As they approached the yellow circle of ribbon they were again joined by the notes of ‘Fur Elise’. The rain had all but stopped and a mist tugged at the mountains. Everything was shades of grey-green and between the notes they could hear rain dripping from the leaves.
Gamache had ordered the crime scene team to withdraw until after Mrs Finney had seen her daughter. Now they stood in a semicircle on the verge of the forest watching as the elderly woman, so tiny and pink, walked towards the hole in the ground.
As Mrs Finney approached she saw only the gaily fluttering police ribbon. Yellow. Julia’s favourite colour. She’d been the feminine one, the daughter who’d loved dressing up, loved make-believe and make-up, loved the shoes and the hats. Loved the attention.
She saw then the semicircle of men and women in the forest, watching. And above them the bruised and swollen sky.
Poor Julia.
Irene Finney slowed as she approached. She wasn’t a woman who understood the void, who’d given it any thought. But she knew, too late, she should have. She knew then that the void wasn’t empty at all. Even now, steps away, she could hear the whisper. The void wanted to know something.
What do you believe?
That’s what filled the void. The question and the answer.
Irene Finney stopped, not ready yet to face what she must. She waited for Bert. Not looking but sensing him there she took another step. One more and she’d see.
She hesitated then took it.
What she saw skipped her eyes completely and lodged right in her chest. In an instant she was pitched forward, beyond grief, into a wilderness where no anguish, no loss, no passion existed.
She heaved a breath up out of herself. Then another.
She used that breath to whisper the only prayer she could remember.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
She saw Julia’s hands outstretched. She saw the fingers, pudgy and wet, grasping her thumb in the bath in the old kitchen sink, in their very first apartment. Her and Charles. Charles, what have you done?
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
She offered the vesper to the void, but it was too late. It had taken Julia and now it took her. She looked up into the faces of the semicircle, but they’d changed. They were flat, like a reproduction. Not real at all. The forest, the grass, the Chief Inspector beside her, even Bert. All gone. Not real any more.
What do you believe?
Nothing.
Gamache walked them inside, remaining silent, respecting her need to be with her own thoughts. Then he returned to find the crane had arrived.
‘Here comes the coroner.’ Lacoste nodded to a woman in her early thirties wearing slacks, a light summer shell and rubber boots.
‘Dr Harris.’ Gamache waved then turned back to watch the removal of the statue.
Beauvoir directed operations, batting away blackflies. It was confusing for the crane operator who mistook his flailing for directions and twice almost dropped the statue back onto Julia Martin.
‘Fucking bugs,’ snarled Beauvoir, looking around at the rest of the team, working away steadily and methodically. ‘Isn’t anyone else bothered? Christ.’ He whacked himself on the side of the head trying to crush a deerfly. He missed.
‘Bonjour.‘ Gamache inclined his head towards the coroner. Sharon Harris smiled a small greeting. She knew how the Chief Inspector preferred decorum at the site of a murder, especially in the presence of the corpse. It was rare. Most murder scenes were filled with smart-ass and often gruesome comments, made by men and women frightened by what they saw, and believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.
Chief Inspector Gamache chose men and women for his team who might also be afraid, but had the courage to rise above it.
Standing beside him and watching the statue sucked from the ground, and the woman, she caught the slight aroma of rosewater and sandalwood. His scent. She turned and watched the Chief Inspector for a moment, his strong face in profile. At rest, but watchful.
There was an old-world courtliness about him that made her feel she was in the company of her grandfather, though he was only twenty years older than her, if that. Once the statue was hovering over the flatbed truck Dr Harris put on her gloves and moved in.
She’d seen worse. Far worse. Horrible deaths that could never be avenged because there was no fault, except fate. This might be one, she thought, as she looked at the mangled body, then back at the statue. Then at the pedestal.
Kneeling down she examined the wounds.
‘I’d say she’s been dead twelve hours, maybe more. The rain makes it more difficult, of course.’
‘Why’s that?’ Lacoste asked.
‘No bugs. The amount and type of insect helps tell us how long a person’s been dead. But the heavy rain kept the bugs home. They’re like cats. Hate the rain. Now after the rain …’
She looked over at Beauvoir doing a mad dance and slapping himself.
