A Place of Hiding (34 page)

“Why's that?” Cherokee had kept his eyes on the ring while Mitchell was examining it, but he raised them now.

“Because of the implication,” Mitchell answered. “They built tunnels, of course. Fortifications, gun emplacements, observation towers, hospitals, the lot. Even a railway. But not an actual bulwark. And even if they had done, this is commemorating something from a year before the Occupation began.” He bent to it a second time with his magnifying glass. “I've never actually seen anything like it. Are you considering selling?”

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.”

“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 des Niaux.
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.

In the house, he found his father nodding in his chair with pages of the
Guernsey Press
scattered like overlarge playing cards round him on the floor. Frank realised as he saw the paper that he hadn't told Mrs. Petit to keep it from his father, so he had an uneasy few moments as he gathered the pages up and scanned them for a mention of Guy's death. He breathed more easily when he saw there was none today. Tomorrow would be different with coverage of the funeral. For today, he was safe.

He went on to the kitchen where he put the newspaper back into order and set about making their tea. On her final visit to Graham, Mrs. Petit had thoughtfully brought a pie along with her, and she'd affixed a jaunty label to its tin.
Chicken & leek, enjoy!
was written on a from-Betty's-kitchen card woven through the plastic tines of a miniature pitchfork upended and driven through the crust.

This would do nicely, Frank thought. He filled the kettle and rooted out the tea tin. He spooned English Breakfast into the pot.

He was setting the plates and the cutlery on the table mats when his father stirred in the sitting room. Frank heard him give an awakening snort first, followed by the startled gasp of someone who hadn't intended to fall asleep.

“Time's it?” Graham Ouseley called out. “That you, Frank?”

Frank went to the door. He saw that his father's chin was wet and that a string of saliva had followed a groove from his mouth to form a stalactite of phlegm on his jaw.

“Getting our tea,” he said.

“How long you been home?”

“A few minutes. You were asleep. I didn't like to wake you. How'd you get on with Mrs. Petit?”

“She helped me to the toilet. I don't like women in the toilet with me, Frank.” Graham plucked at the blanket that was covering his knees. “Where you been all these hours? What time's it gone?”