A Place of Hiding (65 page)

She said again, “Sit down. You're not going anywhere. We have something to discuss.”

He said, “What?” and Margaret was infuriated that he sounded not wary but actually irritated, as if she were presuming on his valuable time.

“Carmel Fitzgerald,” she said. “I intend to get to the bottom of this.”

He met her eyes with his own, and she saw he had the temerity actually to look insolent, like an adolescent blatantly caught in an act that has been forbidden him, an act he very much
wanted
to be caught in as a mark of a defiance he refused to verbalise. Margaret felt her palms itch with the desire to slap that expression from Adrian's face: that slightly raised upper lip and those flaring nostrils. She contained herself and walked to a chair.

He remained by the door but he didn't leave the room. He said, “Carmel. All right. What about her?”

“You told me that she and your father—”

“You assumed. I told you sod all.”

“Don't you dare use that sort of—”

“Sod all,” he repeated. “Jack shit, Mother. Bum-fucking nothing.”

“Adrian!”

“You
assumed.
You've spent your whole life comparing me with him. And that being the case, why would anyone prefer the son to the father?”

“That isn't true!”

“Funnily enough, though, she did prefer me. Even with him there. You could say it was because she wasn't his type and she knew it—not blonde, not submissive the way he liked them, not appropriately awed by his money and his power. But the fact is she wasn't impressed by him, no matter the charm he poured on. She knew it was just a game, and it was, wasn't it: the clever talk, the anecdotes, the probing questions while giving a woman all of his attention. He didn't want her, not really, but if she'd been willing, he would've gone for it because that's what he always did. Second nature. You know. Who better than you? Only she wasn't willing.”

“Then why on earth did you tell me . . . did you imply . . . And you can't deny it. You
did
imply. Why?”

“You'd already worked it out in your head. Carmel and I ended things after we came here to see him, and what other reason could there possibly have been? I'd caught him with his hands down her knickers—”

“Stop that!”

“And I'd been forced to end it. Or she'd ended it, liking him better than me. That was the only thing you could work out, wasn't it? Because if it wasn't that, if I hadn't lost her to Dad, then it would have to be something else, and you didn't want to think what that was because you'd been hoping all of it was finally passed.”

“You're talking nonsense.”

“So here's what it was, Mother. Carmel was willing to take just about anything. She wasn't a looker and she didn't have much spark to her either. She wasn't likely to hook up with more than one bloke in her life, so she was willing to settle. And having settled, she wasn't likely to go after other men. In short, she was perfect. You saw it. I saw it. Everybody saw it. Carmel saw it, too. We were made for each other. But there was only one problem: a compromise she wasn't able to make.”

“What sort of compromise? What are you talking about?”

“A nocturnal compromise.”

“Nocturnal? You sleepwalked? She was frightened? She didn't understand that these things—”

“I peed the bed,” he cut in. His face blazed humiliation. “All right? Happy? I peed the bed.”

Margaret attempted to keep the aversion from her voice as she said, “That could have happened to anyone. A night of too much drink . . . A nightmare, even . . . The confusion of being in a house not your own . . .”

“Every night we were here,” he said. “Every night. She was sympathetic, but who can blame her for calling things off? Even a mousy little chess player without a hope in hell of
ever
having another man draws the line somewhere. She'd been willing to put up with the sleepwalking. The night sweats. The bad dreams. Even my occasional descent into the fog. But she drew the line at having to sleep in my piss, and I can hardly blame her. I've been sleeping in it myself for thirty-seven years, and it gets unpleasant.”

“No! You were past that. I
know
you were past that. Whatever happened here in your father's house, it was an aberration. It won't happen again because your father is dead. So I'll phone her. I'll tell her.”

“That eager, are you?”

“You deserve—”

“Let's not lie. Carmel was your best chance of being rid of me, Mother. It just didn't work out the way you hoped.”

“That isn't true!”

“Isn't it?” He shook his head in amused derision. “And here I was thinking you wanted no more lies.” He turned back to the door, no mother there any longer to stop him leaving the room. He opened it. He said over his shoulder as he stepped from the drawing room, “I'm finished with this.”

