by Louise Penny
‘What did you do?’
‘I thought it was one of the guests who might’ve had too much to drink and passed out,’ said Peter. ‘Slept it off in our garden. But then I could see that her eyes were open and her head—’
He tilted his, but of course he couldn’t achieve that angle. No living person could. It was a feat reserved for the dead.
‘And you?’ Gamache asked Olivier.
‘I asked Clara to call the police,’ he said. ‘Then I called Gabri.’
‘You say you have guests?’ Gamache asked. ‘People from the party?’
Gabri nodded. ‘A couple of the artists who came down from Montréal for the party decided to stay at the B and B. A few are also staying up at the inn and spa.’
‘Was this a last-minute booking?’
‘At the B and B it was. They made it sometime during the party.’
Gamache nodded and turning away he gestured toward Agent Isabelle Lacoste, who quickly joined him, listened as the Chief murmured instructions, then walked rapidly away. She spoke to two young Sûreté agents, who nodded and left.
It always fascinated Clara to see how easily Gamache took command, and how naturally people took his orders. Never barked, never shouted, never harsh. Always put in the most calm, even courteous manner. His orders were couched almost as requests. And yet not a person mistook them for that.
Gamache turned back to give the four friends his full attention. ‘Did any of you touch the body?’
They looked at each other, shaking their heads, then back to the Chief.
‘No,’ said Peter. He was feeling more certain now. The ground had firmed up, filled in with facts. With straightforward questions and clear answers.
Nothing to be afraid of.
‘Do you mind?’ Gamache started walking toward the Adirondack. Even had they minded, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was going there and they were welcome to join him.
‘Before they came back, when you were sitting here alone, you didn’t notice anything strange?’ he asked as they walked. It seemed obvious that had Clara seen a body in her garden she’d have said something earlier. But it wasn’t just the body he wanted to know about. This was Clara’s garden, she knew it well, intimately. Perhaps something else was wrong. A plant broken, a shrub disturbed.
Some detail his investigators might miss. Something so subtle she herself might have missed it, until he asked her directly.
And, to her credit, she didn’t come back with a smart-ass reply.
But Gabri did. ‘Like the body?’
‘No,’ said the Chief, as they arrived at the chair. He turned and surveyed the garden from there. It was true that at this angle the dead woman was hidden by the flower beds. ‘I mean something else.’
He turned thoughtful eyes on Clara.
‘Is there anything unusual about your garden this morning?’ He shot a warning glance at Gabri, who put a finger to his mouth. ‘Anything small? Some detail off?’
Clara looked around. The back lawn was dotted with large flower beds. Some round, some oblong. Tall trees along the riverbank threw dappled shade, but most of it was in bright noonday sun. Clara scanned her garden, as did the others.
Was there something different? It was so hard to tell now, what with all the people, the newspapers, the activity, the yellow police tape. The newspapers. The body. The newspapers.
Everything was different.
She turned back to Gamache, her eyes asking for help.
Gamache hated to give it, hated to suggest in case he led her to see something that wasn’t really there.
‘It’s possible the murderer hid back here,’ he finally said. ‘Waiting.’
He left it at that. And he could see Clara understood. She turned back to her garden. Had a man intent on murder waited here? In her private sanctuary?
Had he hidden himself in the flower beds? Crouching behind the tall peony? Had he peered out from the morning glory climbing the post? Had he knelt behind the growing phlox?
Waiting?
She looked at each and every perennial, each shrub. Looking for something knocked down, knocked askew, a limb twisted, a bud broken off.
But it was perfect. Myrna and Gabri had worked days on the garden, getting it immaculate for the party. And it was. Last night. And it was that morning.
Except for the police, like pests, crawling all over it. And the bright body. A blight.
‘Do you see anything?’ she asked Gabri.
‘No,’ he said. ‘If the murderer hid back here it wasn’t in one of the flower beds. Maybe behind a tree?’ He waved toward the maples but Gamache shook his head.
