‘When the invitation arrived I almost didn’t come. It’s an annual reunion, you know, but I’ve never been before. Vancouver’s so far away.’
She could still see the invitation sitting face up on the gleaming hardwood floor of her impressive entrance where it had fallen as though from a great height. She knew the feeling. She’d stared at the thick white paper and the familiar spider scrawl. It was a contest of wills. But she knew who’d win. Who always won.
‘I don’t want to disappoint them,’ Julia Martin finally said, quietly.
‘I’m certain you couldn’t do that.’
She turned to him, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’
He’d said it to be polite. He honestly had no idea how the family felt about each other.
She saw his hesitation and laughed again. ‘Forgive me, monsieur. Each day I’m with my family I regress a decade. I now feel like an awkward teenager. Needy and sneaking smokes in the garden. You too?’
‘Smoking in the garden? No, not for many years now. I was just exploring.’
‘Be careful. We wouldn’t want to lose you.’ She spoke with a hint of flirtation.
‘I’m always careful, Madame Martin,’ said Gamache, careful not to return the flirtation. He suspected it was second nature to her and harmless. He’d watched her for a few days and she’d used the same inflection on everyone, men and women, family and stranger, dogs, chipmunks, hummingbirds. She cooed to them all.
A movement off to the side caught his attention. He had the impression of a white blur and for an instant his heart leapt. Had the marble thing come to life? Was it lumbering towards them out of the woods? He turned and saw a figure on the terrasse recede into the shadows. Then it reappeared.
‘Elliot,’ called Julia Martin, ‘how wonderful. Have you brought my brandy and Benedictine?’
‘Oui, madame.‘ The young waiter smiled as he handed her the liqueur off his silver salver. Then he turned to Gamache. ‘And for Monsieur? What may I get you?’
He looked so young, his face so open.
And yet Gamache knew the young man had been lurking at the corner of the lodge, watching them. Why?
Then he laughed at himself. Seeing things not there, hearing words unspoken. He’d come to the Manoir Bellechasse to turn that off, to relax and not look for the stain on the carpet, the knife in the bush, or the back. To stop noticing the malevolent inflections that rode into polite conversation on the backs of reasonable words. And the feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami. Made to look pretty, but disguising something not at all attractive.
It was bad enough that he’d taken to watching old movies and wondering whether the elderly people in the background were still alive. And how they died. But when he started looking at people in the street and noticing the skull beneath the skin it was time for a break.
Yet here he was in this peaceful lodge examining the young waiter, Elliot, and on the verge of accusing him of spying.
‘Non, merci. Madame Gamache has ordered our drinks for the Great Room.’
Elliot withdrew and Julia watched him.
‘He’s an attractive young man,’ said Gamache.
‘You find him so?’ she asked, her face invisible but her voice full of humour. After a moment she spoke again. ‘I was just remembering a similar job I had at about his age, but nothing as grand as this. It was a summer job in a greasy spoon on the Main, in Montreal. You know, boulevard Saint-Laurent?’
‘I know it.’
‘Of course you do. Forgive me. It was a real dive. Minimum wage, owner was all hands. Disgusting.’
She paused again.
‘I loved it. My first job. I’d told my parents I was at the yacht club taking sailing lessons, but instead I’d get on the 24 bus and head east. Uncharted territory for Anglos in the Sixties. Very bold,’ she said in a self-mocking tone. But Gamache knew the times and knew she was right.
‘I still remember my first pay cheque. Took it home to show my parents. Do you know what my mother said?’
Gamache shook his head then realized she couldn’t see him in the dark. ‘Non.‘
‘She looked at it then handed it back and said I must be proud of myself. And I was. But it was clear she meant something else. So I did something stupid. I asked her what she meant. I’ve since learned not to ask a question unless I’m prepared for the answer. She said I was privileged and had no need of the money, but someone else did. I’d as good as stolen it from some poor girl who actually needed the job.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gamache. ‘I’m sure she didn’t mean it.’
‘She did, and she was right. I quit the next day, but I’d go back every now and then and look through the window at the new girl waiting tables. That made me happy.’
‘Poverty can grind a person down,’ said Gamache quietly. ‘But so can privilege.’
