The Murder Stone

by Louise Penny

  Eventually Edward III made an offer. He’d spare Calais, if six of its most prominent citizens would surrender. To be executed. He ordered that these men present themselves at the gate, stripped of their finery, with ropes round their necks and holding the key to the city.

  Jean Guy Beauvoir paled, imagining what he’d do. Would he step forward? Would he step back, look away? He imagined the horror of the town, and the choice. Listening to the chief he felt his heart pounding in his chest. This was far worse than any horror film. This was real.

  ‘What happened?’ Beauvoir whispered.

  ‘A man, Eustache de Saint-Pierre, one of the wealthiest men in Calais, volunteered. Five others joined him. They took off all their clothes, down to their undergarments, put nooses round their own necks, and walked out of the gates.’

  ‘Bon Dieu,’ whispered Beauvoir.

  Dear God, agreed Gamache, looking again at Charles Morrow.

  ‘Rodin did a sculpture of that moment, when they stood at the gate, surrendering.’

  Beauvoir tried to imagine what it would look like. He’d seen a lot of official French art, commemorating the storming of the Bastille, the wars, the victories. Winged angels, buxom cheering women, strong determined men. But if this statue reminded the chief of those men, it couldn’t be like anything he’d seen before.

  ‘It’s not a regular statue, is it?’ said Beauvoir, and thought maybe he’d find out where the Musée des Beaux Arts was in Montreal.

  ‘No, it’s like no other war statue you’re likely to see. The men aren’t heroic. They’re resigned, frightened even.’

  Beauvoir could imagine. ‘But wouldn’t that make them even more heroic?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Gamache, turning back to Charles Morrow. Who wore clothing, who had no chains or ropes or noose. At least, not visible. But Armand Gamache knew Charles Morrow was bound as surely as those men. Roped and chained and tied to something.

  What was Charles Morrow seeing with those sorrowful eyes?

  The owner of the crane company was waiting for them at the reception desk. He was small and square and looked like a pedestal. His steel-grey hair was short and stood on end. A red ridge cut across his forehead where a hard hat had sat, that day and every working day for the past thirty years.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know,’ he said as he stuck his square hand out to shake.

  ‘I know,’ said Gamache, taking it and introducing himself and Beauvoir. ‘We think it was murder.’

  ‘Tabernacle,’ the man exhaled and wiped his beading brow. ‘For real? Wait till the boys hear that.’

  ‘Did your worker tell you what happened?’ Beauvoir asked, as they took the man into the garage.

  ‘He’s a horse’s ass. Said the block had shifted and the statue fell off. I told him that was bullshit. The base was solid. They’d poured a concrete foundation with sona tubes sunk six feet into the ground, below frost level, so it doesn’t shift. Ya know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Gamache.

  ‘You have to dig down at least six feet around here when you do construction, below the frost line. If you don’t, whatever you build will heave when the ground thaws in the spring. Get it?’

  Gamache understood what the worker had meant about his boss. The man was a natural lecturer, though not a natural teacher.

  ‘Madame Dubois at the Manoir never does anything unless it’s done right. I like that. I’m the same way myself. And she knows a thing or two about building.’ It was his highest compliment.

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Beauvoir.

  ‘Keep your condom on, voyons. I’m getting there. She asked us to put in sona tubes so that the statue wouldn’t fall over, so we did. That was about a month ago. The thing hasn’t even been through a winter yet. Couldn’t have shifted.’

  ‘You sunk the shafts,’ said Beauvoir, ‘then what?’

  A murder investigation, thought Beauvoir, was for the most part asking ‘then what happened?’ over and over. And listening to the answers, of course.

  ‘We poured the concrete, waited a week. It set. Then we put down that damned base, and yesterday I put the statue on. Huge fucking thing. Had to lift it carefully.’

  The men were treated to a fifteen-minute explanation of how hard his job was. Beauvoir replayed the baseball game from the night before, thought about whether his wife would be angry again about his being away from home, had a small argument with the caretaker of his building.

