The Murder Stone (40 page)

‘Merci,’ he said, taking the tea in one hand. His left he kept under the table, flexing it, trying to get the feeling back. He was chilled, more from shock he knew than from the rain. Beside him Beauvoir put two heaping spoons of honey into Gamache’s tea and stirred.

‘I’ll be mother today,’ Beauvoir said quietly, and the thought stirred something inside the younger man. Something to do with this kitchen. Beauvoir put the teaspoon down and watched Chef Veronique take the seat on Patenaude’s other side.

Beauvoir waited for the sting, the anger. But he felt only giddy amazement they were together in this warm kitchen, and he wasn’t kneeling in the mud, trying to force life back into a broken and beloved body. He looked over at Gamache, again. Just to make sure. Then he looked back at Chef Veronique and felt something. He felt sadness for her.

Whatever he’d felt for her before was nothing compared to what she felt for this man, this murderer.

Veronique took Patenaude’s trembling hand in her own. No reason to pretend any more. No reason to hide her feelings. ‘Ca va?‘ she asked.

It might have been a ridiculous question, given what had just happened. Of course he wasn’t all right. But Patenaude looked at her with a little surprise, and nodded.

Madame Dubois brought Beauvoir a cup of hot, strong tea and poured one for herself. But instead of joining them the elderly woman stepped back from the table. She tried to block out the other two and see only Veronique and Pierre. The two who’d kept her company in the wilderness. Who’d grown up and grown old here. One had fallen in love, the other had simply fallen.

Clementine Dubois had known Pierre Patenaude was full of rage when he’d arrived as a young man, more than twenty years earlier. He’d been so contained, his movements so precise, his manners so perfect. He hid it so well. But ironically it had been his decision to stay that had confirmed her suspicion. No one chose to live this deep in the woods for so long without reason. She knew Veronique’s. She knew her own. And now, finally, she knew his.

This was the first time Veronique and Pierre had held hands, she knew. And probably the last. Certainly the last time they’d all gather round this old pine table. And discuss their days.

She knew she should feel horrible about what Pierre had done, and she knew she would, in a few minutes. But for the moment she only felt anger. Not at Pierre, but at the Morrows and their reunion and at Julia Martin, for coming. And getting murdered. And ruining their small but perfect life by the lake.

Madame Dubois knew that was unreasonable and unkind, and certainly very selfish. But for just a moment she indulged herself, and her sorrow.

‘Why did you kill Julia Martin?’ Gamache asked. He could hear people moving about outside the swinging doors into the dining room. A Surete agent was stationed at the door, not to stop anyone from leaving the kitchen but to stop anyone from entering. He wanted a few quiet minutes with Patenaude and the others.

‘I think you know why,’ said Patenaude, not meeting his eye. Since looking into Chef Veronique’s eyes a minute earlier he’d been unable to raise his own. They’d been cast down, staggered by what he’d met in her gaze.

Tenderness.

And now she held his hand. How long had it been since someone had held his hand? He’d held other people’s hands, at celebrations when they sang ‘Gens Du Pays’. He’d comforted kids homesick and afraid. Or hurt. Like Colleen. He’d held her hand to comfort her when she’d found the body. A body he’d made.

But when was the last time someone had held his hand?

He cast his mind back until it hit the wall beyond which he could never look. Somewhere on the other side was his answer.

But now Veronique held his cold hand in her warm one. And slowly his trembling stopped.

‘But I don’t know why, Pierre,’ said Veronique. ‘Can you tell me?’

Clementine Dubois sat down opposite him then and the three again, and for the last time, entered their own world.

Pierre Patenaude opened and closed his mouth, dredging the words up from deep down.

‘I was eighteen when my father died. A heart attack, but I know it wasn’t that. My mother and I had watched him work himself to death. We’d had money once, you know. He was the head of his own company. Big home, big cars. Private schools. But he’d made one mistake. He’d invested in a young man, a former employee. Someone he’d fired. I was there the day he’d fired the man. I was just a kid. My father had told me that everyone deserved a second chance. But not a third. He’d given this man a second chance, then fired him. But Dad liked this young man. Had kept in touch. Had even had him over for dinner after firing him. Perhaps he felt guilty, I don’t know.’

‘He sounds a kind man,’ said Madame Dubois.

