A Rule Against Murder

Pandora slammed the box shut, but it was too late.

Peter wriggled in his chair, feeling the panic crawling like ants over him. Just as he’d wriggled on the sofa, his brother and sisters pinching him to keep still. But he couldn’t.

And he couldn’t now. His eyes fell on the glowing white thing in the perpetual shade of the black walnut, the tree that kills. And Peter knew that despite what Gamache might believe, that box had opened on its own. And horrors had been unleashed. It had tilted and dropped his father on Julia. Crushing. Killing.

He heard Reine-Marie’s voice again.

“But not everything escaped. Something lay curled at the very bottom of the box.”

Bean’s eyes were wide. Peter stopped twitching and stared.

Something was left in the box? This was new. His mother hadn’t mentioned this.

“At the very bottom, underneath everything else, one thing sat and stayed. Didn’t flee.”

“What was it?” asked Bean.

“Hope.”

“Here, let me help.” Peter reached for his mother’s suitcase.

“Bert can do it, or one of the porters.”

“I know they can, but I’d like to.”

“Suit yourself.”

He carried her case out of the door. Thomas and Sandra were leaving, without saying goodbye. Thomas did honk his horn. To say goodbye or warn Peter out of the way?

“Bert’s bringing the car,” said Mrs. Finney, staring ahead.

“Will you be all right?”

“Of course I will.”

“I’m so sorry about the graffiti, Mother. I never should have done it.”

“That’s true. It was a terrible thing you did.”

Peter waited for the “but.”

Irene Finney waited for the car. What was taking Bert so long? He’d pleaded with her in their room as they packed to tell the children everything. To explain why she never held them, never hugged them. Never gave or accepted kisses. Especially that. To explain the pain of neuralgia, that any touch, even the lightest, was excruciating.

She knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn’t feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.

But she was raised never to admit a flaw, a failing, a feeling.

She looked over at Peter. Holding her valise. She opened her mouth, but the car appeared just then. She stepped back from the void.

“Here he is.”

Without a backward glance she got in the car and left.

You can’t get milk from a hardware store.

Marianna had told Peter about the note Father had left her. Maybe, thought Peter, if we put all our notes together, the code would be complete. But then he smiled and shook his head. Old habits. There was no code, and he had his answer.

His father had loved him.

As he watched his mother disappear into the woods he wondered if he could ever bring himself to believe that she loved him too. Perhaps one day, but not today.

He walked back to Clara, knowing not everything had left. One thing remained.

Reine-Marie found her husband on the dock, his floppy hat restored, his slacks rolled up and his feet dangling in the clear cool waters.

“I almost lost you today, didn’t I?” She sat beside him, catching the aroma of rosewater and sandalwood.

“Never. Like the Manoir, I’m built to last.”

She smiled and patted his hand, and tried not to think about it.

“I finally got through to Daniel in Paris,” said Gamache. “I apologized.”

And he’d meant it.

“I told him if he wanted to name his son Honoré he had my blessing. He was right. Honoré is a good name. Besides, his child will make his own way. Like Bean. I’d thought it cruel naming the child Bean, that it helped explain the child’s unhappiness. But Bean isn’t unhappy at all.”

“It could have been worse,” said Reine-Marie. “Marianna could have married David Martin.”

“How would that make it worse?”

“Bean Martin?”

Gamache laughed, low and rumbling. “It’s an amazing thing to know your child has more courage than you.”

“He’s his father’s son.”

They looked across the lake, lost in their own thoughts.

“What are you thinking?” she asked quietly after a few moments.

“I’m counting my blessings,” he whispered, looking at her in her floppy hat. “Daniel told me something else. They found out today the sex of their child and they’ve decided on a name.”

“Honoré?”