“I noticed something red on the ground as we came around the house,” Peter picked up the story. “I think I assumed it was one of the poppies, fallen over. But it was too big. So I slowed down and looked over. That’s when I saw it was a woman.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought it was one of the guests who might’ve had too much to drink and passed out,” said Peter. “Slept it off in our garden. But then I could see that her eyes were open and her head—”
He tilted his, but of course he couldn’t achieve that angle. No living person could. It was a feat reserved for the dead.
“And you?” Gamache asked Olivier.
“I asked Clara to call the police,” he said. “Then I called Gabri.”
“You say you have guests?” Gamache asked. “People from the party?”
Gabri nodded. “A couple of the artists who came down from Montréal for the party decided to stay at the B and B. A few are also staying up at the inn and spa.”
“Was this a last-minute booking?”
“At the B and B it was. They made it sometime during the party.”
Gamache nodded and turning away he gestured toward Agent Isabelle Lacoste, who quickly joined him, listened as the Chief murmured instructions, then walked rapidly away. She spoke to two young S?reté agents, who nodded and left.
It always fascinated Clara to see how easily Gamache took command, and how naturally people took his orders. Never barked, never shouted, never harsh. Always put in the most calm, even courteous manner. His orders were couched almost as requests. And yet not a person mistook them for that.
Gamache turned back to give the four friends his full attention. “Did any of you touch the body?”
They looked at each other, shaking their heads, then back to the Chief.
“No,” said Peter. He was feeling more certain now. The ground had firmed up, filled in with facts. With straightforward questions and clear answers.
Nothing to be afraid of.
“Do you mind?” Gamache started walking toward the Adirondack. Even had they minded, it wouldn’t have mattered. He was going there and they were welcome to join him.
“Before they came back, when you were sitting here alone, you didn’t notice anything strange?” he asked as they walked. It seemed obvious that had Clara seen a body in her garden she’d have said something earlier. But it wasn’t just the body he wanted to know about. This was Clara’s garden, she knew it well, intimately. Perhaps something else was wrong. A plant broken, a shrub disturbed.
Some detail his investigators might miss. Something so subtle she herself might have missed it, until he asked her directly.
And, to her credit, she didn’t come back with a smart-ass reply.
But Gabri did. “Like the body?”
“No,” said the Chief, as they arrived at the chair. He turned and surveyed the garden from there. It was true that at this angle the dead woman was hidden by the flower beds. “I mean something else.”
He turned thoughtful eyes on Clara.
“Is there anything unusual about your garden this morning?” He shot a warning glance at Gabri, who put a finger to his mouth. “Anything small? Some detail off?”
Clara looked around. The back lawn was dotted with large flower beds. Some round, some oblong. Tall trees along the riverbank threw dappled shade, but most of it was in bright noonday sun. Clara scanned her garden, as did the others.
Was there something different? It was so hard to tell now, what with all the people, the newspapers, the activity, the yellow police tape. The newspapers. The body. The newspapers.
Everything was different.
She turned back to Gamache, her eyes asking for help.
Gamache hated to give it, hated to suggest in case he led her to see something that wasn’t really there.
“It’s possible the murderer hid back here,” he finally said. “Waiting.”
He left it at that. And he could see Clara understood. She turned back to her garden. Had a man intent on murder waited here? In her private sanctuary?
Had he hidden himself in the flower beds? Crouching behind the tall peony? Had he peered out from the morning glory climbing the post? Had he knelt behind the growing phlox?
Waiting?
She looked at each and every perennial, each shrub. Looking for something knocked down, knocked askew, a limb twisted, a bud broken off.
But it was perfect. Myrna and Gabri had worked days on the garden, getting it immaculate for the party. And it was. Last night. And it was that morning.
Except for the police, like pests, crawling all over it. And the bright body. A blight.
“Do you see anything?” she asked Gabri.
“No,” he said. “If the murderer hid back here it wasn’t in one of the flower beds. Maybe behind a tree?” He waved toward the maples but Gamache shook his head.
“Too far away. It would take him too long to make it across the lawn and around the flower beds. She’d have seen him coming.”
“So where did he hide?” Olivier asked.
“He didn’t,” said Gamache, sitting in the Adirondack chair. From there the body was also hidden. No, Clara couldn’t see the dead woman.
The Chief Inspector hauled himself up. “He didn’t hide. He waited in plain sight.”
“And she walked right up to him?” Peter asked. “She knew him?”
“Or he walked up to her,” said Gamache. “Either way, she wasn’t alarmed or frightened.”
“What was she doing back here?” Clara asked. “The barbeque was out there,” she waved beyond their home. “Everything was on the green. The food, the drinks, the music. The caterers set up all the tables and chairs out front.”
“But if people wanted to, they could walk into back yards?” Gamache asked, trying to get a picture of the event.
