by Louise Penny
‘How are you feeling?’ Clara asked.
It fell into a lull in the conversation and now all faces turned to her, except Bert Finney and Bean. Both were looking out of the window.
‘Are you speaking to me?’ her mother-in-law asked.
Clara was pretty sure her skin had just been sliced, by the look if not the tone.
‘It’s been a terrible day,’ said Clara, wondering where this suicidal instinct had sprung from. Maybe the Morrows were right. Maybe talking about it made it worse. She suddenly felt like a sadist, whipping this tiny, elderly grieving woman. Forcing her to confront the horrible death of her daughter. Forcing her to talk about it. Over vichyssoise.
Who was unreasonable now?
But it was too late. Her question was out there. She stared at Peter’s mother, who looked at her as though seeing her daughter’s murderer. Clara lowered her gaze.
‘I was remembering Julia,’ said Mrs Morrow. ‘How beautiful she was. How kind and loving. Thank you for asking, Claire. I wish one of my own children had thought to ask. But they seem to prefer to talk about American politics and the latest show at the National Gallery. Do you care about those things more than your sister?’
Clara had gone from feeling like crap to feeling like a hero to feeling like crap again. She looked across the table at Peter. His hair was standing straight out at the sides and he’d dropped a small dribble of soup, like pabulum, onto his shirt.
‘But then Julia was always the most sensitive of you. I understand you told the Chief Inspector Julia was greedy and cruel.’
Her gentle Wedgwood eyes focused on Peter. There was no movement now. Even the waiters seemed afraid to approach.
‘I didn’t say that,’ he stammered, reddening. ‘Who told you that?’
‘And you told him my own death might be for the best.’
Now there was an audible gasp and Clara realized they’d all inhaled in shock, including herself. She was finally in the boat. Great timing.
Mrs Morrow fiddled with the stem of her wine glass.
‘Did you say that, Peter?’
‘No, I didn’t, Mother. I’d never say such a thing.’
‘Because I know when you’re lying. I always know.’
This wasn’t difficult, Clara knew, since in her company they always lied. She’d taught them that. Their mother knew where all their buttons were, and why not. She’d installed them.
Peter was lying now. Clara knew it, his mother knew it. The maître d’ knew it. The chipmunk Bert Finney was staring at probably knew it.
‘I would never say that,’ repeated Peter. His mother glared.
‘You never disappoint me, you know. I always knew you’d come to nothing. Even Claire is more successful than you. A solo show with Denis Fortin. Have you ever had one?’
‘Mrs Morrow,’ said Clara. Enough was enough. ‘That’s not fair. Your son’s a fine man, a gifted artist, a loving husband. He has lots of friends and a beautiful home. And a wife who loves him. And my name is Clara.’ She stared along the table to the elderly woman. ‘Not Claire.’
‘And my name is Mrs Finney. You’ve called me Mrs Morrow for fifteen years, long after my marriage. Do you know how insulting that is?’
Clara was stunned into silence. She was right. It’d never occurred to her that Peter’s mother was now Mrs Finney. She’d always just been Mrs Morrow.
How had it come to this? Here she was yelling at Peter’s mother when she meant to comfort her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’
And then she saw something almost as horrifying as what the young gardener must have witnessed that morning. But instead of a crushed middle-aged woman, Clara saw a crushed elderly woman. In front of her, in front of them all, Peter’s mother put her head in her hands and started to cry.
Mariana shrieked and jumped up, just as the ceiling collapsed. Or at least, something landed on her from above, and bounced.
It was a cookie.
The sky was made of marshmallow, and it was falling.
Over coffee Chief Inspector Gamache put on his half-moon glasses and read the bundle of letters, handing each to Beauvoir as he finished. After a few minutes he lowered his glasses and stared out the window.
He was beginning to know Julia Martin. To know her facts, her history. He felt the rich, thick notepaper in his hands.
