The Murder Stone (12 page)

Peter and Clara joined them and after a few minutes Thomas and Sandra appeared. The rest of the guests and staff were either sleeping through it, or too frightened to move.

For an hour or more the massive logs shuddered, the windows rattled, the copper roof pounded. But it held.

The storm moved on, to terrorize other creatures deeper in the forest. And the Gamaches returned to bed, throwing open their windows for the cool breeze the storm had left as an apology.

In the morning the power was restored, though the sun wasn’t. It was overcast and drizzly. The Gamaches rose late to the seductive aromas of Canadian back bacon, coffee and mud. The smell of the Quebec countryside after a heavy rain. They joined the others in the dining room, nodding hellos.

After ordering cafe au lait and waffles with wild blueberries and maple syrup, and visiting the buffet, they settled in for a lazy, rainy day. But just as their waffles arrived they heard a faraway sound, something so unexpected it took Gamache a moment to recognize it.

It was a scream.

Rising rapidly he strode across the dining room, while the others were still looking at each other. Pierre caught up with him and Reine-Marie followed, her eyes on her husband.

Gamache stopped in the hallway.

The shriek came again.

‘Upstairs,’ said Pierre.

Gamache nodded and started up, taking the stairs two at a time. At the landing they listened again.

‘What’s above us?’

‘The attic. There’s a stairway hidden behind a bookcase. Over here.’ They followed Pierre to a slight widening of the hall, where bookcases had been built in. One was swung open. Gamache peered up. There was an old staircase, dim and dusty.

‘Stay here.’

‘Armand?’ Reine-Marie began, but stopped when he held up his hand. He ran up the stairs, disappearing round a bend.

A bare bulb swished from side to side. Dust floated in what little light it threw and cobwebs hung from the rafters. It smelled of spiders. Gamache forced himself to stop and listen. There was nothing but the thumping of his heart. He stepped forward and a floorboard creaked. Behind him came another shriek. He turned and plunged into a darkened room. Bending low, ready to leap to either side, he stared and felt a pressure in his own throat.

Hundreds of eyes were staring at him. Then he saw a head. And another. Eyes peered at him from decapitated heads. And just as his racing brain registered that, something flew at him from a corner and knocked him almost off balance.

Bean sobbed and clung, digging small fingers into Gamache’s thigh. He prised them loose and held the child tight in his arms.

‘What is it? Is someone else up here? Bean, you must tell me.’

‘M-m-monsters,’ Bean whispered, all eyes and dread. ‘We have to get out. Pleeease.’

Gamache picked Bean up, but the child screamed as though scalded and writhed in his arms. He lowered Bean back to the ground and held the small hand and together they ran to the stairs and down. A crowd had gathered.

‘You again. What have you done to Bean this time?’ Mariana demanded, clawing at her child.

‘Bean found the heads?’ Madame Dubois asked. Gamache nodded. The old woman knelt down and put a wrinkled hand on the tiny heaving back.

‘I’m so sorry, Bean. It was my fault. Those are just decorations. Animal heads. Someone shot them years ago and had them stuffed. I can see how they’d be scary, but they can’t hurt you.’

‘Of course they can’t hurt you.’ Another withered hand landed on Bean’s back and the child stiffened. ‘Now, no tears, Bean. Madame Dubois has explained it all. What do you say?’

‘Merci, Madame Dubois,’ was heard, muffled.

‘No, Bean. You must apologize for trespassing. You must have known you shouldn’t go there. You’re old enough to know better.’

‘Non, ce n’est pas necessaire,’ Madame Dubois protested, but it was clear no one was going anywhere until the child apologized for being frightened half to death. And eventually Bean did.

All returned to normal and within minutes the Gamaches were in their wicker rocking chairs in the screen porch. There was something deeply peaceful about a rainy summer day. Outside the rain was soft and steady and refreshing after the terrible heat and humidity. The lake was dull and small squalls could be seen marking the surface. Reine-Marie did crossword puzzles as Gamache stared out of the screen porch and listened to the rain drum steadily on the roof and drip to the grass from the trees. In the distance he heard the call of the ‘Oh Canada’ bird, and a crow. Or was it a raven? Gamache wasn’t very good with bird calls, except loons. But this was like no bird he’d ever heard before.

