‘Do you think that had anything to do with her death?’
‘It does seem a coincidence,’ Clara admitted reluctantly. ‘I’ve watched the Morrows for twenty-five years. The angrier they get the quieter they get. They haven’t really spoken in decades.’
Lacoste could believe it.
‘But Julia, she was an outlier. Different. No, that’s not right, not really different, but distant. She’d been away. I always think the Morrows have like a layer of polyethylene. They’re dipped in it as kids, like Achilles. To protect them. Make them able to withstand high pressures and being dropped on their heads. And once a year they need to be close to Mother to kinda top it up. Get all buffed and polished and hardened again. But Julia had been away so long her coating had worn thin. It took a few days, but eventually she cracked. Exploded really. And said some things she didn’t mean.’
‘The Chief Inspector has the impression she meant every word.’
Clara was surprised, and thought about that.
‘She might have meant it, but that didn’t make what she said true.’
Lacoste nodded and consulted her notes. This was the delicate part.
‘She accused your husband of being the worst. Of being,’ she read from her notes, ‘cruel, greedy and empty.’
Clara began to speak but Lacoste stopped her with a gesture. ‘There’s more. She said he’d destroy anything to get what he wanted.’ Lacoste looked up. ‘It doesn’t sound like the Peter Morrow we know. What did she mean?’
‘She was just trying to hurt him, that’s all.’
‘Did she?’
‘Peter wasn’t very close to her. I don’t think he cared much about her opinion.’
‘Is that possible?’ Lacoste asked. ‘I know we say we don’t care, but they’re family. Don’t you think at some level he cared?’
‘Enough to kill, you mean?’
Lacoste said nothing.
‘The Morrows are used to wounding each other. Normally they do it more subtly. The stone in the snowball, the sting in the tail. You don’t see it coming. You think you’re safe.’
‘Julia came home at a time of stress, to be with her family,’ said Lacoste. ‘She must’ve thought she was safe. But one of them got her.’
Clara said nothing.
‘Who do you think did it?’ Lacoste asked.
‘Not Peter,’ Clara said. Lacoste stared at her, then nodded and closed her book.
‘Julia Martin said one other thing,’ said Lacoste, getting up. ‘She said she’d finally figured out their father’s secret. What did she mean by that?’
Clara shrugged. ‘I asked Peter the same thing. He thinks she was just raving by then, trying to hurt. People do, you know. Like Mrs Morrow this morning and the terrible lies about the Chief Inspector.’
‘She was talking about his father, not him.’
‘But the hurt was directed at him.’
‘Perhaps, but the Chief Inspector isn’t easily hurt. Besides, you’re mistaken. Everything she said about Honore Gamache was true. He was a coward.’
Gamache and Beauvoir arrived back at the Manoir Bellechasse just as the call came from the Nanaimo Correctional Centre in British Columbia.
‘You’ll have to take it in there,’ said Madame Dubois, pointing to the tiny office. Beauvoir thanked her and sat down behind the desk which seemed to be never used, the proprietor obviously preferring to be in the centre of activity.
‘Monsieur David Martin?’
‘Oui.‘
‘I’m calling about the death of your ex-wife.’
‘Wife. We weren’t divorced yet. Just separated.’
Beauvoir thought he must have fitted right in with the Morrows. Appropriate that he would end up in a corrections facility.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
He said it by rote, but the man’s response surprised him.
‘Thank you. I still can’t believe she’s gone.’ And he sounded genuinely sad. The first one so far. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘I need to know all about her. How you met, when you met, how well you know the family. Anything at all.’
‘I didn’t know the Morrows all that well. I saw them when I came back to Montreal, but even those visits tapered out. I know Julia was very upset by what happened.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, when her father kicked her out of the house.’
‘We’d heard that she left.’
There was a hesitation. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s right, but sometimes people can make your life such hell you have no choice.’
‘Charles Morrow made his daughter’s life hell? How?’
‘He believed some malicious gossip. Well, I’m not even sure he believed it.’ David Martin suddenly sounded exhausted. ‘Someone wrote nasty stuff about Julia, her father saw it and got very angry.’
‘Was it true what was written?’
He knew the story but he wanted this man’s version.
‘It said Julia gave good head.’ The disgust was clear in his voice. ‘If you’d ever met Julia you’d know it was ridiculous. She was gracious and kind. A lady. An old-fashioned word, I realize, but it described her. Always made others feel comfortable. And she adored her father. That’s why his reaction hurt so much.’
‘And her mother? What kind of relationship did she have with her?’
David Martin laughed. ‘The further Julia moved away, and the longer she was gone, the better it got. Space and time. That’s relativity for the Morrows.’ But he didn’t seem amused.
‘You have no children?’
‘No. We tried, but Julia didn’t seem too keen. She did it for my sake, but once I realized she didn’t really want them I stopped insisting. She was very wounded, Inspector. I thought I could make it better and look where it led me.’
‘You’re not saying you stole all that money and ruined so many lives for your wife?’
‘No, that was greed,’ he admitted.
‘If you’re so greedy, why wasn’t your wife insured?’
There was another hesitation.
‘Because I couldn’t imagine her dying. Not before me. I’m older than her, I should’ve gone first. I wanted to go first. I could never take money from her death.’
‘Do you know what’s in your wife’s will?’
‘She might’ve made a new one,’ Martin cleared his throat and his voice came back stronger, ‘but the last I heard it all came to me, except for some bequests to charities.’
‘Like?’
‘Oh, the children’s hospital, the animal shelter, the local library. Nothing very big.’
‘Nothing to her family?’
‘Nothing. I can’t imagine they expected anything, but you never know.’
‘How much money did she have?’
‘Well, she might’ve had more but her father left most of his money to his wife when he died. The kids got just enough to ruin them.’
Now the disdain was clear.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Charles Morrow lived in terror his children would squander the family fortune.’
‘Beware the third generation, oui, I heard,’ said Beauvoir.
‘His father had told him that, and he believed it. Each of the kids inherited about a million from their father, except Peter,’ Martin continued. ‘He declined his inheritance.’
‘Quoi?‘
‘I know, foolish. He gave it back to the estate and it was split among his siblings and mother.’
Beauvoir was so surprised his formidable brain stopped for a moment. How could someone turn down a million dollars? He hated to think what he’d do for that money, and he couldn’t begin to imagine what would make him turn it down.
‘Why?’ was all he could manage. Fortunately it was enough.
A chuckle came all the way across the continent. ‘I never asked, but I can guess. Revenge. I think he wanted to prove to his father that he’d been wrong. That he of all the kids wasn’t interested in his fortune.’
‘But his father was dead.’ Beauvoir didn’t get it.
‘Families are complicated,’ said David Martin.
‘My family’s complicated, monsieur. This is just weird.’
Beauvoir didn’t like weird.
‘How did you meet your wife?’