The Murder Stone

by Louise Penny

  Gamache walked over to Peter and shook his hand. ‘Hello, old son.’

  Gamache was smiling and Peter stared as though at something extraordinary.

  ‘Armand? But how in the world did you come to be here?’

  ‘Well, it is an inn after all.’ Gamache laughed. ‘We’re here celebrating our anniversary.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ said Clara and stepped towards Reine-Marie. Peter also made to move towards them but the clearing of a small throat behind him stopped his progress.

  ‘Perhaps we can talk later,’ suggested Reine-Marie. ‘You need time with your charming family.’ She gave Clara another quick hug. Clara was reluctant to let go, but did, and watched as the Gamaches strolled across the lawn towards the lake. She felt a trickle down her neck. Reaching up to wipe the sweat away she was surprised to see blood on her fingers.

  SIX

  Finally, after a luncheon that lasted a thousand years, Clara was able to get away, and the first thing she wanted to do was go on the hunt for the Gamaches.

  ‘I think Mother would prefer us to stay here.’ Peter hovered on the stone terrasse.

  ‘Come on.’ She gave him a conspiratorial look and held out her hand. ‘Be daring.’

  ‘But it’s a family reunion.’ Peter longed to go with her. To take her hand and race across the perfect lawn, and find their friends. Over lunch, while the rest of the family either ate in silence or discussed the stock market, Peter and Clara had whispered urgently and excitedly about the Gamaches.

  ‘You should’ve seen your face,’ said Peter, trying to keep his voice down. ‘You looked like Dorothy meeting the Great and Powerful Oz. All stunned and excited.’

  ‘I think you’re spending way too much time with Olivier and Gabri,’ said Clara, smiling. She’d never actually smiled at a family reunion before. It felt odd. ‘Besides, you looked like the Tin Man, all stunned. Can you believe the Gamaches are here? Can we sneak away and spend some time with them this afternoon?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Peter, hiding behind a warm bun. The prospect of killing a few hours with their friends instead of enduring the family was a great relief.

  Clara had looked at her watch. Two p.m. Twenty more hours. If she went to bed at eleven and woke up at nine tomorrow morning that would leave just – she tried to work it out in her head – eleven more waking hours with Peter’s family. She could just about make it. And two hours with the Gamaches, that left just nine hours. Dear Lord, she could almost see the end coming. Then they could return to their little village of Three Pines, until another invitation arrived, next year.

  Don’t think about that.

  But now Peter hesitated on the terrasse, as she secretly knew he would. Even over lunch she’d known he couldn’t do it. Still, it had been fun to pretend. Like playing emotional dress-up. Pretending to be the brave one this time.

  But in the end, of course, he couldn’t do it. And Clara couldn’t leave him. And so she walked slowly back inside.

  ‘Why’d you tell your family about my solo show?’ she asked Peter, and wondered if she was trying to pick a fight with him. To punish him for making them stay.

  ‘I thought they should know. They’re always so dismissive of your work.’

  ‘And you’re not?’ She was pissed off.

  ‘How can you say that?’ He looked hurt, and she knew she’d said it to wound. She waited for him to point out that he’d supported her all these years. He’d put a roof over their heads and bought the food. But he stayed silent, which annoyed her even more.

  As he turned to face her she noticed a small dot of whipped cream, like a whitehead, on his cheek. It might as well have been an aeroplane, so odd was it to see anything unplanned attached to her husband. He was always so splendid, so beautifully turned out. His clothes never wrinkled, the creases crisp, never a stain nor a fault. What was that thing on Star Trek? The tractor beam? No, not that. The shields. Peter went through life with his shields raised, repulsing attack by food or beverage, or people. Clara wondered whether there was a tiny Scottish voice in his head right now screaming, ‘Cap’n, the shields are down. I canna git them up.’

  But Peter, dear Peter, was oblivious of the small, fluffy, white alien attached to his face.

  She knew she should say something, or at least wipe it off, but she was fed up.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Peter asked, looking both concerned and a little afraid. Confrontation petrified him.