“Sure,” said Olivier. “If they wanted. There weren’t any fences or ropes up to stop them, but there was no need.”
“Well—” said Clara.
They turned to her.
“Well, I didn’t come back here last night, but I have at other parties. To kind of escape for a few minutes, you know?”
To their surprise, Gabri nodded. “I do the same thing, sometimes. Just to be quiet, get away from all the people.”
“Did you last night?” Gamache asked.
Gabri shook his head. “Too much to do. We had caterers, but you still have to supervise.”
“So it’s possible the dead woman came back here for a quiet moment,” said Gamache. “She might not have known it was your home.” He looked at Clara and Peter. “She just chose any place that was private, away from the crowds.”
They were silent then, for a moment. Imagining the woman in the bright red “look at me” dress. Slipping around the side of the old brick home. Away from the music, and fireworks, from the people looking at her.
To find a few moments of peace and quiet.
“She doesn’t seem the shy type,” said Gabri.
“Neither do you,” said Gamache with a small smile and surveyed the garden.
There was a problem. There were quite a few problems, actually, but the one that perplexed the Chief Inspector at the moment was that none of the four people with him now had seen the dead woman alive, at the party.
“Bonjour.”
Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir approached. As he got closer Gabri broke into a smile and extended his hand.
“I’m beginning to think you’re bad luck,” said Gabri. “Every time you come to Three Pines there’s a body.”
“And I think you provide them just for the pleasure of my company,” said Beauvoir, warmly shaking Gabri’s hand, then accepting Olivier’s.
They’d seen each other the evening before, at the vernissage. At that time they’d been in Peter and Clara’s element. The gallery. But now they were in Beauvoir’s habitat. A crime scene.
Art scared him. But pin a dead body to the wall and he was fine. Or, in this case, drop it into a garden. This he understood. It was simple. Always so simple.
Someone had hated the victim enough to kill her.
His job was to find that person and lock him up.
There was nothing subjective about it. No question of good and bad. It wasn’t an issue of perspective or nuance. No shading. Nothing to understand. It just was.
Collect the facts. Put them in the right order. Find the killer.
Of course, while it was simple it wasn’t always easy.
But he’d take a murder over a vernissage any day.
Though, like everyone else here, he suspected in this case the murder and the vernissage were one and the same. Inter-locked.
The thought dismayed him.
“Here’re the pictures you asked for.” Beauvoir handed the Chief Inspector a photograph. Gamache studied them.
“Merci. C’est parfait.” He looked up at the four people watching him. “I’d like you all to look at these photographs of the dead woman.”
“But we’ve already seen her,” said Gabri.
“I wonder if that’s true. When I asked if you’d seen her at the party you all said she’d be hard to miss in her red dress. I thought the same thing. When I tried to remember if I’d seen her at your vernissage yesterday, Clara, what I was really doing was scouring my memory for a woman in bright red. I was focusing on the dress, not the woman.”
“So?” asked Gabri.
“So,” said Gamache. “Suppose the red dress was recent. She might have been at the vernissage, but wearing something more conservative. She might have even been here—”
“And changed into the red dress mid-party?” asked Peter, incredulous. “Why would someone do that?”
“Why would someone kill her?” asked Gamache. “Why would a perfect stranger be at the party? There’re all sorts of questions, and I’m not saying this is the answer, but it is a possibility. That you were all so impressed by the dress you didn’t really concentrate on her face.”
He held up a photograph.
“This is what she looks like.”
He handed it to Clara first. The woman’s eyes were now closed. She looked peaceful, if a little flaccid. Even in sleep there’s some life in a face. This was an empty face. Blank. No more thoughts, or feelings.
Clara shook her head and passed the picture to Peter. Around the circle of friends the photo circulated, to the same reaction.
Nothing.
“The coroner’s ready to move the body,” said Beauvoir.
Gamache nodded and placed the photo in his pocket. Beauvoir and Lacoste and the others would have their own copies, he knew. Excusing themselves they walked back to the body.
Two assistants stood by a stretcher, waiting to lift the woman onto it and take her to the waiting van. The photographer also waited. All looking at Chief Inspector Gamache. Waiting for him to give the order.
“Do you know how long she’s been dead?” Beauvoir asked the coroner, who’d just stood up and was moving her stiff legs.
“Between twelve and fifteen hours,” said Dr. Harris.
Gamache checked his watch and did the math. It was now eleven thirty on Sunday morning. That meant she was alive at eight thirty last night and dead by midnight. She never saw Sunday.
“No apparent sexual assault. No assault at all, except the broken neck,” said Dr. Harris. “Death would’ve been immediate. There was no struggle. I suspect he stood behind her and twisted her neck.”
“As simple as that, Dr. Harris?” asked the Chief Inspector.
“I’m afraid so. Especially if the victim wasn’t tensing. If she was relaxed and caught off guard there’d be no resistance. Just a quick twist. A snap.”