He cocked his head to one side and listened more closely. Then he stood up.

It wasn’t a bird calling. It was a cry, a shriek.

‘It’s just Bean again,’ Sandra said, wandering into the porch.

‘Just wants attention,’ said Thomas, from the Great Room. Ignoring them Gamache walked into the hallway and ran into Bean.

‘That wasn’t you?’ asked Gamache, though he knew the answer. Bean stared.

Another scream, even more hysterical this time, reached them.

‘My God, what’s that?’ Pierre appeared at the door to the kitchen. He looked at Bean, then at Gamache.

‘It’s coming from outside,’ said Reine-Marie.

Gamache and the maitre d’ hurried into the rain, not stopping for protection.

‘I’ll go this way,’ yelled Pierre, motioning towards the staff cabins.

‘No, wait,’ said Gamache. Again he held his hand up and Pierre stopped dead. This man was used to giving orders and being obeyed, Pierre realized. They stood for what seemed an eternity, rain running down their faces and plastering their light clothes to their skins.

There was no more screaming. But after a moment Gamache heard something else.

‘This way.’

His long legs took him quickly down the fieldstone walk and round the puddled corner of the old lodge, Pierre splashing and slipping after him.

Colleen, the gardener, stood on the sodden lawn holding her hands to her streaming face. She was whimpering and he thought she’d been stung in the face by wasps, but as he got closer he saw her eyes. Staring and horrified.

Following her gaze he saw it too. Something he should have noticed as soon as he’d turned the corner of the Manoir.

The statue of Charles Morrow had taken that hesitant step. Somehow the huge stone man had left his plinth and toppled over. He now lay deeply imbedded in the soft and saturated ground but not as deeply as he might have been, for something had broken his fall. Beneath him, barely visible, lay his daughter Julia.

TEN

The maitre d’ stopped dead.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he exhaled.

Gamache looked at Colleen, as petrified surely as Charles Morrow. Her hands covered her face and her bulging blue eyes stared out from between rain-soaked fingers.

‘Come away,’ Gamache said gently but firmly, standing in front of her to block the sight.

Her lips moved but he couldn’t make out the words. He leaned closer.

‘Help.’

‘It’s all right, we’re here,’ he said and caught Pierre’s eye.

‘Colleen.’ The maitre d’ laid a hand on her arm. Her eyes flickered and refocused.

‘Help. We need to help her.’

‘We will,’ Gamache said reassuringly. Together, he and the maitre d’ guided her through the rain to the back door into the kitchen.

‘Take her inside,’ Gamache instructed Pierre. ‘Ask Chef Veronique to make her hot sugared tea. In fact, ask her to make a few pots. I think we’re going to need them. Earl Grey.’

‘Je comprends,’ said Pierre. ‘What do I say?’

Gamache hesitated. ‘Tell them that there’s been a death, but don’t tell them who. Keep everyone inside. Can you round up the staff?’

‘Easily. On a day like today most are inside the main lodge doing chores.’

‘Good. Keep them there. And call the police.’

‘D’accord. The family?’

‘I’ll tell them.’

The door swung closed and Armand Gamache stood alone in the pelting rain. Then he made his way back to Julia Martin. Kneeling down he reached out and touched her. She was cold and hard. Her mouth and eyes were wide open, surprised. He half expected her to blink as the raindrops fell onto her open eyes. He blinked a few times in sympathy then his gaze continued down her body. Her legs were collapsed and invisible under the statue, but her arms were flung open as though to embrace her father.

Gamache stood for a long minute, rain dripping from his nose and chin and hands and running inside his collar. He stared at the surprised face of Julia Martin, and thought of the face of Charles Morrow, filled with sorrow. Then he turned slightly and stared finally at the white cube that had reminded him of a grave marker when first he’d seen it. How had this massive statue fallen?

Reine-Marie and Bean were sitting in the hallway of the Manoir playing I Spy when he returned. One look at his face told her all she needed to know, for now.

‘Bean, why don’t you get your book and we can read together.’

‘OK.’ The child left but not before giving Gamache an appraising look. After Bean ran upstairs Gamache took his wife into the library and told her everything as he headed for the phone.

‘But how?’ she asked, immediately grasping the question.

‘I don’t know, yet. Oui, bonjour. Jean Guy?’