‘I actually envied that girl,’ said Julia. ‘Silly, I know. Romantic. I’m sure her life was dreadful. But I thought, maybe, it was at least her own.’ She laughed and took a sip of her B&B. ‘Lovely. Do you think the monks at the abbey make it?’
‘The Benedictines? I don’t really know.’
She laughed. ‘It’s not often I hear those words.’
‘Which words?’
‘I don’t know. My family always knows. My husband always knew.’
For the past few days they’d exchanged polite comments about the weather, the garden, the food at the Manoir. This was the first real conversation he’d had with any of them and it was the first time she’d mentioned her husband.
‘I came to the Manoir a few days early, you know. To …’
She didn’t seem to know what to say, but Gamache waited. He had all the time, and patience, in the world.
‘I’m in the middle of a divorce. I don’t know if you knew.’
‘I had heard.’
Most Canadians had heard. Julia Martin was married to David Martin, whose spectacular success and just as spectacular fall had been chronicled relentlessly in the media. He’d been one of the nation’s wealthiest men, making his fortune in insurance. The fall had started a few years ago. It had been long and excruciating, like sliding down the side of a muddy slope. It looked at each moment as though he might be able to stop the descent, but instead he’d just kept gathering mud and slime and speed. Until finally even his enemies found it hard to watch.
He’d lost everything, including, finally, his freedom.
But his wife had stood beside him. Tall, elegant, dignified. Instead of arousing envy for her obvious privilege, she’d somehow managed to endear herself to the people. They warmed to her good cheer and sensible comments. They identified with her dignity and loyalty. And finally they’d adored her for the public apology she’d made at the end, when it became clear her husband had lied to everyone, and ruined tens of thousands of life savings. And she’d pledged to pay back the money.
And now David Martin lived in a penitentiary in British Columbia and Julia Martin had moved back home. She’d make her life in Toronto, she’d told the media just before she’d disappeared. But here she was, in Quebec. In the woods.
‘I came here to catch my breath, before the family reunion. I like my own space and time to myself. I’ve missed it.’
‘Je comprends,’ he said. And he did. ‘But there is something I don’t understand, madame.’
‘Yes?’ She sounded a little guarded, like a woman used to invasive questions.
‘Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped?’ Gamache asked.
She laughed. ‘A game we used to play as children.’
He could see part of her face reflected in the amber light from the Manoir. The two of them stood silent, watching people move from room to room. It felt a little as though they were watching a play. The stage atmospherically lit, the different sets decorated and populated. The actors moving about.
And he looked again at his companion and couldn’t help but wonder. Why was the rest of her family there, like an ensemble on the stage? And she was outside, alone in the dark. Watching.
They’d gathered in the Great Room, with its soaring timbered ceiling and magnificent furnishings. Mariana went to the piano, but was waved away by Madame Finney.
‘Poor Mariana.’ Julia laughed. ‘Nothing ever changes. Magilla never gets to play. Thomas’s the musician in the family, like my father. He was a gifted pianist.’
Gamache shifted his gaze to the elderly man on the sofa. He couldn’t picture the gnarled hands producing lovely music, but then they probably hadn’t always been so twisted.
Thomas sat on the bench, raised his hands, and sent the strains of Bach drifting into the night air.
‘He plays beautifully,’ said Julia. ‘I’d forgotten.’
Gamache agreed. Through the windows he saw Reine-Marie take a seat and a waiter deposit two espressos and cognacs in front of her. He wanted to get back.
‘There’s one more to come, you know.’
‘Really?’
She’d tried to keep her tone light but Gamache thought he caught an undertow.
Reine-Marie was stirring her coffee, and had turned to look out of the window. He knew she couldn’t see him. In the light all she’d see was the room, reflected.
Here I am, his mind whispered. Over here.
She turned and looked directly at him.
It was coincidence, of course. But the part of him that didn’t worry about reason knew she’d heard him.
‘My younger brother Spot is coming tomorrow. He’ll probably bring his wife, Claire.’
It was the first time he’d heard Julia Martin say anything that wasn’t nice and pleasant. The words were neutral, informative. But the tone was telling.
It was full of dread.
