The Murder Stone (35 page)

‘He didn’t say that. We were talking about family dynamics and whether the children would continue to see each other after you’re gone. He said it was possible they’d grow even closer.’

‘Really? Why’s that?’

She snapped it out, but Gamache thought he detected genuine curiosity.

‘Because now they come to see you, and only you. They see each other as competition. But when you go—’

‘Die, Chief Inspector. Don’t you mean die?’

‘When you die, they’ll have to find a reason to see each other, or not. The family will either disappear or they’ll grow even closer. That’s what Peter meant.’

‘Julia was the best of them, you know.’ She was gliding the bowl back and forth across the spilled sugar as she spoke, not looking at him. ‘Kind and gentle. She asked for almost nothing. And she was always such a lady. Her father and I tried to teach all of them that, to be little ladies and gentlemen. But only Julia understood. Beautiful manners.’

‘I noticed that too. My father always said a gentleman puts others at ease.’

‘Funny thing for a man who hurt so many people to say. He sure put himself at ease, letting others do the fighting. How does it feel to have a father so vilified?’

Gamache held her gaze then stared at the lawn sloping to the golden lake, and the dock. And the ugly old man doing his sums. The man who’d known his father. He longed to ask Finney about him. Gamache had been eleven when the police car had pulled up. He’d been staring out of the window, his soft cheek on the prickly back of the sofa. Waiting for his parents. Every other time they’d come home. But they were late.

He’d seen the car and known it wasn’t theirs. Was it a slight difference in the sound? The tilt of the headlights? Or did something else tell him this wasn’t them? He’d watched the Montreal police get out, put their hats on, pause, then start up the walk.

All very slowly.

His grandmother had also seen the car arrive, the headlights gleaming through the window, and had gone to the door to greet his parents.

Slowly, slowly he saw her walk, her hand outstretched for the doorknob. He tried to move, to say something, to stop her. But while the world had slowed, he had stopped.

He simply stared, his mouth open.

And then the knock. Not a sharp rap but something more ominous. It was almost a scratch, a gentle rub. He saw his grandmother’s expression change in the instant before she opened the door. Surely his parents wouldn’t knock? He’d run to her then, to stop her from letting this thing into the house. But there was no stopping it.

Before the officer had even spoken she’d shoved Armand’s face into her dress, so that to this day when he smelled mothballs it made him gag. And he felt her large, strong hand on his back still, as though to keep him from falling.

All his childhood, all his teen years and into his twenties Armand Gamache had wondered why God had taken them both. Couldn’t He have left one, for him? It wasn’t a demand on his part or an accusation against a clumsy and thoughtless God, more of a puzzle.

But he’d found his answer when he’d found Reine-Marie, had loved and married her and loved her more each day. He knew then how kind God had been not to take one and leave the other. Even for him.

His eyes looked away from the lake and returned to the elderly woman in front of him, who’d just spewed her hurt all over him.

He looked at her with kindness. Not because he knew it would confuse or anger her further, but because he knew he’d had time to absorb his loss. And hers was fresh.

Grief was dagger shaped and sharp and pointed inwards. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and disappointment, of privilege and pride. And the dagger she’d fashioned was taking a brief break from slashing her insides, and was now pointed outward. At Armand Gamache.

‘I loved my father then and I love him now. It’s pretty simple,’ he said.

‘He doesn’t deserve it. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth, and I have to speak it. The truth will set you free.’ She seemed almost sorry.

‘I believe it,’ he said. ‘But I also believe it’s not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.’

Now she bristled.

‘I’m not the one who needs freeing, Mr Gamache. You refuse to see your father clearly. You’re living with a lie. I knew him. He was a coward and a traitor. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can get on with your life. What he did was despicable. He doesn’t deserve your love.’

‘We all deserve love. And at times pardon.’

‘Pardon? Do you mean mercy, forgiveness?’ She made it sound like an oath, a curse. ‘I’ll never forgive the man who killed Julia. And if he’s ever pardoned …’ Her trembling hands released their grip on the sugar bowl. After a moment her voice steadied. ‘We’d already lost so much time, you see. Stolen by David Martin. He didn’t even want to come home to be married. Insisted they got married in Vancouver. And he kept her there.’

