Glass Houses

CHAPTER 2

No. The figure at the Halloween party was disconcerting, but Gamache had really begun to think something was very wrong the next morning, as he’d looked out their bedroom window into the damp November day.

“What’re you looking at, Armand?” asked Reine-Marie, coming out of the shower and walking over to him.

Her brow dropped as she looked out the window. “What’s he doing there?” she asked, her voice low.

Where everyone else had gone home, gone to sleep, the figure in the dark cloak had not. He’d stayed behind. Stayed there. And was still there. Standing on the village green in his wool robes. And hood. Staring.

Gamache couldn’t see from that angle, but he suspected the mask was also in place.

“I don’t know,” said Armand.

It was Saturday morning, and he put on his casual clothes. Cords and shirt and a heavy fall sweater. It was the beginning of November and the weather wasn’t letting them forget it.

The day had dawned gray, as November often did, after the bright sunshine and bright autumn leaves of October.

November was the transition month. A sort of purgatory. It was the cold damp breath between dying and death. Between fall and the dead of winter.

It was no one’s favorite month.

Gamache put on his rubber boots and went outside, leaving their German shepherd Henri and the little creature Gracie to stare after him in bewilderment. Unused to being left behind.

It was colder than he’d expected. Colder even than the night before.

His hands were icy before he’d even reached the green, and he regretted leaving his gloves and cap behind.

Gamache placed himself right in front of the dark figure.

The mask was in place. Nothing visible except the eyes. And even those were obscured by a sort of gauze.

“Who are you?” he asked.

His voice was calm, almost friendly. As though this were a cordial conversation. A perfectly reasonable situation.

No need to antagonize. Time enough for that later, if need be.

But the figure remained silent. Not exactly at attention, it wasn’t that wooden. There was about it a sense of confidence, of authority even. It was as if it not only belonged on that spot, but owned it.

Though Gamache suspected that impression came more from the robes and the silence than the man.

It always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert. But he didn’t have the luxury of silence himself.

“Why are you here?” Gamache asked. First in French, then in English.

Then waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty-five seconds.

In the bistro, Myrna and Gabri watched through the leaded-glass window.

Two men, staring at each other.

“Good,” said Gabri. “Armand’ll get rid of him.”

“Who is he?” Myrna asked. “He was at your party last night.”

“I know, but I have no idea who he is. Neither does Olivier.”

“Finished with that?” asked Anton, the dishwasher and morning busboy.

He reached for Myrna’s plate, now just crumbs. But his hand stopped. And, like the other two, he stared.

Myrna looked up at him. He was fairly new to the place but had fit in quickly. Olivier had hired him to do the dishes and bus, but Anton had made it clear he hoped to be head chef.

“There is only one chef,” Anton had confided in Myrna one day while buying vintage cookbooks at her shop. “But Olivier likes to make it sound like there’s a fleet of them.”

Myrna laughed. Sounded like Olivier. Always trying to impress, even people who knew him too well for that.

“Do you have a specialty?” she asked as she rang up the total on her old cash register.

“I like Canadian cuisine.”

She’d paused to look at him. In his mid-thirties, she thought. Surely too old, and too ambitious, to be a busboy. He sounded well educated, and was well turned out. Lean and athletic. With dark brown hair trimmed on the sides and longer on top so that it flopped over his forehead in a way that made him look more boyish than he actually was.

He was certainly handsome. And an aspiring chef.

Had she been twenty years younger …

A gal can dream. And she did.

“Canadian cuisine. What’s that?”

“Exactly,” Anton had said, smiling. “No one really knows. I think it’s anything that’s native to the land. And rivers. And there’s so much out there. I like to forage.”

He’d said it with a deliberate leer, as a voyeur might have said, “I like to watch.”

Myrna had laughed, blushed slightly, and charged him a dollar for both cookbooks.

Now Anton, stooping over their table at the bistro, stared out the window.

“What is that?” he asked in a whisper.

“Weren’t you at the party last night?” Gabri asked.

“Yes, but I was in the kitchen all night. I didn’t come out.”

Myrna looked from the thing on the village green to this young man. A party just through the swinging doors, and he’d been stuck doing dishes. It sounded like something out of a Victorian melodrama.

He seemed to know what she was thinking and turned to smile at her.

