A Rule Against Murder - Page 109/135

“I’m not the one who needs freeing, Mr. Gamache. You refuse to see your father clearly. You’re living with a lie. I knew him. He was a coward and a traitor. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can get on with your life. What he did was despicable. He doesn’t deserve your love.”

“We all deserve love. And at times pardon.”

“Pardon? Do you mean mercy, forgiveness?” She made it sound like an oath, a curse. “I’ll never forgive the man who killed Julia. And if he’s ever pardoned . . .” Her trembling hands released their grip on the sugar bowl. After a moment her voice steadied. “We’d already lost so much time, you see. Stolen by David Martin. He didn’t even want to come home to be married. Insisted they got married in Vancouver. And he kept her there.”

“Against her will?”

She hesitated. “He kept her away. He hated us, especially Charles.”

“Why?”

“Charles was too smart for him, knew what sort of man David was. Not a gentleman.” She almost smiled. “He always had a scheme. Always looking for the angle, the fast deal. Julia and Charles had had a falling out. Perhaps you’ve heard?”

Her head lifted and her cunning blue eyes studied him. He nodded.

“Then you know how sensitive Julia was. Over-sensitive then. She left and met David Martin right away. When Martin heard her father was the financier Charles Morrow, well, he couldn’t push for a reconciliation fast enough. Charles was thrilled at first, but then it became clear Martin only wanted him to invest in one of his schemes. Charles turned him down flat.”

“Both the deal and the reconciliation failed?”

“No, the deal went through but with other more gullible investors. But eventually he lost everything and had to start again. He never tired of badmouthing us to Julia. Turned her against us completely, especially her father.”

“But it didn’t start with David Martin, it started long before that. With a slur written on the men’s room wall of the Ritz.”

“You know about that, do you? Well, it was a lie. Filthy. With one purpose. To hurt Charles and drive a wedge between him and Julia.”

“But who’d want to do that?”

“We never found out.”

“Do you have your suspicions?”

She hesitated. “If I do, I keep them to myself. Do you think I’m a common gossip?”

“I think if your family was attacked you and your husband would fight back. And you’d do everything you could to find out who’d done it.”

“Charles tried,” she conceded. “We had our suspicions, but couldn’t act on them.”

“Someone close to home?”

“This conversation is over.” She got up, but not before Gamache thought he saw her eyes dart away. Down the lawn. To the lake. And the ugly man almost enveloped by the mist around the dock.

Just as Gamache walked onto the dock a tiny figure flashed past, galloping across the lawn. Bean in flight, a Spider Man towel flapping behind, hands gripping reins, a breathless whisper of a song, “Letter B, Letter B,” barely sung and barely heard. Joyous, the child galloped over the grass then into the woods.

“See anything?” Gamache asked Finney and nodded to the binoculars.

“Don’t really look any more,” admitted Finney. “They’re more out of habit. In case anything unusual happens. Bean’s asked me to keep an eye out for Pegasus, and I think I just saw him.”

Finney nodded to the now empty lawn and Gamache smiled.

“But I don’t look for birds any more. Keep forgetting.”

“The martlet,” said Gamache, placing his large hands behind his back and staring onto the lake with its soft waves. Clouds were slowly moving in. “Now there’s an interesting bird. Used a lot in heraldry. It’s thought to signify enterprise and hard work. The martlet’s also meant to signify the fourth child.”

“Is that right?” Finney kept staring into the lake, but his lazy eye was energized, flitting here and there.

“Yes. I found a book last night about the Hundred Years War between England and France. At that time the first son of any family inherited, the second was given to the church, the third might make a good marriage, but the fourth? Well, the fourth had to make his own way.”

“Difficult times.”

“For martlets. And I remembered what Charles Morrow most feared about his own children, four of them as it turned out. He was afraid they’d squander the family fortune.”