‘He was.’ Patenaude’s eyes met hers and he was surprised, again, by tenderness. Had he always been surrounded by it, he wondered. Was it always there? And all he’d seen were the dark woods and the deep water.

‘He gave this man his personal money to invest. It was foolish, a kind of madness. The man later claimed my father and the others were as greedy as he was, and maybe that was true. But I don’t think so. I think he just wanted to help.’

He looked at Veronique, her face so strong and her eyes so clear.

‘I believe you’re right,’ she said, squeezing his hand slightly.

He blinked, not understanding this world that had suddenly appeared.

‘The man was David Martin, wasn’t it?’ said Veronique. ‘Julia’s husband.’

Patenaude nodded. ‘My father went bankrupt, of course. Lost everything. My mother didn’t care. I didn’t care. We loved him. But he never recovered. I don’t think it was the money, I think it was the shame and the betrayal. We never expected Martin to pay Dad back. It was an investment, and a bad one. It happens. Dad knew the risks. And Martin didn’t steal the money. But he never said he was sorry. And when he made his fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars, he never once contacted Dad, never offered to pay him back. Or invest in his company. I watched Martin get rich and my father work and work trying to rebuild.’

He stopped talking. There seemed nothing more that could be said. He couldn’t begin to explain how it felt to watch this man he adored sink, and finally go under. And watch the man who’d done this rise up.

Something new had started growing in the boy. Bitterness. And over the years it ate a hole where his heart should have been. And finally it ate all his insides so that there was only darkness in there. And a howl, an old echo going round and round. And growing with each repetition.

‘I was happy here, you know.’ He turned to Madame Dubois, who reached her old hand across the table and touched his arm.

‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘And I was happy to have you. It seemed a kind of miracle.’ She turned to Veronique. ‘A double blessing. And you were so good with the young staff. They adored you.’

‘When I was with them I felt my father inside me. I could almost hear him whispering to me, telling me to be patient with them. That they needed a steady but gentle hand. Did you find Elliot?’

He asked Beauvoir beside him, who nodded.

‘Just got the call. He was at the bus station in North Hatley.’

‘Didn’t get far,’ said Patenaude, and he smiled despite himself. ‘He never could take direction.’

‘You told him to run, didn’t you? You tried to frame him, monsieur,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Tried to make us believe he’d killed Julia Martin. You found the notes he’d written her and you kept them, deliberately tossing them into the grate, knowing we’d find them there.’

‘He was homesick. I know the signs,’ said Patenaude. ‘I’ve seen it often enough. And the longer he stayed the more angry and frustrated he got. But when he found out Julia Martin was from Vancouver he clung to her. At first it was inconvenient for me. I was afraid he’d figure out what I was doing. Then I saw how I could use it.’

‘You’d have let him be arrested for your crime?’ Veronique asked. She wasn’t, Beauvoir noticed, accusing, not judging. Just asking.

‘No,’ he said, tired. He rubbed his face and sighed, coming to the end of his energy. ‘I just wanted to confuse things, that’s all.’

Beauvoir didn’t believe him, but he thought Veronique did. Or maybe she didn’t, and loved him anyway.

‘Is that why you took the child?’ asked Madame Dubois. They were in dangerous territory now. Killing Julia Martin was one thing. Who, honestly, didn’t want to kill a Morrow every now and then? Even framing Elliot she could understand, perhaps. But dangling that child from the roof?

‘Bean was insurance, that’s all,’ said Patenaude. ‘To add to the confusion, and in case Elliot came back. I didn’t want to hurt Bean. I just wanted to get away. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t tried to stop me,’ he said to Gamache.

And everyone in the comfortable, warm room glimpsed Pierre Patenaude’s small world, where wretched actions could be justified, and others blamed.

‘Why did you kill Julia Martin?’ Gamache asked again. He was bone tired but he had a distance to go yet. ‘She wasn’t responsible for what her husband did. They weren’t even married at the time.’

‘No.’ Patenaude looked at Gamache. They both looked very different from less than an hour ago, on the roof. The fear was gone from Gamache’s deep brown eyes, and the rage from Patenaude’s. Now they were two tired men, trying to understand. And be understood. ‘When I first realized who she was I felt kind of numb, but as the days passed I just got angrier and angrier. Her perfect nails, her styled hair, her teeth.’

Teeth? thought Beauvoir. He’d heard many motives for murder, but never teeth.

