by Louise Penny
‘But the Burghers died, and you didn’t.’ Beauvoir laughed, trying to break the unbearable moment.
‘Oh, no. The Burghers didn’t die,’ said Gamache. ‘Their lives were spared.’
He turned back to the door into the dining room, and said something Beauvoir didn’t quite catch. It might have been merci. Or mercy. Then he was gone.
Beauvoir put out his hand to shove the swinging door and follow the chief, but hesitated. Instead he walked back to the table where the women stood still staring out of the back door and into the woods.
In the dining room he could hear raised voices. Morrow voices. Demanding answers, demanding attention. He needed to join the Chief Inspector. But he needed to do something first.
‘He could have let them die, you know.’
The two women turned slowly to look at him.
‘Patenaude, I mean,’ Beauvoir continued. ‘He could have let Chief Inspector Gamache and Bean die. But he didn’t. He saved their lives.’
And Chef Véronique turned to face him then with a look he’d longed for, but no longer needed. And inside he felt a deep calm, as though some old debt had been paid.
THIRTY-ONE
‘Paradise lost,’ said Chief Inspector Gamache, taking his place, naturally, at the centre of the gathering, a raised hand hushing the Morrows. ‘To have it all and to lose it. That’s what this case was about.’
The room was packed with the Manoir staff, police officers and volunteers. And Morrows. Reine-Marie had hurried over from Three Pines when she heard what had happened and was sitting quietly off to the side.
‘What’s he talking about?’ whispered Sandra loudly.
‘A poem by John Milton,’ said Mrs Finney, sitting upright next to her husband. ‘It’s about the devil being cast out of heaven.’
‘That’s right,’ said Gamache. ‘The fall from grace. The tragedy in Milton’s poem was that Satan had it all and didn’t realize it.’
‘He was a fallen angel,’ said Mrs Finney. ‘He believed it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. He was greedy.’ She looked at her children.
‘But what’s heaven and what’s hell?’ asked Gamache. ‘It depends on our point of view. I love this place.’ He looked around the room and out of the window, where the rain had now stopped. ‘For me it’s heaven. I see peace and quiet and beauty. But for Inspector Beauvoir it’s hell. He sees chaos and discomfort and bugs. Both are true. It’s perception. The mind is its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,’ Gamache quoted. ‘Early on, even before the death of Julia Martin, I knew there was something wrong. Spot and Claire, the odious missing family members, became Peter and Clara, two gentle, kind friends of ours. Not without their flaws,’ Gamache held up his hand again to head off Thomas’s catalogue of Peter’s faults, ‘but at their hearts good people. And yet they were denounced as vile. I knew then this was a family at odds with reality, their perception skewed. What purpose did it serve?’
‘Does there have to be a purpose?’ asked Clara.
‘There’s a purpose to everything.’ Gamache turned to her, sitting next to Peter. ‘Thomas was seen by the family as an accomplished pianist, linguist, businessman. And yet his playing is workmanlike, his career is mediocre and he can’t speak French.
‘Mariana’s business is flourishing, she plays the piano with passion and skill, she has an extraordinary child and yet she’s treated like the selfish little sister who can’t do anything right. Peter is a gifted and successful artist,’ Gamache walked along the room to Peter, dishevelled and bleary, ‘in a loving marriage with many friends. And yet you’re perceived as greedy and cruel. And Julia,’ he continued. ‘The sister who left and was punished for it.’
‘She was not,’ said Mrs Finney. ‘She chose to leave.’
‘But you forced her out. And what was her crime?’
‘She shamed the family,’ said Thomas. ‘We became a laughing stock. Julia Morrow gives good head.’
‘Thomas!’ snapped his mother.
They’d been cast out of society. Mocked and ridiculed.
Paradise lost.
And so, they’d taken their revenge on the good child.
‘It must’ve been hard for Julia to come to the reunion,’ said Mariana. Bean was on her lap for the first time in years, feet dangling inches off the ground.
‘Oh, please,’ said Thomas. ‘Like you care, Magilla.’