‘Too far away. It would take him too long to make it across the lawn and around the flower beds. She’d have seen him coming.’
‘So where did he hide?’ Olivier asked.
‘He didn’t,’ said Gamache, sitting in the Adirondack chair. From there the body was also hidden. No, Clara couldn’t see the dead woman.
The Chief Inspector hauled himself up. ‘He didn’t hide. He waited in plain sight.’
‘And she walked right up to him?’ Peter asked. ‘She knew him?’
‘Or he walked up to her,’ said Gamache. ‘Either way, she wasn’t alarmed or frightened.’
‘What was she doing back here?’ Clara asked. ‘The barbecue was out there,’ she waved beyond their home. ‘Everything was on the green. The food, the drinks, the music. The caterers set up all the tables and chairs out front.’
‘But if people wanted to, they could walk into back yards?’ Gamache asked, trying to get a picture of the event.
‘Sure,’ said Olivier. ‘If they wanted. There weren’t any fences or ropes up to stop them, but there was no need.’
‘Well …’ said Clara.
They turned to her.
‘Well, I didn’t come back here last night, but I have at other parties. To kind of escape for a few minutes, you know?’
To their surprise, Gabri nodded. ‘I do the same thing, sometimes. Just to be quiet, get away from all the people.’
‘Did you last night?’ Gamache asked.
Gabri shook his head. ‘Too much to do. We had caterers, but you still have to supervise.’
‘So it’s possible the dead woman came back here for a quiet moment,’ said Gamache. ‘She might not have known it was your home.’ He looked at Clara and Peter. ‘She just chose any place that was private, away from the crowds.’
They were silent then, for a moment. Imagining the woman in the bright red ‘look at me’ dress. Slipping around the side of the old brick home. Away from the music, and fireworks, from the people looking at her.
To find a few moments of peace and quiet.
‘She doesn’t seem the shy type,’ said Gabri.
‘Neither do you,’ said Gamache with a small smile and surveyed the garden.
There was a problem. There were quite a few problems, actually, but the one that perplexed the Chief Inspector at the moment was that none of the four people with him now had seen the dead woman alive, at the party.
‘Bonjour.’
Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir approached. As he got closer Gabri broke into a smile and extended his hand.
‘I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck,’ said Gabri. ‘Every time you come to Three Pines there’s a body.’
‘And I think you provide them just for the pleasure of my company,’ said Beauvoir, warmly shaking Gabri’s hand, then accepting Olivier’s.
They’d seen each other the evening before, at the vernissage. At that time they’d been in Peter and Clara’s element. The gallery. But now they were in Beauvoir’s habitat. A crime scene.
Art scared him. But pin a dead body to the wall and he was fine. Or, in this case, drop it into a garden. This he understood. It was simple. Always so simple.
Someone had hated the victim enough to kill her.
His job was to find that person and lock him up.
There was nothing subjective about it. No question of g
Collect the facts. Put them in the right order. Find the killer.
Of course, while it was simple it wasn’t always easy.
But he’d take a murder over a vernissage any day.
Though, like everyone else here, he suspected in this case the murder and the vernissage were one and the same. Inter-locked.
The thought dismayed him.
‘Here’re the pictures you asked for.’ Beauvoir handed the Chief Inspector a photograph. Gamache studied them.
‘Merci. C’est parfait.’ He looked up at the four people watching him. ‘I’d like you all to look at these photographs of the dead woman.’
‘But we’ve already seen her,’ said Gabri.
‘I wonder if that’s true. When I asked if you’d seen her at the party you all said she’d be hard to miss in her red dress. I thought the same thing. When I tried to remember if I’d seen her at your vernissage yesterday, Clara, what I was really doing was scouring my memory for a woman in bright red. I was focusing on the dress, not the woman.’
‘So?’ asked Gabri.
