A Rule Against Murder

“Yes?” She sounded a little guarded, like a woman used to invasive questions.

“Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped?” Gamache asked.

She laughed. “A game we used to play as children.”

He could see part of her face reflected in the amber light from the Manoir. The two of them stood silent, watching people move from room to room. It felt a little as though they were watching a play. The stage atmospherically lit, the different sets decorated and populated. The actors moving about.

And he looked again at his companion and couldn’t help but wonder. Why was the rest of her family there, like an ensemble on the stage? And she was outside, alone in the dark. Watching.

They’d gathered in the Great Room, with its soaring timbered ceiling and magnificent furnishings. Marianna went to the piano, but was waved away by Madame Finney.

“Poor Marianna.” Julia laughed. “Nothing ever changes. Magilla never gets to play. Thomas’s the musician in the family, like my father. He was a gifted pianist.”

Gamache shifted his gaze to the elderly man on the sofa. He couldn’t picture the gnarled hands producing lovely music, but then they probably hadn’t always been so twisted.

Thomas sat on the bench, raised his hands, and sent the strains of Bach drifting into the night air.

“He plays beautifully,” said Julia. “I’d forgotten.”

Gamache agreed. Through the windows he saw Reine-Marie take a seat and a waiter deposit two espressos and cognacs in front of her. He wanted to get back.

“There’s one more to come, you know.”

“Really?”

She’d tried to keep her tone light but Gamache thought he caught an undertow.

Reine-Marie was stirring her coffee, and had turned to look out of the window. He knew she couldn’t see him. In the light all she’d see was the room, reflected.

Here I am, his mind whispered. Over here.

She turned and looked directly at him.

It was coincidence, of course. But the part of him that didn’t worry about reason knew she’d heard him.

“My younger brother Spot is coming tomorrow. He’ll probably bring his wife, Claire.”

It was the first time he’d heard Julia Martin say anything that wasn’t nice and pleasant. The words were neutral, informative. But the tone was telling.

It was full of dread.

They walked back into the Manoir Bellechasse and as Gamache held open the screen door for Julia Martin he caught sight of the marble box in the woods. He could see just a corner of it and knew then what it reminded him of.

A grave marker.

THREE

Pierre Patenaude leaned against the swinging kitchen door and pushed just as a rumble of laughter came out. It stopped as soon as he appeared and he didn’t know what upset him more, the laughter or its abrupt end.

In the middle of the room stood Elliot, one hand on a slender hip, the other raised slightly, his index finger erect and frozen, a look on his face both needy and sour. It was an exceptionally accurate caricature of one of their guests.

“What’s going on?”

Pierre hated the stern disapproval in his voice. And he hated the look on their faces. Fear. Except Elliot. He looked satisfied.

The staff had never been afraid of him before, and they had no reason to be now. It was that Elliot. Since he’d arrived he’d turned the others against the maître d’. He could feel it. That shift from being at the very center of the Manoir staff, their respected leader, to suddenly feeling an outsider.

How had the young man done it?

But Pierre knew how. He’d brought out the worst in him. He’d pushed the maître d’, taunted him, broken the rules, and forced Pierre to be the disciplinarian he didn’t want to be. All the other young staff had been trainable, willing to listen and learn, grateful for the structure and leadership the maître d’ provided. He taught them to respect the guests, to be courteous and kind even when faced with rudeness. He told them their guests paid good money to be pampered, but more than that. They came to the Manoir to be looked after.

Pierre sometimes felt like an emergency room physician. People streamed through his door, casualties of city life, lugging a heavy world behind them. Broken by too many demands, too little time, too many bills, emails, meetings, calls to return, too little thanks and too much, way too much, pressure. He remembered his own father coming home from the office, drawn, worn down.

It wasn’t servile work they did at the Manoir Bellechasse, Pierre knew. It was noble and crucial. They put people back together. Though some, he knew, were more broken than others.