It was almost nine in the evening and still bright. They’d only just passed the summer solstice. The longest day of the year. The mist was disappearing, though some hovered lightly over the calm lake. The clouds were breaking up and a hint of red and purple was in the sky. It was going to be a magnificent sunset.
‘What do you think?’ he asked, tapping his glasses on the stack of letters.
‘They’re the strangest collection of love letters I’ve ever seen,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Why’d she keep them?’
Agent Lacoste picked up the letters and the velvet ribbon.
‘They were important to her, for some reason. More than important, they were crucial. So much so she kept them with her. But …’
She seemed lost for words and Gamache knew how she felt. The notes spanned more than thirty years and seemed simply a collection of thank yous for parties, or dances or gifts. Various people telling Julia Martin she was kind.
None an actual love letter. Her father had written to thank her for a tie. There was an old one from her husband before they married, asking her to meet him for dinner. It was pleasant, complimentary. All of them were. Affectionate, grateful, polite. But no more.
‘Why did she keep them?’ Gamache mumbled, almost to himself. Then he picked up the more recent notes, the ones crumpled and found in the grate. ‘And why did she throw these away?’
As he read them again something struck him.
‘Do you notice something unusual about this note?’ He pointed to one.
You are very kind. I know you won’t tell anyone what I said. I could get into trouble!
Beauvoir and Lacoste studied it, but saw nothing.
‘Not in the words, but in the punctuation,’ said Gamache. ‘The exclamation mark.’
They looked at him blankly and he smiled. But he also knew there was something there. Something important. As so often happened, the message wasn’t in the words but in how they were put.
‘I found something else in my search,’ said Agent Lacoste, getting up from the table. ‘I’d like to show you before the Morrows finish dinner.’
All three climbed the stairs to the guest rooms and Isabelle Lacoste led them to the Garden Room. Knocking, she waited a moment then opened the door.
Gamache and Beauvoir stepped forward then stopped.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ Agent Lacoste asked.
Gamache shook his head. In thirty years as an investigator he’d certainly seen more disturbing things, more frightening things, more grotesque things. But he’d never seen anything quite like this.
‘Why would a child have so many clocks?’ asked Beauvoir, surveying Mariana and Bean Morrow’s room. There were clocks on every surface.
‘How do you know they’re Bean’s?’ asked Gamache.
‘Because the kid’s screwed up. Wouldn’t you be if your name was Bean and nobody knew if you were a boy or girl?’
They stared at him. He hadn’t told them this yet.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lacoste.
‘Mariana Morrow’s kept Bean’s sex a secret.’
‘Even from her mother?’
‘Especially from her mother. From everyone. How fucked up is that?’
Gamache picked up a Mickey Mouse clock and nodded. What parents did to their kids, he thought, looking at the room and listening to the ticking, ticking, ticking. He examined Mickey then picked up a few other clocks.
Why had Bean set them all for seven in the morning?
EIGHTEEN
Peter Morrow stood alone just outside the yellow ribbon. The ground held a Julia-sized indent.
In
life she’d torn the family apart and now she was doing it in death. Selfish, greedy and yes, cruel. He’d meant every word.
His mother had cried for her. Had only good things to say about Julia. She’d become perfect Julia, beautiful Julia, kind and loving Julia. Well, who’d stayed and looked after Mother? Who visited her and had her for dinners? Who phoned her and sent cards and gifts?
He stared at the hole and tried to feel something. Tried to remember Julia as a girl. His older sister. Born between the boys, like being born between the wars. Trodden upon and mauled as the boys tried to get at each other. They’d squashed and trampled her in the middle. Flat.
And now Dad had done it too.
There’d been four of them all their lives. Thomas, Julia, Peter, Mariana. Four wheels, four walls, four seasons, four elements, four corners of the earth.
But now they were three. Strange as their world had been, it at least made sense, to them. What happens when one corner is removed?
All hell breaks loose. And the first trumpet was heard tonight. His mother’s cry.
‘Peter?’
He stood still, not daring to turn round, to show his face to anybody.
