http://www.minotaurbooks.com/

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37702-1

ISBN-10: 0-312-37702-9

1. Gamache, Armand (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Québec (Province)—Fiction. 3. Québec (Province)— Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation— Fiction. 5. Resorts— Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4.P464R85 2009

813’.6—dc22

2008030430

First published in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group under the title The Murder Stone

First U.S. Edition: January 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my parents, in love and memory

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have a few people to thank for this book. The first and foremost, as always, is my kind and gentle husband, Michael. It took me a lot longer than it should have to realize that Armand Gamache isn’t simply my fictional husband, he’s my real husband. Indeed, without even realizing it I based Chief Inspector Gamache on Michael. A man who is content and knows great joy, because he’s known great sorrow. And mostly, he knows the difference.

I’d also like to thank Rachel Hewitt, who curates the sculpture collection at the Royal Academy in London.

Hope Dellon of St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books and Sherise Hobbs of Headline are my editors and worked to make this book what it is. I owe them both a huge debt, as I do the most wonderful agent in the world, Teresa Chris. She is very wise.

I owe a great debt to Lise Page, my assistant, who patiently tends gardens in the summer and tends to us the rest of the year. Everything she touches flourishes. And she rarely finds the need to use fertilizer.

And finally Jason, Stephen and Kathy Stafford, who own and run Manoir Hovey in the village of North Hatley, Quebec. The Manoir Bellechasse is inspired by Hovey Manor, and by the many, many wonderful days and nights we’ve spent there. If you read this book and then visit Hovey you’ll notice that it is far from an exact replica—of the Inn or the lake. But I hope

I have, at least, captured the feel of Manoir Hovey. In fact, Michael and I love it so much we got married in the tiny Anglican Chapel in North Hatley many years ago, then had a two-day wedding party at Hovey.

Bliss.

Though, as Stephen has pointed out, they happily do not have nearly the number of black flies as the fictional Manoir Bellechasse. Nor, it must be said, nearly the number of murders.

A RULE AGAINST MURDER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

PROLOGUE

More 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 didn’t actually dirty their own hands. What clung to them was something else entirely. No, these men hired men with names like Zoétique, Télesphore and Honoré to hack down the massive and ancient forests. At first the Québécois 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 wasn’t aesthetics but the certainty that winter’s bite would kill whoever was inside if they didn’t choose the logs wisely. A coureur de 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 de 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 he’d never achieve again. And if that man’s eyes could see far enough he’d make out something horrible approaching, like the veins of summer lightning. Marching

toward 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.

He’d laid copper roofs before, always with the same design. But this time, when everyone else had thought it was finished, he’d 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 he’d had the copper left over. He’d 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 they’d 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 water’s edge. It commanded Lac Massawippi, as the Robber Barons commanded everything. These captains of industry couldn’t 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. They’d 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 hadn’t.

The Robber Barons were back. They’d come to the Manoir Bellechasse once again, to kill.

ONE

In the height 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 wasn’t 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 he’d never been promoted. For two decades or more he’d 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 thé glacé outside the bistro. Or café 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.