A Rule Against Murder

She looked over at Beauvoir doing a mad dance and slapping himself.



“Here,” she pointed to a wound, “see?”



Lacoste peered in. She was right. No bugs, though a few were beginning to hover.



“Now, this is interesting,” said Dr. Harris. “Look at that.”



On her finger was a smear of brown. Lacoste bent closer.



“Dirt?” she asked.



“Dirt.”



Lacoste raised her brows, perplexed, but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes the coroner got up and walked to the Chief Inspector.



“I can tell you how she died.”



“A statue?” asked Gamache.



“Probably,” said the coroner, turning to look at the levitating statue then at its pedestal.



“That’s the more interesting question,” said Gamache, reading her mind.



“We had quite a storm last night,” said Dr. Harris. “Maybe that knocked it down.”



“They’re driving me crazy.” Beauvoir joined them, his face smeared with tiny freckles of crushed blackflies. He looked at Gamache, poised and comfortable. “Don’t they bite you?”



“No. It’s mind over matter. It’s all in your head, Inspector.”



That much was true, Beauvoir knew. He’d just inhaled a swarm of blackflies and he knew for certain a few had flown up his nose. A sudden buzzing in his ear warned him he was either having a stroke or a deerfly had just flown in.



Please, let this be an accident. Let me get home to my barbecue, my cooler of beer, my sports channel. My air-conditioning.



He dug his little finger into his ear, but the buzzing only moved deeper.



Charles Morrow subsided onto the dirty truck. He lay on his side, his arms out, his face sad, and smeared with his own flesh and blood.



Gamache walked alone to the edge of the hole in the ground. They all watched as he looked down. There was no movement, except his right hand, which clasped slowly closed.



Then he motioned to the team and there was a sudden flurry of activity as evidence was collected. Jean Guy Beauvoir took charge while Gamache returned to the large flatbed truck.



“Were you the one who put him on his pedestal?” he asked the crane operator.



“Not me, Patron. When was the job done?” the operator asked, securing and covering Charles Morrow for the trip to the Sûreté compound in Sherbrooke.



“Yesterday, early afternoon.”



“My day off. I was fishing in Lake Memphramagog. I can show you the pictures and the catch. I have a license.”



“I believe you.” Gamache smiled reassuringly. “Could someone else from your company have done it?”



“I’ll ask.”



A minute later he was back.



“Called dispatch. Got the boss. He placed the statue himself. We do a lot of work with the Manoir, so when Madame Dubois called about this the boss decided it needed a special touch. No one’s better than him.”



This was said with more than a little sarcasm. It was clear this man wouldn’t mind if the boss turned out to have screwed up royally. And if he could help point the middle finger, so much the better.



“Can you give me his name and coordinates?”



The operator happily handed over a card with the proprietor’s name underlined.



“Please ask him to meet me at the Sûreté detachment in Sherbrooke in about an hour.”



“Chief?” Dr. Harris approached just as the driver got back in his rig and drove off.



“Could the storm have done this?” he asked, remembering the lightning bolts and the furious angels bowling, or crying, or pushing over statues.



“Knocked over the statue? Maybe. But it didn’t.”



Gamache turned surprised brown eyes on the coroner. “How can you be so certain?”



She held up her finger. Beside him Agent Lacoste grimaced. It wasn’t just “a” finger, it was “the” finger. Gamache raised his brows and grinned. Then his brows lowered and he leaned in closer, staring at the brown smear.



“This was under her body. You’ll see more when her body’s moved.”



“It looks like dirt,” said Gamache.



“It is,” said Dr. Harris. “Dirt, not mud. It means the storm didn’t kill her. She was on the ground before the storm started. It’s dry underneath her.”



Gamache was quiet, absorbing the information.



“Are you saying the statue fell off and crushed her before the storm hit?”



“That’s a fact, Chief Inspector. The ground’s dry. I have no idea how that thing came to fall, but it wasn’t the storm.”