“I could’ve come out, but I’m not big on parties. Being in the kitchen suits me.”

Myrna nodded. She understood. We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent. Hers was her bookstore. Olivier’s was the bistro. Clara’s was her studio.

Sarah’s, the bakery. And Anton’s was the kitchen.

But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.

“What’s he saying?” Anton asked, taking a seat and gesturing toward Gamache and the robed figure.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Armand asked. “Someone you’d like to speak to?”

There was no answer. No movement. Though he could see steam coming from where the mouth would be.

Evidence of life.

It was steady. Like the long, easy plume of a train moving forward.

“My name is Gamache. Armand Gamache.” He let that rest there for a moment. “I’m the head of the Sûreté du Québec.”

Was there a slight shift in the eyes? Had the man glanced at him, then away?

“It’s cold,” said Armand, rubbing his frigid hands together. “Let’s go inside. Have a coffee and maybe some bacon and eggs. I live just over there.”

He gestured toward his home. He wondered if he should have identified his home, but realized this person probably already knew where he lived. He’d just come from there, after all. It was hardly a secret.

He waited for the robed figure to respond to his breakfast invitation, wondering briefly what Reine-Marie might think when he brought home his new friend.

When there was no response, Armand reached out to take hold of his arm. And coax him along.

All conversation had stopped in the bistro, the morning service grinding to a halt.

Everyone, patrons and servers alike, was staring out at the two men on the village green.

“He’s going to drag the guy away,” said Olivier, joining them.

Anton made to get up, but Olivier waved him back down. There was no rush anymore.

They watched as Armand lowered his hand, without touching the man.

Armand Gamache stood perfectly still himself now. And while the robed figure stared at the bistro, the bookstore, the boulangerie, and Monsieur Béliveau’s general store, Gamache stared at him.

“Be careful,” Armand finally whispered.

And then he turned, and returned home.

The robed figure was still there in the afternoon.

Armand and Reine-Marie passed him on their way to Clara’s home, on the other side of the village green.

An invisible moat had formed around the man. The village had slowly ventured out and gone about its business. Though a wide circle was circumscribed around him, beyond which no one went.

No children played on the grass and people walked faster than usual, averting their eyes as they passed by.

Henri, on his leash, gave a low growl and moved to the far side of Armand. His hackles up. His huge ears were forward, then he laid them back on his large and, it must be admitted, slightly vacuous head.

Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head.

But the shepherd was smart enough to keep his distance from the robed figure.

Gracie, who’d been found in a garbage can months earlier, along with her brother Leo, was also on a leash.

She stared, as though mesmerized by the figure, and refused to move. Reine-Marie had to pick her up.

“Should we say something?” Reine-Marie asked.

“Let’s leave him be,” said Armand. “It’s possible he wants attention. Maybe he’ll go away when we don’t give it to him.”

But she suspected that wasn’t the reason Armand wanted to ignore it. Reine-Marie thought Armand didn’t want her to get that close to it. And truthfully, neither did she.

As the morning had progressed, she’d found herself drawn to the window. Hoping it would be gone. But the dark figure remained on the village green. Unmoving. Immovable.

Reine-Marie wasn’t sure when it had happened, but at some point she’d stopped thinking of him as “him.” Any humanity it had had drained away. And the figure had become “it.” No longer human.

“Come on in,” said Clara. “I see our visitor is still there.”

She tried to make it light, but it was clearly upsetting her. As it was them.

“Any idea who he is, Armand?”

“None. I wish I had. But I doubt he’ll stay much longer. It’s probably a joke.”

“Probably.” She turned to Reine-Marie. “I’ve put the new boxes in the living room by the fireplace. I thought we could go through them there.”

“New” wasn’t completely accurate.

Clara was helping Reine-Marie with what was becoming the endless task of sorting the so-called archives of the historical society. They were actually boxes, and boxes, and boxes, of photographs, documents, clothing. Collected over a hundred years or more, from attics and basements. Retrieved from yard sales and church basements.

So Reine-Marie had volunteered to sort through it. It was a crapshoot of crap. But she loved it. Reine-Marie’s career had been as a senior librarian and archivist with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and, like her husband, she had a passion for history. Québec history in particular.

“Join us for lunch, Armand?” asked Clara. The scent of soup filled the kitchen. “I picked up a baguette from the boulangerie.”