‘You’re not calling for advice again, are you, Chief? Eventually you’re going to have to figure things out on your own.’

‘Harrowing as that thought is, I do need your help.’

Jean Guy Beauvoir recognized this wasn’t a social call from his long-time boss. His voice sharpened and Gamache could almost hear his chair fall back to the ground as his feet whisked off the desk.

‘What is it?’

Gamache succinctly passed on the details.

‘At the Manoir Bellechasse? Mais, c’est incroyable. That’s the top auberge in Quebec.’

It always amazed Gamache that people, even professionals, thought Frette sheets and a superb wine list guarded against death.

‘Was she murdered?’

And there was the other question. The two questions that had gotten up from the crime site and started to shadow Armand Gamache as soon as he’d seen Julia Martin’s body: how had the statue tumbled down, and was it murder?

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’ll soon find out. I’m on my way.’

Gamache looked at his watch. Ten to eleven. Beauvoir and the rest of the team should arrive from Montreal by twelve thirty. The Manoir Bellechasse was buried south of Montreal, in an area known as the Eastern Townships, close to the American border. So close that some of the mountains he’d contemplated that misty morning were in Vermont.

‘Armand? I think I hear a car.’

That would be the local Surete, he thought, grateful for the maitre d’s help.

‘Merci.‘ He smiled at Reine-Marie and made for the hallway, but she stopped him.

‘What about the family?’

She looked worried and for good reason. The thought that Mrs Finney would find out about her daughter from a waiter, or, worse, by perhaps wandering outside, was terrible.

‘I’ll just give the officers their instructions and go right in.’

‘I’ll go in and make sure they’re all right.’

He watched her go, her step resolute, walking into a room filled with people whose lives were about to change forever. She could have sat quietly in the library and no one would have faulted her, but instead Reine-Marie Gamache chose to sit in a room soon to be overwhelmed with grief. Not many would make that choice.

Walking quickly outside he introduced himself to the officers, who were surprised to meet this renowned Surete investigator in the middle of the woods. He gave them directions, then motioning to one of them to follow he went inside to tell the Morrows.

‘Something has happened. I have bad news.’

Armand Gamache knew it was never a kindness to prolong bad news.

But he knew something else.

If it was murder, someone in this room almost certainly did it. He never let that overwhelm his compassion, but neither did he let his compassion blind him. He watched closely as he spoke.

‘Madame.’ He turned to Mrs Finney, sitting composed in a wing chair, that day’s Montreal Gazette folded on her lap. He saw her stiffen. Her eyes darted quickly about the room. He could read her nimble mind. Who was there, and who was missing?

‘There’s been a death.’ He said it quietly, clearly. He was under no illusions about what his words would do to this woman. They were statue words, heavy and crushing.

‘Julia,’ she exhaled the name. The missing child. The one not there.

‘Yes.’

Her lips parted and her eyes searched his, looking for some escape, some back door, some hint this might not be true. But he didn’t blink. His brown eyes were steady, calm and certain.

‘What?’

Thomas Morrow was on his feet. The word wasn’t yelled. It was expelled across the room at him.

What. Soon someone would ask how and when and where. And finally the key question. Why.

‘Julia?’ Peter Morrow asked, standing. Beside him Clara had taken his hand. ‘Dead?’

‘I have to go to her.’ Mrs Finney stood, the Gazette slipping to the floor, unattended. It was the equivalent of a scream. Mr Finney rose unsteadily to his full height. He reached for her hand then pulled back.

‘Irene,’ he said. Again he reached out, and Gamache willed with all his might that Bert Finney could go the distance. But once again the old twig hand stopped short and finally fell to the side of his grey slacks.

‘How do you know?’ snapped Mariana, also on her feet now. ‘You’re not a doctor, are you? Maybe she’s not dead.’

She approached Gamache, her face red and her fists clenched.

‘Mariana.’ The voice was still commanding and it stopped the charging woman in her tracks.

‘But Mommy—’

‘He’s telling the truth.’ Mrs Finney turned back to the large, certain man in front of her. ‘What happened?’

‘How could she be dead?’ Peter asked.

The shock was lifting, Gamache could see. They were beginning to realize a woman in her late fifties, apparently healthy, doesn’t normally just die.

‘An aneurysm?’ asked Mariana.