A Rule Against Murder

“But what’s heaven and what’s hell?” asked Gamache. “It depends on our point of view. I love this place.” He looked around the room and out of the window, where the rain had now stopped. “For me it’s heaven. I see peace and quiet and beauty. But for Inspector Beauvoir it’s hell. He sees chaos and discomfort and bugs. Both are true. It’s perception. The mind is its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,” Gamache quoted. “Early on, even before the death of Julia Martin, I knew there was something wrong. Spot and Claire, the odious missing family members, became Peter and Clara, two gentle, kind friends of ours. Not without their flaws,” Gamache held up his hand again to head off Thomas’s catalogue of Peter’s faults, “but at their hearts good people. And yet they were denounced as vile. I knew then this was a family at odds with reality, their perception skewed. What purpose did it serve?”

“Does there have to be a purpose?” asked Clara.

“There’s a purpose to everything.” Gamache turned to her, sitting next to Peter. “Thomas was seen by the family as an accomplished pianist, linguist, businessman. And yet his playing is workmanlike, his career is mediocre and he can’t speak French.

“Marianna’s business is flourishing, you play the piano with passion and skill, you have an extraordinary child and yet you’re treated like the selfish little sister who can’t do anything right. Peter is a gifted and successful artist,” Gamache walked along the room to Peter, dishevelled and bleary, “in a loving marriage with many friends. And yet you’re perceived as greedy and cruel. And Julia,” he continued. “The sister who left and was punished for it.”

“She was not,” said Mrs. Finney. “She chose to leave.”

“But you forced her out. And what was her crime?”

“She shamed the family,” said Thomas. “We became a laughingstock. Julia Morrow gives good head.”

“Thomas!” snapped his mother.

They’d been cast out of society. Mocked and ridiculed.

Paradise lost.

And so, they’d taken their revenge on the good child.

“It must’ve been hard for Julia to come to the reunion,” said Marianna. Bean was on her lap for the first time in years, feet dangling inches off the ground.

“Oh, please,” said Thomas. “Like you care, Magilla.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Why should I? You might fool him,” he looked at Gamache, “he doesn’t know you. But we do. You were selfish then and you’re selfish now. That’s why we call you Magilla. So you’ll remember what you did to Father. He asked one thing of you, to kiss him when he got home. And what did you do? You stayed in the basement watching that ridiculous TV show. You preferred a cartoon gorilla to Father. And he knew it. And when you’d finally come to kiss him you were crying. Upset at being made to do something you didn’t want to. You broke his heart, Magilla. Every time I call you that I want you to remember the pain you caused him.”

“Stop it.” Marianna stood. “It. Was. Never. The. Cartoon.”

The words jerked out as though fighting with her, desperate to stay inside. “It. Was. The. Cage.”

No sound came out of Marianna now. She stood silent, her mouth open, a fine line of drool dripping down, like clear honey. Bean squeezed her hand and Marianna started to breathe again, in sobs and whoops, like a newborn, slapped.

“It was the cage. Every day I’d rush home from school to watch Magilla the Gorilla in his cage. Praying that today he’d find a home. He’d be adopted. And loved.”

Tilting her head back she stared at the beam above her head. She saw it tremble, a fine spill of dust and plaster raining down. She braced herself. And then it stopped. The beam held fast. It didn’t fall.

“And that’s why you design beautiful homes for the homeless,” said Gamache.

“Marianna,” said Peter softly, approaching her.

“And you,” said Thomas, his words springing up between Peter and his sister, stopping him. “You’re the most devious of all. You who had everything wanted more. If there’s a devil in this family it’s you.”

“Me?” Peter said, stunned by the attack, vicious even by Morrow standards.

“You’re saying I had everything? What family did you live in? You’re the one Mother and Father loved. You got everything, even his—” He stopped, remembering the plops and the two circles radiating on the calm lake.