  ‘You told your family about the Fortin gallery to annoy them. Especially Thomas. It had nothing to do with me. You used my art as a weapon.’

  Cap’n, she’s breakin’ up.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  But he sounded unsure, something else she rarely heard.

  ‘Please don’t talk about my art with them again. In fact, don’t mention anything personal at all. They don’t care and it just hurts me. Probably shouldn’t, but it does. Can you do that?’

  She noticed his slacks pocket was still inside out. It was one of the most disconcerting things she’d ever seen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said. ‘But it wasn’t Thomas, you know. Not any more. I think I’ve grown used to him. It was Julia. Seeing her again has thrown me.’

  ‘She seems nice enough.’

  ‘We all do.’

  ‘Twenty more hours,’ said Clara, looking at her watch then reaching up and rubbing the whipped cream off his face.

  On their way up the footpath the Gamaches heard a voice calling to them, and stopped.

  ‘There you are,’ puffed Madame Dubois, holding a basket of herbs from the garden. ‘I left a note at the front desk. Your son called from Paris. Said he’d be out this evening, but he’ll try again.’

  ‘Quel dommage,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ll connect eventually. Merci. May I carry that?’ He put out his hand for the basket and after a small hesitation the innkeeper handed it to him gratefully.

  ‘It is getting hot,’ she said, ‘and I find the humidity wearying.’ She turned and started up the path at a pace that flabbergasted the Gamaches.

  ‘Madame Dubois.’ Gamache found himself chasing after a woman in her mid-120s. ‘We have a question.’

  She stopped and waited for him.

  ‘We were wondering about the marble cube.’

  ‘What marble cube?’

  ‘Pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Madame Dubois.

  ‘That big box of marble down there, on the other side of the Manoir. I saw it last night and then again this morning. Your young gardener doesn’t know what it’s for and Pierre told us to ask you.’

  ‘Ah, oui, that marble box,’ she said as if there were others. ‘Well, we’re very lucky. We’re …’ and she mumbled something then headed off.

  ‘I didn’t hear what you said.’

  ‘Oh. All right.’ She behaved as though they’d tortured her for the information. ‘It’s for a statue.’

  ‘A statue? Really?’ Reine-Marie asked. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of Madame Finney’s husband.’

  Armand Gamache saw Bert Finney in marble in the middle of their beloved gardens at Manoir Bellechasse. Forever. His wretched face etched in stone and watching them, or God knows what, for eternity.

  Their faces must have alerted Madame Dubois.

  ‘Not this one, of course. The first one. Charles Morrow. I knew him, you know. A fine man.’

  The Gamaches, who really hadn’t given it much thought, suddenly understood a great deal. How Spot Finney had become Peter Morrow. His mother had married again. She’d gone from Morrow to Finney, but no one else had. In their minds they’d been thinking of them all as Finneys, but they weren’t. They were Morrows.

  That might explain, at least in part, how a reunion to celebrate Father seemed to ignore Bert Finney.

  ‘Charles Morrow died quite a few years ago,’ Clementine Dubois continued. ‘Heart. The family’s holding a little unveiling later this afternoon, just before the cocktail hour. The statue’s
arriving in about an hour. He’ll make a wonderful addition to the garden.’

  She looked at them furtively.

  By the size of the marble pedestal the statue would be enormous, Gamache guessed. Taller than some of the trees, though happily the trees would grow and presumably the statue wouldn’t.

  ‘Have you seen the sculpture?’ Gamache asked, trying to make it sound casual.

  ‘Oh, yes. Enormous thing. Naked, of course, with flowers around his head and little wings. They were fortunate to find red marble.’

  Gamache’s eyes widened and brows rose. Then he caught her smile.

  ‘You wretched woman,’ he laughed, and she chuckled.

  ‘Do you think I’d do that to you? I love this place,’ Madame Dubois said, as they walked her the rest of the way back to the swinging screen door into the cool Manoir. ‘But it’s getting so expensive to run. We needed a new furnace this year, and the roof will soon need redoing.’

