by Louise Penny
‘Jesus.’ He shook his head and slapped his arm, squishing a blackfly. In his peripheral vision he saw Agent Lacoste leaning in and putting her latex gloves on.
This was their new office.
Over the next few minutes more trucks and team members arrived and the Scene of Crime work got into full swing. Armand Gamache took it all in, as Beauvoir led the forensics.
‘What do you think, Chief?’ Lacoste removed her gloves and joined him under his umbrella. ‘Was she murdered?’
Gamache shook his head. He was stumped. Just then the young Sûreté officer he’d placed in the Great Room with the Morrows appeared, excited.
‘Good news, sir,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like to know as soon as possible. I think we have a suspect.’
‘Well done. Who?’
‘The family was quiet at first, but after a while two of them started whispering. Not the artist fellow, but the other brother and sister. They seem pretty confident if it was murder she could only have been killed by one of two people.’
‘Really?’ Beauvoir asked. They might be able to get back to civilization sooner than he’d thought.
‘Oui.’ She consulted her notebook. ‘The shopkeeper and his cleaning woman wife. Their names are Armand and Reine-Marie something. They’re guests.’
Beauvoir grinned and Lacoste turned away briefly.
‘My suspicions confirmed,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Will you come quietly?’
‘I’ll miss you,’ said Agent Lacoste.
Gamache smiled slightly and shook his head. Seven mad Morrows.
Six.
ELEVEN
‘Peter,’ Clara whispered.
She’d watched as he’d taken the Manoir notepaper and a pencil and then, grey head bowed, become lost as the pencil drew lines within ordered lines. It was mesmerizing and comforting, in the way the third martini was comforting. It felt good, but only because it numbed. Even Clara felt drawn in. Anything to escape the room filled with silent and solemn sorrow.
Across the Great Room Thomas’s grey head was also bowed. Over the piano. The notes had been slow, tentative, but after a few moments Clara recognized them. Not Bach, for once. But Beethoven. ‘Für Elise’. It was a spry and chipper tune. And relatively easy to play. She’d even managed to peck out the first few notes herself.
But Thomas Morrow played it as a dirge. Each note hunted for as though the tune was hiding. It filled the grieving room with an ache that finally brought tears to Clara’s eyes. They burned with the effort of concealment, but the tears were out and obvious.
Sandra cried shortbread, scarfing the cookies one after another while Mariana sat beside Bean, a shawled arm round the child’s shoulder as Bean read. They were silent now, though a few minutes earlier Thomas, Sandra and Mariana had been huddled together, whispering. Clara had approached, to offer her condolences, but they’d fallen silent and eyed her suspiciously. So she’d left.
Not everyone makes the boat, she thought. But HMCS Morrow was sinking. Even Clara could see that. It was a steamboat in the age of jets. They were old money in a meritocracy. The alarms were sounding. But even Peter, her lovely and thoughtful husband, clung to the wreckage.
Clara knew something the Morrows didn’t. Not yet. They’d lost more than a sister and a daughter that morning. The police were at the door and the Morrows were about to lose whatever delusions had kept them afloat. And then they’d be like everyone else.
Peter’s mother was sitting erect on the sofa, motionless. Staring.
Should she say something, Clara wondered. Do something? She racked her brains. Surely there was some way to offer comfort to this elderly woman who’d just lost her daughter.
What? What?
The door opened and Armand Gamache appeared. The music stopped and even Peter looked up. Behind Gamache came Inspector Beauvoir, Agent Lacoste and the young Sûreté officer.
‘You bastard,’ said Thomas, standing so abruptly the piano bench fell over.
He started towards Gamache.
‘Thomas,’ his mother commanded. He stopped. Mrs Finney rose and walked a few paces into the centre of the room. ‘Have you arrested this man?’ She spoke to Beauvoir and nodded towards Gamache.
‘I’d like to introduce Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec,’ said Beauvoir.
