The Murder Stone (28 page)

She didn’t budge.

He leaned harder then turned his back and shoved, feeling sweat break out on his body. Still nothing. Eventually he stopped and wiping his brow with his handkerchief he turned back to Pelletier.

‘Is it fixed in place? A rod down the centre into the pedestal?’

‘No. It’s just heavy. Far heavier than it looks. Marble is. And petrified wood is heavier still.’

Gamache stared at the statue, about a quarter the size and weight of Charles Morrow.

‘If one person didn’t move the statue of Charles Morrow, could several?’

‘At a guess I’d say you’d need twenty football players.’

The Morrows weren’t that.

‘There’s one other thing,’ said Gamache as they walked back to the car. ‘The marble pedestal wasn’t marked.’

Pelletier stopped. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I mean there were no marks on it,’ said Gamache, watching the man’s face. He looked genuinely upset for the first time. ‘It was perfect, polished even.’

‘The sides, you mean.’

‘No, I mean the top. Where Charles Morrow stood.’

‘But that’s not possible. Just placing the statue on top of the marble would mark it.’ He was about to suggest Gamache hadn’t looked closely enough, but decided this commanding, quiet man would have. Instead he shook his head.

‘So how could the statue fall?’ Beauvoir repeated.

Pelletier tilted his palms towards the blue sky.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Beauvoir, suddenly annoyed. ‘God murdered Julia Martin?’

‘He is a serial killer,’ said Pelletier, without humour. After a moment’s thought he spoke again. ‘When I heard about what happened I asked myself the same question. The only way I know to get a statue that size off its pedestal is with ropes and a winch. Even in the time of Rodin that’s how they did it. Are you sure that wasn’t used to bring him down?’

He looked at Gamache who shook his head. Pelletier nodded.

‘That leaves us with God.’

As they got in the car Beauvoir whispered to Gamache, ‘You make the arrest.’

Pelletier walked back to the barn and Beauvoir put the car in gear.

‘Wait, wait.’

They looked in their rearview mirror. The sculptor was running after them waving a piece of paper.

‘I found this.’ He shoved it through the window at Gamache. ‘It was pinned to my board. I’d forgotten I’d put it there.’

Gamache and Beauvoir stared at the yellow, crinkled piece of paper. On it was a simple pencil drawing of a bird, without feet.

It was signed Peter Morrow.

TWENTY-TWO

Glad I found you.’ Mariana stumbled to catch up with her brother. ‘I wanted to talk. It wasn’t me, you know, who told Mother what you said to that cop. It was Sandra.’

Peter looked at her. She’d always been a crybaby, the tattle-tale.

‘Fucking Sandra,’ said Mariana, falling into step beside him. ‘Always going behind people’s backs. And Thomas, what a piece of work he’s turned into. Snot. What’re we going to do?’ She stopped and whispered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, someone killed Julia. It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was you. That leaves one of them. If they’d kill Julia, they’ll kill us.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not being.’ She sounded petulant. ‘I’m tired of all this crap. Tired of these reunions. Each is worse than the last, and this is the worst yet.’

‘Let’s hope.’

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said, yanking a flower from its bush. ‘No power on earth’ll get me back to one of these. I’m tired of it all. All this pretending, yes Mother, no Mother, can I get you anything Mother? Who cares what the old bitch thinks anyway? She’s probably disinherited us long ago. That Finney got her to do it, Thomas thinks. So why’re we even bothering?’

‘Because she’s our mother?’

Mariana gave him a look and continued to shred the flower.

‘I’d have thought,’ said Peter, ‘having a child of your own would make you more sympathetic to your own mother.’

‘It has. It’s shown me just how horrible our home life was.’

‘Well, she was better than Father.’

‘You think?’ asked Mariana. ‘At least he listened to us.’

‘Right. And did fuck all. He knew what we wanted and ignored us. Remember that year we all asked for new skis for Christmas? He gave us mittens. He could’ve bought the ski hill and he gave us mittens. Why would he do that?’

Mariana nodded. She remembered. ‘But at least Dad smelled the milk before he gave it to us. Mom never did.’

He smelled the milk and felt the bathwater, he blew on their hot food. They all thought it was disgusting. But a strange new thought started to form in a part of her brain that hadn’t had a new thought in decades.

