As he watched the light flickered out, and all was in darkness across the way. The family at sleep, at peace.
Honore Gamache. Was it so wrong? Was he wrong to feel this way? And what would he say to Daniel in the morning?
He stared into space, thinking about that for a few minutes, then slowly he became aware of something in the woods. Glowing. He looked around to see if there was anyone else there, another witness. But the terrasse and the gardens were empty.
Curious, Gamache walked towards it, the grass soft beneath his feet. He glanced back and saw the bright and cheerful lights of the Manoir and the people moving about the rooms. Then he turned back to the woods.
They were dark. But they weren’t silent. Creatures moved about in there. Twigs snapped and things dropped from the trees and thumped softly to the ground. Gamache wasn’t afraid of the dark, but like most sensible Canadians he was a little afraid of the forest.
But the white thing glowed and called, and like Ulysses with the sirens, he was compelled forward.
It was sitting on the very edge of the woods. He walked up, surprised to find it was large and solid and a perfect square, like a massive sugar cube. It came up to his hip and when he reached out to touch it he withdrew his hand in surprise. It was cold, almost clammy. Reaching out again, more firmly this time, he rested his large hand on the top of the box, and smiled.
It was marble. He’d been afraid of a cube of marble, he chuckled at himself. Very humbling. Standing back, Gamache stared at it. The white stone glowed as though it had captured what little moonlight came its way. It was just a cube of marble, he told himself. Not a bear, or a cougar. Nothing to worry about, certainly nothing to spook him. But it did. It reminded him of something.
‘Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped.’
Gamache froze.
‘Peter’s perpetually purple pimple popped.’
There it was again.
He turned round and saw a figure standing in the middle of the lawn. A slight haze hung about her and a bright red dot glowed near her nose.
Julia Martin was out for her secret cigarette. Gamache cleared his throat noisily and brushed his hand along a bush. Instantly the red dot fell to the ground and disappeared under an elegant foot.
‘Good evening,’ she called merrily, though Gamache doubted she could possibly have known who was there.
‘Bonsoir, madame,’ said Gamache, bowing slightly as he came up beside her. She was slender and was wearing an elegant evening dress. Hair and nails and make-up were done, even in the wilderness. She wafted a slim hand in front of her face, to disperse the pungent tobacco smell.
‘Bugs,’ she said. ‘Blackflies. The only trouble with the east coast.’
‘You have no blackflies out west?’ he asked.
‘Well, not many in Vancouver. Some deerflies on the golf courses. Drive you crazy.’
This Gamache could believe, having been tormented by deerflies himself.
‘Fortunately smoke keeps the bugs away,’ he said, smiling.
She hesitated, then chuckled. She had an easy manner and an easy laugh. She touched his arm in a familiar gesture, though they weren’t all that familiar. But it wasn’t invasive, simply habit. As he’d watched her in the past few days he’d noticed she touched everyone. And she smiled at everything.
‘You caught me, monsieur. Sneaking a cigarette. Really, quite pathetic.’
‘Your family wouldn’t approve?’
‘At my age I’ve long since stopped caring what others think.’
‘C’est vrai? I wish I could.’
‘Well, perhaps I do just a little,’ she confided. ‘It’s a while since I’ve been with my family.’ She looked towards the Manoir and he followed her gaze. Inside, her brother Thomas was leaning over and speaking to their mother while Sandra and Mariana looked on, not speaking and unaware anyone was watching them.
‘When the invitation arrived I almost didn’t come. It’s an annual reunion, you know, but I’ve never been before. Vancouver’s so far away.’
She could still see the invitation sitting face up on the gleaming hardwood floor of her impressive entrance where it had fallen as though from a great height. She knew the feeling. She’d stared at the thick white paper and the familiar spider scrawl. It was a contest of wills. But she knew who’d win. Who always won.
‘I don’t want to disappoint them,’ Julia Martin finally said, quietly.
‘I’m certain you couldn’t do that.’
She turned to him, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’
He’d said it to be polite. He honestly had no idea how the family felt about each other.
She saw his hesitation and laughed again. ‘Forgive me, monsieur. Each day I’m with my family I regress a decade. I now feel like an awkward teenager. Needy and sneaking smokes in the garden. You too?’
‘Smoking in the garden? No, not for many years now. I was just exploring.’
‘Be careful. We wouldn’t want to lose you.’ She spoke with a hint of flirtation.
‘I’m always careful, Madame Martin,’ said Gamache, careful not to return the flirtation. He suspected it was second nature to her and harmless. He’d watched her for a few days and she’d used the same inflection on everyone, men and women, family and stranger, dogs, chipmunks, hummingbirds. She cooed to them all.
A movement off to the side caught his attention. He had the impression of a white blur and for an instant his heart leapt. Had the marble thing come to life? Was it lumbering towards them out of the woods? He turned and saw a figure on the terrasse recede into the shadows. Then it reappeared.
‘Elliot,’ called Julia Martin, ‘how wonderful. Have you brought my brandy and Benedictine?’
‘Oui, madame.‘ The young waiter smiled as he handed her the liqueur off his silver salver. Then he turned to Gamache. ‘And for Monsieur? What may I get you?’
He looked so young, his face so open.
And yet Gamache knew the young man had been lurking at the corner of the lodge, watching them. Why?
Then he laughed at himself. Seeing things not there, hearing words unspoken. He’d come to the Manoir Bellechasse to turn that off, to relax and not look for the stain on the carpet, the knife in the bush, or the back. To stop noticing the malevolent inflections that rode into polite conversation on the backs of reasonable words. And the feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami. Made to look pretty, but disguising something not at all attractive.
It was bad enough that he’d taken to watching old movies and wondering whether the elderly people in the background were still alive. And how they died. But when he started looking at people in the street and noticing the skull beneath the skin it was time for a break.
Yet here he was in this peaceful lodge examining the young waiter, Elliot, and on the verge of accusing him of spying.
‘Non, merci. Madame Gamache has ordered our drinks for the Great Room.’
Elliot withdrew and Julia watched him.
‘He’s an attractive young man,’ said Gamache.
‘You find him so?’ she asked, her face invisible but her voice full of humour. After a moment she spoke again. ‘I was just remembering a similar job I had at about his age, but nothing as grand as this. It was a summer job in a greasy spoon on the Main, in Montreal. You know, boulevard Saint-Laurent?’
‘I know it.’
‘Of course you do. Forgive me. It was a real dive. Minimum wage, owner was all hands. Disgusting.’
She paused again.