A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(98)
“Harrison Ford,” Mark Potter said. “Don’t tell fibs, Mum.”
She laughed and looked flustered. “Go on with you, then.” And then to Deborah, “I quite like Harrison. That little scar on his chin? Something so manly about him.”
“You’re very naughty,” Mark told her. “What would Dad’ve thought?”
Cherokee interposed, saying hopefully, “What did she look like? The American lady? Do you remember?”
They didn’t see much of her, as things turned out. She had a head wrap on—Mark thought it was a scarf; his mother thought it was a hood—and it covered her hair and dropped over the top part of her face. As the light wasn’t all that bright inside the shop, and as it was likely raining that day...They couldn’t add much about what she looked like. She was all in black, though, if that was any help. And she was wearing leather trousers, Jeanne Potter recalled. She remembered them especially, those leather trousers. Just the sort of thing she would’ve liked to wear at that age had they existed then and had she ever had the figure for them, which she had not.
Deborah didn’t look at Cherokee, but she didn’t have to. She’d told him where she and Simon had found the ring, so she knew he was despairing at this new bit of information. He did try to make the best of it, though, because he asked the Potters if there was any place else on the island where a ring like this —another ring like this, he emphasised—might have come from.
Both of the Potters considered the question, and ultimately Mark was the one to answer. There was only one place, he informed them, that another ring like this might have come from. He named the place, and when he did so, his mother seconded the notion at once.
Out in the Talbot Valley, Mark said, lived a serious collector of wartime lumber. He had more items than the rest of the island put together. He was called Frank Ouseley, Jeanne Potter added, and he lived with his father in a place called Moulin des Niaux.
Speaking to Nobby Debiere about the potential demise of the plans to build a museum hadn’t been easy for Frank. He’d done it, though, out of a sense of obligation to the man whom he’d failed in so many ways as a youth. Next he was going to have to speak to his father. He owed Graham Ouseley much as well, but it was lunacy to think that he could forever pretend their dreams were being incarnated just down the lane from St. Saviour’s Church, as his father expected.
He could, of course, still approach Ruth about the project. Or, for that matter, he could speak with Adrian Brouard, his sisters—providing he could find them—and Paul Fielder and Cynthia Moullin as well. The advocate hadn’t named any actual sum of money these individuals stood to inherit since that would be in the hands of bankers, brokers, and forensic accountants. But there had to be a huge amount involved because it was impossible to believe that Guy might have disposed of Le Reposoir, its contents, and his other properties in whatever way he’d disposed of them, without assuring his own future with an enormous bank account and a portfolio of investments with which to replenish that account if necessary. He was far too clever for that.
Speaking to Ruth would be the most efficacious method of moving the project forward. She was the likeliest candidate to be the legal owner of Le Reposoir— however this manoeuvre had been effected—and if that was the case, she might be manipulated into feeling a duty to fulfill her brother’s promises to people, perhaps agreeing to build a humbler version of the Graham Ouseley Wartime Museum in the grounds of Le Reposoir itself, which would allow the sale of the land they’d acquired for the museum near St. Saviour’s, which would in turn help to fund the building. On the other hand, he could speak to Guy’s heirs and try to wring the funding from them, persuading them to construct what would in effect be a memorial to their benefactor.
He could do that, Frank knew, and he should do that. Indeed, had he been another sort of man altogether, he would do that. But there were other considerations beyond the creation of a structure to house more than half a century’s amassment of military goods. No matter how much such a structure might have enlightened the people of Guernsey, no matter what such a structure could have done to establish Nobby Debiere as an architect in the public arena, the truth of the matter was that Frank’s personal world was going to be a far better place without a wartime museum in it. So he wouldn’t be speaking to Ruth about carrying on her brother’s noble work. Nor would he corral any of the others with the hope of squeezing funds from them. As far as Frank was concerned, the matter was over. The museum was as dead as Guy Brouard.
Frank squeezed his old Peugeot into the track that led to Moulin desNiaux. As he jolted the fifty yards to the water mill, he noted how overgrown the way had become. The brambles were fast overtaking the asphalt. There would be plenty of blackberries in the coming summer, but no road to get to the mill or its cottages if he didn’t do something to cut back the branches, ivy, holly, and ferns.
He knew he could do something about the undergrowth now. Having made his decision, having drawn the metaphorical line in the nonexistent sand at long last, he had bought himself a degree of freedom that he hadn’t even realised he’d been missing. That freedom opened up his world, even to thinking about something as ordinary as trimming bushes. How odd it was, he thought, to be obsessed. The rest of the world simply faded away when one submitted oneself to the constricting embrace of single fixation. He turned in the gate just beyond the water wheel and crunched over the gravel on the drive. He parked at the end of the cottages, the Peugeot’s bonnet pointing towards the stream that he could hear but not see through a thicket of elms long since overgrown with ivy. This trailed from branches nearly to the ground like an invitation from Rapunzel. It provided a useful screen from the main road through the Talbot Valley, but at the same time it hid a pleasant burbling stream from the garden where deck chairs in spring and summer could have allowed one to enjoy it. More work needing done round the cottages, Frank realised. Yet another indication of how much he’d let everything go.