  The Gamaches tilted their heads back to look at the copper roof, oxidized green over time. Even looking at it gave Gamache vertigo. He’d never make a roofer.

  ‘I’ve spoken to an Abinaki craftsman about doing the work. You know it was the Abinaki who built the Manoir to begin with?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Gamache, who loved Quebec history. ‘I assumed it was done by the Robber Barons.’

  ‘Paid for by them, but built by the natives and the Québécois. Used to be a hunting and fishing lodge. When my husband and I bought it fifty years ago it was abandoned. The attic was filled with stuffed heads. Looked like an abattoir. Disgraceful.’

  ‘You were wise to accept the Finneys’ proposal.’ He smiled. ‘And their money. Better to have Charles Morrow in the garden and the repairs done than lose everything.’

  ‘Let’s hope he isn’t naked. I haven’t seen the statue.’

  The Gamaches watched as she walked towards the kitchen.

  ‘Well, at least the birds’ll have one more thing to perch on,’ said Gamache.

  ‘At least,’ said Reine-Marie.

  The Gamaches found Peter and Clara on the wharf when they went down for a swim.

  ‘Now, tell us what’s been happening in your lives, starting with Denis Fortin and your art.’ Reine-Marie patted the Adirondack chair. ‘And don’t leave out a thing.’

  Peter and Clara brought them up to date on events in their village of Three Pines, then, after some more prompting, Clara told the story of the great art dealer showing up to their modest home there, his return visit with his partners, then the excruciating wait while they decided if Clara Morrow was, at the age of forty-eight, an emerging artist. Someone they wanted to sponsor. For everyone in the art world knew that if Denis Fortin approved of you, the art world approved. And anything was possible.

  Then the nearly unbelievable news that after decades of trying to get someone, anyone, to notice her work, Clara was indeed going to have a solo show at the Galerie Fortin next year.

  ‘And how are you feeling about this?’ Gamache asked quietly, having left the women and wandered to the end of the dock with Peter.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  Gamache nodded and putting his hands behind his back he looked out to the far shore, and waited. He knew Peter Morrow. Knew him to be a decent and kind man, who loved his wife more than anything in the world. But he also knew Peter’s ego was almost as large as his love. And that was enormous.

  ‘What?’ Peter laughed, after the silence had stretched beyond his breaking.

  ‘You’re used to being the successful one,’ said Gamache simply. No use pretending. ‘It would be natural to feel a little …’ he searched for the right word, the kind word, ‘murderous.’

  Peter laughed again and was surprised to hear it magnified by the far shore.

  ‘You do know artists. I’ve had a bit of a struggle over this, as I think you know, but seeing Clara so happy, well …’

  ‘I’m not sure Reine-Marie would be pleased if I became a librarian, like her,’ said Gamache, looking over at his wife talking animatedly with Clara.

  ‘I can just see both of you working at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Montreal, seething resentments between the aisles. Especially if you got promoted.’

  ‘That wouldn’t happen. I can’t spell. Have to sing the alphabet every time I look a number up in the phone book. Drives Reine-Marie crazy. But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians,’ confided Gamache. ‘All that silence. Gives them ideas.’

  They laughed and as they walked back to the women they heard Reine-Marie describe the rest of their day.

  ‘Swim, nap, swim, white wine, dinner, swim, sleep.’

  Clara was impressed.

  ‘Well, we’ve had all week to perfect it,’ admitted Reine-Marie. ‘You have to work on these things. What’re you two doing?’

  ‘Boating, unveiling, getting drunk, humiliating myself, apologizing, sulking, eating, sleeping,’ said Clara. ‘I’ve had twenty years of reunions to perfect it. Though the unveiling is new.’

  ‘It’s a statue of your father?’ Gamache asked Peter.

  ‘The pater. Better here than our garden.’

  ‘Peter,’ said Clara mildly.

  ‘Would you want it?’ asked Peter.

  ‘No, but I didn’t really know your father. He was handsome enough, like his son.’

  ‘I’m not at all like him,’ snapped Peter in a tone so unlike him it surprised the others.

  ‘You didn’t like your father?’ Gamache asked. It seemed a safe guess.

