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

A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4) Page 64

Now she saw someone else wrapped and trapped in there. Someone tired. Someone worn. Someone old. Not as old as Julia, but then Julia had stopped aging. Fuck her. Always ahead of her time. The one who’d married well, the one who was rich and thin. The one who got away. And now the one who’d never get old.

Fuck Julia.

Someone else was indeed bound up in there, with Amelia and Isadora. Someone just peeping out from the layers of too flimsy material.

Marianna tied a scarf to her head and imagined the huge iron chandelier in the dining room crashing down on top of all of them. Except Bean, of course.

“Must you wear that?” Thomas asked his wife.

She looked perfectly fine, but that wasn’t the point. Was never the point.

“Why not?” she asked, looking at herself in the mirror. “It’s somber but tasteful.”

“It’s just not right.”

He managed to convey the sense it wasn’t the dress that was wrong. Nor was it necessarily Sandra. But her upbringing. Not her fault. Really. Darling.

It was in the pauses. Never the words, but the hesitations. Sandra had spent the first few years ignoring it, agreeing with Thomas that she was just too sensitive. Then she’d spent a few years trying to change, to be slim enough, sophisticated enough, elegant enough.

Then she’d entered therapy and spent a few years fighting back.

Then she’d surrendered. And started taking it out on others.

Thomas went back to struggling with his cufflink. His large fingers fumbled at the tiny silver clasp which seemed to have shrunk. He could feel his tension rising, the stress starting at his toes spreading up his legs and through his loins and exploding in his chest.

Why wouldn’t this cufflink go in? What was wrong?

He needed them tonight. They were his crucifix, his talisman, his rabbit’s foot, his stake and hammer and garlic.

They protected him, and reminded the others who he was.

The eldest son, the favorite son.

He finally got the post through and secured the cufflink, noticing it gleaming next to the frayed cuff. Then they made their way down the hall, Thomas in a snit and Sandra brightening up, remembering the cookies plastered to the dining room ceiling, like stars.

“I don’t think you need do that, my dear,” said Bert Finney, hovering behind his wife. “Not tonight. Everyone will understand.”

She was dressed in a loose-fitting frock, her earrings in, her pearl necklace on. Only one thing missing.

Her face.

“Really.” He reached out and almost touched her wrist, but stopped just in time. They locked eyes in the harsh bathroom mirror. His bulbous nose pocked and veined, his hair thinning and unkempt, his mouth full of teeth as though he’d chewed them but hadn’t yet swallowed. But for once his eyes, liquid almost, were steady. And trained on her.

“I must,” she said. “For Julia.”

She dipped the soft round pad into the foundation. Bringing her hand up she hesitated for a moment, looking at her reflection, then began applying her mask.

Irene Finney finally knew what she believed. She believed Julia to be the kindest, most loving, most generous of her children. She believed Julia loved her too, and came back just to be with her. She believed had Julia not died they’d have shared their lives. Loving mother and loving daughter.

Finally, a child who wouldn’t disappoint and disappear.

With each savage stroke of her make-up, Irene Finney filled the void with a child not loved then lost, but first lost, then loved.

Bean Morrow sat alone at the table. Waiting. But not alone or lonely. Bean had brought Hercules, Ulysses, Zeus and Hera. And Pegasus.

Alone in the dining room of the Manoir Bellechasse, feet planted on the ground, Bean climbed aboard the rearing, mighty stallion. Together they galloped down the grass of the Bellechasse and just as lawn turned into lake Pegasus took off. Together they circled the lodge then headed out across the lake, over the mountains. Bean wheeled and soared and swung, high in the sunlit silence.

SEVENTEEN

A table was set in the corner of the library, by the windows, and there the three officers sat to eat. They hadn’t dressed for dinner, though Chief Inspector Gamache always wore a suit and tie during investigations and still wore it.

As the various courses arrived they went over the findings.

“We now believe Julia Martin was murdered last night shortly before the storm. That would be sometime between midnight and one a.m., is that right?” Gamache asked, sipping his cold cucumber and raspberry soup. There was a bit of dill in it, a hint of lemon and something sweet.

Honey, he realized.