The door to the library opened and Sandra Morrow stepped in. Beauvoir deftly stepped in front of their lists and Gamache got to his feet and went across to her.
‘May I help you?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you. I’m just here to find a book and settle in.’
She made to go around the Chief Inspector, who stepped in front of her.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, her voice frigid.
‘I’m sorry, madame, but this room is no longer available for guests. I thought that was clear. If not, I’m terribly sorry for the confusion, but we need it as our headquarters.’
‘Headquarters? You make it sound very grand. We’re paying guests. And I paid to use this room too.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ said Gamache, his voice firm but friendly. ‘I understand your frustration, and I know it’s a difficult time, but you’ll have to go elsewhere.’
She gave him a look of such loathing it surprised even Beauvoir, who’d given and received a few of those looks in his life.
‘I understand you need to investigate the death of my sister-in-law but you don’t need this particular room. There must be bedrooms. Hers even. Smaller rooms. Surely the Manoir has a back office you could use. These are public rooms, for the guests.’
‘Goodbye, Madame Morrow,’ he said and held out his arm to indicate the door.
She looked at him closely.
‘I know your type. You always take the best. You’re a little man with a little power and it’s made you a bully. I wonder where you get it from?’
She left.
Beauvoir shook his head. Just as he thought this Anglopalooza couldn’t get any weirder, Sandra Morrow did this.
‘Where were we?’ asked Gamache, regaining his seat and taking a sip of beer.
‘Cigarettes,’ said Lacoste, watching to see if Sandra Morrow’s ragged little insults had resulted in even a flesh wound. But the chief looked superbly unconcerned.
‘The Jubilee Tobacco case. I remember it,’ said Beauvoir. ‘All that stuff came out about the shit the companies are putting into cigarettes. My mother actually quit after watching a report.’
‘Smart woman,’ said Gamache. ‘Lots of people quit.’
‘And did that cause the crisis?’ asked Beauvoir, lost again.
‘No, they just turned to the developing world for their market. What brought Martin’s house down around him was the discovery that long after they knew they were in trouble they continued to sell Partnerships, to offset their losses with the tobacco companies. Thousands of people were ruined. The small investors.’
Beauvoir and Lacoste were silent, thinking about that. Beauvoir, having spoken to Martin from prison, was surprised. He didn’t seem like the sort to intentionally screw so many people, the small investors. Ma and Pop. Yet he had. Greed. That was the real jailer.
‘Is it possible one of the Morrows, maybe even Charles Morrow, was a Partner?’ Lacoste asked. ‘Maybe they lost a fortune.’
‘David Martin said the Morrows are worth about twenty million.’
‘Dollars?’ asked Lacoste.
‘No, dog biscuits. Of course dollars,’ said Beauvoir.
‘But maybe they were worth a hundred million before all this,’ said Gamache. ‘Could you check it out?’ he asked Lacoste.
Soon they had every other guest on the suspect list.
‘Haven’t exactly narrowed it down, have we?’ Beauvoir smiled ruefully. ‘They all had the opportunity, they all seemed to have motives for killing each other.’
‘Julia said she’d figured out her father’s secret,’ said Lacoste. ‘I think that’s significant. I asked Clara about it.’
‘And?’ Gamache was curious.
‘She wasn’t helpful, in fact she was slightly unhelpful.’
‘Really?’
Beauvoir stared at the list. Then at the other board. On it was a list of clues, facts, statements. The men’s room graffiti. The two notes they’d found in the grate were tacked to it, and next to them a bird without feet.
And a series of questions:
Was the storm significant?
What had Julia figured out about her father?
Who wrote the notes in the grate?
Why did Julia keep the thank you letters from long ago?
Who wrote the graffiti on the men’s room wall? Does it matter?
They had a long list for Who. For Why. But one word sat alone on the foolscap.
How.
How had that statue fallen? Nothing was written below the word, not even wild guesses.
‘Oh, I have another name to add to the list,’ said Beauvoir, scribbling the name slightly larger than the rest.
‘Pierre Patenaude? The maitre d’?’ asked Lacoste.
‘Of course him,’ said Beauvoir.
‘Why him?’ asked Gamache.
‘Well, he was out on the terrasse around midnight. He helped place the statue, so maybe he did something so that it would fall down. He worked in a cemetery as a kid, so he’d know about statues.’
‘He’d know how to put them up, perhaps,’ said Gamache reasonably. ‘But not how to bring them down. He probably only learned how to cut grass around them, anyway.’
‘He has access to all the rooms,’ said Beauvoir, trying not to sound increasingly argumentative. ‘He could’ve written the notes. Or maybe he didn’t even give them to her. Maybe he just wrote them and crumpled them up and threw them into the grate knowing we’d find them.’
Two silent, staring faces greeted this burst of genius.
‘On purpose,’ he stressed. Still they stared. ‘To misdirect. Oh, come on, he’s a great suspect. He’s everywhere and no one sees him.’
‘You aren’t suggesting the butler did it?’ said Gamache.
‘It’s either him or the shopkeeper and his cleaning woman wife,’ said Beauvoir, and cracked a smile.
The door opened and all three looked up. It was Elliot with a tray of fresh, sweet strawberries.
‘We just picked them. And there’s creme fraiche.’ He smiled at Isabelle Lacoste, managing to make it sound like lubricant. ‘From the nearby monastery.’
Even that sounded sexy.
They ate and stared at the lists. Finally, after scraping the last of the thick cream from the bowl, Beauvoir got up and walked again to their lists. He tapped one.
‘Is this important?’
Who wrote the graffiti on the men’s room wall? Does it matter?
‘Could be. Why?’ asked Gamache.
‘Well, at the end of my conversation with David Martin he said he thought he knew who did it.’
‘We know,’ said Lacoste. ‘Thomas Morrow.’
‘No, Julia’s husband thinks Peter did it.’
Beauvoir and Lacoste spent the rest of the afternoon checking backgrounds and movements. Armand Gamache went in search of Madame Dubois, though it wasn’t a very long or difficult search. There she was, as always, in the middle of the reception hall at her shiny wooden desk looking as though it wasn’t eighty degrees in the shade.
He sat in the comfortable chair opposite. She removed her reading glasses and smiled at him.
‘How may I help you, Chief Inspector?’
‘I’ve been puzzling about something.’
‘I know. Who killed our guest.’
‘That too, but I’ve been wondering why you put the statue where you did.’
‘Ah, that is a very good question, and my answer will be riveting.’ She smiled as she got up. ‘Suivez-moi,’ she said, as though perhaps he wasn’t going to follow her. They walked along the wide plank flooring to the screen door which clacked closed behind them. They were out on the veranda, shaded from the worst of the sun, but still hot. As she waddled by the planters on the edge of the porch she spoke, Gamache bending low, anxious not to miss a riveting word.
‘When Madame Finney first approached me about the statue I declined. This was shortly after Charles Morrow died. She was still Madame Morrow then, of course. They’d stayed here often and I knew them quite well.’