The Murder Stone (24 page)

‘You birdwatch?’

‘I do,’ said Finney, bringing his hand up to finger the binoculars. ‘I have quite a life-list. Sparrows, of course, and cardinals. Black-crested bulbul and white-throated babbler. Marvellous names. I’ve seen most of the birds here before, but you never know what you might find.’

They sipped their coffee and ate their croissants, batting away hungry flies. Dragonflies skimmed the water around the dock, graceful and bright as the sun caught their wings and luminous bodies.

‘Do you know of a bird without feet?’

‘Without feet?’ Instead of laughing Finney considered the question carefully. ‘Why would a bird have no feet?’

‘Why indeed?’ said Gamache, but chose not to elaborate. ‘Who do you think killed your stepdaughter?’

‘Besides Charles?’

Gamache remained silent.

‘This is a difficult family, Chief Inspector. A complicated one.’

‘You called them “seven mad Morrows in a verchere” the other day.’

‘Did I?’

‘What did you mean? Or were you just angry about being left behind?’

As Gamache had hoped, that roused the elderly man who up until that moment had seemed perfectly at ease. Now he turned in his chair and looked at Gamache. But not with annoyance. He looked amused.

‘I remember I told Clara that not everyone makes the boat,’ said Finney. ‘What I didn’t say is that not everybody wants to make the boat.’

‘This is a family, Monsieur Finney, and you’ve been excluded. Doesn’t that hurt?’

‘Hurt is having your daughter crushed to death. Hurt is losing your father, your mother. Hurt is all sorts of things. It isn’t being forced to stand on a shore, especially this shore.’

‘The surroundings aren’t the issue,’ said Gamache quietly. ‘The interior is. Your body can be standing in the loveliest of places, but if your spirit is crushed, it doesn’t matter. Being excluded, shunned, is no small event.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Finney leaned back again into the deep Adirondack chair. Across the lake a couple of Oh Canada birds called to each other. It was just after seven.

Bean’s alarms would have gone off by now.

‘Did you know that Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were friends?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Gamache, staring straight ahead, but listening closely.

‘They were. Thoreau was once thrown in jail for protesting some government law he believed violated freedom. Emerson visited him there and said, “Henry, how did you come to be in here?” Do you know what Thoreau replied?’

‘No,’ said Gamache.

‘He said, “Ralph, how did you come to be out there?”’ After a moment Finney made a strangled noise. Gamache turned to look. It was laughter. A soft, almost inaudible, chuckle.

‘You called them mad. What did you mean?’

‘Well now, that’s just my perception, but I’ve seen men go mad before and I’ve thought about it quite a bit. What do we call madness?’

Gamache was beginning to appreciate that Finney spoke in rhetorical questions.

‘Not going to answer?’

Gamache smiled at himself. ‘Do you want me to? Madness is losing touch with reality, creating and living in your own world.’

‘True, though sometimes that’s the sanest thing to do. The only way to survive. Abused people, especially children, do it.’

Gamache wondered how Finney knew that.

‘They’ve lost their minds,’ said Finney. ‘Not always a bad thing. But there’s another expression we use to describe madness.’

A movement to his left caught Gamache’s eye, a flapping. Looking over he saw Bean running down the lawn. Fleeing? Gamache wondered. But after a moment he realized the child was neither fleeing nor running.

‘We say they’ve taken leave of their senses,’ said Finney.

Bean was galloping, like a horse, a huge swimming towel flapping behind.

‘The Morrows are mad,’ Finney continued, either oblivious of the child or used to it, ‘because they’ve taken leave of their senses. They live in their heads and pay no heed to any other information flooding in.’

‘Peter Morrow’s an artist and a gifted one,’ said Gamache. ‘You can’t be that good an artist without being in touch with your senses.’

‘He is gifted,’ agreed Finney, ‘but how much better would he be if he stopped thinking and started just being? Started listening, smelling, feeling?’

Finney sipped his now cool coffee. Gamache knew he should get up, but he lingered, enjoying the company of this extravagantly ugly man.

‘I remember the first time I intentionally killed something.’

The statement was so unexpected Gamache looked over to the whittled old man to see what prompted it. Bert Finney pointed a gnarled finger at a point of land. Just drifting round it was a boat with a fisherman, alone in the early morning calm, casting.

