She looked at him closely.
“I know your type. You always take the best. You’re a little man with a little power and it’s made you a bully. I wonder where you get it from?”
She left.
Beauvoir shook his head. Just as he thought this Anglo-palooza couldn’t get any weirder, Sandra Morrow did this.
“Where were we?” asked Gamache, regaining his seat and taking a sip of beer.
“Cigarettes,” said Lacoste, watching to see if Sandra Morrow’s ragged little insults had resulted in even a flesh wound. But the chief looked superbly unconcerned.
“The Jubilee Tobacco case. I remember it,” said Beauvoir. “All that stuff came out about the shit the companies are putting into cigarettes. My mother actually quit after watching a report.”
“Smart woman,” said Gamache. “Lots of people quit.”
“And did that cause the crisis?” asked Beauvoir, lost again.
“No, they just turned to the developing world for their market. What brought Martin’s house down around him was the discovery that long after they knew they were in trouble they continued to sell Partnerships, to offset their losses with the tobacco companies. Thousands of people were ruined. The small investors.”
Beauvoir and Lacoste were silent, thinking about that. Beauvoir, having spoken to Martin from prison, was surprised. He didn’t seem like the sort to intentionally screw so many people, the small investors. Ma and Pop. Yet he had. Greed. That was the real jailer.
“Is it possible one of the Morrows, maybe even Charles Morrow, was a Partner?” Lacoste asked. “Maybe they lost a fortune.”
“David Martin said the Morrows are worth about twenty million.”
“Dollars?” asked Lacoste.
“No, dog biscuits. Of course dollars,” said Beauvoir.
“But maybe they were worth a hundred million before all this,” said Gamache.
“Could you check it out?” he asked Lacoste.
Soon they had every other guest on the suspect list.
“Haven’t exactly narrowed it down, have we?” Beauvoir smiled ruefully. “They all had the opportunity, they all seemed to have motives for killing each other.”
“Julia said she’d figured out her father’s secret,” said Lacoste. “I think that’s significant. I asked Clara about it.”
“And?” Gamache was curious.