‘Is it all right that I’m here?’ he asked.
‘As long as you go no closer, but you know that,’ said Gamache.
The two men stared at the scene, though both were actually staring at the pedestal of hard marble. Gamache had come into the garden for some fresh air, to walk off his dinner and try to put order into the pile of evidence they were collecting. But mostly he’d wanted to come here again, to look at the white block. The thing he’d first mistaken for a grave marker. And now it was.
But what troubled him was why the block wasn’t marred. It showed absolutely no sign of the statue’s ever being on it, and certainly no signs of it scraping off. Not a scratch, not a blemish. It was perfect. And it was impossible.
‘My mother used to read us stories when we were children,’ Peter said. ‘My father would play the piano and we’d all cram onto the sofa and Mother would read. Our favourite was always from a book on myths. I still remember most of them. Zeus, Ulysses. Thomas loved that one. Always wanted it read. Over and over we heard about the lotus-eaters and the sirens.’
‘And Scylla and Charybdis,’ said Gamache. ‘I loved it too. That terrible choice Ulysses faced, to aim his ship for the whirlpool or for the six-headed monster.’
‘He chose the monster and it killed six of his men. They died and he sailed on,’ said Peter.
‘What would you have done?’ asked Gamache. He knew the myth well. Ulysses returning from the Trojan War, his long perilous journey. Trying to get home. Coming upon that terrible strait. On one side a whirlpool that sucked every ship and soul into it. And on the other side Scylla. A six-headed monster. On one side certain death for everyone on the ship, and on the other certain death for six of his men.
Which path to take?
Peter felt the tears then. For little Julia, crushed by her brothers, crushed by her mother, crushed by her husband. And finally, just as she’d returned home, crushed by the one man she trusted. Her Ulysses. Her father.
But mostly he was weeping for himself. He’d lost a sister today, but worse, far worse, he felt he’d just lost his mother. A mother who’d decided the dead sister was perfect, and he was a monster.
‘Let’s walk,’ said Gamache, and the two men turned their backs on the dented earth and the harsh white cube beside it. Gamache clasped his hands behind his back and they fell into step, walking silently across the lawn and towards the lake. The sun was just setting, filling the evening sky with spectacular lurid colour. Purples and pinks and golds, it seemed to change every moment.
The men stopped and stared.
‘That was a lovely image of your family gathered around your mother as she read.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ said Peter. ‘We weren’t gathered around her. We were on the sofa, all four of us. She was across the room in her wing chair.’
Suddenly the image that had been so natural, heartwarming even, that had finally allowed him to see the Morrows as a family, disappeared. Like the sunset, it shifted into something else. Something darker.
Four small children by themselves staring across the straits to their mother, upright and proper and reading about terrible choices. And death.
‘You said Ulysses was Thomas’s favourite. What was yours?’
Peter had been thinking of the square of white marble looming over the place where Julia died. Four corners, four walls.
‘Pandora’s box,’ he said.
Gamache turned away from the sunset and looked at Peter. ‘Is something bothering you?’
‘You mean beyond the murder of my sister?’
‘I do mean that. You can tell me.’
‘Oh really? Well someone told my mother what I said to you this afternoon. Yes, look surprised, but can you imagine how I felt? You demand I tell you the truth, I tell it, and get practically kicked out of the family for it. I bet it’s always been easy for you. So sure of yourself. Always fitting in. Well try being an artist in a family of intellectuals. Try being tone deaf in a family of musicians. Try being taunted all the way to class, not by other kids, but by your own brother, yelling “Spot, Spot”.’
Peter felt the last restraints tear apart. He wanted to warn Gamache, to tell him to run, to flee from him, to hide in the forest until this riot had passed. Until the writhing, stinking, armed escapees had burned and violated everything in sight and moved on to another target. But it was too late, and he knew the man in front of him would never run.
Morrows ran and hid in smiling cynicism and dark sarcasm.
This man stood his ground.