Whiz. Plop. And the far-off ticking, like Bean’s clocks, as the line was slowly reeled in.

‘I was about ten and my brother and I went out to shoot squirrels. He took my father’s rifle and I used his. I’d seen him shoot often enough but had never been allowed to do it myself. We snuck out and ran into the woods. It was a morning like this, when parents sleep in and kids get up to mischief. We dodged between the trees and threw ourselves onto the ground, pretending to be fighting the enemy. Trench warfare.’

Gamache watched as the elderly man twisted his torso, mimicking the movements of almost eighty years ago.

‘Then my brother hushed me and pointed. Two chipmunks were playing at the base of a tree. My brother pointed to my rifle. I lifted it, took aim, and fired.’

Whiz. Plop. Tick, tick, tick.

‘I got him.’

Bert Finney turned to Gamache, his eyes wild now, going every which way. It was hard to imagine this man being able to shoot anything.

‘My brother cheered and I ran up excitedly. Very proud. I could hardly wait to tell my father. But the thing wasn’t dead. It was gravely hurt, I could tell. It cried and clawed the air, then it stopped and just whimpered. I heard a sound and looked over. The other chipmunk was watching.’

‘What did you do?’ Gamache asked.

‘I shot it again. Killed it.’

‘Was that the last time you killed something?’

‘For a long time, yes. My father was disappointed I wouldn’t hunt with him after that. I never told him why. Perhaps I should have.’

They watched the man in the boat, the man, Gamache guessed, from the cabin across the lake.

‘But I eventually killed again,’ said Finney.

Bean galloped by again then disappeared into the woods.

‘Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,’ said Finney, watching the last flap of the bathing towel as it disappeared into the forest.

‘Are they surly bonds?’ asked Gamache.

‘For some,’ said Finney, still looking at the spot where Bean had been.

The fisherman’s rod suddenly arched and the boat rocked slightly as the man, surprised, leaned back in his seat and started reeling in. The line protested, screaming.

Gamache and Finney watched, willing the fish to flick its head just right. To dislodge the hook tearing its mouth.

‘How well did you know Charles Morrow?’

‘He was my best friend.’ Finney broke away, reluctantly, from the scene on the lake. ‘We went through school together. Some people you lose track of, but not Charles. He was a good friend. Friendship mattered to him.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Forceful. He knew what he wanted and he generally got it.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Money, power, prestige. The usual.’ Finney was drawn back to the fisherman and his arching rod. ‘He worked hard and built a strong company. Actually, to be fair, he took over the family company. It was a small but respected investment firm. But Charles built it into something else. Opened offices across Canada. He was a driven man.’

‘What was it called?’

‘Morrow Securities. I remember he came to work one day laughing because little Peter had asked where his gun was. He thought his dad was a security guard. Very disappointed to find out he wasn’t.’

‘You worked for him?’

‘All my life. He finally sold the company.’

‘Why didn’t he pass it on to his children?’

For the first time Bert Finney appeared uncomfortable.

The fisherman was leaning over the side of his boat, a net in hand, dipping it into the water.

‘I believe he wanted to, but he just didn’t think any of them would be suitable. Peter had far too much imagination, it would have killed him, said Charles, though he believed Peter would’ve been willing to try. He loved that boy’s loyalty and his willingness to help. He was a very kind boy, Charles always said. Julia was already gone, off to BC and engaged to David Martin. Charles had very little time for poor Julia’s husband, so that wasn’t an option. Mariana? Well, he thought she could do it one day. He always said she had the best mind of any of them. Not, perhaps, the best brain. But the best mind. But she was busy having fun.’

‘And Thomas?’

‘Ah, Thomas. Charles thought he was smart and canny, both important.’

‘But?’

‘But he thought the boy was missing something.’

‘What?’

‘Compassion.’

Gamache thought about that. ‘It doesn’t seem like the first quality you’d look for in an executive.’

‘But it is in a son. Charles didn’t want Thomas quite that close.’

Gamache nodded. He’d finally gotten it out of Finney, but had Finney wanted him to ask, to push? Was this the reason Finney was sitting here? To steer the Chief Inspector towards his stepson?

‘When did Charles Morrow die?’

