The Murder Stone (15 page)

‘She was killed last night, just before the storm. Did any of you see Madame Martin after the coffee service? That would’ve been about ten thirty.’

There was a movement off to his left. He glanced over and saw Colleen and Madame Dubois sitting at the table. The young waiter Elliot was standing beside them and behind him was someone else. Given her age and costume it could only be the head chef, the famous Chef Veronique.

One of them had moved. Not a crime, but while everyone else was too stunned to budge, one of them wasn’t. Who?

‘You’ll all be interviewed, of course, and I want to make something clear. You need to be honest. If you saw something, anything, you must tell us.’

The silence continued.

‘Every day I look for murderers, and most of the time we find them. It’s what we do, my team and I. It’s our job. Your job is to tell us everything you know, even if you think it’s not important.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Elliot stepped forward.

‘Elliot,’ the maitre d’ warned, also coming forward, but Gamache stopped him with a raised hand and turned to the young man.

‘Our job is to wait tables and make beds and serve drinks. To smile at people who insult us, who treat us like furniture. Our job isn’t to help you find a murderer, and I sure as hell am not being paid enough to keep waiting on these people. I mean,’ he appealed to the rest of the staff, ‘one of them killed her. Do you want to stay and serve them? Did you ever?’

‘Elliot,’ said the maitre d’ again, ‘that’s enough. I know you’re upset, son, we all are—’

‘Don’t call me son.’ Elliot rounded on him. ‘You’re pathetic. These people won’t thank you. They never do. They don’t even know who you are. They’ve been coming here for years and has any of them even asked your last name? Do you think if you left and someone else took over they’d even notice? You’re nothing to them. And now you’d risk your life to keep feeding them cucumber sandwiches? And you’d have us do the same?’

His face was bright red as though burned.

‘It’s our job,’ repeated the maitre d’.

‘Ours is but to do and die, is that it?’ Elliot offered a mocking salute.

‘Pierre Patenaude’s a remarkable man,’ Chef Veronique said, speaking to Elliot but heard by all. ‘You’d do well to learn from him, Elliot. And the first lesson could be knowing who’s on your side. And who isn’t.’

‘You’re right,’ said the maitre d’ to Elliot. ‘I will stay to feed them cucumber sandwiches or whatever they want and Chef Veronique makes. And I do it happily. Sometimes people are rude and insensitive and insulting. That’s their problem, not mine. Everyone who comes here is treated with respect. Not because they’ve earned it, but because it’s our job. And I do my job well. They’re our guests, true. But they’re not our superiors. One more outburst like that and you won’t have to worry about staying on.’ He turned to the rest of the room. ‘If any of you want to leave I’ll understand. I for one am staying.’

‘So am I,’ said Chef Veronique.

Gamache noticed Colleen’s furtive glances at Elliot, then over to the maitre d’.

‘They’re welcome to quit, Patron,’ said Gamache, who’d found this exchange interesting, ‘but they’re not welcome to leave. You need to stay at the Manoir at least for the next few days.’ He let this sink in then smiled reassuringly. ‘If you have to stay, you might as well be paid.’

There were nods of agreement. Chef Veronique moved to the cutting board and handed bunches of herbs to a couple of the kitchen staff and soon the air was ripe with the scent of rosemary. A small murmur of conversation picked up. A few of the guys shoved Elliot playfully. But the young man wasn’t ready to be jollied out of his rage.

Chief Inspector Gamache left the kitchen wondering about the scene he’d witnessed. He knew that behind rage was fear. That young waiter was very afraid, of something.

‘So it was murder, Armand,’ said Reine-Marie, shaking her head in disbelief. They were alone in the library and he’d just brought her up to speed. ‘But how could someone push that statue over with their bare hands?’

‘The family wants to know the same thing,’ said Beauvoir, entering the room with Lacoste. ‘I just told them we think it’s murder.’

‘And?’ Gamache asked.

‘You know what it’s like. One moment they believe it, the next they don’t,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Can’t say I blame them. I’ve told them they can leave the Great Room, but not the grounds. And of course the crime site itself is out of bounds. Peter and Clara Morrow have asked to see you,’ he said to the Chief Inspector.

‘Good. I want to speak to them as well. Tell me what you know.’

