A Rule Against Murder

On their way up the footpath the Gamaches heard a voice calling to them, and stopped.

“There you are,” puffed Madame Dubois, holding a basket of herbs from the garden. “I left a note at the front desk. Your son called from Paris. Said he’d be out this evening, but he’ll try again.”

“Quel dommage,” said Gamache. “We’ll connect eventually. Merci. May I carry that?” He put out his hand for the basket and after a small hesitation the innkeeper handed it to him gratefully.

“It is getting hot,” she said, “and I find the humidity wearying.” She turned and started up the path at a pace that flabbergasted the Gamaches.

“Madame Dubois.” Gamache found himself chasing after a woman in her mid-120s. “We have a question.”

She stopped and waited for him.

“We were wondering about the marble cube.”

“What marble cube?”

“Pardon?” he said.

“Pardon?” said Madame Dubois.

“That big box of marble down there, on the other side of the Manoir. I saw it last night and then again this morning. Your young gardener doesn’t know what it’s for and Pierre told us to ask you.”

“Ah, oui, that marble box,” she said as if there were others. “Well, we’re very lucky. We’re . . .” and she mumbled something then headed off.

“I didn’t hear what you said.”

“Oh. All right.” She behaved as though they’d tortured her for the information. “It’s for a statue.”

“A statue? Really?” Reine-Marie asked. “Of what?”

“Of Madame Finney’s husband.”

Armand Gamache saw Bert Finney in marble in the middle of their beloved gardens at Manoir Bellechasse. Forever. His wretched face etched in stone and watching them, or God knows what, for eternity.

Their faces must have alerted Madame Dubois.

“Not this one, of course. The first one. Charles Morrow. I knew him, you know. A fine man.”

The Gamaches, who really hadn’t given it much thought, suddenly understood a great deal. How Spot Finney had become Peter Morrow. His mother had married again. She’d gone from Morrow to Finney, but no one else had. In their minds they’d been thinking of them all as Finneys, but they weren’t. They were Morrows.

That might explain, at least in part, how a reunion to celebrate Father seemed to ignore Bert Finney.

“Charles Morrow died quite a few years ago,” Clementine Dubois continued. “Heart. The family’s holding a little unveiling later this afternoon, just before the cocktail hour. The statue’s arriving in about an hour. He’ll make a wonderful addition to the garden.”

She looked at them furtively.

By the size of the marble pedestal the statue would be enormous, Gamache guessed. Taller than some of the trees, though happily the trees would grow and presumably the statue wouldn’t.

“Have you seen the sculpture?” Gamache asked, trying to make it sound casual.

“Oh, yes. Enormous thing. Naked, of course, with flowers around his head and little wings. They were fortunate to find red marble.”

Gamache’s eyes widened and brows rose. Then he caught her smile.

“You wretched woman,” he laughed, and she chuckled.

“Do you think I’d do that to you? I love this place,” Madame Dubois said, as they walked her the rest of the way back to the swinging screen door into the cool Manoir. “But it’s getting so expensive to run. We needed a new furnace this year, and the roof will soon need redoing.”

The Gamaches tilted their heads back to look at the copper roof, oxidized green over time. Even looking at it gave Gamache vertigo. He’d never make a roofer.

“I’ve spoken to an Abinaki craftsman about doing the work. You know it was the Abinaki who built the Manoir to begin with?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Gamache, who loved Quebec history. “I assumed it was done by the Robber Barons.”

“Paid for by them, but built by the natives and the Québécois. Used to be a hunting and fishing lodge. When my husband and I bought it fifty years ago it was abandoned. The attic was filled with stuffed heads. Looked like an abattoir. Disgraceful.”

“You were wise to accept the Finneys’ proposal.” He smiled. “And their money. Better to have Charles Morrow in the garden and the repairs done than lose everything.”

“Let’s hope he isn’t naked. I haven’t seen the statue.”

The Gamaches watched as she walked toward the kitchen.