‘Did you know, when I left home I found a note in my suitcase from him?’ she said, another old memory staggering back.

Peter looked at her, amazed, and afraid. Afraid he was about to lose the one tiny scrap that was his alone. The cipher, the puzzle. The special code from his father.

Never use the first stall in a public washroom.

‘Is Bean a boy or a girl?’ he asked, knowing that would take Mariana off course.

She hesitated then went after the bait. ‘Why should I tell you? Besides, you’ll tell Mother.’

Her mother had stopped harping at Mariana about it years ago. Now there was silence, as though she no longer cared if she had a grandson or a granddaughter. But Mariana knew her mother, and she knew not knowing was killing her. If only it would hurry up.

‘Of course I won’t tell Mother. Come on, tell me.’

Mariana sure as hell knew enough not to tell Peter. Spot.

Peter watched Mariana think. Frankly, he didn’t care whether Bean was animal, vegetable or mineral. He just wanted his sister to shut up, to not steal the only thing his father had given him alone.

But Peter knew it was too late. Knew that Father must have written the same note to all his children, and once again Peter felt a fool. For forty years he’d lugged that sentence around, thinking he was special. Secretly selected by their father because he loved and trusted Peter the most. Never use the first stall in a public washroom. All the magic had gone from it now. It sounded just stupid. Well, he could finally let it go.

He turned and stomped off in search of Clara.

‘Peter,’ his sister called after him. He turned back reluctantly. ‘You sat in some jam,’ she said, gesturing.

He walked away.

She watched him go, remembering the note her father had left. The note she’d memorized and was about to tell Peter about, as a peace offering. But he’d refused it, as he refused all offers of help.

You can’t get milk from a hardware store.

It was a funny sort of thing for a father to tell a daughter. It seemed obvious. And then with all the superstores you could find milk in one aisle and hammers in the next. But by then she’d broken the code, and knew what her father had been trying to tell her. And what she’d just tried to tell Peter.

You can’t get milk from a hardware store.

So stop asking for something that can’t be given. And look for what is offered. She saw the fork of food, and the thin lips that rarely smiled at them, blowing on it.

Agent Lacoste walked along the shore of Lac Massawippi. It was hot, and made hotter by the sun shimmering off the water. She glanced around. Nobody. She imagined stripping off her light summer dress, kicking away her sandals, laying the notebook and pen on the grass, and diving in. She imagined how the refreshing water would feel as her perspiring body splashed into it.

Thinking about it actually made it worse, so she contented herself with taking her sandals off and walking through the shallows, feeling the cool water on her feet.

Then she spotted Clara Morrow sitting on a rock jutting into the lake. Agent Lacoste stopped and watched. Clara Morrow’s hair was groomed under the sensible, floppy sun hat. Her shorts and shirt were neat, her face without smears or smudges or pastry. She was impeccable. Lacoste barely recognized her.

Lacoste got out of the water, wiped her feet on the grass and slipped her sandals back on. As she cleared her throat Clara started and looked over.

‘Bonjour.‘ Clara waved and smiled. ‘Come on over.’ She patted the flat stone beside her and Isabelle Lacoste picked her way along the shore and out onto the rocks. The stone was warm on her bottom.

‘Sorry to interrupt.’

‘Never. I was just creating my next work.’

Lacoste looked around for the sketch pad. Nothing. Not even a pencil.

‘Really? It looked as though—’ She stopped herself, but not quite in time.

Clara laughed. ‘As though I was doing nothing? It’s all right, that’s what most people think. It’s a shame that creativity and sloth look exactly the same.’

‘Are you going to paint this?’ Lacoste indicated their surroundings.

‘I don’t think so. I was thinking about painting Mrs Morrow … Finney. Whatever.’ Clara laughed. ‘Maybe that’ll become my specialty. Embittered women. First Ruth and now Peter’s mother.’

But she always painted groups of three. Who would be the last bitter old woman? She hoped it wasn’t herself, but at times Clara could feel herself slipping in that direction. Was that why she was fascinated by them? Maybe she knew that beneath her civilized and supportive exterior there lived a shrivelled, judgemental, negative old thing, waiting.

‘Well, you had a series called the Warrior Uterus,’ said Lacoste. ‘About young women. Maybe this is the other end, so to speak.’