‘Here,’ she pointed to a wound, ‘see?’
Lacoste peered in. She was right. No bugs, though a few were beginning to hover.
‘Now, this is interesting,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Look at that.’
On her finger was a smear of brown. Lacoste bent closer.
‘Dirt?’ she asked.
‘Dirt.’
Lacoste raised her brows, perplexed, but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes the coroner got up and walked to the Chief Inspector.
‘I can tell you how she died.’
‘A statue?’ asked Gamache.
‘Probably,’ said the coroner, turning to look at the levitating statue then at its pedestal.
‘That’s the more interesting question,’ said Gamache, reading her mind.
‘We had quite a storm last night,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Maybe that knocked it down.’
‘They’re driving me crazy.’ Beauvoir joined them, his face smeared with tiny freckles of crushed blackflies. He looked at Gamache, poised and comfortable. ‘Don’t they bite you?’
‘No. It’s mind over matter. It’s all in your head, Inspector.’
That much was true, Beauvoir knew. He’d just inhaled a swarm of blackflies and he knew for certain a few had flown up his nose. A sudden buzzing in his ear warned him he was either having a stroke or a deerfly had just flown in.
Please, let this be an accident. Let me get home to my barbecue, my cooler of beer, my sports channel. My air conditioning.
He dug his little finger into his ear, but the buzzing only moved deeper.
Charles Morrow subsided onto the dirty truck. He lay on his side, his arms out, his face sad, and smeared with his own flesh and blood.
Gamache walked alone to the edge of the hole in the ground. They all watched as he looked down. There was no movement, except his right hand, which clasped slowly closed.
Then he motioned to the team and there was a sudden flurry of activity as evidence was collected. Jean Guy Beauvoir took charge while Gamache returned to the large flatbed truck.
‘Were you the one who put him on his pedestal?’ he asked the crane operator.
‘Not me, Patron. When was the job done?’ the operator asked, securing and covering Charles Morrow for the trip to the Surete compound in Sherbrooke.
‘Yesterday, early afternoon.’
‘My day off. I was fishing in Lake Memphremagog. I can show you the pictures and the catch. I have a licence.’
‘I believe you.’ Gamache smiled reassuringly. ‘Could someone else from your company have done it?’
‘I’ll ask.’
A minute later he was back.
‘Called dispatch. Got the boss. He placed the statue himself. We do a lot of work with the Manoir, so when Madame Dubois called about this the boss decided it needed a special touch. No one’s better than him.’
This was said with more than a little sarcasm. It was clear this man wouldn’t mind if the boss turned out to have screwed up royally. And if he could help point the middle finger, so much the better.
‘Can you give me his name and co-ordinates?’
The operator happily handed over a card with the proprietor’s name underlined.
‘Please ask him to meet me at the Surete detachment in Sherbrooke in about an hour.’
‘Chief?’ Dr Harris approached just as the driver got back in his rig and drove off.
‘Could the storm have done this?’ he asked, remembering the lightning bolts and the furious angels bowling, or crying, or pushing over statues.
‘Knocked over the statue? Maybe. But it didn’t.’
Gamache turned surprised brown eyes on the coroner. ‘How can you be so certain?’
She held up her finger. Beside him Agent Lacoste grimaced. It wasn’t just ‘a’ finger, it was ‘the’ finger. Gamache raised his brows and grinned. Then his brows lowered and he leaned in closer, staring at the brown smear.
‘This was under her body. You’ll see more when her body’s moved.’
‘It looks like dirt,’ said Gamache.
‘It is,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Dirt, not mud.’
Still the chief was baffled. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means the storm didn’t kill her. She was on the ground before the storm started. It’s dry underneath her.’
Gamache was quiet, absorbing the information.
‘Are you saying the statue fell off and crushed her before the storm hit?’
‘That’s a fact, Chief Inspector. The ground’s dry. I have no idea how that thing came to fall, but it wasn’t the storm.’
