Chief Inspector Gamache left the kitchen wondering about the scene he’d witnessed. He knew that behind rage was fear. That young waiter was very afraid, of something.
‘So it was murder, Armand,’ said Reine-Marie, shaking her head in disbelief. They were alone in the library and he’d just brought her up to speed. ‘But how could someone push that statue over with their bare hands?’
‘The family wants to know the same thing,’ said Beauvoir, entering the room with Lacoste. ‘I just told them we think it’s murder.’
‘And?’ Gamache asked.
‘You know what it’s like. One moment they believe it, the next they don’t,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Can’t say I blame them. I’ve told them they can leave the Great Room, but not the grounds. And of course the crime site itself is out of bounds. Peter and Clara Morrow have asked to see you,’ he said to the Chief Inspector.
‘Good. I want to speak to them as well. Tell me what you know.’
Agent Lacoste sat in the wing chair across from Reine-Marie while the two men sat together on the leather sofa, heads almost touching as Beauvoir bent over his notebook and Gamache bent over him. They looked, Reine-Marie thought, a bit like Russian matrioshka dolls, nesting. Large powerful Armand hovering almost protectively over smaller, younger Beauvoir.
She’d spoken to their son Daniel while Armand had been supervising the crime site. He was anxious to speak to his father about the name they’d chosen for their child. He knew, as she did, what Honore meant to his father. And while he’d never hurt his father, he was determined to use that name. But how did Armand feel about another Honore Gamache? And his own grandson at that?
‘How did the Morrows account for themselves last night?’ asked Gamache.
Beauvoir consulted his notebook. ‘The family was together all through dinner, sharing a table. After dinner they split up. Peter and Clara came in here and had drinks. They said you were with them.’
‘Most of the time,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘We were on the terrasse. But we could see them through the window.’
Beauvoir nodded. He liked clarity.
‘Monsieur and Madame Finney stayed at the table for their coffee.’ Isabelle Lacoste picked up the story. ‘Thomas and Sandra Morrow went into the Great Room. Thomas played the piano and Mariana took her child upstairs.’
‘Bean,’ said Reine-Marie.
‘Been?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Been what?’
‘Bean Morrow, I suppose.’
They looked at each other, confused, then Reine-Marie smiled.
‘Bean is the child’s name,’ she explained, spelling it for him.
‘As in coffee?’ he asked.
‘If you wish,’ said Reine-Marie.
He didn’t. What he wished was that this would all go away. Jean Guy Beauvoir already suspected most Anglos were nuts. And now a Bean to prove it. Who called their child after a legume?
‘And Julia?’ asked Gamache. ‘What did they say about her movements last night?’
‘Thomas and Sandra Morrow say she went into the garden for a walk,’ said Lacoste.
‘She came into the library through the screen door from the garden,’ Reine-Marie remembered. ‘We were all in here by then. Thomas and Sandra Morrow had joined us. So had Mariana. The Finneys had just gone to bed.’
‘Did they go to bed before or after Julia appeared?’ Gamache asked his wife.
They stared at each other, then each shook their head.
‘Can’t remember,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Movements just before a murder always matter.’
‘But you can’t really think they killed Julia?’ Reine-Marie asked, then regretted questioning her husband in front of his staff. But he didn’t seem to care.
‘Stranger things have happened,’ he said, and she knew that was true.
‘What was your impression of Julia Martin, sir?’ Lacoste asked.
‘She was elegant, sophisticated, well educated. She was self-deprecating and charming and she knew it. Is that fair?’ He turned to his wife, who nodded. ‘She was very polite. It made a contrast to the rest of her family. Almost too polite. She was very nice, kind, and I thought that was the impression she wanted to make.’
‘Don’t most people?’ asked Lacoste.
‘Most people want to make a good impression, it’s true,’ said Gamache. ‘We’re taught to be polite. But with Julia Martin it seemed more than a desire. It seemed a need.’
‘That was my impression too,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘But there was something manipulative about her, I felt. She told you that story, about her first job.’
Gamache told Beauvoir and Lacoste about Julia’s first job and her mother’s reaction.
‘What a terrible thing to say to a daughter,’ said Lacoste. ‘Making her feel she has no role in life, except to be docile and grateful.’
‘It was a terrible thing to say,’ agreed Reine-Marie. ‘Crippling, if you let it. But why is she still telling it forty years later?’
‘Why do you think?’ Gamache asked.
‘Well, I find it interesting she told you, and not us. But then I’m not a man.’
‘Now that’s an interesting thing to say,’ said Gamache. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I think like many women she behaved differently around men. And men seem hard wired to be sympathetic to a needy woman, even you. Julia was vulnerable. But she played on those things, I think. Probably had her whole life. And I think her tragedy wasn’t that she had low self-esteem, though I think she had. Her tragedy was that she always found men to save her. She never had to save herself. She never knew she could.’
‘From what I gather, she was about to find out,’ said Agent Lacoste, understanding exactly what Reine-Marie Gamache was talking about. ‘She’d left her husband and was starting a new life.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Beauvoir. ‘With millions of dollars. Not exactly a test of self-sufficiency. She is the Julia Martin who was married to that insurance man, the guy in a pen out west?’
‘She is,’ said Gamache.
‘And what was the first thing she did?’ asked Reine-Marie. ‘She came here. To her family. Once again she wanted others to fix her.’
‘Was it that?’ asked Gamache, almost to himself. ‘Or was she looking for something else from them?’
‘Like what?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I was taken in by her, but I have a feeling there was something else behind her being here. She must have known her family weren’t the supportive kind. I’m not sure she came here for that.’
‘Revenge?’ asked Reine-Marie. ‘Remember last night?’
She told Inspector Beauvior and Agent Lacoste about the scene between Julia and her siblings.
‘So you think she came here to unload?’ asked Beauvoir. ‘Having told the criminal husband to fuck off it was time to tell Mother and the rest?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Reine-Marie. ‘The problem was her outburst seemed so unplanned, so unexpected.’
‘I wonder if it was,’ said Gamache. He hadn’t thought of it before but now he wondered. ‘Is it possible one of them provoked that outburst? After all, who knows you better than your family?’
‘What were you talking about?’ asked Lacoste.
‘Toilets,’ said Gamache. ‘Toilets?’ asked Beauvoir. He’d been feeling a little intimidated by the surroundings but if that’s what rich people and senior Surete officers on vacation talk about, hell, he’d fit right in.