A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(97)

No, no, Deborah told him. They were only trying to find out where it had come from since from its condition it was obvious it hadn’t been lying out in the open since 1945. Antiques shops had seemed the logical place for them to start looking for information.

“I see,” Mitchell told them. Well, if information was what they wanted, they’d be wise to speak to the Potters just up the street. Potter and Potter Antiques, Jeanne and Mark, a mother and son, he clarified. She was a porcelain expert and wouldn’t be much help. But there was very little about the German army in the Second World War that he didn’t know. In short order, Deborah and Cherokee were in Mill Street again, this time climbing higher, past a shadowy opening between two buildings that was called Back Lane. Just beyond this alley, they found Potter and Potter. Unlike the previous shop, this one looked like a viable enterprise. Potter the mother was in attendance, they found as they went in. She sat in a rocking chair with her slippered feet on a tufted hassock, and she gave her attention to the screen of a television no bigger than a shoe box. On it she was watching a film: Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney driving in the countryside in a vintage MG. A car not unlike Simon’s, Deborah saw, and for the first time since making the decision to bypass the police station in favour of seeking out China River, she felt a twinge. It was like a string pulling at her conscience, a thread that might unravel if tugged upon too strongly. She couldn’t call it guilt, exactly, because she knew she had nothing about which she ought to be feeling guilty. But it was definitely something unpleasant, a bad psychic taste that wanted getting rid of. She wondered why she felt it at all. How maddening, really, to be in the middle of something important and to have something else make an unreasonable attempt to claim one’s attention. Cherokee, she saw, had found the military section of the shop, and it was considerable. Unlike John Steven Mitchell Antiques, Potter and Potter offered everything from old gas masks to Nazi napkin rings. They even had an anti-aircraft gun for sale, along with an ancient cine projector and a film called Eine gute Sache. Cherokee had gone straight for a display case with electric shelves that rose and fell on a tumbler one after another upon the push of a button. In here the Potters kept medals, badges, and insignia from military uniforms. China’s brother was scanning each shelf. One foot nervously tapping the floor told the tale of how intent he was on finding something that might prove useful to his sister’s situation. Potter the Mother roused herself from Audrey and Albert. She was plump, with thyroid-troubled eyes that were nonetheless friendly when she spoke to Deborah. “Can I help, love?”

“With something military?”

“It’ll be my Mark you want.” She padded to a half-closed door, which she opened to reveal a stairway. She walked like a woman who needed a hip replacement, one hand holding on to whatever she happened to pass. She called upstairs for her son, and his disembodied voice replied. She told him there were customers below and he’d have to leave off the computer for now. “Internet,” she said to Deborah confidentially. “I think it’s as bad as heroin, I do.”

Mark Potter clattered down the stairs, looking very little like an addict of anything. Despite the time of year, he was very tanned, and his movements radiated vitality. What could he do for them? he wanted to know. What were they looking for? He was getting in new items all the time—“People die, but their collections remain, all the better for the rest of us, if you ask me”—so if there was something they were looking for that he didn’t have, chances were quite good he could get it for them.

Deborah brought forth the ring again. Mark Potter’s face brightened when he saw it. “Another one!” he cried. “How extraordinary! I’ve seen only one of those in all the years I’ve been dealing. And now another. How’d you come upon it?”

Jeanne Potter joined her son on the other side of the cabinet, where Deborah had placed the ring with the same request she’d made at the other shop that they not touch it. She said, “That’s just like the one you sold, love, isn’t it?” And to Deborah, “We had it here ever so long. Bit grim, it was, just like that one. Never thought we’d sell it. Not everyone likes that sort of thing, do they?”

“Did you sell it recently?” Deborah asked.

The Potters looked at each other. She said, “When...?”

He said, “Ten days? Perhaps two weeks?”

“Who bought it?” Cherokee asked. “D’you remember?”

“Definitely,” Mark Potter said.

And his mother, with a smile, “You would, love. Always the eye, you have.”

Potter grinned, said, “That’s not it, and you know it. Stop teasing me, you silly old cow.” Then he spoke to Deborah. “An American lady. I remember because we get few enough Americans on Guernsey and never any at this time of year. Well, why would we? They’ve got bigger places on their minds for travel than the Channel Islands, haven’t they?”

Next to her, Deborah heard Cherokee’s intake of breath. She said,

“You’re certain she was American?”

“California lady. I heard her accent and asked. Mum did as well.”

Jeanne Potter nodded. “We talked about movie stars,” she said. “I’ve never been myself, but I always thought if you lived in California you saw them walking about the streets. She said no, that wasn’t the case.”