The Morrows, except Peter and Clara, stared at the open door, expecting the great man to appear. Slowly, excruciatingly, their gaze fell back. To the large man in front of them. To the shopkeeper.
‘Him?’ said Mariana.
‘Is this a joke?’ With each word Sandra expelled shortbread crumbs onto the carpet.
‘Bonjour.’ He bowed solemnly. ‘I’m afraid he does mean me.’
‘You’re a cop?’ asked Thomas, trying to grasp that the chief suspect had become the Chief Inspector. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘I didn’t think it mattered. We were guests together, nothing more. Until this morning.’ He turned to Mrs Finney. ‘Would you still like to see your daughter? I couldn’t allow it before because we had to secure the site. But I must warn you—’
‘No need for warning, Chief Inspector. I know it won’t be pleasant. Take me to Julia.’
She walked determinedly past him and Clara was impressed by her ability, even in grief, to change course. To accept Gamache as the Chief Inspector when Thomas and Mariana still stared, open mouthed and suspicious. And she, first among them, seemed to have accepted that Julia was indeed dead. But was it too quick, Clara wondered.
Gamache watched Mrs Finney move towards the door. But he wasn’t fooled any more. Earlier that morning, in the instant before he’d told her about Julia, he’d seen her avian glance, her flight around the room to see who was there, and who was gone. Which child was loved, now lost. He’d seen what she kept hidden.
‘I’m going to have to ask the rest of you to stay here,’ said Gamache, though no one else had made any move. Except Bert Finney.
He stopped a foot away from Gamache, his eyes focusing on a lamp and a bookcase. ‘I’m afraid I have to insist,’ the old man said.
Gamache hesitated. The face was craven, ashen, almost inhuman. But the action was noble. He nodded.
They left the young officer behind and Gamache wondered who’d got the more gruesome assignment.
As they approached the yellow circle of ribbon they were again joined by the notes of ‘Für Elise’. The rain had all but stopped and a mist tugged at the mountains. Everything was shades of grey-green and between the notes they could hear rain dripping from the leaves.
Gamache had ordered the crime scene team to withdraw until after Mrs Finney had seen her daughter. Now they stood in a semicircle on the verge of the forest watching as the elderly woman, so tiny and pink, walked towards the hole in the ground.
As Mrs Finney approached she saw only the gaily fluttering police ribbon. Yellow. Julia’s favourite colour. She’d been the feminine one, the daughter who’d loved dressing up, loved make-believe and make-up, loved the shoes and the hats. Loved the attention.
She saw then the semicircle of men and women in the forest, watching. And above them the bruised and swollen sky.
Poor Julia.
Irene Finney slowed as she approached. She wasn’t a woman who understood the void, who’d given it any thought. But she knew, too late, she should have. She knew then that the void wasn’t empty at all. Even now, steps away, she could hear the whisper. The void wanted to know something.
What do you believe?
That’s what filled the void. The question and the answer.
Irene Finney stopped, not ready yet to face what she must. She waited for Bert. Not looking but sensing him there she took another step. One more and she’d see.
She hesitated then took it.
What she saw skipped her eyes completely and lodged right in her chest. In an instant she was pitched forward, beyond grief, into a wilderness where no anguish, no loss, no passion existed.
She heaved a breath up out of herself. Then another.
She used that breath to whisper the only prayer she could remember.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
She saw Julia’s hands outstretched. She saw the fingers, pudgy and wet, grasping her thumb in the bath in the old kitchen sink, in their very first apartment. Her and Charles. Charles, what have you done?
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
She offered the vesper to the void, but it was too late. It had taken Julia and now it took her. She looked up into the faces of the semicircle, but they’d changed. They were flat, like a reproduction. Not real at all. The forest, the grass, the Chief Inspector beside her, even Bert. All gone. Not real any more.
What do you believe?
Nothing.
Gamache walked them inside, remaining silent, respecting her need to be with her own thoughts. Then he returned to find the crane had arrived.
