A Trick of the Light

There was the image of a camel on the face of it, just visible beneath the smears.

“Who’s touched this?” Beauvoir asked.

“We all did,” said Ruth, proudly.

“Do you not know what to do with evidence at a crime scene?”

“Do you not know how to collect evidence?” Ruth asked. “If you did we wouldn’t have found it.”

“This was just lying in the garden?” Gamache asked. With the tip of his finger, careful not to touch it more than necessary, he flipped it over.

“No,” said Myrna. “It was buried.”

“Then how did you find it?”

“With the prayer stick,” said Ruth.

“What’s a prayer stick?” Beauvoir asked, afraid of the answer.

“We can show you,” Dominique offered. “We put it in the flower bed where the woman was murdered.”

“We were doing a ritual cleansing—” said Clara, before being cut off by Myrna.

“Phhht.” Myrna made a noise. “Ix-nay on the leansing-cay.”

Beauvoir stared at the women. It wasn’t enough that they were English and had a prayer stick, but now they’d lapsed into pig latin. It was no wonder there were so many murders here. The only mystery was how any got solved, with help like this.

“I bent down to mound dirt around the prayer stick and this thing appeared,” Myrna explained, as though this was a reasonable thing to be doing at a murder scene.

“Didn’t you see the police tape?” Beauvoir demanded.

“Didn’t you see the coin?” Ruth countered.

Gamache held up his hand and the two stopped bickering.

On the side now exposed there was writing. What looked like a poem.

Putting on his half-moon reading glasses he furrowed his brow, trying to read through the dirt.

No, not a poem.

A prayer.

NINE

For the second time that day Armand Gamache stood from crouching beside this flower bed.

The first time he’d been staring at a dead woman, this time he’d been staring at a prayer stick. Its bright, cheerful ribbons fluttering in the slight breeze. Catching, according to Myrna, currents of good energy. If she was right, there was a lot around, as the ribbons flapped and danced.

He straightened up, brushing his knees. Beside him, Inspector Beauvoir was glowering at the spot where the coin had been found.

Where he’d missed it.

Beauvoir was in charge of the crime scene investigation, and had personally searched the area directly around the body.

“You found it just here?” the Chief pointed to the mounded earth.

Myrna and Clara had joined them. Beauvoir had called Agent Lacoste and she arrived that moment with a crime scene kit.

“That’s right,” said Myrna. “In the flower bed. It was buried and caked with dirt. Hard to see.”

“I’ll take that,” said Beauvoir, grabbing the crime scene kit, annoyed at what he took to be a patronizing tone in Myrna’s voice. As though she needed to make excuses for his failure. He bent down to examine the earth.

“Why didn’t we find it before?” asked the Chief.

It wasn’t a criticism of his team. Gamache was genuinely perplexed. They were professional and thorough. Still, mistakes happened. But not, he thought, missing a silver coin sitting in a flower bed two feet from the dead body.

“I know how it was missed,” said Myrna. “Gabri could tell you too. Anyone who gardens could tell you. We’d weeded yesterday morning and mulched the earth in the beds so that it’d be fresh and dark and show off the flowers. Gardeners call it ‘fluffing’ the garden. Making the earth soft. But when we do that the ground becomes very crumbly. I’ve lost whole tools in there. Laid them down and they sort of tumble into a crevice and get half buried.”

“This is a flower bed,” said Gamache, “not the Himalayas. Could something really be swallowed up in there?”

“Try it.”

The Chief Inspector walked to the other side of the flower bed. “Did you mulch here too?” he asked.

“Everywhere,” said Myrna. “Go on. Try it.”

Gamache knelt and dropped a one dollar coin into the flower bed. It sat on top of the earth, clearly visible. Picking it back up, he rose and looked at Myrna.

“Any other suggestions?”

She gave the dirt a filthy look. “It’s probably settled now. If it was freshly turned it’d work.”

She got a trowel from Clara’s shed and dug around, turning the earth, fluffing it up.

“OK, try it now.”

Gamache knelt again, and again dropped the coin into the flower bed. This time it slid over onto its side, down a small crevice.

“See,” said Myrna.

“Well, yes, I do see. I see the coin,” said Gamache. “I’m afraid I’m not convinced. Could it have been there for a while? It might’ve fallen into the bed years ago. It’s made of plastic so it wouldn’t rust or age.”

“I doubt it,” said Clara. “We would’ve found it long ago. They sure would’ve found it yesterday when they weeded and mulched, don’t you think?”

“I’ve given up thinking,” said Myrna.

They walked back to where Beauvoir was working.

“Nothing more, Chief,” he said, standing abruptly and slapping his knees free of dirt. “I can’t believe we missed it the first time.”