Louise Penny - The Murder Stone - A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Three Pines Mysteries - Book 4)

Published by Hachette Digital

ISBN: 978-0-748-12965-2

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Louise Penny

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Published in Canada and the United States as A Rule Against Murder

Excerpt from The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Serviceused with permission of the estate of John Masefield.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Hachette Digital

Little, Brown Book Group

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London, EC4Y 0DY

www.hachette.co.uk

Louise Penny is the New York Times-bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels, the first of which, Still Life, won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2006. Recipient of virtually every other existing award for crime fiction, she lives in a small village south of Montreal.

Still Life

Dead Cold

The Cruellest Month

The Murder Stone

The Brutal Telling

Bury Your Dead

For my parents, in love and memory

M ore than a century ago the Robber Barons discovered Lac Massawippi. They came with purpose from Montreal, Boston, New York, and burrowing deep into the Canadian wilderness they built the great lodge. Though, of course, they didnt actually dirty their own hands. What clung to them was something else entirely. No, these men hired men with names like Zotique, Tlesphore and Honor to hack down the massive and ancient forests. At first the Qubcois were resistant, having lived in the forest all their lives. They balked at destroying a thing of such beauty and a few of the more intuitive recognized the end when they saw it. But money took care of that and slowly the forest receded and the magnificent Manoir Bellechasse rose. After months of cutting and stripping and turning and drying the huge logs were finally stacked one on top of the other. It was an art, this building of log homes. But what guided the keen eyes and rough hands of these men wasnt aesthetics but the certainty that winters bite would kill whoever was inside if they didnt choose the logs wisely. A coureur du bois could contemplate the stripped trunk of a massive tree for hours, as though deciphering it. Walking round and round, sitting on a stump, filling his pipe and staring until finally this coureur du bois, this man of the woods, knew exactly where that tree would sit for the rest of its life.

It took years, but finally the great lodge was completed. The last man stood on the magnificent copper roof like a lightning rod and surveyed the forests and the lonely, haunting lake from a height hed never achieve again. And if that mans eyes could see far enough hed make out something horrible approaching, like the veins of summer lightning. Marching towards not merely the lodge, but the exact place he stood, on the gleaming metal roof. Something dreadful was going to happen on that very spot.

Hed laid copper roofs before, always with the same design. But this time, when everyone else had thought it was finished, hed climbed back up and added a ridge, a cap along the peak of the roof. He had no idea why, except that it looked good and felt right. And hed had the copper left over. Hed use the same design again and again, in great buildings across the burgeoning territory. But this was the first.

Having hammered the final nail he slowly, carefully, deliberately descended.

Paid off, the men paddled away, their hearts as heavy as their pockets. And looking back the more intuitive among them noticed that what theyd created looked a little like a forest itself, but one turned unnaturally on its side.

For there was something unnatural about the Manoir Bellechasse from the very beginning. It was staggeringly beautiful, the stripped logs golden and glowing. It was made of wood and wattle and sat right at the waters edge. It commanded Lac Massawippi, as the Robber Barons commanded everything. These captains of industry couldnt seem to help it.

And once a year men with names like Andrew and Douglas and Charles would leave their rail and whiskey empires, trade their spats for chewed leather moccasins and trek by canoe to the lodge on the shore of the isolated lake. Theyd grown weary of robbery and needed another distraction.

The Manoir Bellechasse was created and conceived to allow these men to do one thing. Kill.

It made a nice change.

Over the years the wilderness receded. The foxes and deer, the moose and bears, all the wild creatures hunted by the Robber Barons, crept away. The Abinaki, who often paddled the wealthy industrialists to the great lodge, had retired, repulsed. Towns and villages sprang up. Cottagers, weekenders, discovered the nearby lakes.

But the Bellechasse remained. It changed hands over the generations and slowly the stunned and stuffed heads of long-dead deer and moose and even a rare cougar disappeared from the log walls and were tossed into the attic.

As the fortunes of its creators waned, so went the lodge. It sat abandoned for many years, far too big for a single family and too remote for a hotel. Just as the forest was emboldened enough to reclaim its own, someone bought the place. A road was built, curtains were hung, spiders and beetles and owls were chased from the Bellechasse and paying guests invited in. The Manoir Bellechasse became one of the finest auberges in Quebec.

But while in over a century Lac Massawippi had changed, Quebec had changed, Canada had changed, almost everything had changed, one thing hadnt.

The Robber Barons were back. Theyd come to the Manoir Bellechasse once again, to kill.

A t the beginning of summer the guests descended on the isolated lodge by the lake, summoned to the Manoir Bellechasse by identical vellum invitations, addressed in the familiar spider scrawl as though written in cobwebs. Thrust through mail slots, the heavy paper had thudded to the floor of impressive homes in Vancouver and Toronto, and a small brick cottage in Three Pines.

The mailman had carried it in his bag through the tiny Quebec village, taking his time. Best not to exert yourself in this heat, he told himself, pausing to remove his hat and wipe his dripping head. Union rules. But the actual reason for his lethargy wasnt the beating and brilliant sun, but something more private. He always lingered in Three Pines. He wandered slowly by the perennial beds of roses and lilies and thrusting bold foxglove. He helped kids spot frogs at the pond on the green. He sat on warm fieldstone walls and watched the old village go about its business. It added hours to his day and made him the last courier back to the terminal. He was mocked and kidded by his fellows for being so slow and he suspected that was the reason hed never been promoted. For two decades or more hed taken his time. Instead of hurrying, he strolled through Three Pines talking to people as they walked their dogs, often joining them for lemonade or th glac outside the bistro. Or caf au lait in front of the roaring fire in winter. Sometimes the villagers, knowing he was having lunch at the bistro, would come by and pick up their own mail. And chat for a moment. He brought news from other villages on his route, like a travelling minstrel in medieval times, with news of plague or war or flood, someplace else. But never here in this lovely and peaceful village. It always amused him to imagine that Three Pines, nestled among the mountains and surrounded by Canadian forest, was disconnected from the outside world. It certainly felt that way. It was a relief.