A Rule Against Murder

“It was a terrible thing to say,” agreed Reine-Marie. “Crippling, if you let it. But why is she still telling it forty years later?”

“Why do you think?” Gamache asked.

“Well, I find it interesting she told you, and not us. But then I’m not a man.”

“Now that’s an interesting thing to say,” said Gamache. “What do you mean?”

“I think like many women she behaved differently around men. And men seem hard-wired to be sympathetic to a needy woman, even you. Julia was vulnerable. But she played on those things, I think. Probably had her whole life. And I think her tragedy wasn’t that she had low self-esteem, though I think she had. Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.”

“From what I gather, she was about to find out,” said Agent Lacoste, understanding exactly what Reine-Marie Gamache was talking about. “She’d left her husband and was starting a new life.”

“Yeah, right,” said Beauvoir. “With millions of dollars. Not exactly a test of self-sufficiency. She is the Julia Martin who was married to that insurance man, the guy in a pen out west?”

“She is,” said Gamache.

“And what was the first thing she did?” asked Reine-Marie. “She came here. To her family. Once again she wanted others to fix her.”

“Was it that?” asked Gamache, almost to himself. “Or was she looking for something else from them?”

“Like what?” Beauvoir asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe I was taken in by her, but I have a feeling there was something else behind her being here. She must have known her family weren’t the supportive kind. I’m not sure she came here for that.”

“Revenge?” asked Reine-Marie. “Remember last night?”

She told Inspector Beauvior and Agent Lacoste about the scene between Julia and her siblings.

“So you think she came here to unload?” asked Beauvoir. “Having told the criminal husband to fuck off it was time to tell Mother and the rest?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Reine-Marie. “The problem was her outburst seemed so unplanned, so unexpected.”

“I wonder if it was,” said Gamache. He hadn’t thought of it before but now he wondered. “Is it possible one of them provoked that outburst? After all, who knows you better than your family?”

“What were you talking about?” asked Lacoste.

“Toilets,” said Gamache.

“Toilets?” asked Beauvoir. He’d been feeling a little intimidated by the surroundings but if that’s what rich people and senior Sûreté officers on vacation talk about, hell, he’d fit right in.

The door opened and Clementine Dubois waddled in, followed by the maître d’ and a couple of the staff, carrying trays.

“I thought you could use some refreshment,” the proprietor said. “I’ve taken food and drinks in to the family as well.”

“How are they?” asked Gamache.

“Pretty upset. They’re demanding to see you.”

Gamache looked down at a tray of frothy cold soups with delicate mint leaves and curled lemon rind floating on the top. Another tray held platters of open-faced sandwiches, roast beef, smoked salmon, tomato and Brie. The final tray held bottles of ginger beer, spruce beer, ginger ale, beer and a bucket with a light white wine on ice.

“Merci.” He accepted a ginger beer and turned to the maître d’. “When did the storm start last night? Do you know?”

“Well, I’d done my last tour of the place and had just gone to bed. I was woken by a huge explosion, practically blew me out of bed. I looked over to my clock radio and it said one something. Then the power went out.”

“Did you see anyone before you went to bed?” asked Beauvoir, who’d taken a soup and a roast beef sandwich and was about to plop into a large leather wing chair.

The maître d’ shook his head. “No one was up.”

Gamache knew that wasn’t true. Someone was up.

“I was woken by the storm too,” said Madame Dubois. “I got up to make sure everything was properly shut and to secure the shutters. Pierre and a couple of the staff were already running around. You two were there. You helped.”

“A little. Were all the windows and doors shut?”

“They were shut before I went to bed,” said Pierre. “I check on my last rounds.”

“But in the storm some blew open.” Gamache remembered the banging. “Were they locked?”