The plump woman stood on one leg, arms reaching for the sky and neck stretched to its limits.
Ten-year-old Bean ignored Mommy and continued to read. Gamache wondered how bored the child must be.
‘It’s the most difficult position,’ Mariana said more loudly than necessary, almost throttling herself with one of her scarves. Gamache had noticed that Mariana’s t’ai chi and yoga and meditations and military callisthenics only happened when Thomas appeared.
Was she trying to impress her older brother, Gamache wondered, or embarrass him? Thomas took a quick glance at the pudgy, collapsing crane and steered Sandra in the other direction. They found two chairs in the shade, alone.
‘You’re not spying on them, are you?’ Reine-Marie asked, lowering her own book to look at her husband.
‘Spying is far too harsh. I’m observing.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to stop that?’ Then after a moment she added, ‘Anything interesting?’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Still,’ said Reine-Marie, looking around at the scattered Finneys. ‘Odd family that comes all this way for a reunion then ignores each other.’
‘Could be worse,’ he said. ‘They could be killing each other.’
Reine-Marie laughed. ‘They’d never get close enough to manage it.’
Gamache grunted his agreement and realized happily that he didn’t care. It was their problem, not his. Besides, after a few days together he’d become fond of the Finneys in a funny sort of way.
‘Votre the glace, madame.‘ The young man spoke French with a delightful English Canadian accent.
‘Merci, Elliot.’ Reine-Marie shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun and smiled at the waiter.
‘Un plaisir.‘ He beamed and handed a tall glass of iced tea to Reine-Marie and a perspiring glass of misty lemonade to Gamache, then went off to deliver the rest of his drinks.
‘I remember when I was that young,’ said Gamache wistfully.
‘You might have been that young but you were never that—’ She nodded towards Elliot as he walked athletically across the manicured lawn in his tailored black slacks and small white jacket snugly fitting his lithe body.
‘Oh, God, am I going to have to beat up another suitor?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You know I would.’ He took her hand.
‘I know you wouldn’t. You’d listen him to death.’
‘Well, it’s a strategy. Crush him with my massive intellect.’
‘I can imagine his terror.’
Gamache sipped his lemonade and suddenly puckered, tears springing to his eyes.
‘Ah, and what woman could resist that?’ She looked at his fluttering, watering eyes and face screwed into a wince.
‘Sugar. Needs sugar,’ he gasped.
‘Here, I’ll ask the waiter.’
‘Never mind. I’ll do it.’ He coughed, gave her a mockingly stern gaze and rocked out of the deep and comfortable seat.
Taking his lemonade he wandered up the path from the fragrant gardens and onto the wide veranda, already cooler and shaded from the brunt of the afternoon sun. Bert Finney lowered his book and gazed at Gamache, then smiled and nodded politely.
‘Bonjour,’ he said. ‘Warm day.’
‘But cooler here, I notice,’ said Gamache, smiling at the elderly couple sitting quietly side by side. Finney was clearly older than his wife. Gamache thought she was probably in her mid-eighties while he must be nearing ninety and had that translucent quality people sometimes got, near the end.
‘I’m going inside. May I get you anything?’ he asked, thinking yet again that Bert Finney was both courtly and one of the least attractive people he’d ever met. Admonishing himself for being so superficial, it was all he could do not to stare. Monsieur Finney was so repulsive he was almost attractive, as though aesthetics were circular and this man had circumnavigated that rude world.
His skin was pocked and ruddy, his nose large and misshapen, red and veined as though he’d snorted, and retained, Burgundy. His teeth protruded, yellowed and confused, heading this way and that in his mouth. His eyes were small and slightly crossed. A lazy eye, thought Gamache. What used to be known as an evil eye, in darker times when men like this found themselves at best cast out of polite society and at worst tied to a stake.
Irene Finney sat next to her husband and wore a floral sundress. She was plump with soft white hair in a loose bun on her head, and while she didn’t glance up he could see her complexion was tender and white. She looked like a soft, inviting, faded pillow, propped next to a cliff face.
‘We’re fine, but merci.’
Gamache had noticed that Finney, alone among his family, always tried to speak a little French to him.
Within the Manoir the temperature dropped again. It was almost cool inside, a relief from the heat of the day. It took a moment for Gamache’s eyes to adjust.