‘Against her will?’

She hesitated. ‘He kept her away. He hated us, especially Charles.’

‘Why?’

‘Charles was too smart for him, knew what sort of man David was. Not a gentleman.’ She almost smiled. ‘He always had a scheme. Always looking for the angle, the fast deal. Julia and Charles had had a falling-out. Perhaps you’ve heard?’

Her head lifted and her cunning blue eyes studied him. He nodded.

‘Then you know how sensitive Julia was. Over-sensitive then. She left and met David Martin right away. When Martin heard her father was the financier Charles Morrow, well, he couldn’t push for a reconciliation fast enough. Charles was thrilled at first, but then it became clear Martin only wanted him to invest in one of his schemes. Charles turned him down flat.’

‘Both the deal and the reconciliation failed?’

‘No, the deal went through but with other more gullible investors. But eventually he lost everything and had to start again. He never tired of badmouthing us to Julia. Turned her against us completely, especially her father.’

‘But it didn’t start with David Martin, it started long before that. With a slur written on the men’s room wall of the Ritz.’

‘You know about that, do you? Well, it was a lie. Filthy. With one purpose. To hurt Charles and drive a wedge between him and Julia.’

‘But who’d want to do that?’

‘We never found out.’

‘Do you have your suspicions?’

She hesitated. ‘If I do, I keep them to myself. Do you think I’m a common gossip?’

‘I think if your family was attacked you and your husband would fight back. And you’d do everything you could to find out who’d done it.’

‘Charles tried,’ she conceded. ‘We had our suspicions, but couldn’t act on them.’

‘Someone close to home?’

‘This conversation is over.’ She got up, but not before Gamache thought he saw her eyes dart away. Down the lawn. To the lake. And the ugly man almost enveloped by the mist around the dock.

Just as Gamache walked onto the dock a tiny figure flashed past, galloping across the lawn. Bean in flight, a Spider-Man towel flapping behind, hands gripping reins, a breathless whisper of a song, ‘Letter B, Letter B,’ barely sung and barely heard. Joyous, the child galloped over the grass then into the woods.

‘See anything?’ Gamache asked Finney and nodded to the binoculars.

‘Don’t really look any more,’ admitted Finney. ‘They’re more out of habit. In case anything unusual happens. Bean’s asked me to keep an eye out for Pegasus, and I think I just saw him.’

Finney nodded to the now empty lawn and Gamache smiled.

‘But I don’t look for birds any more. Keep forgetting.’

‘The martlet,’ said Gamache, placing his large hands behind his back and staring onto the lake with its soft waves. Clouds were slowly moving in. ‘Now there’s an interesting bird. Used a lot in heraldry. It’s thought to signify enterprise and hard work. The martlet’s also meant to signify the fourth child.’

‘Is that right?’ Finney kept staring into the lake, but his lazy eye was energized, flitting here and there.

‘Yes. I found a book last night about the Hundred Years War between England and France. At that time the first son of any family inherited, the second was given to the church, the third might make a good marriage, but the fourth? Well, the fourth had to make his own way.’

‘Difficult times.’

‘For martlets. And I remembered what Charles Morrow most feared about his own children, four of them as it turned out. He was afraid they’d squander the family fortune.’

‘Foolish man, really,’ said Finney. ‘Kind and generous with everyone else, but harsh with his own.’

‘You think? I’ll tell you what I think. Yes, Charles Morrow was told by his own father to beware of the next generation, and he believed it. His one foolish decision. But sons tend to believe fathers. So Charles made another decision. A wise one this time. I think he decided to give his children something else, some other riches besides money. Something they couldn’t waste. While he showered his wife and his friends with wealth and gifts.’ He bowed slightly to Finney who acknowledged the gesture. ‘He decided to withhold that from his children. Instead he gave them love.’

Gamache could see the ropy muscles of Finney’s ill-shaven face clench.

‘He thought a lot about wealth, you know,’ said Finney finally. ‘Obsessed with it, in a way. He tried to figure out what money bought. He never really figured it out. The closest he came was knowing that he’d be miserable without it, but honestly?’ Finney turned his ravaged face on Gamache. ‘He was miserable with it. It was all he could think of in the end. Would he have enough, was someone trying to steal it from him, would the children squander it? Made for very boring conversation.’

