And Clara had an idea. An inspiration. 'Thank you, Jane,' she whispered, and felt the elderly arms around her for the first time in a week. Before moving off Clara pulled a banana out of her pocket, and tied it to the stick, for Lucy. But she had one more item to add. From her other pocket she drew a playing card. The Queen of Hearts. Tying it to the prayer stick Clara thought of Yolande, and the wonderful gift she'd been offered as a child, and either rejected or forgot. Clara stared at the pattern on the Queen of Hearts, memorising it. She knew the magic wasn't in it staying the same, but in the changes.
By the end the prayer stick was brilliant with waving and weaving colored ribbons, dangling their gifts. The wind caught the objects and sent them dancing into the air around the prayer stick, clinking and clanging into each other, like a symphony.
The women looked around and saw their circle was no longer bound by fear, but was loose and open. And in the center, on the spot Jane Neal had last lived and died, a wealth of objects played, and sang the praises of a woman who was much loved.
Clara allowed her gaze, free now from fear, to follow the ribbons as they were caught in the wind. Her eye caught something at the end of one of the ribbons. Then she realised it wasn't attached to a ribbon at all, but to the tree behind.
High up in one of the maple trees she saw an arrow.
Gamache was just getting into his car to drive back to Montreal when Clara Morrow shot out of the woods, running toward him down du Moulin as though chased by demons. For a wild moment Gamache wondered whether the ritual had inadvertently conjured something better left alone. And, in a way, it had. The women, and their ritual, had conjured an arrow, something someone must sorely wish had been left undisturbed.
Gamache immediately called Beauvoir in Montreal then followed Clara to the site. He hadn't been there for almost a week and was impressed by how much it'd changed. The biggest changes were the trees. Where they'd been bright and bold with cheery color a week ago, now they were past their prime, with more leaves on the ground than in the branches. And that's what had revealed the arrow. When he'd stood at this spot a week ago and looked up he would never, could never, have seen the arrow. It'd been hidden by layers of leaves. But no longer.
The other change was the stick in the ground with ribbons dancing around it. He supposed it had something to do with the ritual. Either that or Beauvoir had very quickly become very weird without his supervision. Gamache walked over to the prayer stick, impressed by its gaiety. He caught at some of the items to look at them, including an old photograph of a young woman, plump and short-sighted, standing next to a rugged, handsome lumberjack. They were holding hands and smiling. Behind them a slender young woman stood, looking straight into the camera. A face taken by bitterness.
'So? It's an arrow.' Matthew Croft looked from Beauvoir to Gamache. They were in the cell at the Williamsburg jail. 'You've got five of them. What's the big deal with this one?'
'This one,' said Gamache, 'was found twenty-five feet up a maple tree two hours ago. Where Jane Neal was killed. Is this one of your father's?'
Croft examined the wood shaft, the four-bladed tip, and finally, critically, the feathering. By the time he pulled away he felt faint. He took a huge breath, and collapsed on to the side of the cot.
'Yes,' he whispered on the exhale, having difficulty focusing now. 'That was Dad's. You'll see for sure when you compare it to the others from the quiver, but I can tell you now. My father made his own feathering, it was a hobby of his. He wasn't very creative, though, and they were all the same. Once he found what he liked and what worked he saw no need to change.'
'Good thing,' said Gamache.
'Now,' Beauvoir sat on the cot opposite him. 'You have a lot to tell us.'
'I need to think.'
'There's nothing to think about,' said Gamache. 'Your son shot this arrow, didn't he?' Croft's mind was racing. He'd so steeled himself to stick to his story it was hard now to give it up, even in the face of this evidence. 'And if he shot this arrow and it ended up in that tree,' continued Gamache, 'then he couldn't have killed Jane Neal. He didn't do it. And neither did you, this arrow proves someone else did it. We need the truth from you now.'
And still Croft hesitated, afraid there was a trap, afraid to give up his story.
'Now, Mr Croft,' said Gamache in a voice that brooked no argument. Croft nodded. He was too stunned to feel relief, yet.
'All right. This is what happened. Philippe and I had had an argument the night before. Some stupid thing, I can't even remember what. The next morning when I got up Philippe was gone. I was afraid he'd run away, but about 7.15 he comes skidding into the yard on his bike. I decided not to go out and see him, but to wait for him to come to me. That was a mistake. I found out later he went directly to the basement with the bow and arrow then took a shower and changed his clothes. He never did come to see me, but stayed in his room all day. That wasn't unusual. Then Suzanne started to act strange.'
'When did you hear about Miss Neal?' Beauvoir asked.
'That night, a week ago. Roar Parra called, said it was a hunting accident. When I went to your meeting next day I was sad, but not like it was the end of the world. Suzanne, on the other hand, couldn't sit still, couldn't relax. But honestly I didn't think much about it, women can be more sensitive than men, that's all I figured it was.'
'How'd you find out about Philippe?'
'When we got home. Suzanne had been silent in the car, then once we got back she laid into me. She was furious, violent almost, because I'd asked you back to look at the bows and arrows. She told me then. She'd found out because she found Philippe's clothes ready for the wash, blood stains on them. Then she'd gone into the basement and found the bloody arrow. She got the story from Philippe. He thought he'd killed Miss Neal, so he grabbed the bloody arrow and ran, thinking it was his. He didn't look at it, neither did Suzanne. I guess they didn't notice it wasn't the same as the others. Suzanne burned the arrow.'
'What did you do when you heard all this?'
'I burned his clothes in the furnace but then you arrived so I told Suzanne to burn the bow, to destroy everything.'
'But she didn't.'
'No. When I put the clothes in it smothered the flames, so she had to build them back up. Then she realised the bow would have to be chopped up. She didn't think she could do it without making a noise so she came upstairs, to try to warn me. But you wouldn't let her go back down. She was going to do it when we were out shooting
