all these years to forgive?
“You were kind to me, often. And you were a good friend. Once.”
The gem bright ribbons, the four female ribbons, fluttered and intertwined.
Myrna bent to pat the garden soil more firmly around the prayer stick.
“What’s this?”
She stood up, holding something caked in dirt. Wiping it off, she showed it to the others. It was a coin, the size of an Old West silver dollar.
“That’s mine,” said Ruth, reaching for it.
“Not so fast, Miss Kitty. Are you sure?” asked Myrna. Dominique and Clara took turns examining it. It was a coin, but not a silver dollar. In fact, it was coated in silver paint but it seemed plastic. And there was writing on it.
“What is it?” Dominique handed it back to Myrna.
“I think I know. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t yours,” Myrna said to Ruth.
*
Agent Isabelle Lacoste had joined Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir on the terrasse. She ordered a Diet Coke and gave them an update.
The Incident Room was up and running in the old railway station. Computers, phone lines, satellite links installed. Desks, swivel chairs, filing cabinets, all the hardware in place. It happened quickly, expertly. The homicide division of the S?reté was used to going into remote communities to investigate murder. Like the Army Corps of Engineers, they knew time and precision counted.
“I’ve found out about Lillian Dyson’s family.” Lacoste pulled her chair forward and opened her notebook. “She’d divorced. No children. Her parents are both alive. They live on Harvard Ave in Notre-Dame-de-Grace.”
“How old are they?” Gamache asked.
“He’s eighty-three, she’s eighty-two. Lillian was an only child.”
Gamache nodded. This was, of course, the worst part of any case. Telling the living about the death.
“Do they know?”
“Not yet,” said Lacoste. “I wondered if you—”
“I’ll go into Montréal this afternoon and speak to them.” Where possible he told the family himself. “We should also search Madame Dyson’s apartment.” Gamache took the guest list from his breast pocket. “Can you get agents to interview everyone on this list? They were at the party last night or the vernissage, or both. I’ve marked the people we’ve already spoken to.”
Beauvoir put out his hand for the list.
It was his role, they knew, to coordinate the interviews, assemble the evidence, assign agents.
The Chief Inspector paused, then handed the list to Lacoste. Effectively handing control of the investigation to her. Both agents looked surprised.
“I’d like you with me in Montréal,” he said to Beauvoir.
“Of course,” said Beauvoir, perplexed.
They all had delineated roles within the homicide division. It was one of the things the Chief insisted on. That there be no confusion, no cracks. No overlap. They all knew what their jobs were, knew what was expected. Worked as a team. No rivalry. No in-fighting.
Chief Inspector Gamache was the undisputed head of homicide.
Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir was his second in command.
Agent Lacoste, up for promotion, was the senior agent. And below them were more than a hundred agents and investigators. And several hundred support staff.
The Chief made it clear. In confusion, in fractures, lay danger. Not just internal squabbles and politics, but something real and threatening. If they weren’t clear and cohesive, if they didn’t work together as a team, a violent criminal could escape. Or worse. Kill again.
Murderers hid in the tiniest of cracks. And Chief Inspector Gamache was damned if he was going to let his department provide one.
But now the Chief had broken one of his own cardinal rules. He handed the investigation, the day-to-day operations, over to Agent Isabelle Lacoste instead of Beauvoir.
Lacoste took the list, scanned it, and nodded. “I’ll get on it right away, Chief.”
Both men watched Agent Lacoste leave, then Beauvoir leaned forward.
“OK, patron. What’s this about?” he whispered. But before Gamache could answer they saw four women heading their way. Myrna in the lead, with Clara, Dominique and Ruth in her wake.
Gamache rose and bowed slightly to the women. “Would you like to join us?”
“We won’t stay long, but we wanted to show you something. We found this in the flower bed by where the woman was killed.” Myrna handed him the coin.
“Really?” said Gamache, surprised. He looked down at the dirty coin in his palm. His people had done a thorough search of the whole garden, of the whole village. What could they have missed?
There was the image of a camel on the face of it, just visible beneath the smears.
“Who’s touched this?” Beauvoir asked.
“We all did,” said Ruth, proudly.
“Do you not know what to do with evidence at a crime scene?”
“Do you not know how to collect evidence?” Ruth asked. “If you did we wouldn’t have found it.”
“This was just lying in the garden?” Gamache asked. With the tip of his finger, careful not to touch it more than necessary, he flipped it over.
“No,” said Myrna. “It was buried.”
“Then how did you find it?”
“With the prayer stick,” said Ruth.
“What’s a prayer stick?” Beauvoir asked, afraid of the answer.
“We can show you,” Dominique offered. “We put it in the flower bed where the woman was murdered.”
“We were doing a ritual cleansing—” said Clara, before being cut off by Myrna.
“Phhht.” Myrna made a noise. “Ix-nay on the leansing-cay.”
Beauvoir stared at the women. It wasn’t enough that they were English and had a prayer stick, but now they’d lapsed into pig latin. It was no wonder there were so many murders here. The only mystery was how any got solved, with help like this.
“I bent down to mound dirt around the prayer stick and this thing appeared,” Myrna explained, as though this was a reasonable thing to be doing at a murder scene.
“Didn’t you see the police tape?” Beauvoir demanded.
“Didn’t you see the coin?” Ruth countered.
Gamache held up his hand and the two stopped bickering.
On the side now exposed there was writing. What looked like a poem.
Putting on his half-moon reading glasses he furrowed his brow, trying to read through the dirt.
No, not a poem.
A prayer.