‘Everything so perfect,’ the maitre d’ continued. As he spoke his voice sharpened and sculpted the gentle man into something else. ‘Her clothes, her jewellery, her manners. Friendly but slightly condescending. Money. She shouted money. Money my father should have had. My mother.’

‘You?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Yes, even me. I got more and more angry. I couldn’t get at Martin, but I could get her.’

‘And so you killed her,’ said Gamache.

Patenaude nodded.

‘Didn’t you know who he was?’ Beauvoir asked, pointing at the Chief Inspector. ‘You killed someone right in front of the head of homicide for Quebec?’

‘It couldn’t wait,’ said Patenaude, and they all knew the truth of it. It had waited too long. ‘Besides, I knew you’d come eventually. If you were already here it didn’t much matter.’

He looked at the Chief Inspector. ‘You know, all David Martin had to do was say he was sorry. That’s all. My father would have forgiven him.’

Gamache got up. It was time to face the family. To explain all this. At the door to the dining room he turned and watched as Pierre Patenaude was led through the back door and into a waiting Surete vehicle. Chef Veronique and Madame Dubois stared out of the screen door as it clacked shut behind him.

‘Do you think he would have really thrown Bean off the roof?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘I believed it then. Now, I don’t know. Perhaps not.’

But Gamache knew it was wishful thinking. He was only glad he was still capable of it. Beauvoir stared at the large, still man in front of him. Should he tell him? He took a breath, and walked into the unknown.

‘I had the strangest feeling when I saw you on the roof,’ he said. ‘You looked like a Burgher of Calais. You were frightened.’

‘Very.’

‘So was I.’

‘And yet you offered to come with me.’ Gamache cocked his head slightly to one side. ‘I remember. And I hope you remember, always.’

‘But the Burghers died, and you didn’t.’ Beauvoir laughed, trying to break the unbearable moment.

‘Oh, no. The Burghers didn’t die,’ said Gamache. ‘Their lives were spared.’

He turned back to the door into the dining room, and said something Beauvoir didn’t quite catch. It might have been merci. Or mercy. Then he was gone.

Beauvoir put out his hand to shove the swinging door and follow the chief, but hesitated. Instead he walked back to the table where the women stood still staring out of the back door and into the woods.

In the dining room he could hear raised voices. Morrow voices. Demanding answers, demanding attention. He needed to join the Chief Inspector. But he needed to do something first.

‘He could have let them die, you know.’

The two women turned slowly to look at him.

‘Patenaude, I mean,’ Beauvoir continued. ‘He could have let Chief Inspector Gamache and Bean die. But he didn’t. He saved their lives.’

And Chef Veronique turned to face him then with a look he’d longed for, but no longer needed. And inside he felt a deep calm, as though some old debt had been paid.

THIRTY-ONE

‘Paradise lost,’ said Chief Inspector Gamache, taking his place, naturally, at the centre of the gathering, a raised hand hushing the Morrows. ‘To have it all and to lose it. That’s what this case was about.’

The room was packed with the Manoir staff, police officers and volunteers. And Morrows. Reine-Marie had hurried over from Three Pines when she heard what had happened and was sitting quietly off to the side.

‘What’s he talking about?’ whispered Sandra loudly.

‘A poem by John Milton,’ said Mrs Finney, sitting upright next to her husband. ‘It’s about the devil being cast out of heaven.’

‘That’s right,’ said Gamache. ‘The fall from grace. The tragedy in Milton’s poem was that Satan had it all and didn’t realize it.’

‘He was a fallen angel,’ said Mrs Finney. ‘He believed it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. He was greedy.’ She looked at her children.

‘But what’s heaven and what’s hell?’ asked Gamache. ‘It depends on our point of view. I love this place.’ He looked around the room and out of the window, where the rain had now stopped. ‘For me it’s heaven. I see peace and quiet and beauty. But for Inspector Beauvoir it’s hell. He sees chaos and discomfort and bugs. Both are true. It’s perception. The mind is its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,’ Gamache quoted. ‘Early on, even before the death of Julia Martin, I knew there was something wrong. Spot and Claire, the odious missing family members, became Peter and Clara, two gentle, kind friends of ours. Not without their flaws,’ Gamache held up his hand again to head off Thomas’s catalogue of Peter’s faults, ‘but at their hearts good people. And yet they were denounced as vile. I knew then this was a family at odds with reality, their perception skewed. What purpose did it serve?’