A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4)

A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4) Page 130

“I was never agitated.”

“My mistake,” said Gamache. “Perhaps animated would be a better word.”

Mrs. Finney looked unhappy with the choice.

“The point is, the bowl glided across the sugar.” He demonstrated, sweeping it gently back and forth. “That boy at lunch did something similar with his pop can, though not nearly as gracefully. He simply shoved the can across the spilled salt, like this.”

Gamache put the sugar bowl at one end of the wooden table and shoved it forward. It skidded across the top and stopped at the edge.

“Now, watch what happens on the other half, the part of the table without sugar.”

He tried it again, but this time the china bowl barely moved, catching the rough wood and stopping short.

“This was how the murder was done.”

Gamache looked into faces no wiser. In fact, considerably more perplexed.

“I placed a call this afternoon to the Musée Rodin in Paris and spoke to an archivist there who’d heard about the technique. A worker at the Côte des Neiges cemetery had also heard of it, but they haven’t used it for years. It’s a trick for moving statues.”

“Are we still talking about the Coke can?” asked Peter. “Or the sugar bowl?”

“We’re talking about the statue of your father. Pierre Patenaude worked one summer in a cemetery and he saw them placing statues. Some of the older workers still used this technique back then.”

Gamache took the sugar bowl and pushed it across the table again. This time it didn’t stop at the edge, but fell off the side. Beauvoir caught it just as it fell.

“Voilà,” said Gamache. “Murder. According to the Musée Rodin, when they placed the Burghers of Calais on top of the pedestal, they put a cushion of sugar on it first, so they could adjust the statue an inch here or there, turn it slightly. Just before the statue of your father arrived Pierre Patenaude did the same thing. He poured a layer of sugar over the base.”

“That must’ve taken a lot of sugar,” said Clara.

“It did. He’d been hoarding it for days. That was why the Manoir unexpectedly ran out. He’d been stealing it. Remember how white the pedestal is?”

They nodded.

“The maître d’ guessed a layer of white sugar wouldn’t be noticed, especially since he’d shooed everyone away, leaving just Madame Dubois and the crane operator, both of whom would be busy concentrating on other things.”

They could see it all. Charles Morrow hefted off the flatbed truck, tied tight and strung up, all eyes staring, breaths held and prayers said that he wouldn’t fall. And then, slowly, slowly, he was lowered to his pedestal.

“Even at the unveiling we didn’t notice,” said Clara. “What we did see were wasps.”

“Attracted by the sugar,” said Gamache. “Wasps, honey bees, ants. Colleen the young gardener has nightmares about the ants and I assumed she meant she’d seen ants crawling over the body. But she didn’t. In fact, the coroner even told us the heavy rain meant there were no ants. Colleen saw the ants before the statue fell, on the pedestal and feet.” He looked at Colleen, who nodded. “The cushion of sugar had attracted every insect for miles around. When I saw the wasps and ants at the spilled Coke I realized they were attracted to something sweet.”

“A honey bee,” said Peter, shaking his head. “I wonder if Patenaude realized how damning that was?”

“Such a small thing, a bee. Imagine that giving away a murderer,” said Clara.

“The real brilliance of this old sugar technique is that it’s time sensitive,” said Gamache. “One good rain, the sugar dissolves and the statue subsides onto its pedestal, to stay there forever.”

“But suppose it hadn’t rained,” asked Peter. “What then?”

“Hose it off, simple. Colleen might have noticed, but probably not with the shock of the discovery.”

“But still, it didn’t have to be Pierre,” said Madame Dubois. “Any one of us could have hoarded that sugar.”

“It’s true. He was the most likely, but I needed more. And I got it from Gabri, when he told us about his name. Short for Gabriel, of course. You told him about our own children’s names that also work in both French and English.”

“I remember,” said Reine-Marie.

“That was a clue. That and the turn of phrase ‘everyone comes back for this week.’ You only ‘come back’ if you’re from here to begin with. David Martin told Inspector Beauvoir that he’d come back to Montreal a few times. Come back. I’d presumed he was English, from British Columbia, but suppose he was a Montrealer and his name was Da-veed Mar-tan?” Gamache gave it the French pronunciation. “When I returned to the Manoir one of the calls I made was to Martin. He confirmed he was from Montreal, and that a François Patenaude had been involved in an early, disastrous investment.”