“Non, merci. I’m heading over to the bistro.” He lifted the book in his hand. His Saturday afternoon ritual. Lunch, a beer, and a book, in front of the fireplace at the bistro.

“Not one of Jacqueline’s,” said Reine-Marie, pointing to the baguette.

“No. Sarah’s. I made sure of that. Though I did get some of Jacqueline’s brownies. How important is it?” asked Clara, cutting the crispy baguette. “That a baker knows how to make a baguette?”

“Here?” asked Reine-Marie. “Vital.”

“Yeah,” said Clara. “I think so too. Poor Sarah. She wants to pass the bakery on to Jacqueline, but I don’t know…”

“Well, maybe brownies are enough,” said Armand. “I think I could learn to spread brie on a brownie.”

Clara winced, and then thought about it. Maybe …

“Jacqueline’s only been here a few months,” Reine-Marie pointed out. “Maybe she’ll catch on.”

“Sarah says with baguette you either have it or you don’t,” said Clara. “Something to do with touch, but also the temperature of your hands.”

“Hot or cold?” asked Armand.

“I don’t know,” said Clara. “It was already too much information. I want to believe baguettes are magic, not some accident of birth.” She put down the bread knife. “Soup’s almost ready. While it warms up, would you like to see my latest work?”

It was unlike Clara to offer to show her work, especially those in progress. At least, as Armand and Reine-Marie reluctantly walked across the kitchen to her studio, they hoped there’d been progress.

Normally they’d have leapt at the rare chance to see Clara’s work, as she painted her astonishing portraits. But just recently it had become clear that her idea of “finished” and everyone else’s was very different.

Armand wondered what she saw that they did not.

The studio was in darkness, the windows only letting in the north light, and on a cloudy November day there was precious little of that.

“Those are done,” she said, waving into the gloom at the canvases leaning against one wall. She switched on the light.

It was all Reine-Marie could do not to ask, “Are you sure?”

Some of the portraits looked close, but the hair was just a pencil outline. Or the hands were blotches, blobs.

The portraits, for the most part, were recognizable. Myrna. Olivier.

Armand went up to Sarah, the baker, lounging against the wall.

She was the most complete. Her lined face filled with that desire to help that Armand recognized. A dignity, almost standoffish. And yet Clara had managed to capture the baker’s vulnerability. As though she feared the viewer would ask for something she didn’t have.

Yes, her face, her hands, her attitude, all so finely realized. And yet. Her smock was dashed on, missing all detail. It was as though Clara had lost interest.

Gracie and her littermate, Leo, were wrestling on the concrete floor, and Reine-Marie stooped to pet them.

“What is that?” Everyone spasmed a little on hearing the querulous voice.

Ruth stood there, holding Rosa and pointing into the studio.

“Jesus, it’s awful,” said the old poet. “What a mess. Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“Ruth,” said Reine-Marie. “You of all people should know that creation is a process.”

“And not always a successful one. I’m serious. What is it?”

“It’s called art,” said Armand. “And you don’t have to like it.”

“Art?” Ruth looked dubious. “Really?” She bent down and said, “Come here, Art. Come here.”

They looked at each other. Even for demented old Ruth, this was odd.

And then Clara began to laugh. “She means Gracie.”

She pointed to the little thing, rolling on the floor with Leo.

Though they’d been found together, in the garbage, Clara’s Leo was growing into a very handsome dog. Golden, with short hair on his lean body, and slightly longer hair around his neck. Leo was tall and gangly right now, but already regal.

Gracie was not. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, the runt of the litter. Literally. And perhaps not even a dog.

No one had been quite sure when Reine-Marie had brought her home months earlier. And time had not proven helpful.

Almost completely hairless, except for tufts of different colors here and there. One ear stood boldly up, the other flopped. Her head seemed to be evolving daily and she had grown very little. Some days, to Reine-Marie’s eyes, Gracie seemed to have shrunk.

But her eyes were bright. And she seemed to know she’d been saved. Her adoration of Reine-Marie knew no bounds.

“Come here, Art,” Ruth tried again, then stood up. “Not only ugly but stupid. Doesn’t know its name.”

“Gracie,” said Armand. “Her name’s Gracie.”

