“Looking at your sculpture of Charles Morrow I thought of Rodin,” said Gamache. “Can you guess which one?”
“Not Victor Hugo, that’s for sure. The Gates of Hell, perhaps?”
But the sculptor was clearly not serious. Then he thought about it and after a moment spoke quietly. “The Burghers?”
Gamache nodded.
“Merci, Patron.” The strappy little man gave Gamache a small bow. “But if he was by Rodin, the rest of the family would be by Giacometti.”
Gamache knew the Swiss artist with the long, lean, almost stringy figures, but he couldn’t make out what Pelletier meant.
“Giacometti always began with a huge piece of stone,” Pelletier explained. “Then he’d work and work. Refining and smoothing and chipping away anything offensive, anything that wasn’t just right. Sometimes he did so much refining there wasn’t anything left. The sculpture disappeared completely. All he had left was dust.”
Gamache smiled, understanding it now.
On the outside the Morrows were healthy, attractive even. But you can’t diminish so many people without diminishing yourself. And the Morrows, inside, had all but disappeared. Empty.
But he wasn’t convinced the sculptor was right. He thought there might be quite a bit of the Burghers in all of them. He saw all the Morrows, trudging along, chained together, weighed down by expectation, disapproval, secrets. Need. Greed. And hate. After years of investigating murders Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you forever to the person you hated. Murder wasn’t committed out of hate, it was done as a terrible act of freedom. To finally rid yourself of the burden.
The Morrows were burdened.
And one had tried to break free. By killing.
But how had the murderer managed it?
“How can a statue come off its pedestal?” he asked Pelletier.
“I was wondering when you’d ask. Here, come with me.”
They walked further into the cemetery to a sculpture of a child.
“I did that ten years ago. Antoinette Gagnon. Killed by a car.”
They looked at the gleaming, playing child. Always young, perpetually happy. Gamache wondered whether her parents ever came, and whether their hearts stopped each time they turned the corner and saw this.
“Try to knock her over,” Pelletier said to Beauvoir.