THIRTY-ONE
‘Paradise lost,’ said Chief Inspector Gamache, taking his place, naturally, at the centre of the gathering, a raised hand hushing the Morrows. ‘To have it all and to lose it. That’s what this case was about.’
The room was packed with the Manoir staff, police officers and volunteers. And Morrows. Reine-Marie had hurried over from Three Pines when she heard what had happened and was sitting quietly off to the side.
‘What’s he talking about?’ whispered Sandra loudly.
‘A poem by John Milton,’ said Mrs Finney, sitting upright next to her husband. ‘It’s about the devil being cast out of heaven.’
‘That’s right,’ said Gamache. ‘The fall from grace. The tragedy in Milton’s poem was that Satan had it all and didn’t realize it.’
‘He was a fallen angel,’ said Mrs Finney. ‘He believed it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. He was greedy.’ She looked at her children.
‘But what’s heaven and what’s hell?’ asked Gamache. ‘It depends on our point of view. I love this place.’ He looked around the room and out of the window, where the rain had now stopped. ‘For me it’s heaven. I see peace and quiet and beauty. But for Inspector Beauvoir it’s hell. He sees chaos and discomfort and bugs. Both are true. It’s perception. The mind is its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,’ Gamache quoted. ‘Early on, even before the death of Julia Martin, I knew there was something wrong. Spot and Claire, the odious missing family members, became Peter and Clara, two gentle, kind friends of ours. Not without their flaws,’ Gamache held up his hand again to head off Thomas’s catalogue of Peter’s faults, ‘but at their hearts good people. And yet they were denounced as vile. I knew then this was a family at odds with reality, their perception skewed. What purpose did it serve?’
‘Does there have to be a purpose?’ asked Clara.
‘There’s a purpose to everything.’ Gamache turned to her, sitting next to Peter. ‘Thomas was seen by the family as an accomplished pianist, linguist, businessman. And yet his playing is workmanlike, his career is mediocre and he can’t speak French.
‘Mariana’s business is flourishing, she plays the piano with passion and skill, she has an extraordinary child and yet she’s treated like the selfish little sister who can’t do anything right. Peter is a gifted and successful artist,’ Gamache walked along the room to Peter, dishevelled and bleary, ‘in a loving marriage with many friends. And yet you’re perceived as greedy and cruel. And Julia,’ he continued. ‘The sister who left and was punished for it.’
‘She was not,’ said Mrs Finney. ‘She chose to leave.’
‘But you forced her out. And what was her crime?’
‘She shamed the family,’ said Thomas. ‘We became a laughing stock. Julia Morrow gives good head.‘
‘Thomas!’ snapped his mother.
They’d been cast out of society. Mocked and ridiculed.
Paradise lost.
And so, they’d taken their revenge on the good child.
‘It must’ve been hard for Julia to come to the reunion,’ said Mariana. Bean was on her lap for the first time in years, feet dangling inches off the ground.
‘Oh, please,’ said Thomas. ‘Like you care, Magilla.’
‘Stop calling me that.’
‘Why should I? You might fool him,’ he looked at Gamache, ‘he doesn’t know you. But we do. You were selfish then and you’re selfish now. That’s why we call you Magilla. So you’ll remember what you did to Father. He asked one thing of you, to kiss him when he got home. And what did you do? You stayed in the basement watching that ridiculous TV show. You preferred a cartoon gorilla to Father. And he knew it. And when you’d finally come to kiss him you were crying. Upset at being made to do something you didn’t want to. You broke his heart, Magilla. Every time I call you that I want you to remember the pain you caused him.’
‘Stop it.’ Mariana stood. ‘It. Was. Never. The. Cartoon.’
The words jerked out as though fighting with her, desperate to stay inside. ‘It. Was. The. Cage.’
No sound came out of Mariana now. She stood silent, her mouth open, a fine line of drool dripping down, like clear honey. Bean squeezed her hand and Mariana started to breathe again, in sobs and whoops, like a newborn, slapped.
‘It was the cage. Every day I’d rush home from school to watch Magilla the Gorilla in his cage. Praying that today he’d find a home. He’d be adopted. And loved.’
Tilting her head back she stared at the beam above her head. She saw it tremble, a fine spill of dust and plaster raining down. She braced herself. And then it stopped. The beam held fast. It didn’t fall.
‘And that’s why you design beautiful homes for the homeless,’ said Gamache.
‘Mariana,’ said Peter softly, approaching her.
‘And you,’ said Thomas, his words springing up between Peter and his sister, stopping him. ‘You’re the most devious of all. You who had everything wanted more. If there’s a devil in this family it’s you.’
‘Me?’ Peter said, stunned by the attack, vicious even by Morrow standards. ‘You’re saying I had everything? What family did you live in? You’re the one Mother and Father loved. You got everything, even his—’ He stopped, remembering the plops and the two circles radiating on the calm lake.
‘His what? His cufflinks?’ Thomas vibrated with rage, his hands shaking as he thought of the frayed white dress shirt hanging in the closet upstairs. His father’s old shirt that Thomas had taken the day he’d died. The only thing he’d wanted. The shirt off his back. That still smelled of him. Of rich cigars and spicy cologne.
But now the links were gone. Because of Peter.
‘You have no idea, do you?’ Thomas spat. ‘You can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to succeed all the time. Father expected it, Mother expected it. I couldn’t fail.’
‘You failed all the time,’ said Mariana, recovered. ‘But they refused to see it. You’re lazy and a liar and they thought you could do no wrong.’
‘They knew I was their only hope,’ said Thomas, his eyes never wavering from Peter. ‘You were such a disappointment.’
‘Peter never disappointed his father.’
It was a voice the Morrows rarely heard. They turned to look at their mother, then beside her.
‘He never expected you to excel, Thomas,’ Bert Finney continued. ‘And he never wanted anything except for you to be happy, Mariana. And he never believed those things written on the bathroom wall about Julia.’
The old man struggled to his feet.
‘He loved your art,’ he said to Peter. ‘He loved your music, Thomas. He loved your spirit, Mariana, and always said how strong and kind you were. He loved you all.’
The words, more dangerous than any grenade, exploded in the middle of the Morrows.
‘That’s what Julia figured out,’ said Finney. ‘She realized that was what he’d meant when he withheld money and gifts. She who had it all knew how empty those things were, and that anything of value she’d already been given. By her father. Love, encouragement. That was what she wanted to tell you.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Thomas, returning to sit beside Sandra. ‘He kicked her out of the house. How loving was that?’
‘He regretted that,’ admitted Finney. ‘Always regretted not defending Julia. But he was a stubborn man, a proud man. He couldn’t admit he was wrong. He tried to apologize, in his way. He reached out to her in Vancouver, when he found out she was engaged. But he let his dislike of Martin ruin it. Charles needed to be right. He was a good man, plagued by a bad ego. He paid a high price for it. But it doesn’t mean he didn’t love you all. Including Julia. It just meant he couldn’t show it. Not in the way you wanted.’
Was that the thing to be deciphered, wondered Peter. Not the words of the strange message, but the fact of the message itself?