The Murder Stone (27 page)

Pelletier picked at his calloused fingers and thought.

‘You know those statues out there, the ones in the cemetery?’

Gamache nodded.

‘They’re not all the same size. Some people buy big ones, some smaller. Sometimes it depends on their budget, but mostly it depends on their guilt.’

He smiled. Charles Morrow had been immense.

‘I had the impression he wasn’t missed. That the statue was more for them than him. A kind of replacement for grieving.’

There it was. So simple. The words drifted into the air to join the dry dirt in the sunbeams.

What could be worse? Dying, and not being missed.

Was that true of Charles Morrow, Gamache wondered.

‘The family used words like prominent and respected, they even mailed me a list of boards he sat on. I half expected to get his bank balance. But there was no affection. I felt sorry for the guy. I tried asking what kinda man he was, you know? Father, husband, that sorta thing.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘They seemed offended by the question, as though it wasn’t my business. Like I said, it’s very hard to sculpt a man without knowing him. I almost decided to turn down the commission, though the money was so good it woulda killed me. But then this ugly guy shows up. Spoke almost no French and I don’t speak much English. He shoots, he scores. That’s about it. But we got along. That was almost two years ago. I thought about it and decided to sculpt the guy.’

‘But who did you sculpt, monsieur? Charles Morrow or Bert Finney?’

Yves Pelletier laughed. ‘Or maybe I sculpted myself.’

Gamache smiled. ‘There’s some of you in all your works, I’d expect.’

‘True, but more perhaps in that one. It was difficult, troubling. Charles Morrow was a stranger to his family. They knew his outside but not his inside. The ugly man knew his inside. At least, I believe he did. He told me about a man who loved music, who’d wanted to be a hockey player, had played on his school team, but had agreed to go into the family business. Seduced by the money and the position. Ugly man’s words, not mine. The ego. What a tyrant. My words, not his.’ He smiled at Gamache. ‘Happily, being a sculptor keeps my ego in check.’

‘You might try being a police officer.’

‘Have you ever been sculpted?’

Gamache laughed. ‘Never.’

‘If you decide you’d like to, come to me.’

‘I’m not sure there’s enough marble in that quarry,’ said Gamache. ‘What was Charles Morrow made of after all?’

‘Well, now, there’s an interesting question. I needed something special and money wasn’t an issue so I searched and last year I finally found what I’d heard existed but never actually seen.’

Across the barn Inspector Beauvoir lowered the notes and listened.

‘It was wood,’ said the scrawny sculptor.

Of all the things Gamache thought he’d hear that wasn’t one of them.

‘Wood?’

Pelletier nodded. Gamache remembered reaching out and stroking Charles Morrow, trying to avoid the mud and grass and blood. He again felt the hard grey surface, undulating. It felt like sagging skin. But hard, like stone.

‘Wood,’ he said again, looking back at the sculptor. ‘Fossilized wood.’

‘All the way from British Columbia. Petrified.’

*

Agent Lacoste got off the phone with the coroner, made her notes then opened the strong box with the evidence. There wasn’t much. Out of the box she pulled the packet of letters, tied with yellow ribbon, and the two crumpled notes on Manoir Bellechasse paper. Smoothing them out she decided to start there.

She found Madame Dubois first, behind her huge desk calling guests and cancelling reservations. After a minute or two the tiny hand replaced the receiver.

‘I’m trying not to tell the truth,’ she explained.

‘What’re you saying?’

‘That there was a fire.’

Seeing Agent Lacoste’s surprise she nodded agreement. ‘It might have been better had I thought about it. Fortunately, it was a small, though inconvenient, fire.’

‘That is lucky.’ She glanced down at the rates card on the desk, and raised her eyebrows. ‘I’d love to come back with my husband, one day. Perhaps for our golden wedding anniversary.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

Agent Lacoste thought perhaps she would. ‘We found these in the grate in Julia Martin’s room.’ She handed over the slips of paper. ‘Who do you think wrote them?’

The two slips sat on the desk between the women.

I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. It helped.

You are very kind. I know you won’t tell anyone what I said. I could get into trouble!

‘Perhaps one of her family?’

‘Maybe,’ said Lacoste. She’d thought about what the chief had said. About the exclamation mark. She’d spent much of the morning thinking about it. Then she had it.