‘Here comes the coroner.’ Lacoste nodded to a woman in her early thirties wearing slacks, a light summer shell and rubber boots.
‘Dr Harris.’ Gamache waved then turned back to watch the removal of the statue.
Beauvoir directed operations, batting away blackflies. It was confusing for the crane operator who mistook his flailing for directions and twice almost dropped the statue back onto Julia Martin.
‘Fucking bugs,’ snarled Beauvoir, looking around at the rest of the team, working away steadily and methodically. ‘Isn’t anyone else bothered? Christ.’ He whacked himself on the side of the head trying to crush a deerfly. He missed.
‘Bonjour.’ Gamache inclined his head towards the coroner. Sharon Harris smiled a small greeting. She knew how the Chief Inspector preferred decorum at the site of a murder, especially in the presence of the corpse. It was rare. Most murder scenes were filled with smart-ass and often gruesome comments, made by men and women frightened by what they saw, and believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.
Chief Inspector Gamache chose men and women for his team who might also be afraid, but had the courage to rise above it.
Standing beside him and watching the statue sucked from the ground, and the woman, she caught the slight aroma of rosewater and sandalwood. His scent. She turned and watched the Chief Inspector for a moment, his strong face in profile. At rest, but watchful.
There was an old-world courtliness about him that made her feel she was in the company of her grandfather, though he was only twenty years older than her, if that. Once the statue was hovering over the flatbed truck Dr Harris put on her gloves and moved in.
She’d seen worse. Far worse. Horrible deaths that could never be avenged because there was no fault, except fate. This might be one, she thought, as she looked at the mangled body, then back at the statue. Then at the pedestal.
Kneeling down she examined the wounds.
‘I’d say she’s been dead twelve hours, maybe more. The rain makes it more difficult, of course.’
‘Why’s that?’ Lacoste asked.
‘No bugs. The amount and type of insect helps tell us how long a person’s been dead. But the heavy rain kept the bugs home. They’re like cats. Hate the rain. Now after the rain …’
She looked over at Beauvoir doing a mad dance and slapping himself.
‘Here,’ she pointed to a wound, ‘see?’
Lacoste peered in. She was right. No bugs, though a few were beginning to hover.
‘Now, this is interesting,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Look at that.’
On her finger was a smear of brown. Lacoste bent closer.
‘Dirt?’ she asked.
‘Dirt.’
Lacoste raised her brows, perplexed, but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes the coroner got up and walked to the Chief Inspector.
‘I can tell you how she died.’
‘A statue?’ asked Gamache.
‘Probably,’ said the coroner, turning to look at the levitating statue then at its pedestal.
‘That’s the more interesting question,’ said Gamache, reading her mind.
‘We had quite a storm last night,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Maybe that knocked it down.’
‘They’re driving me crazy.’ Beauvoir joined them, his face smeared with tiny freckles of crushed blackflies. He looked at Gamache, poised and comfortable. ‘Don’t they bite you?’
‘No. It’s mind over matter. It’s all in your head, Inspector.’
That much was true, Beauvoir knew. He’d just inhaled a swarm of blackflies and he knew for certain a few had flown up his nose. A sudden buzzing in his ear warned him he was either having a stroke or a deerfly had just flown in.
Please, let this be an accident. Let me get home to my barbecue, my cooler of beer, my sports channel. My air conditioning.
He dug his little finger into his ear, but the buzzing only moved deeper.
Charles Morrow subsided onto the dirty truck. He lay on his side, his arms out, his face sad, and smeared with his own flesh and blood.
Gamache walked alone to the edge of the hole in the ground. They all watched as he looked down. There was no movement, except his right hand, which clasped slowly closed.
Then he motioned to the team and there was a sudden flurry of activity as evidence was collected. Jean Guy Beauvoir took charge while Gamache returned to the large flatbed truck.
‘Were you the one who put him on his pedestal?’ he asked the crane operator.
‘Not me, Patron. When was the job done?’ the operator asked, securing and covering Charles Morrow for the trip to the Sûreté compound in Sherbrooke.