‘So,’ said Gamache. ‘Suppose the red dress was recent. She might have been at the vernissage, but wearing something more conservative. She might have even been here—’
‘And changed into the red dress mid-party?’ asked Peter, incredulous. ‘Why would someone do that?’
‘Why would someone kill her?’ asked Gamache. ‘Why would a perfect stranger be at the party? There’re all sorts of questions, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but it is a possibility. That you were all so impressed by the dress you didn’t really concentrate on her face.’
He held up a photograph.
‘This is what she looks like.’
He handed it to Clara first. The woman’s eyes were now closed. She looked peaceful, if a little flaccid. Even in sleep there’s some life in a face. This was an empty face. Blank. No more thoughts, or feelings.
Clara shook her head and passed the picture to Peter. Around the circle of friends the photo circulated, to the same reaction.
Nothing.
‘The coroner’s ready to move the body,’ said Beauvoir.
Gamache nodded and placed the photo in his pocket. Beauvoir and Lacoste and the others would have their own copies, he knew. Excusing themselves they walked back to the body.
Two assistants stood by a stretcher, waiting to lift the woman onto it and take her to the waiting van. The photographer also waited. All looking at Chief Inspector Gamache. Waiting for him to give the order.
‘Do you know how long she’s been dead?’ Beauvoir asked the coroner, who’d just stood up and was moving her stiff legs.
‘Between twelve and fifteen hours,’ said Dr Harris.
Gamache checked his watch and did the math. It was now eleven thirty on Sunday morning. That meant she was alive at eight thirty last night and dead by midnight. She never saw Sunday.
‘No apparent sexual assault. No assault at all, except the broken neck,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Death would’ve been immediate. There was no struggle. I suspect he stood behind her and twisted her neck.’
‘As simple as that, Dr Harris?’ asked the Chief Inspector.
‘I’m afraid so. Especially if the victim wasn’t tensing. If she was relaxed and caught off guard there’d be no resistance. Just a quick twist. A snap.’
‘But do most people know how to break someone’s neck?’ asked Agent Lacoste, brushing off her slacks. Like most Québécoise she was petite and managed a casual elegance even while dressed for the country.
‘It doesn’t take much, you know,’ said Dr Harris. ‘A twist. But it’s possible the killer had a fall-back plan. To throttle her, if the twist didn’t work.’
‘You make it sound like a business plan,’ said Lacoste.
‘It might have been,’ said the coroner. ‘Cold, rational. It might not be physically hard to snap someone’s neck, but believe me, it would be very difficult emotionally. That’s why most people are killed with guns or a club to the head. Or even a knife. Let something else do the actual killing. But to do it with your own hands? Not in a fight but in a cold and calculated act? No.’ Dr Harris turned back to the dead woman. ‘It would take a very special person to do that.’
‘And by “very special” you mean?’ Gamache asked.
‘You know what I mean, Chief Inspector.’
‘But I want you to be clear.’
‘Someone who either didn’t care at all, was psychotic. Or someone who cared very, very deeply. Who wanted to do it with his bare hands. To literally take the life, himself.’
Dr Harris stared at Gamache, who nodded.
‘Merci.’
He glanced at the coroner’s assistants and at a signal they lifted the body onto a stretcher. A sheet was placed over the dead woman and she was carried away, never to be in the sun again.
The photographer started snapping pictures and the forensics team moved in. Collecting evidence from beneath the body. Including the clutch purse. The contents were carefully cataloged, tested, photographed, printed then brought to Beauvoir.
Lipstick, foundation, Kleenex, car keys, house keys and a wallet.
Beauvoir opened it and read the driver’s license then handed it to the Chief Inspector.
‘We have a name, Chief. And an address.’
Gamache glanced at the driver’s license, then at the four villagers, watching him. He walked back across the lawn to join them.
‘We know who the dead woman is.’ Gamache consulted the driver’s license. ‘Lillian Dyson.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Clara. ‘Lillian Dyson?’