‘And yet you yourself sit here and do your sums.’

‘It’s true. But I do it privately and don’t impose on anyone.’

Gamache wondered if that was true. With Julia dead this man’s sums just got a whole lot more interesting. Killing Julia could be considered an imposition.

‘So whether because he was miserly or wise Charles Morrow decided he’d shower his children with affection instead of cash,’ continued the Chief Inspector.

‘Charles went to McGill, you know. He played on their hockey team. The McGill Martlets.’ Finney paused, acknowledging the admission. ‘He used to tell his children all about those games, but he’d tell them about the times he’d tripped on the ice or missed the pass or gotten smashed into the boards. All the times he’d messed up. To let the little ones know it was all right to fall, it was all right to fail.’

‘They didn’t like to fall?’ asked Gamache.

‘Most don’t, but the Morrow kids less than most. So they risked nothing. The only one who could risk was Mariana.’

‘The fourth child,’ said Gamache.

‘As it happens, yes. But of all of them Peter was the most fragile. He has an artist’s soul and a banker’s temperament. Makes for a very stressful life, being so in conflict with himself.’

‘On the night she died Julia accused him of being a hypocrite,’ Gamache remembered.

‘They all are, I’m afraid. Thomas is the opposite of Peter. A banker’s soul but an artist’s temperament. Emotions squashed. That’s why his music’s so precise.’

‘But without pleasure,’ said Gamache. ‘Unlike Mariana’s.’

Finney said nothing.

‘But I haven’t told you the most interesting part about the martlet,’ said Gamache. ‘It’s always drawn without feet.’

This brought a grunt from the old man and Gamache wondered if he was in pain.

‘The sculptor Pelletier etched a martlet into the statue of Charles Morrow,’ Gamache continued. ‘Peter drew the same one for his father.’

Finney nodded and sighed. ‘I remember that drawing. Charles treasured it. Kept it with him always.’

‘Julia learned that from him,’ said Gamache. ‘Charles kept a few precious things with him and his daughter did the same thing. She kept a packet of notes with her always. They seem innocuous, mundane even, but to her they were her protection, her proof she was loved. She’d pull them out and read them when she felt unloved, which I imagine was often.’

Peter had said they all had armour, and this was Julia’s. A bunch of frayed thank you notes.

‘I know Charles was your best friend, but forgive me for saying this.’ Gamache sat down so he could watch the older man’s face, though it was nearly impossible to read. ‘For all you say he loved his children, there doesn’t seem to be much love back. Monsieur Pelletier had the impression Charles Morrow wasn’t much missed.’

‘You don’t yet know the Morrows, do you? You think you do, but you don’t, or you’d never have said that.’

It was said softly, without rancour, but the reprimand was clear.

‘I was merely quoting the sculptor.’

Together they watched the dragonflies flitter and buzz around the dock.

‘There was one other quality of the martlet,’ said Gamache.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know why it’s always drawn without feet?’

Finney remained silent.

‘Because it’s on its way to heaven. According to legend a martlet never touches the earth, it flies all the time. I believe Charles Morrow wanted to give that to his children. He wanted them to soar. To find, if not heaven, then at least happiness. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,’ said Gamache. ‘You quoted the poem “High Flight” when we first talked.’

‘Charles’s favourite. He was a naval aviator in the war. And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings. Beautiful.’

Finney looked around, at the lake, the forest, the mountains. He opened his mouth then closed it. Gamache waited. Finally he spoke.

‘You’re very like your father, you know.’

The words went out into the world and joined the golden sunshine streaming through the gathering clouds and onto the water and the dock and warming their faces. The words joined the glittering waves and the bobbing insects and butterflies and birds and shimmering leaves.

Armand Gamache closed his eyes and walked deep into the shadows, deep into the longhouse where all his experiences and memories lived, where everyone he’d ever met and everything he’d ever done or thought or said waited. He walked right to the very back and there he found a room, closed but not locked. A room he’d never dared enter. From under the door there came not a stench, not darkness, not a moan of a terrible threat. But something much more frightening.