‘The words, certainly, could have been written by almost anyone,’ Lacoste admitted to Madame Dubois. ‘But this wasn’t.’

She pointed to the exclamation mark. The elderly proprietor looked down then up, polite but unconvinced.

‘Can you see any of the Morrows writing an exclamation mark?’

The question surprised Madame Dubois and she thought about it then shook her head. That left one option.

‘One of the staff,’ she said reluctantly.

‘Possibly. But who?’

‘I’ll call the chambermaid assigned to her room.’ Madamen Dubois spoke into a walkie-talkie and was assured a young woman named Beth was on her way.

‘They’re young, you know, and most have never worked in jobs like these. It takes a while to understand what’s appropriate, especially if the guests themselves aren’t clear. We tell them not to be too familiar with the guests, even if the guests invite it. Especially then.’

After a longish wait a blonde girl, energetic and confident, though momentarily worried, came down.

‘Desolee,’ she said in slightly accented French, ‘but Madame Morrow in the Lake Room stopped to talk to me. I think she might want to speak to you too.’

The proprietor looked weary. ‘Another complaint?’

Beth nodded. ‘Her sister-in-law’s room was cleaned before hers and she wanted to know why. I told her it depended which end of the lodge we started at. She also thinks it’s too hot.’

‘I hope you told her that was Monsieur Patenaude’s department?’

Beth smiled. ‘I will next time.’

‘Bon. Beth, this is Agent Lacoste, she’s investigating the death of Julia Martin. She has a few questions for you.’

The girl looked disconcerted. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

It’s not my fault, thought Lacoste. The cry of the young. And the immature. Still, she felt for the kid. Not more than twenty and being interviewed as a murder suspect. One day it’ll make a great story, but not today.

‘I don’t think you did,’ said Lacoste in good English. The girl relaxed a little, reassured by both the words and the language. ‘But I’d like you to look at these.’

Beth did, then looked up, puzzled.

‘I’m not sure what you want.’

‘Did you write them?’

She looked astonished. ‘No. Why would I?’

‘Did you check the grate in Mrs Martin’s room?’

‘Not closely. Some guests light their fires even in summer. It’s romantic. So I’ve gotten in the habit of just scanning it, making sure I don’t need to lay another fire. Hers hadn’t been lit. None of them have.’

‘Would you notice if something had been put in there?’

‘Depends. I’d notice if it was a Volkswagen or a sofa.’

Lacoste smiled at this unexpected humour. The girl suddenly reminded her of herself at twenty. Just finding her way. Vacillating between being impertinent and being obsequious. ‘How about these, balled up?’ Lacoste pointed to the papers on the desk.

Beth stared at them, considering. ‘I might.’

‘And what would you have done, if you’d seen them?’

‘Cleaned them up.’

She thought Beth was telling the truth. She didn’t think the Manoir kept workers who were lazy. The question was, would Beth have noticed the papers or could they have sat there for days, even weeks, left there by long departed guests?

But she didn’t think they had.

Why did Julia put most garbage into the wastepaper basket, but toss these into the grate? It was a bit like littering and Agent Lacoste suspected the Morrows thought themselves above that. They might murder, but they’d never litter. And Julia Martin was nothing if not courteous, to a fault.

So if she didn’t put them there, somebody else had. But who?

And why?

Gamache, Beauvoir and the sculptor Pelletier sat in the shade of a huge tree, grateful for the few degrees’ relief it gave from the pounding heat. Beauvoir slapped at his neck and his hand came away with a smear of blood and a tiny black leg. He knew he was covered in bug bodies. You’d think, he thought, other bugs would get the message. But there was probably a reason blackflies didn’t rule the world. Torment it, yes, but nothing else.

He slapped at his arm.

A rose bush planted beside a headstone looked in need of watering, its leaves droopy and yellowing. Pelletier followed Gamache’s gaze.

‘Thought that might happen soon. Tried to warn the family when they planted it.’

‘Roses don’t grow well here?’ Gamache asked.

‘Not now. Nothing’ll grow now. It’s twenty-five years, you know.’

Beauvoir wondered whether decades of snorting cement dust hadn’t done something to this man’s brain.

‘What is?’ asked Gamache.

‘This tree. It’s a black walnut.’ The sculptor dragged his hammer hand over the furrowed bark. ‘It’s twenty-five years old.’