Gamache turned to her. ‘You know her?’
Clara stared at Gamache in disbelief then looked beyond her garden, across the meandering Rivière Bella Bella, and into the woods.
‘Surely not,’ she whispered.
‘Who was she?’ Gabri asked but Clara seemed to have fallen into a stupor, staring bewildered into the forest.
‘Can I see her picture?’ she finally asked.
Gamache handed her the driver’s license. It wasn’t the best photo, but certainly better than the one taken that morning. Clara examined it, then took a long, deep breath, and held it for a moment before exhaling.
‘It could be her. The hair’s different. Blond. And she’s a lot older. Heavier. But it might be her.’
‘Who?’ demanded Gabri again.
‘Lillian Dyson, of course,’ said Olivier.
‘Well I know that,’ Gabri turned to, and on, his partner. ‘But who’s she?’
‘Lillian was—’
Peter stopped as Gamache raised his hand. Not in a threat, but an instruction. To stop talking. And Peter did.
‘I need to hear it from Clara first,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Would you like to speak in private?’
Clara thought for a moment, then nodded.
‘What? Without us?’ asked Gabri.
‘I’m sorry, mon beau Gabri,’ said Clara. ‘But I’d rather speak to them quietly.’
Gabri looked hurt, but accepted. The two men left, walking around the corner of the home.
Gamache caught Agent Lacoste’s eye and nodded then he looked at the two Adirondack chairs in front of them. ‘Could we find two more chairs?’
With Peter’s help two more Adirondack chairs were brought over and the four of them sat in a circle. Had there been a campfire in the center it might have felt like a ghost story.
And in a way, it was.
FOUR
Gabri and Olivier returned to the bistro in time for the lunch hour rush. The place was packed, but all conversation, all activity stopped when the two men entered.
‘Well,’ demanded Ruth into the silence. ‘Who kakked?’
That broke the dam and a flood of questions followed.
‘Was it someone we know?’
‘I heard it was someone from the inn and spa.’<br />
‘A woman.’
‘Must have been someone from the party. Did Clara know her?’
‘Was it a villager?’
‘Was it murder?’ Ruth demanded.
And while she’d broken the silence, now she created it. All questions stopped and eyes swung from the old poet to the two owners of the bistro.
Gabri turned to Olivier.
‘What should we say?’
Olivier shrugged. ‘Gamache didn’t tell us to be quiet.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ snapped Ruth, ‘just tell us. And get me a drink. Better still, get me a drink, then tell us.’
There was a round of debate and Olivier raised his arms. ‘OK, OK. We’ll tell you what we know.’
And he did.
The body was a woman named Lillian Dyson. That was met with silence, then a small buzz as people compared notes. But there were no shrieks, no sudden faints, no rending of shirts.
No recognition.
She was found in the Morrows’ garden, Olivier confirmed.
Murdered.
There was a long pause after the word.
‘Must be something in the water,’ muttered Ruth, who paused neither for life nor death. ‘How was she killed?’
‘Broken neck,’ said Olivier.
‘Who was this Lillian?’ someone at the back of the crowded bistro asked.
‘Clara seems to know her,’ said Olivier. ‘But she never mentioned her to me.’
He looked over at Gabri, who shook his head.
In doing that he noticed that someone else had slipped in after them and was standing quietly by the door.
Agent Isabelle Lacoste had been watching the whole thing, sent there by Chief Inspector Gamache, who understood that the two men would give away all they knew. And the Chief wanted to know whether someone in the bistro, on hearing it, would then give themselves away.
Tell me,’ said Gamache.
He was leaning forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. One hand held the other lightly. In a new, but necessary, gesture.
Beside him, Inspector Beauvoir had his notebook and pen out.
Clara sat back in the deep wooden chair and held on to the wide warm armrests, as though bracing herself. But instead of hurtling forward, she was plunging backward.
-->