Both men watched Agent Lacoste leave, then Beauvoir leaned forward.
“OK,
Gamache rose and bowed slightly to the women. “Would you like to join us?”
“We won’t stay long, but we wanted to show you something. We found this in the flower bed by where the woman was killed.” Myrna handed him the coin.
“Really?” said Gamache, surprised. He looked down at the dirty coin in his palm. His people had done a thorough search of the whole garden, of the whole village. What could they have missed?
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.
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.”