‘Yesterday, early afternoon.’
‘My day off. I was fishing in Lake Memphremagog. I can show you the pictures and the catch. I have a licence.’
‘I believe you.’ Gamache smiled reassuringly. ‘Could someone else from your company have done it?’
‘I’ll ask.’
A minute later he was back.
‘Called dispatch. Got the boss. He placed the statue himself. We do a lot of work with the Manoir, so when Madame Dubois called about this the boss decided it needed a special touch. No one’s better than him.’
This was said with more than a little sarcasm. It was clear this man wouldn’t mind if the boss turned out to have screwed up royally. And if he could help point the middle finger, so much the better.
‘Can you give me his name and co-ordinates?’
The operator happily handed over a card with the proprietor’s name underlined.
‘Please ask him to meet me at the Sûreté detachment in Sherbrooke in about an hour.’
‘Chief?’ Dr Harris approached just as the driver got back in his rig and drove off.
‘Could the storm have done this?’ he asked, remembering the lightning bolts and the furious angels bowling, or crying, or pushing over statues.
‘Knocked over the statue? Maybe. But it didn’t.’
Gamache turned surprised brown eyes on the coroner. ‘How can you be so certain?’
She held up her finger. Beside him Agent Lacoste grimaced. It wasn’t just ‘a’ finger, it was ‘the’ finger. Gamache raised his brows and grinned. Then his brows lowered and he leaned in closer, staring at the brown smear.
‘This was under her body. You’ll see more when her body’s moved.’
‘It looks like dirt,’ said Gamache.
‘It is,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Dirt, not mud.’
Still the chief was baffled. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means the storm didn’t kill her. She was on the ground before the storm started. It’s dry underneath her.’
Gamache was quiet, absorbing the information.
‘Are you saying the statue fell off and crushed her before the storm hit?’
‘That’s a fact, Chief Inspector. The ground’s dry. I have no idea how that thing came to fall, but it wasn’t the storm.’
They all watched as
the flatbed was slowly and carefully driven past them, a Sûreté officer in the passenger seat and the crane operator driving. They disappeared round a bend in the dirt road and into the thick forest.
‘When did the storm hit?’ He was asking himself as much as her. She was silent, pretending to think. She’d been in bed by nine with her Madeleine cookies, Diet Coke and Cosmo, though she’d rather not volunteer that information. She’d woken in the middle of the night to find her cottage shaking and the power out.
‘We’ll call the weather office. If they don’t know the maître d’ will,’ he said, walking back to the hole. Staring in he saw what he should have noted in the first place. She was in the clothes he remembered from the night before.
No raincoat. No hat. No umbrella.
No rain.
She was dead before the storm had struck.
‘Any other wounds on her body?’
‘Don’t appear to be. I’ll do the autopsy this afternoon and let you know. Anything else before we take her away?’
‘Inspector?’ Gamache called and Beauvoir joined him, wiping his hands on his sodden slacks.
‘No, we’re finished. Dirt.’ He looked at his hands and spoke as a surgeon might say ‘germs’. Dirt, grass, mud, insects were unnatural to Beauvoir, for whom cologne and a nice silk blend were his elements.
‘That reminds me,’ said Gamache. ‘There was a bees’ or wasps’ nest nearby. Be careful.’
‘Lacoste, the nest?’ Beauvoir jerked his head, but Lacoste continued to stare at the dead woman. She was putting herself in Julia’s place. Turning. Seeing the statue do the impossible, the unthinkable. Seeing it fall towards her. And Agent Lacoste put her hands out in front of her, palms forward, elbows tucked into her body, ready to repel the attack. Turning away.
It was instinctive.
And yet Julia Martin had opened her arms.
The chief walked past her and stood in front of the pedestal. Reaching out he slid his hand over the wet marble. The surface was perfect, pristine. But that wasn’t possible. A several ton statue would make scuffs, scratches, divots. But this surface was unmarred.