A Fatal Grace (18 page)

Everyone looked at him.

‘Your feet, your feet. Look at your feet.’

All faces disappeared below the table, except Beauvoir’s. Armand Gamache bent down and looked at his boots. They were nylon on the outside. Inside there were layers of Thinsulate and felt.

‘Look at the soles of your feet,’ an exasperated Beauvoir said.

Down they went again.

‘Well?’

‘Rubber,’ said Agent Isabelle Lacoste. Beauvoir could tell by her clever face that she understood. ‘Pre-formed rubber with ridges for traction, so we don’t slip on the ice and snow. I bet we all have rubber soles.’

Everyone agreed.

‘That’s it,’ said Beauvoir, barely able to contain himself. ‘We’ll have to call round to confirm, but I bet there isn’t a boot sold in Quebec that doesn’t have rubber soles. That was the final element, and maybe the most unlikely in a series of unlikely events. Had CC de Poitiers been wearing boots with rubber or even leather bottoms she wouldn’t have died. She grabbed onto something metal. Metal conducts electricity. The earth conducts electricity. Our bodies conduct electricity. According to Dr Harris, electricity is like a living thing. It’s desperate to stay alive. It races from one form to another, through the metal, through the body, and into the earth. And along the way it races through the heart. And the heart has its own electrical current. Amazing, isn’t it? Dr Harris explained all this to me. If the electricity goes right through the body it only takes a few seconds to affect the heart. It screws up the normal rhythms and causes it to’ – he checked his notes – ‘fibrillate.’

‘Which is why they use those electrified paddles to start the heart,’ said Lacoste.

‘And why pacemakers are implanted. Those are really just batteries, giving the heart an electrical impulse,’ agreed Beauvoir, excited by the topic. Thrilled to have facts to deal with. ‘When CC touched the metal her heart was affected within seconds.’

‘But,’ Armand Gamache spoke and all eyes turned to him, ‘Madame de Poitiers had to have been grounded.’

The room sat in silence. By now it had warmed up, but still Gamache felt a chill. He looked at Beauvoir and knew there was more to come.

Beauvoir reached into a bag at his side and plunked a pair of boots onto the table.

Before them sat CC de Poitier’s footwear, made of the youngest, whitest, finest baby seal skin. And on the bottom, where everyone else would have rubber, the investigators could see tiny claws.

Beauvoir turned one of the boots on its side so that the sole was visible. Twisted and charred and grotesque, the claws were revealed to be metal teeth, protruding from the leather sole.

Armand Gamache felt his jaw clench. Who would wear such boots? The Inuit, maybe. In the Arctic. But even they wouldn’t kill baby seals. The Inuit were respectful and sensible hunters who’d never dream of killing the young. They didn’t have to.

No. Only brutes murdered babies. And only brutes supported that trade. Sitting in front of them were the carcasses of two babies. Animals, certainly, but all senseless killing appalled Gamache. What sort of woman wore the bodies of dead babies shaped into boots, with metal claws imbedded in them?

Armand Gamache wondered whether CC de Poitiers was at that very moment trying to explain herself to a perplexed God and a couple of very angry seals.

FIFTEEN

Beauvoir stood in front of another sheet of paper tacked to the wall. CC’s boots sat in the middle of the table like a sculpture, and a reminder of how strange both murderer and murdered were.

‘So, to recap, four things had to come together for the murderer to be successful.’ Beauvoir wrote as he spoke. ‘A: the victim had to be standing in water. B: she had to have taken off her gloves; C: she had to touch something that was electrified and D: she had to be wearing metal on the bottom of her boots.’

‘I have a report from the crime scene,’ said Isabelle Lacoste, who’d been in charge of the Crime Scene Unit the day before. ‘It’s preliminary, of course, but we can answer one question anyway. About the water. If you look at the photographs again you’ll see a slight blue tinge to the snow around the overturned chair.’

Gamache looked closely. He’d taken that area for a shadow. On snow, in certain angles and lights, shadows were blue. But not, perhaps, this particular shade. Now that he looked more closely he recognized it and almost groaned. He should have seen it right away. They all should have.

The murderer could only have created a puddle in two ways. Melt the ice and snow that was there, or spill some new liquid. But if he spilled some coffee or tea or a soft drink it would freeze in very little time.

What wouldn’t freeze?

Something specially designed not to.

Anti-freeze windshield washer fluid. The ubiquitous light blue liquid everyone in Canada poured by the gallon into their cars. It was designed to be sprayed onto the windshield to wipe away the slush and salt. And not to freeze.

Was it that easy?

‘It’s windshield washer fluid,’ said Lacoste.

Apparently so, thought Gamache. At least something about this case was straightforward.

‘How did the murderer spill washer fluid there without being seen?’ Lacoste asked.

‘Well, we don’t know that the murderer wasn’t seen,’ said Gamache. ‘We haven’t asked that question. And someone was sitting right beside Madame de Poitiers. That person might have seen.’

‘Who?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Kaye Thompson.’ Now Gamache got up and walked to the drawing Beauvoir had made of the scene of crime. He told them about his interviews of the day before then he drew three Xs clustered round the heat lamp.

‘Lawn chairs. They were meant for the three elderly women who brought them, but only one ended up using a chair. Kaye Thompson was sitting in this one.’ Gamache pointed to one of the Xs. ‘The other two women were curling and CC sat in the chair closest to the lamp. Now this chair,’ he circled the chair closest to the curling rink, ‘was on its side. It’s also the one with the fluid under it, am I right?’ he asked Lacoste, who nodded.