‘Stop calling me that.’
‘Why should I? You might fool him,’ he looked at Gamache, ‘he doesn’t know you. But we do. You were selfish then and you’re selfish now. That’s why we call you Magilla. So you’ll remember what you did to Father. He asked one thing of you, to kiss him when he got home. And what did you do? You stayed in the basement watching that ridiculous TV show. You preferred a cartoon gorilla to Father. And he knew it. And when you’d finally come to kiss him you were crying. Upset at being made to do something you didn’t want to. You broke his heart, Magilla. Every time I call you that I want you to remember the pain you caused him.’
‘Stop it.’ Mariana stood. ‘It. Was. Never. The. Cartoon.’
The words jerked out as though fighting with her, desperate to stay inside. ‘It. Was. The. Cage.’
No sound came out of Mariana now. She stood silent, her mouth open, a fine line of drool dripping down, like clear honey. Bean squeezed her hand and Mariana started to breathe again, in sobs and whoops, like a newborn, slapped.
‘It was the cage. Every day I’d rush home from school to watch Magilla the Gorilla in his cage. Praying that today he’d find a home. He’d be adopted. And loved.’
Tilting her head back she stared at the beam above her head. She saw it tremble, a fine spill of dust and plaster raining down. She braced herself. And then it stopped. The beam held fast. It didn’t fall.
‘And that’s why you design beautiful homes for the homeless,’ said Gamache.
‘Mariana,’ said Peter softly, approaching her.
‘And you,’ said Thomas, his words springing up between Peter and his sister, stopping him. ‘You’re the most devious of all. You who had everything wanted more. If there’s a devil in this family it’s you.’
‘Me?’ Peter said, stunned by the attack, vicious even by Morrow standards. ‘You’re saying I had everything? What family did you live in? You’re the one Mother and Father loved. You got everything, even his—’ He stopped, remembering the plops and the two circles radiating on the calm lake.
‘His what? His cufflinks?’ Thomas vibrated with rage, his hands shaking as he thought of the frayed white dress shirt hanging in the closet upstairs. His father’s old shirt that Thomas had taken the day he’d died. The only thing he’d wanted. The shirt off his back. That still smelled of him. Of rich cigars and spicy cologne.
But now the links were gone. Because of Peter.
‘You have no idea, do you?’ Thomas spat. ‘You can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to succeed all the time. Father expected it, Mother expected it. I couldn’t fail.’
‘You failed all the time,’ said Mariana, recovered. ‘But they refused to see it. You’re lazy and a liar and they thought you could do no wrong.’
‘They knew I was their only hope,’ said Thomas, his eyes never wavering from Peter. ‘You were such a disappointment.’
‘Peter never disappointed his father.’
It was a voice the Morrows rarely heard. They turned to look at their mother, then beside her.
‘He never expected you to excel, Thomas,’ Bert Finney continued. ‘And he never wanted anything except for you to be happy, Mariana. And he never believed those things written on the bathroom wall about Julia.’
The old man struggled to his feet.
‘He loved your art,’ he said to Peter. ‘He loved your music, Thomas. He loved your spirit, Mariana, and always said how strong and kind you were. He loved you all.’
The words, more dangerous than any grenade, exploded in the middle of the Morrows.
‘That’s what Julia figured out,’ said Finney. ‘She realized that was what he’d meant when he withheld money and gifts. She who had it all knew how empty those things were, and that anything of value she’d already been given. By her father. Love, encouragement. That was what she wanted to tell you.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Thomas, returning to sit beside Sandra. ‘He kicked her out of the house. How loving was that?’
‘He regretted that,’ admitted Finney. ‘Always regretted not defending Julia. But he was a stubborn man, a proud man. He couldn’t admit he was wrong. He tried to apologize, in his way. He reached out to her in Vancouver, when he found out she was engaged. But he let his dislike of Martin ruin it. Charles needed to be right. He was a good man, plagued by a bad ego. He paid a high price for it. But it doesn’t mean he didn’t love you all. Including Julia. It just meant he couldn’t show it. Not in the way you wanted.’
