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.