“For Christ’s sake, why did you say it was Art?” She looked at him as though he were the demented one.

They returned to the kitchen, where Clara stirred the soup and Armand kissed Reine-Marie and walked to the door.

“Not so fast, Tintin,” said Ruth. “You haven’t told us about that thing in the middle of the village. I saw you speaking to him. What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Clearly for Ruth the concept of keeping the mouth shut was completely foreign.

“But why’s he still here?” asked Clara, all pretense of not caring gone. “What does he want? Did he stand there all night? Can’t you do something?”

“Why’s the sky blue?” asked Ruth. “Is pizza really Italian? Have you ever eaten a crayon?”

They looked at her.

“Aren’t we tossing out stupid questions? For what it’s worth, the answers to your questions are, don’t know, don’t know, and Edmonton.”

“The guy’s wearing a mask,” Clara said to Armand, ignoring Ruth. “That can’t be right. He can’t be right. In the head.”

She spun her finger at her temple.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “It’s not against the law in Québec to cover your face.”

“That isn’t a burka,” said Clara.

“For heaven’s sake,” said Ruth. “What’s the big deal? Haven’t you seen Phantom of the Opera? He might burst into song at any moment and we have front row seats.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” said Clara.

“But I am. I’m just not afraid. Though ignorance scares me.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Clara.

“Ignorance,” Ruth repeated, either missing or pretending to miss the warning in Clara’s voice. “Anything different, anything you don’t understand, you immediately believe is threatening.”

“And you’re the poster child for tolerance?” asked Clara.

“Come on,” said Ruth. “There’s a difference between scary and threatening. He might be frightening, I’ll give you that. But he hasn’t actually done anything. If he was going to, he probably would’ve by now.”

Ruth turned to Gamache to back her up, but he didn’t respond.

“Someone puts on a Halloween costume as a joke,” she continued. “In broad daylight, and you get all scared. Puh. You’d have done well in Salem.”

“You got closer than any of us,” Reine-Marie said to her husband. “What do you think it is?”

He looked down at the dogs, intertwined on the floor, sprawled against Henri, who snored and muttered. More than once Armand had envied Henri. Until Henri’s kibble was lowered next to his water bowl. There the envy ended.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be gone soon.”

“Don’t patronize us,” said Clara, her smile only slightly softening the annoyance in her tone. “I showed you mine”—she pointed toward her studio—“now you show me yours.”

“It’s just an impression,” he said. “Meaningless. I have no real idea who or what he is.”

“Armand,” Clara warned.

And he relented.

“Death,” he said, and looked over at Reine-Marie. “That’s what I thought.”

“The Grim Reaper?” asked Ruth with a hoot. “Did he point a crooked finger?”

She lifted her own bony finger and pointed it at Armand.

“I’m not saying it’s actually, literally Death,” he said. “But I do think whoever’s in that costume wants us to make the connection. He wants us to be afraid.”

“Guess what,” said Clara.

“Well, you’re all wrong,” said Ruth. “Death doesn’t look at all like that.”

“How would you know?” asked Clara.

“Because we’re old friends. He visits most nights. We sit in the kitchen and talk. His name’s Michael.”

“The archangel?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Yes. Everyone thinks Death is this horrible creature, but in the Bible it’s Michael who visits the dying and helps them in their last hour. He’s beautiful, with wings he folds tight to his back so he doesn’t knock over the furniture.”

“Let me get this straight. The Archangel Michael visits you?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Let me get this straight,” said Clara. “You read the Bible?”

“I read everything,” Ruth said to Clara, then turned to Reine-Marie. “And he does. But he doesn’t stay long. He’s very busy. But he pops in for a drink and gossips about the other angels. That Raphael is a piece of work, I tell you. Nasty, embittered old thing.”

A hmmm escaped one of them.

“And what do you say to him?” asked Armand.

“Armand,” said Reine-Marie, warning him not to goad the old woman. But that wasn’t his intention. He was genuinely curious.

“I tell him about all of you. Point out your homes and make some suggestions. Sometimes I read him a poem. From the public school to the private hell / of the family masquerade,” she quoted, tipping her face to the ceiling in an effort to remember, “Where could a boy on a bicycle go / when the straight road splayed?”

They stared for a moment, taking in the words that had taken their breaths away.

“One of yours?” asked Clara.

