Glass Houses

CHAPTER 13

The first meeting of the afternoon was with Inspector Beauvoir, who wanted to discuss a suggestion that the Sûreté form a ceremonial drill team.

“Like in the military,” said Beauvoir. “Those close marches.”

Chief Superintendent Gamache listened, unconvinced. “Why would we do that?”

“Well, now, this isn’t my idea, one of the senior officers came to me with it. When I stopped laughing, I started to think.”

He gave his boss a stern look of warning not to be a smart-ass. Gamache lifted his hand in surrender.

“It could start in the academy, with training,” Beauvoir continued. “It would be, I think, a great way to bond, but it’d also be something we could take into communities. You’re always saying we need to rebuild trust. We could go into schools and community centers and put on shows. Maybe as fundraisers for local food banks or rehabs.”

Now Gamache was leaning forward, nodding.

“You know, that’s a terrific idea.”

They discussed it for a few minutes.

When they’d finished, Gamache got to his feet. He was tempted to show Jean-Guy the napkin from lunch. And the words scrawled there.

But he didn’t.

It wasn’t time yet. He needed to sit quietly, and think.

“I’m glad that thing on the village green has gone,” said Beauvoir, walking to the door. “But you still have no idea why he was there?”

“None. And he’s taken up more than enough of my time.”

Jean-Guy adjusted his glasses. They were new to him, and the younger man found it humiliating to need them. The first sign of decrepitude.

It also didn’t help that the chief, a good twenty years older than Beauvoir, only needed his for reading, whereas Jean-Guy had been told he needed to wear his all the time.

“Honoré grabbed them last night at bath time,” said Jean-Guy, taking them off and examining them again. “Pulled them right into the water. That kid’s strong.”

“Are you sure it was Honoré who threw them into the water?” asked Armand, taking the glasses from Beauvoir and quickly adjusting them.

He’d had years of experience with twisted and damaged frames.

He handed them back.

“Merci, patron. What are you suggesting?”

“Sabotage, sir,” said Gamache melodramatically. “And then you have the temerity to blame your infant son. You’re a scoundrel.”

“Jeez, Annie said the same thing. Are you colluding?”

“Yes. We speak endlessly about your glasses.”

That was when the very gentle ding was heard from Gamache’s laptop.

The vast majority of his mail went through Madame Clarke to sort and prioritize. There was a shocking amount of it, but Gina Clarke had proven up to the task, and then some. Even organizing the Chief Superintendent, as though he was just one more email to be replied to, forwarded or sometimes deleted.

Jean-Guy often sat in the chief’s outer office just to watch him be bossed around by the young woman with the pierced nose and pink hair. It was as though Tinker Bell had turned.

But this email had been sent to his private work account.

Gamache got up and walked to his desk. “Do you mind waiting for a moment?”

“Not at all, patron.”

Jean-Guy stood by the door and checked his own messages.

Gamache clicked on the email. It was the report from the lab on the drugs found on Paul Marchand the evening before. But the chief was interrupted by a call on his cell phone.

“Oui, allô,” he picked up the phone, while studying the computer screen, his face grim.

“Armand?”

It was Reine-Marie.

Something was wrong.

“So she called you first, before dialing 911?” asked the Crown.

“She did,” said Gamache. Was it getting even hotter in the courtroom? He could feel his shirt, under his jacket, sticking to his skin.

“And what did she tell you?”

Reaching out quickly, instinctively, as though for the woman herself, Armand touched the speaker button, while across the room, Jean-Guy turned toward him.

“Are you all right?” Armand asked.

“I found the cobrador.”

There was a moment’s pause, just a moment, while the world shifted. Her words, and the men, felt suspended in midair.

“Tell me,” he said, getting to his feet and staring at Jean-Guy.

“He’s in the church basement. I went down to the root cellar to get vases for fresh flowers, and he was there.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Non. He’s dead. There was blood, Armand.”

“Where are you?”

“At home. I locked the church door and came here to call.”

“Good. Stay where you are.”

“I haven’t called 911 yet—”

“I’ll do that now.” He looked over at Beauvoir, who was already on his phone.

“Do you have blood on you?”

“I do. My hands. I leaned over and touched his neck. He still has his mask on, but he was cold. I probably shouldn’t have touched him—”

“You had to find out. I’m sorry—”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Non, I mean I’m sorry about what I’m about to do. I’m going to have to ask you not to wash.”

There was silence as Reine-Marie took that in. She thought to ask why. She thought to argue. To beg even. For a moment, a brief spike, she was angry at him. For treating her like any other witness.

