‘A real chill in the air today,’ said Clara Morrow, who had appeared at his elbow, her eyes bloodshot. ‘There’ll be frost on the pumpkins tonight.’ She managed a smile. ‘We’re having a memorial service for Jane at St Thomas’s on Sunday. A week to the day since she died. We’d like you to be there, if you don’t mind coming down again.’
Gamache didn’t mind. Looking around he realised how much he liked this place and these people. Too bad one of them was a murderer.
TEN
The memorial service for Jane Neal was short and sweet, and had it been plump it would have been an exact replica of the woman. The service was really nothing more than Jane’s friends getting up one after the other and talking about her, in French and English. The service was simple, and the message was clear. Her death was just one instant in a full and lovely life. She’d been with them for as long as she was meant to be. Not a minute longer, not a moment less. Jane Neal had known that when her time came God wouldn’t ask how many committees she’d sat on, or how much money she’d made, or what prizes she’d won. No. He’d ask how many fellow creatures she’d helped. And Jane Neal would have had an answer.
At the end of the service Ruth stood at her seat and sang, in a thin, unsure, alto, ‘What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?’ She sang the unlikely sea shanty at a quarter speed, like a dirge, then slowly picked up speed. Gabri joined in, as did Ben and in the end the whole church was alive with people clapping and swinging their hips and asking the musical question, ‘What do you do with a drunken sailor, err-lie in the morning?’
In the basement after the service the Anglican Church Women served up homemade casseroles and fresh apple and pumpkin pies, accompanied by the thin hum of the sea shanty heard here and there.
‘Why “Drunken Sailor”?’ Approaching the buffet, Armand Gamache found himself standing next to Ruth.
‘It was one of Jane’s favorite songs,’ said Ruth. ‘She was always singing it.’
‘You were humming it that day in the woods,’ Gamache said to Clara.
‘Wards off bears. Didn’t Jane learn it in school?’ Clara asked Ruth.
Olivier jumped in. ‘She told me she learned it for school. To teach, right, Ruth?’