Ruth nodded and smiled. “I do know it’s a process. To be honest, Michael’s not very helpful. He prefers limericks.”

There was an involuntary guffaw from Armand.

“And then, before dawn, he leaves,” said Ruth.

“And leaves you behind?” asked Clara. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Think about it,” murmured Reine-Marie.

“It’s not my time. Not even close. He likes my company because I’m not afraid.”

“We’re all afraid of something,” said Armand.

“I meant I’m not afraid of Death,” said Ruth.

“I wonder if Death’s afraid of her,” said Clara.

“I’ll take two of those, please,” said Katie Evans, pointing to the chocolate brownies. With melted marshmallows on top.

The sort she remembered from years ago.

“And you, madame?”

Jacqueline turned to the other woman. Lea Roux.

She recognized her, but then, most would. She was a member of the National Assembly, and in the news often. Interviewed on French and English talk shows, across the province, for her opinions on politics. She was articulate without being pompous. Funny without being sarcastic. Warm without being cloying. She was the new darling of the media.

And now here she was. In the bakery. Large as life.

In fact, both women were large. Really, more tall than big. But they certainly were a presence. Easily overshadowing the tiny baker. But while the women might have presence, Jacqueline had baked goods. And, she suspected, at that moment that made her the more powerful.

“I think,” said Lea, surveying the bank of patisserie behind the glass, “I’ll take a lemon tart and a mille-feuille.”

“Pretty strange,” said Katie, going up to Sarah, who owned the boulangerie and was restocking the shelves with biscotti.

There was no need to ask what Katie meant.

Sarah wiped her hands on her apron and nodded, glancing out the window.

“I wish it would go away,” said the baker.

“Anyone know what it is?” Lea asked, first Sarah, who shook her head, then Jacqueline, who shook her head and looked away.

“It’s very upsetting,” said Sarah. “I don’t know why someone doesn’t do something. Armand should do something.”

“I doubt there’s much that can be done. Even by Monsieur Gamache.”

Lea Roux had sat on the committee that had confirmed Gamache as head of the Sûreté. She’d disclosed that she knew him, casually. They’d met a few times.

But then, almost everyone on the bipartisan committee knew Armand Gamache. He’d been a high-profile officer in the Sûreté for years and was involved in uncovering all that corruption.

There had been very little discussion, and less debate.

And two months ago, Armand Gamache had been sworn in as Chief Superintendent of the most powerful police force in Québec. Perhaps the most powerful in Canada.

But even with all that power, Lea Roux knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about the creature on the village green.

“You know you can order those in the bistro,” said Sarah as they left, pointing to the small boxes in their hands. “We supply Olivier and Gabri.”

“Merci,” said Katie. “We’re taking these to the bookstore, to share with Myrna.”

“She does like brownies,” said Sarah. “They’ve been a big hit since Jacqueline arrived.”

She looked at the much younger woman, as a proud mother might a daughter.

Except for the baguette thing, Jacqueline’s arrival was pretty much the answer to Sarah’s prayers. She was in her late sixties now, and getting up at five every morning to make bread, then on her feet all day, was getting too much.

Closing the boulangerie wasn’t an option. And she didn’t want to retire completely. But she did want to hand over the day-to-day operations to someone.

And then Jacqueline had arrived three months ago.

If she could only just learn how to make baguette.

“Oh, that looks good,” said Myrna, as she poured the tea and Lea put out the pastries.

Then the three of them sat around the woodstove in Myrna’s bookstore, on the sofa and armchairs in the bay window. Where they could see the robed figure.

After discussing it for a few minutes and getting nowhere, they turned to Katie’s latest project. A glass house on the Magdalen Islands.

“Really?” said Myrna, though her surprise was muffled by the mouthful of brownie. “The Maggies?”

“Yes, there seems quite a bit of money there now. Lobster business must be good.”

Lea raised her brow but didn’t say anything.

There was a whole other commodity that was creating wealth where once there had been hardworking poverty.

“A glass house on the islands must be a challenge,” said Myrna.

And for the next half hour they discussed weather, geography, design, and homes. The issue of home, rather than house, fascinated Myrna and she listened with admiration to these younger women.

She was interested in Katie. Liked her. But it was Lea she felt a bond with, having been her babysitter all those years ago.