They all watched as the flatbed was slowly and carefully driven past them, a Surete officer in the passenger seat and the crane operator driving. They disappeared round a bend in the dirt road and into the thick forest.
‘When did the storm hit?’ He was asking himself as much as her. She was silent, pretending to think. She’d been in bed by nine with her Madeleine cookies, Diet Coke and Cosmo, though she’d rather not volunteer that information. She’d woken in the middle of the night to find her cottage shaking and the power out.
‘We’ll call the weather office. If they don’t know the maitre d’ will,’ he said, walking back to the hole. Staring in he saw what he should have noted in the first place. She was in the clothes he remembered from the night before.
No raincoat. No hat. No umbrella.
No rain.
She was dead before the storm had struck.
‘Any other wounds on her body?’
‘Don’t appear to be. I’ll do the autopsy this afternoon and let you know. Anything else before we take her away?’
‘Inspector?’ Gamache called and Beauvoir joined him, wiping his hands on his sodden slacks.
‘No, we’re finished. Dirt.’ He looked at his hands and spoke as a surgeon might say ‘germs’. Dirt, grass, mud, insects were unnatural to Beauvoir, for whom cologne and a nice silk blend were his elements.
‘That reminds me,’ said Gamache. ‘There was a bees’ or wasps’ nest nearby. Be careful.’
‘Lacoste, the nest?’ Beauvoir jerked his head, but Lacoste continued to stare at the dead woman. She was putting herself in Julia’s place. Turning. Seeing the statue do the impossible, the unthinkable. Seeing it fall towards her. And Agent Lacoste put her hands out in front of her, palms forward, elbows tucked into her body, ready to repel the attack. Turning away.
It was instinctive.
And yet Julia Martin had opened her arms.
The chief walked past her and stood in front of the pedestal. Reaching out he slid his hand over the wet marble. The surface was perfect, pristine. But that wasn’t possible. A several ton statue would make scuffs, scratches, divots. But this surface was unmarred.
It was as though the statue had never been there. Gamache knew that was indulging his imagination. But he also knew he’d need his imagination if he was going to catch this killer. And there was a killer. Armand Gamache had no doubt. For all his magical thinking, Gamache knew statues didn’t walk themselves off their pedestals. If magic hadn’t done it, and if the storm hadn’t, something else had. Some one had.
Somehow someone had managed to get a massive statue, weighing tons, to fall. And to land on Julia Martin.
She’d been murdered. He didn’t know who, and he sure as hell didn’t know how.
But he would.
TWELVE
Armand Gamache had never been in the Manoir kitchen but wasn’t surprised to find it was large, with floors and counters made of gleaming dark wood and appliances made of stainless steel. Like the rest of the old lodge it was a mix of very old and very new. It smelled of basil and coriander, fresh bread and rich ground coffee.
As he entered bottoms slid from counters, the chopping stopped and the hum of conversation petered out.
Gamache immediately went over to Colleen, who was sitting beside the proprietor, Madame Dubois.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She nodded, face bloated and blotched, but she seemed composed.
‘Good. That was a pretty awful thing to see. Shook me too.’
She smiled, grateful he’d said it loud enough for everyone to hear.
Gamache turned to the room.
‘I’m Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Surete du Quebec.’
‘Voyons,’ he heard a loud whisper, ‘I told you it was him.’
A scattering of ‘Holy shit’ was also heard.
‘As you know, there’s been a death. The statue in the garden fell and struck Madame Martin.’
Young, attentive, and excited faces looked at him.
He spoke with natural authority, trying to reassure, even as he broke the frightening news. ‘We believe Madame Martin was murdered.’
There was stunned silence. He’d seen that transition almost every day of his working life. He often felt like a ferryman, taking men and women from one shore to another. From the rugged, though familiar, terrain of grief and shock into a netherworld visited by a blessed few. To a shore where men killed each other on purpose.
They’d all seen it from a safe distance, on television, in the papers. They’d all known it existed, this other world. Now they were in it.
Gamache watched as the young, fresh faces closed slightly, as fear and suspicion entered this room where just moments ago they’d known they were safe. And now these young men and women knew something even their parents probably didn’t fully appreciate.
No place was safe.