A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4)

by Louise Penny

There was no television at the Bellechasse and even the radio was patchy, so Environment Canada forecasts weren’t available. Just Patenaude and his near mythical ability to foretell the weather. Each morning when they arrived for breakfast the forecast would be tacked outside the dining room door. For a nation addicted to the weather, he gave them their fix.

The Manoir Bellechasse is inspired by the Manoir Hovey, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Though the Bellechasse is more rustic. I find it so interesting that when I wrote this, it didn’t occur to me to mention wifi. I wonder if that’s a reflection of how little it was used back then (waaay back ten years ago, which in dog and technology years is a lifetime or more), or whether it was a reflection of how little I used wifi. Hmmm, will have to look that up. But I suspect the internet wasn’t so widely available in rural areas. This also, of course, speaks to Canadians’ obsession with the weather, and for good reason. In Canada the weather can kill you.

Finally, when they could eat no more, the cheese cart arrived burdened with a selection of local cheeses made by the monks in the nearby Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoit-du-Lac. The brothers led a contemplative life, raising animals, making cheese and singing Gregorian chants of such beauty that they had, ironically for men who’d deliberately retreated from the world, become world-famous.

Well, hello St-Benoit-du-lac. I’d forgotten that I’d mentioned the monastery here. It became, as you can probably tell by the quote, the inspiration for St-Gilbert-Entre-les Loups, in THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY. When I wrote A RULE AGAINST MURDER, that book and those monks weren’t even a gleam in my eye.

Then he laughed at himself. Seeing things not there, hearing words unspoken. He’d come to the Manoir Bellechasse to turn that off, to relax and not look for the stain on the carpet, the knife in the bush, or the back. To stop noticing the malevolent inflections that rode into polite conversation on the backs of reasonable words. And the feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami. Made to look pretty, but disguising something not at all attractive.

I think we’ve all known people like those Gamache is describing. The smile on the face and the sting in the tail. It’s a truism, and it certainly has been true in my life, that I find comfort in knowing I can turn hurt into something useful. I can unfold the origami and turn it into my own creation. Eventually. Once I get out of the fetal position.

“When I first went away to school and was unpacking all my little socks and shoes and slacks, I found a note pinned to my blazer in my father’s handwriting. It said, Never use the first stall in a public washroom.”

Haha - this is actually something my mother said to me. When I moved into my very first apartment on my own, a tiny studio, she came to help. Then, when it was time to leave we hugged at the door, tears in our eyes, and she looked at me and said, ’There’s something I want you to know.” “Yes, Mum.” “Never use the first stall in a public washroom.” Then she turned and left. I often wonder, but didn’t want to ask, how long she’d stored that one up, for that moment. Knowing we’d both need a smile. And to this day, if I can avoid it, I don’t. (Mom did later explain that people use them when they’re in a hurry….’nuff said.)

“The first generation makes the money, the second appreciates it, having witnessed the sacrifice, and the third squanders it. We’re the third generation. The four of us. Our father hated us, thought we’d steal his money, ruin the family. He was so afraid of spoiling us he never gave us anything, except stupid advice. Words. That was all.”

I remember hearing this during an interview I conducted on CBC. Can’t now remember who I was interviewing, but it had something to do with one of the “great” industrialist families in Montreal. It seemed so Greek, so tragic, so inevitable, so often true, that I remembered it, and more than ten years later, used it here. Those poor benighted Morrows. Blighted by their own blindness, to how very fortunate they actually were. Failing to do their sums, and adding up what really counted. To be honest, it took me about 35 years to figure that one out myself.