“With what? Adrian, you can't—”

“I can,” he said. “And I do. I am what I am, which is, let's face it, exactly what you wanted me to be. Look where that's brought us both, Mother. Right to this moment: the two of us stuck with each other.”

“Are you blaming me?” she asked him, aghast at how he was deciding to interpret her every loving gesture. No thanks for protecting him, no gratitude for guiding him, no acknowledgement for interceding for him. My God, if nothing else, she was at
least
owed a nod of his head in the direction of her tireless interest in his affairs. “Adrian, are you blaming me?” she demanded again when he didn't reply.

But all the answer she received was a bark of laughter. He closed the door upon her and went on his way.

 

“China said she wasn't involved with him,” Deborah said to her husband once they were out on the drive. She weighed every word. “But she could be . . . perhaps not wanting to tell me. Embarrassed to have had a fling with him because she's on the rebound from Matt. She can't actually've been proud of that. Not for moral reasons, but
because . . . well, it's rather sad. It's . . . it's quite needy in a way. And she'd hate that about herself: being needy. She'd hate what that says about her.”

“It would explain why she wasn't in her own room,” Simon agreed.

“And it gives someone else a chance—someone who knew where she was—to pick up her cloak, that ring, a few of her hairs, her shoes . . . It would have been easy.”

“Only one person could have done it, though,” Simon pointed out. “You see that, don't you?”

Deborah glanced away. “I can't believe that of Cherokee. Simon, there
are
others, others with opportunity and, better yet, with motive. Adrian for one. Henry Moullin for another.”

Simon was silent, watching a small bird darting among the bare branches of one of the chestnut trees. He said her name on a breath—much like a sigh—and Deborah felt the difference in their positions acutely. He had information. She had none. Clearly, he attached it to Cherokee.

Because of all this, Deborah felt herself harden under his tender gaze. She said, “What's next, then?” with some formality.

He accepted the shift in her tone and her mood without protest, saying, “Kevin Duffy, I think.”

Her heart leaped at this alteration in direction. “So you
do
think there's someone else.”

“I think he bears talking to.” Simon was holding the canvas he'd taken from Ruth Brouard and glanced down at it now. “In the meantime, will you track down Paul Fielder, Deborah? He's somewhere nearby, I expect.”

“Paul Fielder? Why?”

“I'd like to know where he got this painting. Did Guy Brouard give it to him for safekeeping or did the boy see it, take it, and give it to Ruth only when he was caught with it in his rucksack?”

“I can't imagine he stole it. What would he have wanted with it? It's not the sort of thing one expects a teenager to steal, is it?”

“It's not. But on the other hand, he doesn't seem to be an ordinary teenager. And I've got the impression the family's struggling. He might have thought the painting was something he could sell to one of the antiques shops in the town. It bears looking into.”

“D'you think he'll tell me if I ask him?” Deborah said doubtfully. “I can't exactly accuse him of taking the painting.”

“I think you can manage to get people to talk about anything,” her husband replied. “Paul Fielder included.”

They parted then, Simon heading for the Duffys' cottage and Deborah remaining at the car, trying to decide which direction to go in her search for Paul Fielder. Considering what he'd been through already that day, she reckoned he'd want a bit of peace and quiet. He'd be in one of the gardens, she suspected. She would have to check them one by one.

She began with the tropical garden since it was nearest to the house. There, a few ducks swam placidly in a pond, and a chorus of larks chattered in an elm, but no one was either watching or listening, so she checked the sculpture garden next. This held the burial spot of Guy Brouard, and when Deborah found its weather-worn gate standing open, she was fairly certain she would find the boy inside.

This turned out to be the case. Paul Fielder sat on the cold ground next to his mentor's grave site. He was gently patting round the bases of a score of pansies that had been planted along the edge of the grave.

Deborah wove her way through the garden to join him. Her footsteps crunched along the gravel and she did nothing to mute the sound of her approach. But the boy didn't raise his head from the flowers.