‘It’s in the lab being tested but I suspect we’ll find that the chair was the murder weapon,’ she said.

‘But wasn’t the heat lamp?’ one of the agents asked, turning to Beauvoir. ‘I thought you said the victim touched the thing that was electrified. That’s the heat lamp.’

‘
C’est vrai
,’ Beauvoir conceded. ‘But it appears that wasn’t what killed her. The chair did, we think. If you look at the wounds on her hands, they’re consistent with the aluminum tubing at the back of the chair.’

‘But how?’ one of the technicians asked.

‘That’s what we have to find out,’ said Beauvoir, so wrapped up in the mystery he failed to tell the technician to get back to work. She’d asked the right question. How did a charge get from the heat lamp to create an electric chair?

An electric chair.

Jean Guy Beauvoir rolled the concept round in his clear, analytical mind. Was that somehow important? Was there a reason the murderer had chosen to kill CC de Poitiers by electric chair?

Was this retribution? Revenge? Was it punishment for some crime of CC’s? If so, it was the first such execution in Canada in fifty years.

‘What do you think?’ Gamache turned to the technician who’d asked the question, a young woman in overalls and a toolbelt. ‘And what’s your name?’

‘Céline Provost, sir. I’m an electrician with Sûreté technical services. I’m just here to wire up the computers.’

‘
Bon, Agent Provost.
What’s your theory?’

She stared at the diagram for a full minute, considering. ‘What was the voltage of the generator?’

Beauvoir told her. She nodded and thought some more. Then she shook her head.

‘I was wondering whether the murderer could have attached some more booster cables from the lamp to the chair, then buried the wires under the snow. That would electrify the chair.’

‘But?’

‘But it would mean the chair was live with electricity the whole time. As soon as the murderer attached the cables the chair would be electrified. Anyone touching it would get the charge. The murderer couldn’t guarantee Madame de Poitiers would be the first to touch it.’

‘There’d be no way to turn the current on and off?’

‘None, except from the truck generator and they make a lot of noise. Everyone would have noticed it going off. And if the murderer put the cables on at the last minute, that woman you said was sitting right there, well, she would have seen for sure.’

Gamache thought about it. She was right.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Other reports?’ Gamache asked as he sat back down.

For the next twenty minutes various agents reported on the crime scene findings, the preliminary analyses, the initial background checks.

‘So far,’ Agent Lacoste reported, ‘we know that Richard Lyon works as a glorified clerk in a clothing factory. He does their paperwork and makes out shift assignments. But in his spare time he’s invented this.’ She held up a diagram.

‘Enough mysteries,’ said Beauvoir. ‘What is it?’

‘Silent Velcro. Apparently the US military has a problem. Now that they’re doing more and more close quarters combat silence is crucial. They sneak up on their enemies.’ Lacoste crouched down at her desk and mimicked skulking around. ‘Then get ready to shoot. But they keep all their equipment attached to their uniforms by Velcro. As soon as the pocket is opened the Velcro rips off and their position is given away. It’s become a huge problem. Anyone who can invent silent Velcro will make a fortune.’

Gamache could see the wheels turning in everyone’s head.

‘And Lyon did?’ he asked.

‘Well, he invented this. It’s a system of keeping pockets shut using magnets.’

‘Ingenious,’ said Gamache.

‘Except that to work through heavy khaki the magnets need to be quite heavy. And you need two per pocket and the average uniform has about forty pockets. The magnets add about fifteen pounds to an already heavy load.’

There were a few snickers.

‘He has nine patents, for various things. All failures.’

‘A loser,’ said Beauvoir.

‘Still, he keeps trying,’ Lacoste pointed out. ‘And if he gets one right, he could be rich beyond his wildest dreams.’

Gamache listened to this and remembered Reine-Marie’s question of the night before. Why had Richard Lyon and CC de Poitiers married? And why had they stayed married? One so ambitious and selfish and cruel, the other so weak and bumbling? He’d have expected CC to kill him, not the other way round.

He realized then that he was almost taking it for granted that Lyon had killed his wife. Very dangerous, he knew, to take anything for granted. Still, was it possible Richard Lyon had finally hit upon an invention that worked? Had he murdered his wife to keep her from sharing in the fortune?

‘There’s something else strange about this case.’ Lacoste smiled her apology to Inspector Beauvoir. The two had worked together on many cases and she knew his mind to be sharp and analytical. This kind of clutter and chaos was torture to him. He braced himself and nodded. ‘I also ran CC de Poitiers through the computer and found nothing. Well, a driver’s license and health card. But no birth certificate, no passport, nothing from more than twenty years ago. I then tried CC Lyon, Cecilia Lyon, Cecilia de Poitiers.’ She lifted her hands in surrender.

‘Try Eleanor and Henri de Poitiers,’ Gamache suggested, looking down at the book in front of him. ‘According to her book, they were her parents. And look up Li Bien.’ He spelled it for her.

‘What’s that?’

‘Her philosophy of life. A philosophy she was hoping would replace feng shui.’

Beauvoir tried to look both interested and knowledgable. He was neither.

‘A philosophy,’ Gamache continued, ‘she was hoping would make her very rich indeed.’

‘A motive for murder?’ Beauvoir perked up.

‘Perhaps, had she actually succeeded. But so far it looks as though CC de Poitiers was about as successful as her husband. Is that all before we hand out assignments?’ He made to get up.

‘Sir, there is one more thing.’ Agent Robert Lemieux. ‘You gave me the garbage from the Lyon home. Well, I’ve sorted through it and I have the inventory list here.’