Agent Lacoste sat in the wing chair across from Reine-Marie while the two men sat together on the leather sofa, heads almost touching as Beauvoir bent over his notebook and Gamache bent over him. They looked, Reine-Marie thought, a bit like Russian matrioshka dolls, nesting. Large powerful Armand hovering almost protectively over smaller, younger Beauvoir.

She’d spoken to their son Daniel while Armand had been supervising the crime site. He was anxious to speak to his father about the name they’d chosen for their child. He knew, as she did, what Honore meant to his father. And while he’d never hurt his father, he was determined to use that name. But how did Armand feel about another Honore Gamache? And his own grandson at that?

‘How did the Morrows account for themselves last night?’ asked Gamache.

Beauvoir consulted his notebook. ‘The family was together all through dinner, sharing a table. After dinner they split up. Peter and Clara came in here and had drinks. They said you were with them.’

‘Most of the time,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘We were on the terrasse. But we could see them through the window.’

Beauvoir nodded. He liked clarity.

‘Monsieur and Madame Finney stayed at the table for their coffee.’ Isabelle Lacoste picked up the story. ‘Thomas and Sandra Morrow went into the Great Room. Thomas played the piano and Mariana took her child upstairs.’

‘Bean,’ said Reine-Marie.

‘Been?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Been what?’

‘Bean Morrow, I suppose.’

They looked at each other, confused, then Reine-Marie smiled.

‘Bean is the child’s name,’ she explained, spelling it for him.

‘As in coffee?’ he asked.

‘If you wish,’ said Reine-Marie.

He didn’t. What he wished was that this would all go away. Jean Guy Beauvoir already suspected most Anglos were nuts. And now a Bean to prove it. Who called their child after a legume?

‘And Julia?’ asked Gamache. ‘What did they say about her movements last night?’

‘Thomas and Sandra Morrow say she went into the garden for a walk,’ said Lacoste.

‘She came into the library through the screen door from the garden,’ Reine-Marie remembered. ‘We were all in here by then. Thomas and Sandra Morrow had joined us. So had Mariana. The Finneys had just gone to bed.’

‘Did they go to bed before or after Julia appeared?’ Gamache asked his wife.

They stared at each other, then each shook their head.

‘Can’t remember,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Movements just before a murder always matter.’

‘But you can’t really think they killed Julia?’ Reine-Marie asked, then regretted questioning her husband in front of his staff. But he didn’t seem to care.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ he said, and she knew that was true.

‘What was your impression of Julia Martin, sir?’ Lacoste asked.

‘She was elegant, sophisticated, well educated. She was self-deprecating and charming and she knew it. Is that fair?’ He turned to his wife, who nodded. ‘She was very polite. It made a contrast to the rest of her family. Almost too polite. She was very nice, kind, and I thought that was the impression she wanted to make.’

‘Don’t most people?’ asked Lacoste.

‘Most people want to make a good impression, it’s true,’ said Gamache. ‘We’re taught to be polite. But with Julia Martin it seemed more than a desire. It seemed a need.’

‘That was my impression too,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘But there was something manipulative about her, I felt. She told you that story, about her first job.’

Gamache told Beauvoir and Lacoste about Julia’s first job and her mother’s reaction.

‘What a terrible thing to say to a daughter,’ said Lacoste. ‘Making her feel she has no role in life, except to be docile and grateful.’

‘It was a terrible thing to say,’ agreed Reine-Marie. ‘Crippling, if you let it. But why is she still telling it forty years later?’

‘Why do you think?’ Gamache asked.

‘Well, I find it interesting she told you, and not us. But then I’m not a man.’

‘Now that’s an interesting thing to say,’ said Gamache. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think like many women she behaved differently around men. And men seem hard wired to be sympathetic to a needy woman, even you. Julia was vulnerable. But she played on those things, I think. Probably had her whole life. And I think her tragedy wasn’t that she had low self-esteem, though I think she had. Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.’

‘From what I gather, she was about to find out,’ said Agent Lacoste, understanding exactly what Reine-Marie Gamache was talking about. ‘She’d left her husband and was starting a new life.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Beauvoir. ‘With millions of dollars. Not exactly a test of self-sufficiency. She is the Julia Martin who was married to that insurance man, the guy in a pen out west?’

‘She is,’ said Gamache.

‘And what was the first thing she did?’ asked Reine-Marie. ‘She came here. To her family. Once again she wanted others to fix her.’