Myrna had been twenty-six, just finishing her degree and scraping together whatever money she could to pay off student debt. Lea had been six. Tiny, like a gerbil. Her parents were divorcing, and Lea, an only child, had become almost housebound with terror. Uncertainty.

Myrna had become her big sister, her mother, her friend. Her protector and mentor. And Lea had become her little sister, daughter, friend.

“You should meet Anton,” said Myrna, watching with pleasure as Lea gobbled the pastries.

“Anton?”

“He’s Olivier’s new dishwasher.”

“He names his dishwashers?” said Katie with a smile. “I call mine Bosch.”

“Really?” said Lea. “Mine’s Gustav. He’s a dirty, dirty boy.”

“Har har,” said Myrna. “Anton’s a person, as you know very well. Wants to be a chef. He’s particularly interested in developing a cuisine based solely on things native to this area.”

“Trees,” said Katie. “Grass.”

“Anglos,” said Lea. “Yum. I’d like to meet him. I think there’re some programs that might be able to help.”

“I’m sorry,” said Myrna. “You must be asked that all the time.”

“I like to help,” said Lea. “And if it means a free meal, even better.”

“Great. How about tonight?”

“I can’t tonight. We’re going in to Knowlton for dinner. But we’ll work something out before we leave.”

“When’s that?”

“Couple of days,” said Katie.

It was, thought Myrna, oddly vague for people who surely had rigid schedules.

When the bakery was finally empty, and the cookies were in the oven, Jacqueline set the timer.

“Do you mind if I—”

“No, go,” said Sarah.

Jacqueline didn’t have to say where she was going. Sarah knew. And wished her well. If she and the dishwasher got married, and he became the chef, then Jacqueline would also stay.

Sarah wasn’t proud of these selfish thoughts, but at least she wasn’t wishing Jacqueline harm. There would be far worse things, Sarah knew, than marrying Anton.

If only Anton felt the same way about Jacqueline. Maybe if she could bake baguettes, thought Sarah, scrubbing down the counters. Yes. That might do it.

In Sarah’s world, a good baguette was a magic wand that solved all problems.

Jacqueline scooted next door to the bistro kitchen. It was midafternoon. They’d be preparing for the dinner service, but it was a fairly quiet time of day for a dishwasher.

“I was just going to come over to see you,” said Anton. “Did you see it?”

“Hard to miss.”

She kissed him on both cheeks, and he returned the kiss, but the way he might kiss Sarah.

“Should we say something?” Jacqueline asked.

“Say what?” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “To who?”

“To Monsieur Gamache, of course,” she said.

“No,” said Anton firmly. “Promise me you won’t. We don’t know what it is—”

“We have a pretty good idea,” she said.

“But we don’t know.” He lowered his voice when the chef looked over. “It’ll probably go away.”

Jacqueline had her own reasons to worry, but for the moment she was focused on Anton’s reaction to the thing.

Armand sat in the bistro, reading.

He could feel eyes on him. All with the same message.

Do something about that thing on the village green.

Make it go away.

What good was it to have the head of the entire Sûreté as a neighbor, if he couldn’t protect them?

He crossed his legs, and heard the mutter of the open fire. He felt the warmth, smelled the maple wood smoke, and sensed the eyes of his neighbors drilling into him.

While there’d been a comfortable armchair right by the open hearth, he’d placed himself in the window. Where he could see the thing.

Like Reine-Marie, Armand had noticed that as the day went by, he’d slowly stopped thinking of the figure on the green as “he.” It had become an “it.”

And Gamache, more than any of them, knew how dangerous that was. To dehumanize a person. Because no matter how strange the behavior, it was a person beneath those robes.

It also interested him to see his own reactions. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to go out there and arrest it. Him.

For what?

For disturbing his personal peace.

It wasn’t useful to tell everyone that there was no threat. Because he didn’t know if that was true. What he did know was that there was nothing he could do. The very fact he was head of the Sûreté made it less possible, not more, for him to act.

Reine-Marie had stood at his side at his swearing-in. Gamache in his dress uniform, with the gold epaulets and gold braid and gold belt. And the medals he wore reluctantly. Each reminding him of an event he wished hadn’t happened. But had.

He’d stood resolute, determined.

