A Rule Against Murder

“What’re they made of?” Beauvoir asked. Most were black and smooth and gleaming.

“Marble. Quarried not far from here.”

“But Charles Morrow wasn’t made of this,” said Gamache.

“No, he was made of something else. I was going to use marble but after listening to people talk about him I changed my mind.”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“The missus, and his kids, but the one I spoke to most, who actually came here, was that ugly guy. If I ever did a sculpture of him I’d get complaints.” He laughed. “But you know, I just might anyway, for myself.”

“Bert Finney?” asked Gamache, to be certain. Pelletier nodded and flicked his butt onto the grass. Beauvoir stepped on it.

“I knew you’d probably be coming so I looked up my notes. Wanna see?”

“S’il vous plaît,” said Beauvoir, who liked notes. They wandered back into the barn, which seemed gloomy compared to the lively cemetery. While Beauvoir read Gamache and the sculptor sat on a low wooden trough.

“How do you go about doing a sculpture?”

“Well, it’s hard if I haven’t met the person. Lots of those people I actually knew.” He waved casually toward the cemetery. “In a small town you do. But Morrow I never met. So like I said, I spoke to his family, looked at pictures. That ugly guy brought a bunch of stuff. Quite interesting. So then I just let it kinda ferment, you know, until I get him. And one day I wake up and I have the guy. Then I get started.”

“What did you ‘get’ about Charles Morrow?”

Pelletier picked at his calloused fingers and thought.

“You know those statues out there, the ones in the cemetery?”

Gamache nodded.

“They’re not all the same size. Some people buy big ones, some smaller. Sometimes it depends on their budget, but mostly it depends on their guilt.”

He smiled. Charles Morrow had been immense.

“I had the impression he wasn’t missed. That the statue was more for them than him. A kind of replacement for grieving.”

There it was. So simple. The words drifted into the air to join the dry dirt in the sunbeams.

What could be worse? Dying, and not being missed.

Was that true of Charles Morrow, Gamache wondered.

“The family used words like prominent and respected, they even mailed me a list of boards he sat on. I half expected to get his bank balance. But there was no affection. I felt sorry for the guy. I tried asking what kinda man he was, you know? Father, husband, that sorta thing.”

“And what did they say?”

“They seemed offended by the question, as though it wasn’t my business. Like I said, it’s very hard to sculpt a man without knowing him. I almost decided to turn down the commission, though the money was so good it woulda killed me. But then this ugly guy shows up. Spoke almost no French and I don’t speak much English. He shoots, he scores. That’s about it. But we got along. That was almost two years ago. I thought about it and decided to sculpt the guy.”

“But who did you sculpt, monsieur? Charles Morrow or Bert Finney?”

Yves Pelletier laughed. “Or maybe I sculpted myself.”

Gamache smiled. “There’s some of you in all your works, I’d expect.”

“True, but more perhaps in that one. It was difficult, troubling. Charles Morrow was a stranger to his family. They knew his outside but not his inside. The ugly man knew his inside. At least, I believe he did. He told me about a man who loved music, who’d wanted to be a hockey player, had played on his school team, but had agreed to go into the family business. Seduced by the money and the position. Ugly man’s words, not mine. The ego. What a tyrant. My words, not his.” He smiled at Gamache. “Happily, being a sculptor keeps my ego in check.”

“You might try being a police officer.”

“Have you ever been sculpted?”

Gamache laughed “Never.”

“If you decide you’d like to, come to me.”

“I’m not sure there’s enough marble in that quarry,” said Gamache. “What was Charles Morrow made of after all?”

“Well, now, there’s an interesting question. I needed something special and money wasn’t an issue so I searched and last year I finally found what I’d heard existed but never actually seen.”

Across the barn Inspector Beauvoir lowered the notes and listened.

“It was wood,” said the scrawny sculptor.

Of all the things Gamache thought he’d hear that wasn’t one of them.