More than two months ago. I’ve gone nowhere off the island in that time. Neither has —

had— Guy. For this last will to be legal, he had to have gone into St. Peter Port to sign the paperwork. The fact that he didn’t take me with him suggests he didn’t want me to know what he planned to do.”

“Which was?”

“Cut out Ana?s Abbott, Frank Ouseley, and the Duffys. He kept that as a secret from me. When I realised that, I saw how it was possible he’d kept other things from me as well.”

They’d come to it now, St. James saw: the reason she’d asked to see him again. Ruth Brouard unclasped the fasteners of the envelope on her lap. She brought forth its contents and St. James saw that among them was Guy Brouard’s passport, which was the first thing the man’s sister handed over.

“This was his first secret,” she said. “Look at the last stamp, the most recent one.”

St. James flipped through the little booklet and found the relevant immigration markings. He saw that, in contradiction to what Ruth Brouard had told him during their earlier conversation that day, her brother had entered the state of California in the month of March, through Los Angeles International Airport.

“He didn’t tell you about this?” St. James asked her.

“Of course not. I would have told you otherwise.” She next handed him a pile of documents. St. James saw that these comprised credit card bills as well as hotel bills and receipts from restaurants and car hire firms. Guy Brouard had stayed five nights in the Hilton in a town called Irvine. He’d eaten at a place called Il Fornaio there, as well as at Scott’s Seafood in Costa Mesa, and the Citrus Grille in Orange. He’d met with someone called William Kiefer, attorney-at-law, in Tustin, to whom he’d paid just over one thousand dollars for three appointments in five days, and he’d kept that lawyer’s business card along with a receipt from an architectural firm called Southby, Strange, Willows, and Ward. Jim Ward had been scrawled on the bottom of this credit slip along with mobile and the relevant phone number.

“He seems to have made his museum arrangements in person, then,”

St. James noted. “This fits in with what we know his plans were.”

“It does,” Ruth said. “But he didn’t tell me. Not one word about this trip at all. Don’t you see what that means?”

Ruth’s question was fraught with a sinister undertone, but St. James saw only that the information meant her brother might well have wanted a bit of privacy. Indeed, he could possibly have taken a companion with him and not wished his sister to know about that. But when Ruth went on, he realised that the new facts she had come across were not so much disconcerting her as they were confirming what she already believed. She said, “California, Mr. St. James. She lives in California. So he had to have known her before she got to Guernsey. She came here having planned it all.”

“I see. Miss River. But she doesn’t live in this part of California,” St. James pointed out. “She’s from Santa Barbara.”

“How far from this can that be?”

St. James frowned. He didn’t actually know, having never been to California and being completely unfamiliar with its towns other than Los Angeles and San Francisco, which, he knew, were more or less at opposite ends of the state. He did know, however, that the place was vast, connected by an incomprehensible network of motorways that were generally glutted with cars. Deborah would be the one to offer an opinion on the feasibility of Guy Brouard’s having made a journey to Santa Barbara during his time in California. When she’d lived there, she’d done a great deal of traveling, not only with Tommy but also with China.

China. This thought tweaked his mind into recalling his wife’s telling him about the visits she’d made to China’s mother, to China’s brother as well. A town like a colour, she’d said: Orange. Home of the Citrus Grille, whose receipt Guy Brouard had tucked among his papers. And Cherokee River—not his sister China—lived somewhere in that area. So how unlikely was it that Cherokee River, not China, had known Guy Brouard before coming to Guernsey?

St. James thought about what this implied and said to Ruth, “Where were the Rivers staying in the house those nights they were with you?”

“On the second floor.”

“Their rooms facing which direction?”

“The front, the south.”

“A clear view to the drive? The trees along it? The Duffys’ cottage?”

“Yes. Why?”

“What made you go to the window that morning, Miss Brouard?

When you saw the figure following your brother, what was it that made you look out in the first place? Was that normally what you did?”

She considered his question, finally saying slowly, “I generally wasn’t yet up when Guy left the house. So I think it must have been...” She looked pensive. She folded her thin hands together on top of the manila envelope and St. James saw how papery her skin was, stretched like tissue across her bones. She said, “I’d actually heard a noise, Mr. St. James. It woke me, frightened me a bit because I thought it was the middle of the night still, with someone creeping about. It was so dark. But when I looked at the clock, I saw it was nearly the time Guy swam. I listened for a few moments, then I heard him in his room. So I assumed he’d made the noise himself.” She saw the direction St. James was heading and said, “But it could have been someone else, couldn’t it? Not Guy at all, but someone already up and about. Someone about to head out to wait by the trees.”