‘So?’ asked Beauvoir, hoping to get to the point.

‘Well, nothing grows around a black walnut once it gets that old.’

Gamache reached out and touched the tree too. ‘Why not?’

‘Dunno. Something poisonous drops from its leaves or bark or something. But it’s fine until it’s twenty-five. Only kills things after that.’

Gamache removed his hand from the greyish trunk and returned his gaze to the cemetery, the sun dappling through the leaves of the killer tree.

‘You carved a bird into the shoulder of the statue.’

‘I did.’

‘Pourquoi?‘

‘Didn’t you like it?’

‘It was charming, and very discreet. Almost as though it wasn’t meant to be found.’

‘Why would I do that, Chief Inspector?’

‘I can’t imagine, Monsieur Pelletier, unless someone asked you to.’

The two men stared at each other, the air suddenly crackling between them like a tiny summer storm.

‘No one asked me,’ the sculptor finally said. ‘I’d gone through that,’ he pointed to the rumpled dossier in Beauvoir’s hands, ‘and found a drawing of the bird. It was very simple, very beautiful. I etched it into Morrow, discreet as you say, as a little gift.’

He looked down at his hands, one picking at the other.

‘I’d grown quite fond of Charles Morrow. I wanted him to have something to keep him company, so he’d be less alone. Something he’d kept close to him in life.’

‘The footless bird?’ said Beauvoir.

‘The drawing’s in there.’ Again he pointed to the manila folder.

Beauvoir handed the folder to Gamache but said as he did, ‘I didn’t see anything like that in there.’

Gamache closed the folder. He believed him.

Like anything else in life, it’s the things we can’t have we most want, and suddenly Chief Inspector Gamache wanted that drawing of the bird very much indeed.

Beauvoir glanced at his watch. Almost noon. He had to be back for the call from David Martin. And lunch.

He touched his face gingerly and hoped she’d forgive him for swearing. She’d looked so shocked. Surely people swear in kitchens? His wife did.

‘Looking at your sculpture of Charles Morrow I thought of Rodin,’ said Gamache. ‘Can you guess which one?’

‘Not Victor Hugo, that’s for sure. The Gates of Hell, perhaps?’

But the sculptor was clearly not serious. Then he thought about it and after a moment spoke quietly. ‘The Burghers?’

Gamache nodded.

‘Merci, Patron.’ The strappy little man gave Gamache a small bow. ‘But if he was by Rodin, the rest of the family would be by Giacometti.’

Gamache knew the Swiss artist with the long, lean, almost stringy figures, but he couldn’t make out what Pelletier meant.

‘Giacometti always began with a huge piece of stone,’ Pelletier explained. ‘Then he’d work and work. Refining and smoothing and chipping away anything offensive, anything that wasn’t just right. Sometimes he did so much refining there wasn’t anything left. The sculpture disappeared completely. All he had left was dust.’

Gamache smiled, understanding it now.

On the outside the Morrows were healthy, attractive even. But you can’t diminish so many people without diminishing yourself. And the Morrows, inside, had all but disappeared. Empty.

But he wasn’t convinced the sculptor was right. He thought there might be quite a bit of the Burghers in all of them. He saw all the Morrows, trudging along, chained together, weighed down by expectation, disapproval, secrets. Need. Greed. And hate. After years of investigating murders Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you for ever to the person you hated. Murder wasn’t committed out of hate, it was done as a terrible act of freedom. To finally rid yourself of the burden.

The Morrows were burdened.

And one had tried to break free. By killing.

But how had the murderer managed it?

‘How can a statue come off its pedestal?’ he asked Pelletier.

‘I was wondering when you’d ask. Here, come with me.’

They walked further into the cemetery to a sculpture of a child.

‘I did that ten years ago. Antoinette Gagnon. Killed by a car.’

They looked at the gleaming, playing child. Always young, perpetually happy. Gamache wondered whether her parents ever came, and whether their hearts stopped each time they turned the corner and saw this.

‘Try to knock her over,’ Pelletier said to Beauvoir.

The Inspector hesitated. The thought of knocking over a cemetery monument disgusted him. And especially a child.

‘Go on,’ said the sculptor. Still Beauvoir hung back.

‘I’ll try.’ Gamache stepped forward and leaned against the small statue, expecting to feel the child scrape forward, or topple over.