  Gamache listened.

  ‘Who was there when you placed the statue?’

  ‘Madame Dubois and that other fellow.’

  ‘Pierre Patenaude?’ asked Gamache. ‘The maître d’?’

  ‘Don’t know who he was. In his forties, dark hair, overdressed. Must have been dying in the heat.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Lots of people came by to see. Couple of kids were working in the gardens and watching. The hard part is getting it on right. Don’t want it facing the wrong way.’ The operator laughed then launched into another five-minute monologue about positioning. Beauvoir treated himself to a fantasy involving Pierre Cardin and a shopping spree in Paris. But that got him thinking about the men of Calais, and that got him thinking about Charles Morrow and that brought him back to this long-winded bore.

  ‘… put the canvas thing over him that Madame Dubois gave me, and left.’

  ‘How could the statue have come off the pedestal?’

  Gamache asked the question as he might ask any, but everyone in the room knew it was the key question. The operator shifted his gaze to the statue, then back.

  ‘The only way I know is with a machine.’ He was unhappy with his answer, and looked guilty. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘We know you didn’t,’ said Gamache. ‘But who did? If it wasn’t done by a machine then how?’

  ‘Maybe it was,’ said the operator. ‘There coulda been a crane there. Not mine, but someone else’s. Maybe.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ said Gamache, ‘but I suspect Julia Martin would have noticed.’

  They nodded.

  ‘What did you think of the statue?’ Gamache asked. Beauvoir looked at him with amazement. Who the hell cares what the crane operator thinks? Might as well ask the fucking pedestal.

  The crane operator also looked amazed, but he thought about it.

  ‘Wouldn’t want it in my garden. Kinda sad, you know? I prefer happy things.’

  ‘Like pixies?’ asked Beauvoir.

  ‘Sure, pixies or fairies,’ the crane operator said. ‘People think they’re the same, but they’re not.’

  Dear God, not a lecture on pixies and fairies.

  Gamache shot Beauvoir a warning look.

  ‘Course, the bird helped.’

  The bird?

  Gamache and Beauvoir looked at each other.

  ‘What bird, monsieur?’ asked Gamache.

  ‘The one on his shoulder.’

  His shoulder?

  The crane operator saw their confusion.

  ‘Yeah, up there.’ He stalked across the floor, his muddy boots thudding on the concrete. Stopping at the statue he pointed.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Beauvoir to Gamache, who also shook his head.

  ‘You got to be close to see it,’ said the crane operator, looking around the garage. Spotting a ladder he brought it over and Beauvoir climbed.

  ‘He’s right. There’s a bird carved here,’ he called down.

  Gamache sighed silently. He’d hoped the crane operator had hallucinated. But no. There had to be a bird and it couldn’t be on Morrow’s foot. Beauvoir descended and Gamache stared at the ladder, knowing he had to see for himself.

  ‘Want a hand?’ smirked Beauvoir with the ease of a man who hadn’t yet found his phobia.

  ‘Non, merci.’ Gamache tried to smile, but knew he probably looked maniacal. Eyes bright, hands shaking slightly, lips still trying to form a lie of a smile, he started up the ladder. Two, three, four ru
ngs. Hardly high, but it didn’t have to be. Maybe, like Bean, I’m afraid to leave the ground, he thought with surprise.

  He was face to face with Charles Morrow, staring into that grim visage. Then he dropped his eyes and there, etched into the left shoulder, was a tiny bird. But there was something odd about it. Every nerve in his body was begging him to get down. He could feel waves of anxiety wash over him and thought perhaps he’d let go, fling himself off the ladder. Drop onto Beauvoir. Crush him, as Morrow had crushed Julia.

  ‘You all right up there?’ Beauvoir asked, slightly anxious now.

  Gamache forced himself to focus, to see the bird. And then he had it.

  No longer trying to appear composed Gamache raced down the ladder, jumping the last two rungs and landing inelegantly at the crane operator’s feet.

