“Good evening,” she called merrily, though Gamache doubted she could possibly have known who was there.
“Bonsoir, madame,” said Gamache, bowing slightly as he came up beside her. She was slender and was wearing a simple, elegant evening dress. Hair and nails and make-up were done, even in the wilderness. She wafted a slim hand in front of her face, to disperse the pungent tobacco smell.
“Bugs,” she said. “Blackflies. The only trouble with the east coast.”
“You have no blackflies out west?” he asked.
“Well, not many in Vancouver. Some deerflies on the golf courses. Drive you crazy.”
This Gamache could believe, having been tormented by deerflies himself.
“Fortunately smoke keeps the bugs away,” he said, smiling. She hesitated, then chuckled. She had an easy manner and an easy laugh. She touched his arm in a familiar gesture, though they weren’t all that familiar. But it wasn’t invasive, simply habit. As he’d watched her in the past few days he’d noticed she touched everyone. And she smiled at everything.
“You caught me, monsieur. Sneaking a cigarette. Really, quite pathetic.”
“Your family wouldn’t approve?”
“At my age I’ve long since stopped caring what others think.”
“C’est vrai? I wish I could.”
“Well, perhaps I do just a little,” she confided. “It’s a while since I’ve been with my family.” She looked toward the Manoir and he followed her gaze. Inside, her brother Thomas was leaning over and speaking to their mother while Sandra and Marianna looked on, not speaking and unaware anyone was watching them.
“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 toward 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.