‘Was it that?’ asked Gamache, almost to himself. ‘Or was she looking for something else from them?’

‘Like what?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I was taken in by her, but I have a feeling there was something else behind her being here. She must have known her family weren’t the supportive kind. I’m not sure she came here for that.’

‘Revenge?’ asked Reine-Marie. ‘Remember last night?’

She told Inspector Beauvior and Agent Lacoste about the scene between Julia and her siblings.

‘So you think she came here to unload?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Having told the criminal husband to fuck off it was time to tell Mother and the rest?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Reine-Marie. ‘The problem was her outburst seemed so unplanned, so unexpected.’

‘I wonder if it was,’ said Gamache. He hadn’t thought of it before but now he wondered. ‘Is it possible one of them provoked that outburst? After all, who knows you better than your family?’

‘What were you talking about?’ asked Lacoste.

‘Toilets,’ said Gamache. ‘Toilets?’ asked Beauvoir. He’d been feeling a little intimidated by the surroundings but if that’s what rich people and senior Surete officers on vacation talk about, hell, he’d fit right in.

The door opened and Clementine Dubois waddled in, followed by the maitre d’ and a couple of the staff, carrying trays.

‘I thought you could use some refreshment,’ the proprietor said. ‘I’ve taken food and drinks in to the family as well.’

‘How are they?’ asked Gamache.

‘Pretty upset. They’re demanding to see you.’

Gamache looked down at a tray of frothy cold soups with delicate mint leaves and curled lemon rind floating on the top. Another tray held platters of open-faced sandwiches, roast beef, smoked salmon, tomato and Brie. The final tray held bottles of ginger beer, spruce beer, ginger ale, beer and a bucket with a light white wine on ice.

‘Merci.‘ He accepted a ginger beer and turned to the maitre d’. ‘When did the storm start last night? Do you know?’

‘Well, I’d done my last tour of the place and had just gone to bed. I was woken by a huge explosion, practically blew me out of bed. I looked over to my clock radio and it said one something. Then the power went out.’

‘Did you see anyone before you went to bed?’ asked Beauvoir, who’d taken a soup and a roast beef sandwich and was about to plop into a large leather wing chair.

The maitre d’ shook his head. ‘No one was up.’

Gamache knew that wasn’t true. Someone was up.

‘I was woken by the storm too,’ said Madame Dubois. ‘I got up to make sure everything was properly shut and to secure the shutters. Pierre and a couple of the staff were already running around. You two were there. You helped.’

‘A little. Were all the windows and doors shut?’

‘They were shut before I went to bed,’ said Pierre. ‘I check on my last rounds.’

‘But in the storm some blew open.’ Gamache remembered the banging. ‘Were they locked?’

‘No,’ Madame Dubois admitted. ‘We never lock. Pierre’s been trying to convince me for a few years that we should, but I’m a little hesitant.’

‘Pig-headed,’ said the maitre d’.

‘Perhaps a little. But we’ve never had a problem and we’re in the middle of nowhere. Who’s going to break in? A bear?’

‘It’s a different world,’ said Pierre.

‘Today I believe you.’

‘It wouldn’t have changed anything,’ Gamache said. ‘Julia Martin would still be dead no matter how many doors were locked.’

‘Because whoever did this was already inside,’ said Madame Dubois. ‘What happened here last night isn’t allowed.’

It was such an extraordinary thing to say it actually stopped the ravenous Beauvoir from taking another bite of his roast beef on baguette.

‘You have a rule against murder?’ he asked.

‘I do. When my husband and I bought the Bellechasse we made a deal with the forest. Any death that wasn’t natural wasn’t allowed. Mice are caught alive and released. Birds are fed in the winter and even the squirrels and chipmunks are welcome. There’s no hunting, not even fishing. The pact we made was that everything that stepped foot on this land would be safe.’

‘An extravagant promise,’ said Gamache.

‘Perhaps.’ She managed a small smile. ‘But we meant it. Nothing would deliberately die at our hands, or the hands of anyone living here. We have an attic filled with reminders of what happens when creatures turn against each other. It scared that poor child half to death and well it should scare us all. But we’ve grown used to it, we tolerate the taking of lives. But it’s not allowed here. You must find out who did this. Because I know one thing for sure. If a person would kill once, they’d kill again.’