The dark maple door to the dining room was closed and Gamache knocked tentatively, then opening it he stepped into the panelled room. Places were being set for dinner, with crisp white linen, sterling silver, fine bone china and a small arrangement of fresh flowers on each table. It smelled of roses and wood, of polish and herbs, of beauty and order. Sun was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked onto the garden. The windows were closed, to keep the heat out and the cool in. The Manoir Bellechasse wasn’t air conditioned, but the massive logs acted as natural insulation, keeping the heat in during the bitterest of Quebec winters, and the heat out on the most sizzling of summer days. This wasn’t the hottest. Low 80s, Gamache figured. But he was still grateful for the workmanship of the coureurs du bois who raised this place by hand and chose each log with such precision that nothing not invited could ever come in.
‘Monsieur Gamache.’ Pierre Patenaude came forward smiling and wiping his hands on a cloth. He was a few years younger than Gamache and slimmer. All that running from table to table, thought Gamache. But the maitre d’ never seemed to run. He gave everyone his time, as though they were the only ones in the auberge, without seeming to ignore or miss any of the other guests. It was a particular gift of the very best maitre d’s, and the Manoir Bellechasse was famous for having only the best.
‘What can I do for you?’
Gamache, slightly bashfully, extended his glass. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I need some sugar.’
‘Oh, dear. I was afraid of that. Seems we’ve run out. I’ve sent one of the garcons to the village to pick up some more. Desole. But if you wait here, I think I know where the chef hides her emergency supply. Really, this is most unusual.’
What was most unusual, thought Gamache, was seeing the unflappable maitre d’ flapped.
‘I don’t want to put you out,’ Gamache called to Patenaude’s disappearing back.
A moment later the maitre d’ returned, a small bone china vessel in his hands.
‘Voila! Success. Of course I had to wrestle Chef Veronique for it.’
‘I heard the screams. Merci.’
‘Pour vous, monsieur, c’est un plaisir.‘ Patenaude picked up his rag and a silver rose bowl and continued his polishing while Gamache stirred the precious sugar into his lemonade. Both men stared in companionable silence out of the bank of windows to the garden and the gleaming lake beyond. A canoe drifted lazily by in the still afternoon.
‘I checked my instruments a few minutes ago,’ said the maitre d’. ‘A storm’s on the way.’
‘Vraiment?‘
The day was clear and calm, but like every other guest at the gracious old lodge he’d come to believe the maitre d’s daily weather reports, gleaned from his home-made weather stations dotted around the property. It was a hobby, the maitre d’ had once explained, passed from father to son.
‘Some fathers teach their sons to hunt or fish. Mine would bring me into the woods and teach me about the weather,’ he’d explained one day while showing Gamache and Reine-Marie the barometric device and the old glass bell jar, with water up the spout. ‘Now I’m teaching them.’ Pierre Patenaude had waved in the direction of the young staff. Gamache hoped they were paying attention.
There was no television at the Bellechasse and even the radio was patchy, so Environment Canada forecasts weren’t available. Just Patenaude and his near mythical ability to foretell the weather. Each morning when they arrived for breakfast the forecast would be tacked outside the dining-room door. For a nation addicted to the weather, he gave them their fix.
Now Patenaude looked out into the calm day. Not a leaf stirred.
‘Oui. Heat wave coming, then storm. Looks like a big one.’
‘Merci.‘ Gamache raised his lemonade to the maitre d’ and returned outside.
He loved summer storms, especially at the Bellechasse. Unlike Montreal, where storms seemed to suddenly break overhead, here he could see them coming. Dark clouds would collect above the mountains at the far end of the lake, then a grey curtain of rain would fall in the distance. It would seem to gather itself, take a breath, and then march like a line of infantry clearly marked on the water. The wind would pick up, catching and furiously shaking the tall trees. Then it would strike. Boom. And as it howled and blew and threw itself at them, he’d be tucked up in the Manoir with Reine-Marie, safe.
As he stepped outside the heat bumped him, not so much a wall as a whack.
‘Find some sugar?’ asked Reine-Marie, stretching out her hand to touch his face as he leaned down to kiss her before settling back into his chair.
‘Absolument.‘
She went back to reading and Gamache reached for Le Devoir, but his large hand hesitated, hovering over the newspaper headlines. Another Sovereignty Referendum Possible. A Biker Gang War. A Catastrophic Earthquake.
His hand moved to his lemonade instead. All year his mouth watered for the home-made Manoir Bellechasse lemonade. It tasted fresh and clean, sweet and tart. It tasted of sunshine and summer.
Gamache felt his shoulders sag. His guard was coming down. It felt good. He took off his floppy sun hat and wiped his brow. The humidity was rising.
Sitting in the peaceful afternoon Gamache found it hard to believe a storm was on its way. But he felt a trickle down his spine, a lone, tickling stream of perspiration. The pressure was building, he could feel it, and the parting words of the maitre d’ came back to him.
‘Tomorrow’s going to be a killer.’