“Avec plaisir.” The girl poured him an orange juice and he took it.
“Merci,” he said, and left.
“Monsieur Gamache,” he heard behind him as he walked out of the swinging screen door and into the new day. “I believe you wanted this.”
Gamache stopped and Elliot walked up to him, a bodum of coffee with cream and rock sugar on a tray with a couple of cups. He’d also placed some warm croissants in a basket with preserves.
“She’s from Saskatchewan. Just arrived. Very nice, but you know.” Elliot, a man of the world, shrugged. He seemed to have recovered his equanimity, or at least his charm, and had resigned himself to continue working despite his flare-up with the maître d’. Gamache wondered, though, how much was genuine acceptance and how much was an act.
A hummingbird zoomed past and stopped at a foxglove.
“Merci.” The Chief Inspector smiled and reached out for the tray.
“S’il vous plaît,” said Elliot, “I’ll carry it. Where would you like to sit?” He looked around the deserted terrasse.
“Well, actually, I was going to the dock.”
The two walked across the lawn, their feet making a path through the light morning dew. The world was waking up, hungry. Chipmunks raced and yipped under the trees, birds hopped and called and insects buzzed quietly in the background. Elliot placed the tray on the arm of the second Adirondack chair, poured a delicate bone china cup of coffee and turned to leave.
“There is one thing I’ve wanted to ask you.”
Did the lithe back tighten in the trim white jacket? Elliot paused for a moment then turned back, an expectant smile on his handsome face.
“What did you think of Madame Martin?”
“Think? All I do here is wait tables and clean up. I don’t think.”
Still the smile, but Gamache had the answer to his earlier question. Anger seethed under the charming exterior.
“Stop playing the fool with me, son.” Gamache’s voice was steady but full of warning.
“She was a guest, I’m an employee. She was polite.”
“You talked?”
Now Elliot really did hesitate and color slightly. With time, Gamache knew, his blush would disappear. He’d be confident instead of cocky. He’d be beyond embarrassment. And he’d be far less attractive.
“She was polite,” he repeated, then seemed to hear how lame he sounded. “She wanted to know if I liked working here, what I planned to do after the summer. That sort of thing. Most guests don’t see the staff, and we’re taught to be discreet. But Madame Martin noticed.”
Was there an invisible world, Gamache wondered. A place where diminished people met, where they recognized each other? Because if he knew one thing about Julia Martin it was that she too was invisible. The sort others cut off in conversation, cut in front of in grocery lines, overlook for jobs though their hand might be raised and waving.
Julia Martin might be all that, but this young man was anything but invisible. No, if they had something in common it wasn’t that. Then he remembered.
“You and Madame Martin had something in common,” he said.
Elliot stood on the dock, silent.
“You’re both from British Columbia.”
“Is that right? We didn’t talk about that.”
He was lying. He did it well, a skill that came with practice. But his eyes instead of shifting met Gamache’s and held them, too long, too hard.
“Thank you for the coffee,” said Gamache, breaking the moment. Elliot was perplexed, then smiled and left. Gamache watched his retreat and thought of what Elliot had said. Madame Martin noticed. And he thought that was probably true.
Is that what killed her? Not something buried in the past, but something fresh and vigorous? And deadly. Something she’d seen or heard here at the Manoir?
Settling into the chair on the wooden dock Gamache sipped coffee and stared at the lake and the forested mountains all around. He cradled the delicate cup in his large hands and let his mind wander. Instead of forcing himself to focus on the case he tried to open his mind, to empty it. And see what came to him.
What came to him was a bird, a footless bird. Then Ulysses and the whirlpool, and Scylla, the monster. The white pedestal.
He saw young Bean, earthbound and trapped among the stuffed heads in the attic. They might have been Morrows, meant more as trophies than children. All head, all stuffed and staring.
But mostly he saw Charles Morrow, looming over this case. Hard, burdened, bound.
“Am I disturbing you?”