A Rule Against Murder

Julia Martin is the killer’s victim. She is the second eldest child, after Thomas but before Peter and Marianna, of Irene and her first husband, Charles Morrow. Julia is in her late 50s and, although she has kept in sporadic contact with her family, this is the first time since she left home that she has attended the annual family reunion. After a family scandal, Julia left Montreal and spent the next 30 years of her life in Vancouver, British Columbia. This makes her another character in the novel who is both intimate and yet distant from the family, allowing some information to be gleaned from her, as with Bert. She married David Martin, a famous Canadian financier who, at the time of the novel, is in jail for a pyramid scheme in which his investors lost millions. While he is despised, Julia is still highly regarded, as she has promised to use her own wealth to pay back her husband’s victims. This intention makes an implicit commentary upon the historical and cultural context of the novel, which reflects on the losses of Québécois and particularly Indigenous Abenaki people in the processes of building in Canada.

After her death, Agent Lacoste discovers “a packet of letters, tied with a worn yellow velvet ribbon” (161). She keeps these letters, thank-you notes that she has collected over the years, with her always. With this talisman, Penny links Julia to the rest of her family, all of whom do the same, contributing to Penny’s theme of Family Armor. Julia is different from her siblings in that she claims to understand what their father had been trying to teach them: “I had to spend my life as far from you as I could get to figure it out, but I finally did. And now I’m back. And I know” (77). This foreshadows the fact that Gamache, too, must have distance from the family in order to solve the murder. Penny writes a speech that could as much be Julia’s as Gamache’s own words after seeing the ants in Three Pines.

Pierre is the maître d’ of the Manoir Bellechasse. He is also Julia Martin’s killer. Pierre has lived and worked at the lodge for over 20 years and, although he is normally a good leader and mentor for the young staff, this summer he is impatient with a brash young worker named Elliot. In the end, in an effort to frame Elliot for Julia’s murder, he convinces Elliot to run away from the lodge. The fact that Pierre is the murderer shocks all those who know him, especially the staff and Gamache’s team, many of whom saw him and Gamache as cut from the same cloth. Penny therefore offers several narrative red herrings about Pierre’s character in order to achieve surprise at the end of the novel.

Pierre kills Julia because of her connection to David Martin, with whom his father had invested and whom Pierre then blames for his father’s bankruptcy. His bitterness about the situation spreads to include Julia, as he confesses, “Her clothes, her jewelry, her manners. Friendly but slightly condescending. Money. She shouted money. Money my father should have had” (300). This anaphoric use of the possessive determiner “her” emphasizes the fact that it is Julia’s possessions that anger Pierre. In the end, he claims that “all David Martin had to do was say he was sorry. That’s all” (301). Although Pierre shocks everyone by threatening to kill Bean, he redeems himself somewhat by saving both Bean and Gamache as they begin to slide off the roof. Penny hence evokes surprise not just because of Pierre’s capacity for murder but because he both fulfills and disrupts the mythology that “[s]omething dreadful” will happen there.

Irene Finney is the matriarch of the Finney-Morrow family. She suffers from neuralgia, a condition that makes physical contact incredibly painful for her. This provides a foundation for the threads of contact in the novel, most notably the fact that Julia dies with outstretched arms to touch what is actually toppling to kill her. However, despite Bert’s urging, she never tells her children about the condition, leaving them to believe she doesn’t love them.

Bert Finney is Irene’s second husband. He was also Charles Morrow’s closest friend and business partner, and he offers valuable insight about the man, and the family, to Gamache. He also understood Honoré Gamache and had seen him speak. By speaking frankly with Gamache about his father, Bert gives Gamache the impetus to change his perspective on his father. Bert is the character whose function is the closest to that of the third-person narrator: He provides intimate knowledge of each character and yet remains detached enough to be observant.

Thomas is Irene and Charles’s oldest son. He a difficult, abrasive man who uses snobbery to keep people at a distance. The fact that the birth order is emphasized throughout the novel alludes to the discussions of inheritance, which underscores the theme of family armor. Adding to this theme, he clings to his father’s shirt and cufflinks and is devastated when, late in the novel, Peter throws the cufflinks into the lake. Sandra, his wife, is constantly engaged in one-upmanship with the rest of the family. Her only moments of relief in the text come when she is engaging with Bean, a point that Penny uses to distract from the fact that the marshmallow cookies are a clue.

Peter Morrow is Irene and Charles’s third child. Gamache knows he and his wife, Clara, from previous cases in Three Pines, where they live. These characters therefore provide a touchpoint for the reader with the rest of the series. They are both painters, and Peter struggles with the fact that Clara is now receiving recognition for her work. Clara is reluctantly attending the reunion, despite the fact that Peter’s family always make her feel terrible about herself.

Marianna is Irene and Charles’s youngest child. Although she is considered by the family to be flaky, she is actually the most successful child, an architect with her own business. The fact that Penny reveals this so late in the novel (Chapter 25) highlights the gendered assumptions that conceal Marianna’s success. In addition, she has a child, Bean, whom she named to embarrass her mother, and whose sex she has hidden from her family for the same reason. Bean is a quiet but joyful child who manages to find fun and escape through the novel, despite the family’s tension. At the end of the novel, she is briefly held hostage by Pierre before being rescued by Gamache.

Madame Clementine Dubois is the owner of the Manoir Bellechasse and has been since she and her husband bought the lodge over 30 years ago. She tells Gamache that, in order to break with the lodge’s destructive past, they had made a pact with the forest that no killing would be committed on the grounds. While a minor character, therefore, Madame Dubois makes the novel’s eponymous “rule against murder,” reflecting the lessons of the detective novel not to overlook any person.

Chef Veronique is the chef at Manoir Bellechasse. She is in love with Pierre, of which everyone except Pierre is aware. Before working at the lodge, she was a famous television chef, and throughout the novel, the adults who had grown up watching her, such as Beauvoir and Lacoste, feel a sense of calm and well-being in her presence, even though they don’t recognize her. She is therefore, in herself, a mystery to be solved and another incomplete story in the novel.

Elliot is one of the Manoir Bellechasse’s servers. He is brash and confrontational, and he and Pierre butt heads on a number of occasions. He is also friendly and flirty with Julia before her death, and both are from Vancouver, briefly making him a suspect in her murder and therefore a red herring that builds suspense for the reader and that Pierre attempts to exploit.

Colleen is a gardener at Manoir Bellechasse. She discovers Julia’s body the morning after the storm and also notes the ants surrounding the pedestal. Her function is therefore to provide a small clue that proves crucial to Gamache’s solving of the case. Penny uses a minor character to deliver this significant clue, again, in order to make it more forgettable and therefore evoke surprise later.