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“Want a hand?” smirked Beauvoir with the ease of a man who hadn’t yet found his phobia.

“Non, merci.” Gamache tried to smile, but knew he probably looked maniacal. Eyes bright, hands shaking slightly, lips still trying to form a lie of a smile, he started up the ladder. Two, three, four rungs. Hardly high, but it didn’t have to be. Maybe, like Bean, I’m afraid to leave the ground, he thought with surprise.Advertisement

He was face to face with Charles Morrow, staring into that grim visage. Then he dropped his eyes and there, etched into the left shoulder, was a tiny bird. But there was something odd about it. Every nerve in his body was begging him to get down. He could feel waves of anxiety wash over him and thought perhaps he’d let go, fling himself off the ladder. Drop onto Beauvoir. Crush him, as Morrow had crushed Julia.

“You all right up there?” Beauvoir asked, slightly anxious now.

Gamache forced himself to focus, to see the bird. And then he had it.

No longer trying to appear composed Gamache raced down the ladder, jumping the last two rungs and landing inelegantly at the crane operator’s feet.

“What kind of a bird is it, do you know?” Gamache asked.

“Course I don’t know. It’s a fucking bird. Not a jay, that’s all I know.”

“Does it matter?” asked Beauvoir, who knew the chief never asked a question without a reason.

“It has no feet.”

“Maybe the guy forgot,” suggested the operator.

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“Or maybe it was his signature, you know?” said Beauvoir. “The way some artists never do eyes.”

“Like Little Orphan Annie,” said the crane operator. “Maybe this guy never does feet.”

All three dropped their eyes. Charles Morrow had feet.

They put the ladder away and walked together to the door.

“Why do you think the bird’s there?” asked the crane operator.

“Don’t know,” said Gamache. “We’ll have to ask the artist.”

“Good luck,” said the operator, making a face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beauvoir asked.

The crane operator looked uncomfortable. What could make a man perfectly willing to admit to a fondness for pixies and fairies uncomfortable, Beauvoir wondered.

The crane operator stopped and looked at them. The younger guy was staring, like a ferret. All eager to pounce. But the older one, the one with the graying moustache and balding head, and the kind, smart eyes, he was quiet. And listening. He squared his shoulders and spoke directly to Gamache.

“Madame Dubois gave me the address yesterday morning to pick up the statue. Over Saint-Felicien-du-Lac way. I got there in plenty of time. I’m like that. Went to the coffee shop . . .”

Here we go, thought Beauvoir, and shifted on his feet.

The crane operator paused then plunged. “Then I went to the atelier to get him, the statue I mean. Madame Dubois said it was an artist’s studio, but it wasn’t.”

He stopped again.

“Go on,” said Gamache, quietly.

“It was a graveyard.”

SIXTEEN

Véronique Langlois was preparing one of the reduction sauces for the dinner service. It was almost five and things were running behind schedule, and destined to get even further behind if the young Sûreté agent continued to ask questions.

Agent Isabelle Lacoste sat at the scrubbed pine table in the warm kitchen, not wanting to leave. The kitchen had the most wonderful aromas, but more than anything it smelled of calm. Odd, she thought, for a place so filled with activity. Assistants in crisp white aprons were chopping herbs and cleaning early vegetables taken from the kitchen garden or dropped off by the local organic farmer Monsieur Pagé. They baked and kneaded, they stuffed and stirred. It was a regular Dr. Seuss book.

And Agent Lacoste did her job. She probed.

So far she’d interviewed all the outside staff, now back to cutting the vast stretches of lawn and weeding the endless flower beds. The place crawled with them. All young, eager to help.

Pierre Patenaude, whom she was currently interviewing, had just explained that the staff changed almost every year, so it was necessary to train most of them.

“Do you have trouble holding on to staff?” she asked.

“Mais, non,” Madame Dubois said. Agent Lacoste had already interviewed her and told her she could leave, but the elderly woman continued to sit, like an apple left on the chair. “Most of the kids go back to school. Besides, we want new staff.”

“Why? It seems a lot of extra work for you.” pqdm.com