Deborah saw that his feet were sockless, that he wore slippers instead of shoes. A smudge of earth was on one of his thin ankles, and the bottoms of his blue jeans were dirty and frayed. He was inadequately dressed for the coolness of the day. Deborah couldn't believe he wasn't shivering.

She mounted the few moss-edged steps to the grave. Instead of joining the boy, however, she went to the arbor just beyond him, where a stone bench stood beneath winter jasmine. The yellow flowers cast a mild fragrance in the air. She breathed it in and watched the boy minister to the pansies.

“I expect you miss him awfully,” she finally said. “It's a terrible thing to lose someone you love. A friend, especially. We never seem to have enough of them. At least, that's how it's always seemed to me.”

He bent over a pansy and pinched off a wilted blossom. He rolled it between his thumb and his index finger.

Deborah saw from a flicker of his eyelids that he was listening, though. She continued. “I think the most important thing about friendship is the freedom it gives you to be who you are. Real friends just accept you, with all of your warts. They're there in good times. They're there in bad times. You can always trust them to speak the truth.”

Paul tossed the pansy away. He pulled at nonexistent weeds among the rest of the plants.

“They want the best for us,” Deborah said. “Even when we don't know what's best for ourselves. I expect that's the sort of friend Mr. Brouard was to you. You're lucky to have had him. It must be awful with him gone.”

Paul got to his feet at this. He wiped his palms down the sides of his jeans. Afraid he might run off, Deborah plunged ahead speaking, trying to find a way into the silent boy's confidence.

“When someone's gone like that—especially like . . . I mean the terrible way he left . . . the way he died—we'd do just about anything to bring them back to us. And when we can't and when we
know
that we can't, then we want to have something of theirs, as a means of holding on to them for just a while longer. Till we can let them go.”

Paul shuffled his slippered feet in the gravel. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his flannel shirt and shot Deborah a wary look. He turned his head hastily and fixed his eyes on the gate some thirty yards away. Deborah had shut it behind her and she silently berated herself for having done so. He would feel trapped by her. As a result, he wouldn't be very likely to speak.

She said, “The Victorians had the right idea. They made jewellery from dead people's hair. Did you know that? It sounds macabre, but when you think about it, there was probably great comfort in having a brooch or a locket that contained a small part of someone they loved. It's sad that we don't do that any longer, because we still want something, and if a person dies and doesn't leave us a part of them . . . what can we do but take what we can find?”

Paul stopped the movement of his feet. He stood perfectly still, like one of the sculptures, but a smudge of colour appeared on his cheek like a thumbprint against his fair skin.

Deborah said, “I'm wondering if that's what happened with the painting you gave to Miss Brouard. I'm wondering if Mr. Brouard showed it to you because he meant to surprise his sister with it. Perhaps he said it was a secret that only the two of you would keep. So you knew that no one else was aware he had it.”

The smudges of colour flamed unevenly towards the boy's ears. He glanced at Deborah, then away. His fingers clutched at the tail of his shirt, which hung limply out of his blue jeans at one side and which was just as worn.

Deborah said, “Then when Mr. Brouard died so suddenly, perhaps you thought you'd have that picture as a memento. Only he and you knew about it, after all. What would it hurt? Is that what happened?”

The boy flinched as if struck. He gave an inarticulate cry.

Deborah said, “It's all right. We've got the painting back. But what I wonder—”

He spun on his toe and fled. He shot down the steps and along the gravel path as Deborah rose from the stone bench and called his name. She thought she'd lost him, but midway across the garden he stopped next to a huge bronze nude of a squatting, heavily pregnant woman with a melancholy expression and great, pendulous breasts. He turned back to Deborah, and she saw him chew on his lower lip and watch her. She took a step forward. He didn't move. She began to walk towards him the way one would approach a frightened fawn. When she was some ten yards from him, he took off again. But then he stopped at the garden gate and looked back at her another time. He pulled the gate open and left it open. He struck off to the east, but he didn't run.