They walked back into the Manoir Bellechasse and as Gamache held open the screen door for Julia Martin he caught sight of the marble box in the woods. He could see just a corner of it and knew then what it reminded him of.
A grave marker.
THREE
Pierre Patenaude leaned against the swinging kitchen door and pushed just as a rumble of laughter came out. It stopped as soon as he appeared and he didn’t know what upset him more, the laughter or its abrupt end.
In the middle of the room stood Elliot, one hand on a slender hip, the other raised slightly, his index finger erect and frozen, a look on his face both needy and sour. It was an exceptionally accurate caricature of one of their guests.
‘What’s going on?’
Pierre hated the stern disapproval in his voice. And he hated the look on their faces. Fear. Except Elliot. He looked satisfied.
The staff had never been afraid of him before, and they had no reason to be now. It was that Elliot. Since he’d arrived he’d turned the others against the maitre d’. He could feel it. That shift from being at the very centre of the Manoir staff, their respected leader, to suddenly feeling an outsider.
How had the young man done it?
But Pierre knew how. He’d brought out the worst in him. He’d pushed the maitre d’, taunted him, broken the rules, and forced Pierre to be the disciplinarian he didn’t want to be. All the other young staff had been trainable, willing to listen and learn, grateful for the structure and leadership the maitre d’ provided. He taught them to respect the guests, to be courteous and kind even when faced with rudeness. He told them their guests paid good money to be pampered, but more than that. They came to the Manoir to be looked after.
Pierre sometimes felt like an emergency room physician. People streamed through his door, casualties of city life, lugging a heavy world behind them. Broken by too many demands, too little time, too many bills, emails, meetings, calls to return, too little thanks and too much, way too much, pressure. He remembered his own father coming home from the office, drawn, worn down.
It wasn’t servile work they did at the Manoir Bellechasse, Pierre knew. It was noble and crucial. They put people back together. Though some, he knew, were more broken than others.
Not everyone was made for this work.
Elliot wasn’t.
‘I was just having some fun.’
Elliot said it as though it was reasonable to stand in the middle of the crowded, busy kitchen mocking the guests, and the maitre d’ was the unreasonable one. Pierre could feel his rage rising. He looked around.
The large old kitchen was the natural gathering place for the staff. Even the gardeners were there, eating cakes and drinking tea and coffee. And watching his humiliation at the hands of a nineteen year old. He’s young, Pierre said to himself. He’s young. But he’d said it so often it had become meaningless.
He knew he should let it go.
‘You were making fun of the guests.’
‘Only one. Oh, come on, she’s ridiculous. Excusez-moi, but I think he got more coffee than I did. Excusez-moi, but is this the best seat? I asked for the best seat. Excusez-moi, I don’t mean to be difficult, but I did order before they did. Where’s my celery stick?’
Titters, quickly stifled, filled the warm kitchen.
It was a good imitation. Even in his anger the maitre d’ recognized Sandra’s smooth, cool whine. Always asking for a little bit more. Elliot might not be a natural waiter, but he had an uncanny ability to see people’s faults. And magnify them. And mock them. It was a gift not everyone would find attractive.
‘Look who I found,’ said Julia cheerfully as they stepped into the Great Room.
Reine-Marie smiled and rose to kiss her husband, holding out a bulbous cognac glass. The rest looked up, smiled, and returned to what they were doing. Julia stood uncertain on the threshold, then picked up a magazine and sat in a wing chair.
‘Feeling better?’ Reine-Marie whispered.
‘Much,’ Gamache said and meant it, taking the glass warmed by her hands and following her to a sofa.
‘Bridge later?’ Thomas stopped playing the piano and wandered over to the Gamaches.
‘Merveilleux. Bonne idee,’ said Reine-Marie. They’d played bridge most nights with Thomas and his wife Sandra. It was a pleasant way to end the day.
‘Find any roses?’ Thomas asked Julia as he walked back to his wife. There was a rat-tat-tat of laughter from Sandra as though he’d said something witty and brilliant.
‘Some Eleanor roses, you mean?’ Mariana asked from the window seat beside Bean, a look of great amusement on her face. ‘They are your favourites, aren’t they, Julia?’