His son and daughter watching. His grandchildren there too, as he’d raised his hand and sworn to uphold Service, Integrity, Justice.

Their friends and neighbors were in the audience, packed into the grand room at the National Assembly.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his longtime second-in-command and now his son-in-law, held his own son. And watched.

Gamache had asked Beauvoir to join him in the Chief Superintendent’s department. Once again as second-in-command.

“Nepotism?” Beauvoir had asked. “A grand Québec tradition.”

“You know how much I value tradition,” said Gamache. “But you’re forcing me to admit that you’re the very best person for the job, Jean-Guy, and the ethics committee agrees.”

“Awkward for you.”

“Oui. The Sûreté is now a meritocracy. So don’t—”

“Fuck up?”

“I was going to say, don’t forget the croissants, but the other works too.”

And Jean-Guy had said oui. Merci. And watched as Chief Superintendent Gamache shook hands with the Chief Justice of Québec, then turned to face the crowded auditorium.

He stood at the head of a force of thousands charged with protecting a province Armand Gamache loved. A populace he saw not as either victim or threat, but as brothers and sisters. Equals, to be respected and protected. And sometimes arrested.

“Apparently there’s more to the job,” he’d said to Myrna, during one of their quiet conversations, “than cocktail parties and luncheon clubs.”

He had, in fact, spent the past couple of months holding intense meetings with the heads of various departments, getting up to speed on dossiers from organized crime, drug trafficking, homicide, cyber crime, money laundering, arson and a dozen other files.

It was immediately obvious that the degree of crime was far worse than even he had imagined. And getting worse. And what drove the gathering chaos was the drug trade.

The cartels.

From there sprang most of the other ills. The murders, the assaults. Money laundering. Extortion.

The robberies, the sexual assaults. The purposeless violence committed by young men and women in despair. The inner cities were already infected. But it wasn’t confined there. The rot was spreading into the countryside.

Gamache had known there was a growing problem, but he’d had no idea of the scope of it.

Until now.

Chief Superintendent Gamache spent his days immersed in the vile, the profane, the tragic, the terrifying. And then he went home. To Three Pines. To sanctuary. To sit by the fire in the bistro with friends, or in the privacy of his living room with Reine-Marie. Henri and funny little Gracie at their feet.

Safe and sound.

Until the dark thing had appeared. And refused to disappear.

“Did you speak to him again?” the Crown attorney asked.

“And say what?” asked Chief Superintendent Gamache, in the witness box. From there he could see people in the gallery fanning themselves with sheets of paper, desperate to create even the slightest of breezes to cut the stifling heat.

“Well, you might’ve asked what he was doing there.”

“I already had. And in any other circumstance, you’d be asking me why I, a police officer, was harassing a citizen who was just standing in a park, minding his own business.”

“A masked citizen,” said the Crown.

“Again,” said Gamache. “Being masked is not a crime. It’s strange, absolutely. And I’m not going to tell you I was happy about it. I wasn’t. But there was nothing I could do.”

That brought a murmur from those listening. Some in agreement. Some feeling that they’d have acted differently. And certainly the head of the Sûreté should have done something.

Gamache recognized the censure in the mumbling, and understood where it came from. But they were sitting in a courtroom now, with full knowledge of what had happened.

And still he knew there was nothing he could have done to stop it.

It was very hard to stop Death, once that Horseman had left the stables.

“What did you do that night?”

“We had dinner, stayed up and watched television, then Madame Gamache went to bed.”

“And you?”

“I poured a coffee and took it into my study.”

“To work?”

“I didn’t turn on the lights. I sat in the darkness, and watched.”

One dark figure watching another.

As he’d sat there, Armand Gamache had the impression something had changed.

The dark figure had moved, shifted slightly.

And was now watching him.

“How long did you stay there?”

“An hour, maybe more. It was difficult to see. He was a dark figure in the darkness. When I took the dogs out for a last walk, he was gone.”

“So he could have left at any time? Even shortly after you sat down. You didn’t actually see him leave?”

“No.”

“Is it possible you drifted off to sleep?”

“It’s possible, but I’m used to surveillance.”

“Watching others. You and he had that in common,” said Zalmanowitz.

The comment surprised Chief Superintendent Gamache and he raised his brows, but nodded. “I suppose so.”

“And the next morning?”

“He was back.”