Gamache walked them inside, remaining silent, respecting her need to be with her own thoughts. Then he returned to find the crane had arrived.
‘Here comes the coroner.’ Lacoste nodded to a woman in her early thirties wearing slacks, a light summer shell and rubber boots.
‘Dr Harris.’ Gamache waved then turned back to watch the removal of the statue.
Beauvoir directed operations, batting away blackflies. It was confusing for the crane operator who mistook his flailing for directions and twice almost dropped the statue back onto Julia Martin.
‘Fucking bugs,’ snarled Beauvoir, looking around at the rest of the team, working away steadily and methodically. ‘Isn’t anyone else bothered? Christ.’ He whacked himself on the side of the head trying to crush a deerfly. He missed.
‘Bonjour.‘ Gamache inclined his head towards the coroner. Sharon Harris smiled a small greeting. She knew how the Chief Inspector preferred decorum at the site of a murder, especially in the presence of the corpse. It was rare. Most murder scenes were filled with smart-ass and often gruesome comments, made by men and women frightened by what they saw, and believing sarcasm and rude remarks kept the monsters at bay. They didn’t.
Chief Inspector Gamache chose men and women for his team who might also be afraid, but had the courage to rise above it.
Standing beside him and watching the statue sucked from the ground, and the woman, she caught the slight aroma of rosewater and sandalwood. His scent. She turned and watched the Chief Inspector for a moment, his strong face in profile. At rest, but watchful.
There was an old-world courtliness about him that made her feel she was in the company of her grandfather, though he was only twenty years older than her, if that. Once the statue was hovering over the flatbed truck Dr Harris put on her gloves and moved in.
She’d seen worse. Far worse. Horrible deaths that could never be avenged because there was no fault, except fate. This might be one, she thought, as she looked at the mangled body, then back at the statue. Then at the pedestal.
Kneeling down she examined the wounds.
‘I’d say she’s been dead twelve hours, maybe more. The rain makes it more difficult, of course.’
‘Why’s that?’ Lacoste asked.
‘No bugs. The amount and type of insect helps tell us how long a person’s been dead. But the heavy rain kept the bugs home. They’re like cats. Hate the rain. Now after the rain …’
She looked over at Beauvoir doing a mad dance and slapping himself.
‘Here,’ she pointed to a wound, ‘see?’
Lacoste peered in. She was right. No bugs, though a few were beginning to hover.
‘Now, this is interesting,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Look at that.’
On her finger was a smear of brown. Lacoste bent closer.
‘Dirt?’ she asked.
‘Dirt.’
Lacoste raised her brows, perplexed, but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes the coroner got up and walked to the Chief Inspector.
‘I can tell you how she died.’
‘A statue?’ asked Gamache.
‘Probably,’ said the coroner, turning to look at the levitating statue then at its pedestal.
‘That’s the more interesting question,’ said Gamache, reading her mind.
‘We had quite a storm last night,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Maybe that knocked it down.’
‘They’re driving me crazy.’ Beauvoir joined them, his face smeared with tiny freckles of crushed blackflies. He looked at Gamache, poised and comfortable. ‘Don’t they bite you?’
‘No. It’s mind over matter. It’s all in your head, Inspector.’
That much was true, Beauvoir knew. He’d just inhaled a swarm of blackflies and he knew for certain a few had flown up his nose. A sudden buzzing in his ear warned him he was either having a stroke or a deerfly had just flown in.
Please, let this be an accident. Let me get home to my barbecue, my cooler of beer, my sports channel. My air conditioning.
He dug his little finger into his ear, but the buzzing only moved deeper.
Charles Morrow subsided onto the dirty truck. He lay on his side, his arms out, his face sad, and smeared with his own flesh and blood.
Gamache walked alone to the edge of the hole in the ground. They all watched as he looked down. There was no movement, except his right hand, which clasped slowly closed.
Then he motioned to the team and there was a sudden flurry of activity as evidence was collected. Jean Guy Beauvoir took charge while Gamache returned to the large flatbed truck.
‘Were you the one who put him on his pedestal?’ he asked the crane operator.
‘Not me, Patron. When was the job done?’ the operator asked, securing and covering Charles Morrow for the trip to the Surete compound in Sherbrooke.
‘Yesterday, early afternoon.’
‘My day off. I was fishing in Lake Memphremagog. I can show you the pictures and the catch. I have a licence.’
‘I believe you.’ Gamache smiled reassuringly. ‘Could someone else from your company have done it?’
‘I’ll ask.’
A minute later he was back.
‘Called dispatch. Got the boss. He placed the statue himself. We do a lot of work with the Manoir, so when Madame Dubois called about this the boss decided it needed a special touch. No one’s better than him.’
This was said with more than a little sarcasm. It was clear this man wouldn’t mind if the boss turned out to have screwed up royally. And if he could help point the middle finger, so much the better.
‘Can you give me his name and co-ordinates?’
The operator happily handed over a card with the proprietor’s name underlined.
‘Please ask him to meet me at the Surete detachment in Sherbrooke in about an hour.’
‘Chief?’ Dr Harris approached just as the driver got back in his rig and drove off.
‘Could the storm have done this?’ he asked, remembering the lightning bolts and the furious angels bowling, or crying, or pushing over statues.
‘Knocked over the statue? Maybe. But it didn’t.’
Gamache turned surprised brown eyes on the coroner. ‘How can you be so certain?’
She held up her finger. Beside him Agent Lacoste grimaced. It wasn’t just ‘a’ finger, it was ‘the’ finger. Gamache raised his brows and grinned. Then his brows lowered and he leaned in closer, staring at the brown smear.
‘This was under her body. You’ll see more when her body’s moved.’
‘It looks like dirt,’ said Gamache.
‘It is,’ said Dr Harris. ‘Dirt, not mud.’
Still the chief was baffled. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means the storm didn’t kill her. She was on the ground before the storm started. It’s dry underneath her.’