  ‘What kind of a bird is it, do you know?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Course I don’t know. It’s a fucking bird. Not a jay, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Beauvoir, who knew the chief never asked a question without a reason.

  ‘It has no feet.’

  ‘Maybe the guy forgot,’ suggested the operator.

  ‘Or maybe it was his signature, you know?’ said Beauvoir. ‘The way some artists never do eyes.’

  ‘Like Little Orphan Annie,’ said the crane operator. ‘Maybe this guy never does feet.’

  All three dropped their eyes. Charles Morrow had feet.

  They put the ladder away and walked together to the door.

  ‘Why do you think the bird’s there?’ asked the crane operator.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ll have to ask the artist.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said the operator, making a face.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Beauvoir asked.

  The crane operator looked uncomfortable. What could make a man perfectly willing to admit to a fondness for pixies and fairies uncomfortable, Beauvoir wondered.

  The crane operator stopped and looked at them. The younger guy was staring, like a ferret. All eager to pounce. But the older one, the one with the greying moustache and balding head, and the kind, smart eyes, he was quiet. And listening. He squared his shoulders and spoke directly to Gamache.

  ‘Madame Dubois gave me the address yesterday morning to pick up the statue. Over Saint-Felicien-du-Lac way. I got there in plenty of time. I’m like that. Went to the coffee shop …’

  Here we go, thought Beauvoir, and shifted on his feet.

  The crane operator paused then plunged. ‘Then I went to the atelier to get him, the statue I mean. Madame Dubois said it was an artist’s studio, but it wasn’t.’

  He stopped again.

  ‘Go on,’ said Gamache quietly.

  ‘It was a graveyard.’

  SIXTEEN

  Véronique Langlois was preparing one of the reduction sauces for the dinner service. It was almost five and things were running behind schedule, and destined to get even further behind if the young Sûreté agent continued to ask questions.

  Agent Isabelle Lacoste sat at the scrubbed pine table in the warm kitchen, not wanting to leave. The kitchen had the most wonderful aromas, but more than anything it smelled of calm. Odd, she thought, for a place so filled with activity. Assistants in crisp white aprons were chopping herbs and cleaning early vegetables taken from the kitchen garden or dropped off by the local organic farmer, Monsieur Pagé. They baked and kneaded, they stuffed and stirred. It was a regular Dr Seuss book.

  And Agent Lacoste did her job. She probed.

  So far she’d interviewed all the outside staff, now back to cutting the vast stretches of lawn and weeding the endless flower beds. The place crawled with them. All young, eager to help.

  Pierre Patenaude, whom she was currently interviewing, had just explained that the staff changed almost every year, so it was necessary to train most of them.

  ‘Do you have trouble holding on to staff?’ she asked.

  ‘Mais, non,’ Madame Dubois said. Agent Lacoste had already interviewed her and told her she could leave, but the elderly woman continued to sit, like an apple left on the chair. ‘Most of the kids go back to school. Besides, we want new staff.’

  ‘Why? It seems a lot of extra work for you.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed the maître d’.

  ‘Here, taste this.’ Chef Véronique shoved a wooden spoon under his nose and he pursed his lips as though kissing it, just the lightest of contacts. He did it by rote, a thing he’d done many times before, Lacoste realized.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said.

  ‘Voyons, you always say that,’ the chef laughed.

  ‘Because it’s always perfect. You can’t do anything but.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  Agent Lacoste could tell she was pleased. And was there something else? Something in the instant the spoon touched his lips? Even she had felt it. An intimacy.

  But then cooking was an intimate act. An act of artistry and creation. Not one she herself enjoyed, but she knew how sensual it could be. And she felt as though she’d just witnessed a very private, very intimate moment.

  She looked at the chef with new eyes.

