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

A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4) Page 75

“And you married his wife.” Gamache wanted it to sound neutral. Not an accusation. And it wasn’t one, it was simply a question. But he also knew a guilty mind was a harsh filter, and heard things unintended.

“I did. I’ve loved her all my life.”

Both men stared out to the lake. The fisherman had something writhing in his net. It was plump and shiny. As they watched he gently took the hook out of its mouth and held it aloft, by its tail.

Gamache smiled. The man who lived in the cabin across the lake was going to let the fish go. With a flash of silver the fish descended and struck the side of the boat.

The fisherman had killed it.

TWENTY

Armand Gamache walked off the wharf, leaving Bert Finney sitting in the Adirondack chair. On the grass the Chief Inspector turned round, looking for signs of the galloping child. But the lawn was empty and quiet.

His watch said seven thirty. Had Bean gone back into the Manoir?

This was the reason he’d gotten up so early, to see why Bean did. And now he’d managed to lose the child, in favor of a conversation with Finney. Had he made the right choice?

Gamache turned away from the lodge and took the trail that wound into and out of the woods, along the shores of Lac Massawippi. It was warm and he knew, even without the maître d’s forecast, that it would be hot. Not the stifling heat and humidity before the storm, but still hot. Already the sun dazzled off the lake, blinding him if he looked too close and too long.

“Dream on, dream on,” a thin voice sang through the woods. Gamache turned and looked in, trying to adjust his eyes to the relative darkness of the forest in full leaf.

“Dream on, dream on.” The voice, reedy, reached an almost shrieking pitch. He walked off the path, stepping on roots and unsteady rocks, his ankle almost twisting a few times. But he plowed on, snaking his large body around living trees and climbing over dead ones until he reached an opening. It was astonishing.

A large circle had been cleared in the middle of the thick forest and planted with honeysuckle and clover. He wondered how he could have missed it, if only by following his nose. It was sweet almost to the point of cloying. The other sense he might have used was hearing.

The glade buzzed. As he looked closer he noticed the tiny, bright, delicate flowers bobbing. The clearing was alive with bees. Bees crawled into and out of and around the blossom-filled bushes.

“Dream on,” the voice sang from the other side of the bobbing bushes. Gamache decided on discretion and skirted the glade, catching sight as he did of half a dozen wooden boxes in the very center of the circle.

Hives. These were honey bees at their morning feeding. The Manoir Bellechasse had its own hives.

At the far side he turned his back on the thousands of bees and stared once again into the woods. There he caught sight of color flitting between trunks. And then it stopped.

Gamache plowed indelicately through the forest until he was within yards of Bean. The child stood feet apart as though planted. Knees slightly bent, head tilted back, hands gripped in front as though holding something.

And smiling. No, not just smiling, beaming.

“Dream on, dream on,” Bean sang in a music-free voice. But a voice filled with something much richer than even music. Bliss.

Bean was the first Morrow he’d seen with a look of joy, of delight, of rapture.

Gamache recognized it because he felt those things himself, every day. But he hadn’t expected to find them here, in the middle of the forest, in a Morrow. And certainly not from this child, marginalized, excluded, mocked. Named for a vegetable, asexual and rooted. Bean seemed destined for disaster. A puppy beside a highway. But this child who couldn’t jump could do something much more important. Bean could be transported.

He sat for a long time, mesmerized, watching the child. He noticed thin white strings falling from Bean’s ears and disappearing into a pocket. An iPod perhaps? Something was driving the concert he was listening to. He heard Louis Armstrong singing “St. James Infirmary Blues,” then the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” though it sounded more like “Letter B.” And some tune without words that sent Bean galloping and humming in a whirl of activity. Every now and then Bean would kick back furiously then arch forward.

Eventually he snuck away, satisfied that Bean was safe. Better than safe. Unbelievable as it seemed, Bean was sound.

Agent Isabelle Lacoste stood by the yellow police tape, staring down at the place where Julia Martin had last lived, and died. The blades of grass had sprung back up, erect where yesterday they too had been crushed. Too bad people couldn’t do the same thing, be revitalized after a rain and some sun. Spring back to life. But some wounds were too grave.