But that passed. And she knew, she was any other witness. And he was a cop.

“I understand,” she said. And she did. “But hurry.”

He was already out the door, Beauvoir right behind him.

“I’m leaving now. Cancel my appointments,” he said as he hurried through the outer office, past Madame Clarke.

She didn’t question, didn’t hesitate. “Yessir.”

Gamache and Beauvoir walked swiftly down the long corridor to the elevators.

“Jean-Guy has called 911, there should be agents there within minutes. Get Clara or Myrna to come over and be with you. I’ll get there as quick as I can. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”

“No, I need to call Clara and Myrna. Hurry, Armand.”

“I am.” He hung up and said to Beauvoir. “Call Lacoste.”

“Already done. She’s sending a team.”

Beauvoir rushed to keep pace with Gamache.

He’d stood beside the older man through countless investigations. During arrests and interrogations and shootouts. During horrific events, and celebrations.

At funerals, at weddings.

Jean-Guy had seen him joyous, and devastated. Angry and worried.

But he’d never seen Armand Gamache desperate.

Until now.

And there was rage there.

That Reine-Marie should have blood on her hands.

They raced down to Three Pines with the siren on, communicating with the local Sûreté detachment. Instructing them not to enter the church, but to secure it.

“And I want an agent in front of my home,” said Gamache, describing which home it was.

Beauvoir cut the siren as they turned off the secondary road onto the small dirt road. He drove more slowly because of the potholes, and the deer that were prone to jump straight into the path of oncoming cars.

“Faster,” said Gamache.

“But patron—”

“Faster.”

“Madame Gamache is fine,” he said. “She’s safe. No harm will come to her.”

“And would you say that, Jean-Guy, if it was Annie who’d found a body, and had blood on her hands? Blood you told her not to wash off?”

Jean-Guy sped up. Feeling his fillings loosen and his glasses bounce as they jolted along.

“So your own wife found the body?” asked the Crown Prosecutor.

“Oui.”

“And she touched it.”

“Oui.”

“Your wife is obviously different from mine, monsieur. I can’t imagine her touching a dead body, never mind one with blood all over it. It was clear, wasn’t it, that this was murder?”

The already steaming courtroom grew even hotter as Gamache felt a flush rise out of his collar and up his neck, but he kept his voice and his gaze steady.

“It was. And you’re right, Madame Gamache is extraordinary. She had to see if she could help. She left only when it was clear there was nothing she could do. I suspect your wife would be equally courageous and compassionate.”

The Crown continued to stare at Gamache. The judge stared. The courtroom stared. The reporters scribbled.

“You told her not to wash the blood off, is that correct?”

“It is.”

“Why is that?”

“Most people who find a murder victim inadvertently disturb the scene—”

“By doing things like touching the body?”

“Or moving something. Or trying to clean up. People aren’t themselves when faced with a shock like that. Normally by the time we arrive, the damage is done.”

“Like in this case.”

“Non. Madame Gamache touched the body, but she had the presence of mind to do nothing else and to lock up. Then she called me.”

“Without removing the mask to see who it was?”

“That’s right.”

“Wasn’t she curious?”

“I don’t think curiosity was her main emotion.”

“And you told her not to wash the blood from her hands, or shoes.”

“So that we could take samples and be clear about what were her traces and what belonged to someone else.”

“How magnificent,” said the Crown. “To have your wife in such a horrible position, and still you chose your job over her comfort. Not only is she extraordinary, but you appear to be as well.”

Gamache did not respond, though his complexion did, the flush rising into his cheeks.

The two men glared at each other. The loathing no longer a matter of conjecture.

“I will, of course, be calling Madame Gamache as a witness later in the trial, but are you quite sure she didn’t touch anything else? And remember, you’re under oath.”

“I do remember that,” snapped Gamache, before hauling himself back. “Merci. And yes, I’m sure.”

At the defense desk, the lawyers stared at each other in disbelief. It seemed Monsieur Zalmanowitz was doing their job for them. Destroying if not the credibility, then the likability of his main witness.

“In the meantime,” said the Crown, “perhaps you can tell us what you found when you finally arrived.”

They passed the Sûreté car, parked by the church. And saw an agent standing at the foot of the stairs up to the door.

As Jean-Guy drove by the bistro, he noticed patrons standing at the window, staring.

Beauvoir had barely stopped the car when Gamache was out and walking swiftly, breaking into a run, down the path, past the agent, to his front door.