Was that the thing to be deciphered, wondered Peter. Not the words of the strange message, but the fact of the message itself?
Never use the first stall in a public washroom.
Peter almost smiled. It was, he had to admit, very like a Morrow. They were nothing if not anal.
‘He was cruel,’ said Thomas, not wanting to let go.
‘Your father never stopped searching for the person who wrote that graffiti. He thought that way he could show Julia how much he cared. And in the end he found him.’
There was silence then, until the small clearing of a throat broke it.
‘That’s not possible,’ said Peter, standing up and smoothing his hair. ‘Father never said anything to me about it.’
‘And why would he?’ demanded Thomas.
‘Because I was the one who wrote the graffiti.’ He didn’t dare look at his mother.
‘Yes,’ said Finney. ‘That’s what your father said.’
The Morrows stared, speechless.
‘How’d he know?’ asked Peter, feeling light headed, slightly nauseous.
‘It was written in the second stall. Only you and he knew about that. It was his private gift to you.’
Peter inhaled sharply.
‘I wrote the graffiti because she’d hurt my feelings. And because I wanted Father to myself. I didn’t want to share him with anyone. I couldn’t stand that Father loved Julia. I wanted to destroy that. And I did.’
‘Have you not heard a word I said?’
Bert Finney now commanded the room, Gamache willingly ceding his place.
‘It wasn’t yours to destroy. You claim too much for yourself, Peter. Your father loved your sister all his life. You couldn’t destroy that. He knew what you’d done.’
Finney stared at Peter and Peter pleaded with him to stop there. Not to say that last thing.
‘And he loved you anyway. He loved you always.’
Paradise lost.
It was the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.
Gamache stepped forward and took charge of the room once again.
‘The seed for a murder is often planted years earlier,’ said Gamache. ‘Like the black walnut tree, it takes that long to grow and become toxic. That’s what happened here. I made a huge mistake at the very beginning. I assumed the murderer was a member of the family. It almost cost Bean’s life.’ He turned to the child. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You saved my life.’
‘How kind of you to see it that way. But I made a mistake. A massive one. I was looking in the wrong direction.’
‘What made you suspect Patenaude?’ asked Clara.
‘This was such an unusual case,’ said Gamache. ‘It wasn’t the who that got me, or even the why. It was the how. How had the murderer killed Julia Martin? How could that statue have fallen, and without scratching the pedestal? Remember the day of the unveiling you went for that boat ride?’ Gamache asked Peter. ‘We were on the dock and Bean came tearing down the lawn.’
‘Stung by a wasp,’ said Peter.
‘Not a wasp, a bee,’ said Gamache. ‘A honey bee.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Clara, ‘but how could it matter if it was a bee or a wasp?’
‘The fact it was a honey bee gave Patenaude away. It was the fatal clue, the one thing he had no control over. Let me explain.’
‘Please,’ said Mrs Finney.
‘The Manoir Bellechasse has its own hives, over there.’ He waved into the forest. ‘Chef Véronique planted a grove of honeysuckle and clover and put the hives in the middle. Honey bees can fly a great distance to get food, but if it’s close they don’t bother. She put the honeysuckle there so the bees wouldn’t leave the glade and disturb the guests. And for years it worked so well we didn’t even know they were there.’
‘Until Bean got stung,’ said Peter, perplexed.
‘Frankly I don’t know the difference between a bee sting and a wasp,’ Gamache admitted. ‘But Inspector Beauvoir became quite interested in honey bees.’ He didn’t say why. ‘According to him a wasp never leaves its stinger, neither do other bees. They can sting over and over. But a worker honey bee can sting only once. As it stings it leaves a barb and a tiny poison sac and that kills the bee. Bean’s stings still had a barb and a poison sac in them. Bean hadn’t been in the glade when stung, but was all the way across the property.’ He arched his arm over from the forest until his hand was pointing in the opposite direction. ‘Bean was stung while playing around the pedestal for the statue. What would a honey bee be doing there, so far from the honeysuckle grove? Especially since all the flowers there were dying, killed by the black walnut?’