  Towering over her young assistants, her apron-wrapped torso was thick, almost awkward in its movements, as though she only borrowed her body. She wore sensible rubber-soled shoes, a simple skirt and an almost severe blouse. Her iron-grey hair was chopped with less attention than the carrots. She wore no makeup and looked at least sixty, maybe more. And she spoke with a foghorn voice.

  And yet there was something unmistakably attractive about her. Isabelle Lacoste could feel it. Not that she wanted to sleep with the chef, or even lick her spoon. But neither did she want to leave this kitchen, this little world the chef created. Perhaps because she seemed so totally oblivious of her body, her face, her clunky mannerisms, there was something refreshing about her.

  Madame Dubois was her opposite. Plump, composed, refined and beautifully turned out, even in the Quebec wilder ness.

  But both women were genuine.

  And Chef Véronique Langlois had something else, thought Lacoste, watching her gently but clearly correct the technique of one of her young assistants, she had a sense of calm and order. She seemed at peace.

  The kids gravitated to her, as did Pierre Patenaude and even the proprietor, Madame Dubois.

  ‘It was a commitment my late husband made,’ Madame Dubois explained. ‘As a young man he’d travelled across Canada and supported himself by working in hotels. It’s the only job untrained kids can get. And he spoke no English. But by the time he got back to Quebec he spoke it very well. Always with a heavy accent, but still it stayed for the rest of his life. He was always grateful to the hotel owners for their patience in teaching him his job, and their language. His dream from then on was to open his own auberge and do for young people what was done for him.’

  That was the other ingredient of the Manoir, thought Lacoste.

  It was filled with suspects, it was filled with Morrows, huffing and silent. But more than that, it was filled with relief. It was like a sigh, with structure. Guests relaxed, kids found an unexpected home at a job that could have been agony. The Manoir Bellechasse might be built of wood and wattle, but it was held together by gratitude. A powerful insulator against harsh elements. It was filled with young people revolving through, learning French, learning hospital corners and reduction sauces and canoe repair. Growing up and going back to PEI and Alberta and the rest of Canada with a love of Quebec, if not the subjunctive.

  ‘So, all your workers are English?’ asked Agent Lacoste. She’d noticed that the ones she’d interviewed were, though some seemed confident enough to conduct the interview in French.

  ‘Almost all,’ said Pierre. ‘Diane over by the sink’s from Newfound land and Elliot, one of our waiters, is from British Columbia. Most are from Ontario, of course. It’s closest. We even get some Brits and a few Americans. Many of them are sisters and brothers of kids who worked here befo
re.’

  Chef Véronique poured iced tea into tall glasses, giving the first to Patenaude, her hand just brushing his, unnecessarily and apparently unnoticed by the maître d’. But not unnoticed by Agent Lacoste.

  ‘We’re getting sons and daughters now,’ said Madame Dubois, expertly snipping a sagging snapdragon from the beaker of flowers on the table.

  ‘Parents trust we’ll look after their children,’ said the maître d’. Then he stopped, remembering the events of the day. Thinking of Colleen, from New Brunswick, standing in the rain, her large, wet hands covering her plain face. Her scream would follow him, Pierre knew, for ever. One of his staff, one of his kids, in terror. He felt responsible, though there was no way he could have known.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Agent Lacoste asked Pierre.

  ‘Twenty years,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a round figure,’ Lacoste pointed out. ‘I need it exact.’

  The maître d’ thought. ‘I came right out of school. It started as a summer job, but I never left.’

  He smiled. It was something Lacoste realized she hadn’t seen. He always looked so serious. Granted, she’d only known him for a few hours, after a guest had been brutally murdered in his hotel. Not much opportunity for hilarity. But he smiled now.

  It was a charming smile, without artifice. He wasn’t what she’d call an attractive man, not someone you’d pick out at a party or notice across a room. He was slim, medium height, pleasant, refined even. He carried himself well, as though born to be a maître d’, or a multi-millionaire.

  There was an ease about him. He was an adult, she realized. Not a child in adult’s clothing, like so many people she knew. This man was mature. It was relaxing to be around him.