  ‘I liked him about as much as he liked me. Isn’t that how it normally works? You get what you give? That’s what he always said. And he gave nothing.’

  There was silence then.

  ‘After Peter’s father died his mother married again,’ explained Clara. ‘Bert Finney.’

  ‘A clerk in my father’s company,’ said Peter, tossing pebbles into the calm lake.

  He was slightly more than a clerk, Clara knew. But she also knew it wasn’t the time to fine-tune her husband.

  ‘I’ll just be glad when this is over. Mother doesn’t want us to see the statue until the unveiling so Thomas suggested we all go boating.’ He cocked his head towards a green wooden rowboat tied to the dock. It was unusually long with two sets of oar holes.

  ‘It’s a verchère,’ said Reine-Marie, amazed. She hadn’t seen one in years.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Peter. ‘We used to go in the seven-in-a-verchère race at the local regatta. Thomas thought it would be a good way to pass the time. A sort of homage to Father.’

  ‘Thomas calls you Spot,’ said Gamache.

  ‘Has most of my life.’ Peter held out his hands. Reine-Marie and Gamache bent over, as though preparing to kiss a ring. But instead of a ring they found dots. Spots.

  ‘Paint,’ said Reine-Marie, straightening up. ‘Turpentine’ll get that out.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Peter with mock astonishment, then smiled. ‘These are new. From this morning in the studio. But I’ve had them on my hands, my face, my clothing, my hair, all my life. When I was a kid Thomas noticed and started calling me Spot.’

  ‘Nothing gets by Thomas, I’m guessing,’ said Gamache.

  ‘He’s the original recycler,’ agreed Peter. ‘He collects conversations and events then uses them years later, against you. Recycle, retaliate, repulse. Nothing’s ever wasted with our Thomas.’

  ‘So that explains Spot,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘But what about your sister Mariana? Why is she Magilla?’

  ‘Oh, some TV show she used to watch as a kid. Magilla Gorilla. She was fixated on it. Father used to get home from work right in the middle of the show and insist we all greet him at the door, like a big happy family. Mariana was always in the basement, watching TV. He’d have to yell at her. Every night she’d stomp up those stairs, crying.’

  ‘So Thomas called her Magilla, after a gorilla?’ Gamache was beginning to get a sense of the man. Peter nodded.

  ‘And what did you call him?’
r />   ‘Thomas. I was always the creative one in the family.’

  They sat enjoying the slight breeze at the dock. Peter listened as Clara talked again about Fortin visiting her studio this past spring and seeing the portrait of their friend Ruth, the old and withered poet. Embittered and embattled and brilliant. For some reason Peter couldn’t hope to understand Clara had painted her as the Madonna. Not, of course, the dewy virgin. But an old and forgotten woman, alone and frightened and facing her final years.

  It was the most beautiful work Peter had ever seen, and he’d stood in front of masterpieces. But never had he seen anything more extraordinary than in Clara’s small back studio, cramped with rejected pieces and magazines and curled and crisp orange rinds, next to his pristine, professional, disciplined space.

  But while he’d once again taken a common item and gotten so close it was unrecognizable then painted it as an abstract and called it The Curtain, or Blade of Grass, or Transport, Clara had squirrelled away in her little space and captured the divine in the face of their wizened, shrivelled, vicious old neighbour. Veined old hands clutched a faded blue robe to her withered neck. Her face was full of misery and disappointment, rage and despair. Except her eyes. It wasn’t obvious. Just a hint, a suggestion.

  It was there, in the tiniest dot in her eye. In the entire, huge canvas, Clara had painted a single dot, a spot. And in that spot she’d placed hope.

  It was exquisite.

  He was happy for her. Really.

  A shriek broke into their reflections and in an instant all were on their feet turning towards the Manoir. Armand Gamache started forward just as a small figure shot out of the garden.

  Bean.

  The child raced screaming towards them down the lawn getting more hysterical with each panicked step, the swim towel snapping behind. And someone was chasing the child. As they came closer Gamache recognized the young gardener.