FIFTEEN
Beauvoir stood in front of another sheet of paper tacked to the wall. CC’s boots sat in the middle of the table like a sculpture, and a reminder of how strange both murderer and murdered were.
‘So, to recap, four things had to come together for the murderer to be successful.’ Beauvoir wrote as he spoke. ‘A: the victim had to be standing in water. B: she had to have taken off her gloves; C: she had to touch something that was electrified and D: she had to be wearing metal on the bottom of her boots.’
‘I have a report from the crime scene,’ said Isabelle Lacoste, who’d been in charge of the Crime Scene Unit the day before. ‘It’s preliminary, of course, but we can answer one question anyway. About the water. If you look at the photographs again you’ll see a slight blue tinge to the snow around the overturned chair.’
Gamache looked closely. He’d taken that area for a shadow. On snow, in certain angles and lights, shadows were blue. But not, perhaps, this particular shade. Now that he looked more closely he recognized it and almost groaned. He should have seen it right away. They all should have.
The murderer could only have created a puddle in two ways. Melt the ice and snow that was there, or spill some new liquid. But if he spilled some coffee or tea or a soft drink it would freeze in very little time.
What wouldn’t freeze?
Something specially designed not to.
Anti-freeze windshield washer fluid. The ubiquitous light blue liquid everyone in Canada poured by the gallon into their cars. It was designed to be sprayed onto the windshield to wipe away the slush and salt. And not to freeze.
Was it that easy?
‘It’s windshield washer fluid,’ said Lacoste.
Apparently so, thought Gamache. At least something about this case was straightforward.
‘How did the murderer spill washer fluid there without being seen?’ Lacoste asked.
‘Well, we don’t know that the murderer wasn’t seen,’ said Gamache. ‘We haven’t asked that question. And someone was sitting right beside Madame de Poitiers. That person might have seen.’
‘Who?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘Kaye Thompson.’ Now Gamache got up and walked to the drawing Beauvoir had made of the scene of crime. He told them about his interviews of the day before then he drew three Xs clustered round the heat lamp.
‘Lawn chairs. They were meant for the three elderly women who brought them, but only one ended up using a chair. Kaye Thompson was sitting in this one.’ Gamache pointed to one of the Xs. ‘The other two women were curling and CC sat in the chair closest to the lamp. Now this chair,’ he circled the chair closest to the curling rink, ‘was on its side. It’s also the one with the fluid under it, am I right?’ he asked Lacoste, who nodded.
‘It’s in the lab being tested but I suspect we’ll find that the chair was the murder weapon,’ she said.
‘But wasn’t the heat lamp?’ one of the agents asked, turning to Beauvoir. ‘I thought you said the victim touched the thing that was electrified. That’s the heat lamp.’
‘C’est vrai,’ Beauvoir conceded. ‘But it appears that wasn’t what killed her. The chair did, we think. If you look at the wounds on her hands, they’re consistent with the aluminum tubing at the back of the chair.’
‘But how?’ one of the technicians asked.
‘That’s what we have to find out,’ said Beauvoir, so wrapped up in the mystery he failed to tell the technician to get back to work. She’d asked the right question. How did a charge get from the heat lamp to create an electric chair?
An electric chair.
Jean Guy Beauvoir rolled the concept round in his clear, analytical mind. Was that somehow important? Was there a reason the murderer had chosen to kill CC de Poitiers by electric chair?
Was this retribution? Revenge? Was it punishment for some crime of CC’s? If so, it was the first such execution in Canada in fifty years.
‘What do you think?’ Gamache turned to the technician who’d asked the question, a young woman in overalls and a toolbelt. ‘And what’s your name?’
‘Céline Provost, sir. I’m an electrician with S?reté technical services. I’m just here to wire up the computers.’
‘Bon, Agent Provost. What’s your theory?’
She stared at the diagram for a full minute, considering. ‘What was the voltage of the generator?’
Beauvoir told her. She nodded and thought some more. Then she shook her head.
‘I was wondering whether the murderer could have attached some more booster cables from the lamp to the chair, then buried the wires under the snow. That would electrify the chair.’
‘But?’