‘And your father?’ Gamache asked, as though Peter hadn’t sprayed his face with spittle. ‘What did he say to you?’
‘My father? But you already know what he said. Never use the first stall in a public washroom. Who fucking says that to a ten year old? You know the other lesson we were taught? Beware the third generation.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The first generation makes the money, the second appreciates it, having witnessed the sacrifice, and the third squanders it. We’re the third generation. The four of us. Our father hated us, thought we’d steal his money, ruin the family. He was so afraid of spoiling us he never gave us anything, except stupid advice. Words. That was all.’
Was that the burden Gamache had seen etched in that stone face? Not sacrifice, but fear? Was Charles Morrow afraid his own children would betray him? Had he created the very thing he was so afraid of? Unhappy, unloving, ungrateful children? Children capable of stealing from their father, and killing each other?
‘Who do you think killed your sister?’
It took Peter a minute to be able to speak again, to change direction.
‘I think it was Bert Finney.’
‘Why would he kill Julia?’ It was almost dark now.
‘For money, always for money. I’m sure my mother’s the beneficiary of her insurance. He married my mother for money and now he’ll get more than he dreamed.’
They continued their walk down to the dock and the two Adirondack chairs reclining on the grey, weathered wood. Peter was drained. Their feet echoed on the slats and water gently lapped against the wharf.
As they approached one of the chairs moved. The men stopped.
The wooden chair grew before their eyes, outlined against the last of the light.
‘Monsieur Gamache?’ the chair said.
‘Oui.’ Gamache took a step forward though Peter reached out to grab him back.
‘Armand Gamache? That is your name, didn’t you say?’
‘Oui.’
‘I knew your father,’ said Bert Finney. ‘His name was Honoré. Honoré Gamache.’
NINETEEN
After dropping his bombshell Bert Finney had simply departed, jerking past the two men without another word.
‘What did he mean by that?’ Peter ask
ed. ‘He knew your father?’
‘They’d be of an age,’ said Gamache, his mind hurrying. He’d picked it, and his heart, up from the dock and shoved them back into his body.
‘Has your father ever mentioned him? Bert Finney?’ As though Gamache didn’t know who’d spoken.
‘My father died when I was a child.’
‘Murdered?’ Peter asked.
Gamache turned to him. ‘Murdered? Why would you say that?’
Peter, who’d bunched up into Gamache’s personal space in an effort to hide, took a step back. ‘Well, you’re in homicide, I thought maybe …’ Peter’s voice tailed off. There was silence then, except the gentle lap of the water. ‘He must have been young,’ Peter finally said.
‘He was thirty-eight.’ And five months, and fourteen days.
Peter nodded, and though he longed to leave he stayed with Gamache while the large man stared out into the lake.
And seven hours. And twenty-three minutes.
And once all the light had gone, the two men walked back to the Manoir, in silence.
Gamache’s alarm went off at five thirty the next morning and after a refreshing shower he dressed, picked up his notebook and left. The summer sun was just up and wandering in the lace-curtained windows. Nothing stirred, except a loon calling across the lake.
As he descended the wide stairs he heard a noise in the kitchen. Poking his head in he saw a young woman and the waiter Elliot going about their work. The young man was arranging plates and she was putting bread in the oven. There was a smell of strong coffee.
‘Bonjour, monsieur l’inspecteur,’ said the girl in French with a thick English accent. She must have been fairly new, Gamache thought. ‘You’re up early.’
‘And so are you. Hard at work already. I wonder if I might have some coffee?’ he said slowly and clearly in French.
‘Avec plaisir.’ The girl poured him an orange juice and he took it.
‘Merci,’ he said, and left.
‘Monsieur Gamache,’ he heard behind him as he walked out of the swinging screen door and into the new day. ‘I believe you wanted this.’
Gamache stopped and Elliot walked up to him, a bodum of coffee with cream and rock sugar on a tray with a couple of cups. He’d also placed some warm croissants in a basket with preserves.