‘I can call it the Hysterectomies,’ said Clara. She also had the series on the Three Graces. Faith, Hope and Charity. What would this series be called? Pride, Despair and Greed? The broken-hearted.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’ asked Agent Lacoste.

‘Fire away.’

‘When you heard that Julia Martin had been killed, what did you think?’

‘I was stunned, like everybody. I thought it was an accident. Still do, in some ways. I just can’t figure out how that statue could’ve fallen.’

‘Neither can we,’ admitted Lacoste. ‘The night she died there was a scene in the library.’

‘Sure was.’

‘Do you think that had anything to do with her death?’

‘It does seem a coincidence,’ Clara admitted reluctantly. ‘I’ve watched the Morrows for twenty-five years. The angrier they get the quieter they get. They haven’t really spoken in decades.’

Lacoste could believe it.

‘But Julia, she was an outlier. Different. No, that’s not right, not really different, but distant. She’d been away. I always think the Morrows have like a layer of polyethylene. They’re dipped in it as kids, like Achilles. To protect them. Make them able to withstand high pressures and being dropped on their heads. And once a year they need to be close to Mother to kinda top it up. Get all buffed and polished and hardened again. But Julia had been away so long her coating had worn thin. It took a few days, but eventually she cracked. Exploded really. And said some things she didn’t mean.’

‘The Chief Inspector has the impression she meant every word.’

Clara was surprised, and thought about that.

‘She might have meant it, but that didn’t make what she said true.’

Lacoste nodded and consulted her notes. This was the delicate part.

‘She accused your husband of being the worst. Of being,’ she read from her notes, ‘cruel, greedy and empty.’

Clara began to speak but Lacoste stopped her with a gesture. ‘There’s more. She said he’d destroy anything to get what he wanted.’ Lacoste looked up. ‘It doesn’t sound like the Peter Morrow we know. What did she mean?’

‘She was just trying to hurt him, that’s all.’

‘Did she?’

‘Peter wasn’t very close to her. I don’t think he cared much about her opinion.’

‘Is that possible?’ Lacoste asked. ‘I know we say we don’t care, but they’re family. Don’t you think at some level he cared?’

‘Enough to kill, you mean?’

Lacoste said nothing.

‘The Morrows are used to wounding each other. Normally they do it more subtly. The stone in the snowball, the sting in the tail. You don’t see it coming. You think you’re safe.’

‘Julia came home at a time of stress, to be with her family,’ said Lacoste. ‘She must’ve thought she was safe. But one of them got her.’

Clara said nothing.

‘Who do you think did it?’ Lacoste asked.

‘Not Peter,’ Clara said. Lacoste stared at her, then nodded and closed her book.

‘Julia Martin said one other thing,’ said Lacoste, getting up. ‘She said she’d finally figured out their father’s secret. What did she mean by that?’

Clara shrugged. ‘I asked Peter the same thing. He thinks she was just raving by then, trying to hurt. People do, you know. Like Mrs Morrow this morning and the terrible lies about the Chief Inspector.’

‘She was talking about his father, not him.’

‘But the hurt was directed at him.’

‘Perhaps, but the Chief Inspector isn’t easily hurt. Besides, you’re mistaken. Everything she said about Honore Gamache was true. He was a coward.’

Gamache and Beauvoir arrived back at the Manoir Bellechasse just as the call came from the Nanaimo Correctional Centre in British Columbia.

‘You’ll have to take it in there,’ said Madame Dubois, pointing to the tiny office. Beauvoir thanked her and sat down behind the desk which seemed to be never used, the proprietor obviously preferring to be in the centre of activity.

‘Monsieur David Martin?’

‘Oui.‘

‘I’m calling about the death of your ex-wife.’

‘Wife. We weren’t divorced yet. Just separated.’

Beauvoir thought he must have fitted right in with the Morrows. Appropriate that he would end up in a corrections facility.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

He said it by rote, but the man’s response surprised him.

‘Thank you. I still can’t believe she’s gone.’ And he sounded genuinely sad. The first one so far. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘I need to know all about her. How you met, when you met, how well you know the family. Anything at all.’

‘I didn’t know the Morrows all that well. I saw them when I came back to Montreal, but even those visits tapered out. I know Julia was very upset by what happened.’