‘Eighteen years ago. I was with him. By the time we got him to the hospital he was dead. Heart attack.’

‘And you married his wife.’ Gamache wanted it to sound neutral. Not an accusation. And it wasn’t one, it was simply a question. But he also knew a guilty mind was a harsh filter, and heard things unintended.

‘I did. I’ve loved her all my life.’

Both men stared out to the lake. The fisherman had something writhing in his net. It was plump and shiny. As they watched he gently took the hook out of its mouth and held it aloft, by its tail.

Gamache smiled. The man who lived in the cabin across the lake was going to let the fish go. With a flash of silver the fish descended and struck the side of the boat.

The fisherman had killed it.

TWENTY

Armand Gamache walked off the wharf, leaving Bert Finney sitting in the Adirondack chair. On the grass the Chief Inspector turned round, looking for signs of the galloping child. But the lawn was empty and quiet.

His watch said seven thirty. Had Bean gone back into the Manoir?

This was the reason he’d gotten up so early, to see why Bean did. And now he’d managed to lose the child, in favour of a conversation with Finney. Had he made the right decision?

Gamache turned away from the lodge and took the trail that wound into and out of the woods, along the shores of Lac Massawippi. It was warm and he knew, even without the maitre d’s forecast, that it would be hot. Not the stifling heat and humidity before the storm, but still hot. Already the sun dazzled off the lake, blinding him if he looked too close and too long.

‘Dream on, dream on,’ a thin voice sang through the woods. Gamache turned and looked in, trying to adjust his eyes to the relative darkness of the forest in full leaf.

‘Dream on, dream on.’ The voice, reedy, reached an almost shrieking pitch. He walked off the path, stepping on roots and unsteady rocks, his ankle almost twisting a few times. But he ploughed on, snaking his large body around living trees and climbing over dead ones until he reached an opening. It was astonishing.

A large circle had been cleared in the middle of the thick forest and planted with honeysuckle and clover. He wondered how he could have missed it, if only by following his nose. It was sweet almost to the point of cloying. The other sense he might have used was hearing.

The glade buzzed. As he looked closer he noticed the tiny, bright, delicate flowers bobbing. The clearing was alive with bees. Bees crawled into and out of and around the blossom-filled bushes.

‘Dream on,’ the voice sang from the other side of the bobbing bushes. Gamache decided on discretion and skirted the glade, catching sight as he did of half a dozen wooden boxes in the very centre of the circle.

Hives. These were honey bees at their morning feeding. The Manoir Bellechasse had its own hives.

At the far side he turned his back on the thousands of bees and stared once again into the woods. There he caught sight of colour flitting between trunks. And then it stopped.

Gamache ploughed indelicately through the forest until he was within yards of Bean. The child stood feet apart as though planted. Knees slightly bent, head tilted back, hands gripped in front as though holding something.

And smiling. No, not just smiling, beaming.

‘Dream on, dream on,’ Bean sang in a music-free voice. But a voice filled with something much richer than even music. Bliss.

Bean was the first Morrow he’d seen with a look of joy, of delight, of rapture.

Gamache recognized it because he felt those things himself, every day. But he hadn’t expected to find them here, in the middle of the forest, in a Morrow. And certainly not from this child, marginalized, excluded, mocked. Named for a vegetable, asexual and rooted. Bean seemed destined for disaster. A puppy beside a highway. But this child who couldn’t jump could do something much more important. Bean could be transported.

He sat for a long time, mesmerized, watching the child. He noticed thin white strings falling from Bean’s ears and disappearing into a pocket. An iPod perhaps? Something was driving the concert he was listening to. He heard Louis Armstrong singing ‘St James Infirmary Blues’, then the Beatles’

‘Let It Be’, though it sounded more like ‘Letter B’. And some tune without words that sent Bean galloping and humming in a whirl of activity. Every now and then Bean would kick back furiously then arch forward.

Eventually he snuck away, satisfied that Bean was safe. Better than safe. Unbelievable as it seemed, Bean was sound.

Agent Isabelle Lacoste stood by the yellow police tape, staring down at the place where Julia Martin had last lived, and died. The blades of grass had sprung back up, erect where yesterday they too had been crushed. Too bad people couldn’t do the same thing, be revitalized after a rain and some sun. Spring back to life. But some wounds were too grave.