‘What was the bee doing there?’ asked Madame Dubois, puzzled.
‘It was one of those tiny mysteries, an inconsistency that nags. A murder investigation is full of them. Some are important, some are just the messiness of everyday life. This turned out to be crucial. I finally got it yesterday at the Canada Day picnic.’
‘Really?’ said Clara, remembering the lunch, the whole village out on the green, the kids hyper on a diet of Coaticook ice cream, cream sodas and toasted marshmallows.
‘What did you see that we didn’t?’ asked Reine-Marie.
‘I saw bees and ants attracted to the puddles of Coke, and I saw spilled salt,’ he said.
‘So did I,’ said Peter, ‘but they didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Do you remember how the Coke spilled?’
‘The little boy shoved it across the table,’ said Peter, remembering.
‘He shoved it across the spilled salt,’ clarified Gamache. ‘Your mother did much the same thing when we spoke this morning.’
Peter turned astonished eyes on his mother.
‘I did no such thing.’
Gamache walked over to the sideboard and picked up a delicate china sugar bowl. ‘May I?’ he asked Madame Dubois, who nodded. He then took the linen tablecloth off one of the dining-room tables, revealing a wood surface underneath. It was antique pine and rough to the touch. Taking the top off the sugar bowl he turned it upside down.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ demanded Mrs Finney.
But she joined everyone else, now crowded round the table, with its pyramid of granular white sugar. Gamache smoothed it out, until it covered half the dark wood surface.
‘This morning as we talked on the terrasse you held a sugar bowl much like this one,’ the Chief Inspector said to Mrs Finney. ‘When you were agitated you moved it back and forth, across some sugar that had spilled.’
‘I was never agitated.’
‘My mistake,’ said Gamache. ‘Perhaps animated would be a better word.’
Mrs Finney looked unhappy with the choice.
‘The point is, the bowl glided across the sugar.’ He demonstrated, sweeping it gently back and forth. ‘That boy at lunch did someth
ing similar with his pop can, though not nearly as gracefully. He simply shoved the can across the spilled salt, like this.’
Gamache put the sugar bowl at one end of the wooden table and shoved it forward. It skidded across the top and stopped at the edge.
‘Now, watch what happens on the other half, the part of the table without sugar.’
He tried it again, but this time the china bowl barely moved, catching the rough wood and stopping short.
‘This was how the murder was done.’
Gamache looked into faces no wiser. In fact, considerably more perplexed.
‘I placed a call this afternoon to the Musée Rodin in Paris and spoke to an archivist there who’d heard about the technique. A worker at the Côte des Neiges cemetery had also heard of it, but they haven’t used it for years. It’s a trick for moving statues.’
‘Are we still talking about the Coke can?’ asked Peter. ‘Or the sugar bowl?’
‘We’re talking about the statue of your father. Pierre Patenaude worked one summer in a cemetery and he saw them placing statues. Some of the older workers still used this technique back then.’
Gamache took the sugar bowl and pushed it across the table again. This time it didn’t stop at the edge, but fell off the side. Beauvoir caught it just as it fell.
‘Voilà,’ said Gamache. ‘Murder. According to the Musée Rodin, when they placed the Burghers of Calais on top of the pedestal, they put a cushion of sugar on it first, so they could adjust the statue an inch here or there, turn it slightly. Just before the statue of your father arrived Pierre Patenaude did the same thing. He poured a layer of sugar over the base.’
‘That must’ve taken a lot of sugar,’ said Clara.
‘It did. He’d been hoarding it for days. That was why the Manoir unexpectedly ran out. He’d been stealing it. Remember how white the pedestal is?’
They nodded.
‘The maître d’ guessed a layer of white sugar wouldn’t be noticed, especially since he’d shooed everyone away, leaving just Madame Dubois and the crane operator, both of whom would be busy concentrating on other things.’