What had started as a misty though promising day had turned gloomy again. The clouds shutting out the tentative sun. The damp rolling down the hill and pooling in the village.

Reine-Marie was in the kitchen with Clara and Myrna. The woodstove pumping out heat. Mugs of tea in front of them.

“I’m sorry, mon coeur,” said Armand, as she stood and went to him and he took a step back, holding his hands up as though to ward her off. “I can’t—”

Reine-Marie stopped, her arms out for an embrace. And then she slowly lowered them.

Clara, standing a few steps behind Reine-Marie, thought she had never seen such sorrow in a man’s eyes.

Jean-Guy brushed by him, moving through the gulf between husband and wife, and quickly, efficiently took samples and photographs.

No one spoke until he had finished, and stepped away.

Then Armand stepped forward, embracing Reine-Marie, holding her tight. “Are you all right?”

“I will be,” she said.

“The police arrived about half an hour ago,” said Clara. “Until then, Myrna stood on the porch, making sure no one approached the church.”

“Good,” said Jean-Guy. “Did anyone?”

“No,” said Myrna.

Armand took Reine-Marie to the powder room, and together they washed the worst of the blood off her hands, his large fingers softly rubbing the now dried blood from her skin.

When they’d finished, he took her upstairs to their bedroom.

As she stripped down, he turned the shower on, making sure it wasn’t too hot.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You’re leaving? I’m sorry, of course you are. You have to.”

He held her, then stepping back he took her hands and looked down at them. There was still some blood stuck to her wedding ring. It was difficult not to see the symbolism.

This was what he’d brought into their marriage. Blood ran through their lives together. Like a river that sometimes broke its banks. Marring them. Staining them.

What would their lives have been like had he followed up his pre-law degree and not gone into the Sûreté? Had he stayed at Cambridge? Perhaps become a professor.

He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be standing there trying to scrape one last bit of dried blood from his wife’s hand.

“I am sorry,” he said quietly.

“Someone else did this, Armand. You’re here to help.”

He kissed her and nodded toward the shower. “Go.”

She nodded toward the door. “Go. Oh, you’ll need this.”

She took the key to the church out of her sweater pocket. It too had blood on it.

Armand grabbed a tissue and took the key.

Downstairs, Beauvoir was talking to Clara and Myrna.

“Who else knows?”

“Reine-Marie told us, of course. About the cobrador,” said Clara. “But no one else. Obviously everyone knows something’s happened, especially when the agents arrived. But not what, and the agents wouldn’t tell them anything.”

“Because they don’t know,” said Beauvoir. It was vital, he knew, to guard information. Sometimes from your own people.

“Everyone’s gathered at the bistro,” said Myrna. “Waiting for news. Waiting for you. Some came here, but the agent stopped them.”

“Who?”

“Gabri, of course,” said Clara. “Honestly? Almost everyone came over.”

Joining them, Gamache asked if they’d stay with Reine-Marie until he returned.

“Of course,” said Clara.

Then he and Beauvoir walked swiftly down the path from the front porch to the dirt road, pausing briefly to speak to the agent.

“Stay here, please.”

“Oui, patron.” He was one of the agents who’d been called to Three Pines the evening before.

“What did you do with Monsieur Marchand, the man from last night?”

“As you asked. We kept him overnight. By morning he’d cooled down. Then drove him home.”

“What time?”

“Ten. He refused to tell us where he got the stuff in the packet. What was it?”

Gamache remembered the email, the lab report he’d been reading when Reine-Marie called. “Fentanyl.”

“Ffff—” But the agent stopped himself.

Chief Superintendent Gamache nodded agreement, then continued down his walkway, noticing Gabri approaching from the bistro, taking long strides toward them. Not exactly running. Gabri did not run. He lumbered at speed.

Still holding a dish towel, he intercepted Gamache and Beauvoir.

“What’s happened? The cops won’t tell us anything.” He looked accusingly at the agent, who pretended not to hear.

“And neither can I,” said Gamache.

“It’s something to do with Reine-Marie,” said Gabri. “Is she all right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thank God for that. But someone isn’t…” He gestured toward the church, and the other agent.

Gamache shook his head and noticed more people heading their way, led by Lea Roux with Matheo close behind.

“You go. I’ll take care of this,” said Gabri. He turned to head them off, allowing Armand and Jean-Guy to escape.

The agent guarding the church was waiting for them. Behind her rose the small white clapboard chapel. Pretty. Innocuous. Like thousands of others in villages throughout Québec.

Only this one held not a relic, a saint’s knuckle or molar, but an entire body.

A dead creature from another time.