The Cruelest Month

SIXTEEN

‘Hi, Dad.’ Daniel’s harried voice came through the phone. ‘Where’s her bunny? We can’t sit on the plane for seven hours without the bunny. And the gar.’

‘When’re you heading to the airport?’ Gamache asked, looking at the time on the Volvo console.

Five twenty.

‘We should’ve left half an hour ago. Florence’s gar is missing.’

This made perfect sense to the Chief Inspector. Florence’s other grandfather, Papa Grégoire, had given her a yellow pacifier which she loved. Papa Grégoire had said in passing that Florence sucked on it the way he used to suck on cigars. Florence heard and it became her ‘gar’. Her most precious possession. No gar, no flight.

Gamache wished he’d thought of hiding it.

‘What, honey?’ Daniel’s voice, off the mouthpiece, called. ‘Oh, great. Dad, we found them. Gotta go. Love you.’

‘I love you too, Daniel.’

The line went dead.

‘Want me to drive to the airport?’ Beauvoir asked.

Gamache looked at the time again. Their flight to Paris was at seven thirty. Two hours.

‘No, it’s all right. Too late. Merci.’

Beauvoir was glad he asked, and even happier the chief had said no. A small blossom of satisfaction opened in his chest. Daniel was gone. The chief was all his again.

Odile stared at the bags of organic cereal on the shelves, for inspiration. ‘Though winds blow stout,’ she repeated, stuck. She had to find something that rhymed with ‘gale’.

‘Pale? Pail? Shale? Though winds blow stout like a great big whale?’ said Odile, hopefully. But no, it was close, but not quite right.

All day in the store that she and Gilles ran in St-Rémy she’d been inspired to write. It had flooded out of her so that now the counter was awash with her works, scribbled on the backs of receipts and empty brown paper bags. Most, she felt sure, were good enough to be published. She’d type them up and send them off to the Hog Breeder’s Digest. They almost always accepted her poems, often without change. The muse wasn’t always so generous, but today Odile found her heart lighter than it had been in months.

All day people had visited the shop, most wanting a small purchase and a lot of information, which Odile was happy to supply, after being prodded. Wouldn’t do to appear too anxious. Or pleased.

‘You were there, dear?’

‘It must have been horrible.’

‘Poor Monsieur Béliveau. He was quite in love with her. And his wife barely two years gone.’

‘Was she really scared to death?’

That was the one memory Odile didn’t want to revisit. Madeleine frozen in a scream, as though she’d seen something so horrible it had turned her to stone, like the whatever it was from those myths, the head with the snakes. It had never seemed that scary to Odile, whose monsters took human shape.

Yes, Madeleine had been scared to death and it served her right for all the terror she’d visited upon Odile in the last few months. But now the terror was gone, like a storm blown over.

A storm. Odile smiled and thanked her muse for coming through again.

It was past five and time to lock up. A good day’s work.

Chief Inspector Gamache called Agent Lemieux, still at the B. & B.

‘She’s not back yet, Chief. But Gabri is.’

‘Pass the phone to him, please.’

After a pause the familiar voice came on. ‘Salut, patron.’

‘Salut, Gabri. Did Madame Chauvet arrive by car?’

‘No, no she just materialized. Of course she arrived by car. How else does anyone get here?’

‘Is her car still there?’

‘Ah, good question.’ Gamache could hear Gabri carrying the phone out the door and presumably onto the veranda. ‘Oui, c’est ici. A little green Echo.’

‘So she couldn’t have gone far,’ said Gamache.

‘Do you want me to open the door to her room? I can pretend I’m cleaning. I have the key with me now,’ Gamache heard tinkling as the key was lifted from its peg, ‘and I’m walking down the corridor.’

‘Could you give it to Agent Lemieux, please? He should be the one to open the door.’

‘Fine.’ Gamache could feel Gabri’s annoyance. A moment later Lemieux spoke.

‘I’ve unlocked the door, Chief.’ There was an agonizing pause while Agent Lemieux stepped into the room and put on the light. ‘Nothing. Room’s empty. So’s the bathroom. Want me to search the drawers?’

‘No, that’s going too far. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t there.’

‘Dead? I wondered too, but she isn’t.’

Gamache asked to speak to Gabri again.

‘Patron, we might need rooms for tomorrow night.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until the case is over.’

‘Suppose you don’t solve it? Will you stay forever?’

Gamache remembered the elegant inviting bedrooms with their soft pillows and crisp linens and beds so high they needed little step stools to reach. The bedside tables with books and magazines and water. The lovely bathrooms with old tiling and new plumbing.

‘If you made eggs Florentine every morning, I would,’ Gamache said.

‘You’re an unreasonable man,’ said Gabri, ‘but I like you. And don’t worry about rooms, we have plenty.’

‘Even over the Easter break? You’re not full?’

‘Full? No one knows about us, and I hope to keep it that way,’ snorted Gabri.

Gamache hung up after asking Gabri to call when Jeanne Chauvet returned and telling Lemieux to go home for the night. Looking out the window at the other cars whizzing along the autoroute into Montreal, Gamache wondered.

Where was the psychic?

He always secretly hoped a voice would whisper some answers, though he didn’t know what he’d do if he started hearing voices.

He gave it a moment and when no voice answered, he picked up the phone and made another call.

‘Bonjour, Superintendent. Still at work?’

‘Just leaving. What’ve you got, Armand?’

‘This was murder.’

‘Now, is that a feeling you’re getting or is there an actual fact in the case?’

Gamache smiled. His old friend knew him well and like Beauvoir had a certain distrust of Gamache’s ‘feelings’.

‘Actually, my spirit guide told me.’

There was a pause on the other end then Gamache laughed.

‘That’s a joke, Michel. Une blague. This time there’s an actual fact. Ephedra.’

‘As I remember I told you about the ephedra.’

‘True, but there was no ephedra in her bedroom or bathroom or anywhere reasonable she might have put it. All the evidence says this was a woman who didn’t feel she needed to lose weight. Had no eating disorder that would lead her to use a known dangerous drug. No obsession with weight and diets. No books or magazines on the subject. Nothing.’

‘You think someone gave her the ephedra.’

‘I do. I’m taking this on as a murder investigation.’

‘I agree. I’m sorry to have taken you away from your holiday, though. Will you get back in time to see Daniel before he goes?’

‘No, he’s on his way to the airport now.’

‘Armand, I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ said Gamache, though Brébeuf, who knew him so well, could hear the regret. ‘Give my love to Catherine.’

‘I will.’

Hanging up, Gamache felt relief. For a few months now, maybe longer, he’d sensed a change in his friend, as though a film had descended, come between them. Something had obscured the intimacy they’d always had. It was nothing obvious, and Gamache had even wondered if he was imagining it, had asked Reine-Marie about it after a dinner with the Brébeufs.

‘It’s nothing I can put my finger on,’ he’d struggled to explain. ‘Just a—’

‘Feeling?’ she’d smiled. She trusted his feelings.

‘Perhaps slightly more than that. His tone is different, his eyes seem harder. And sometimes he says things that seem intentionally insulting.’

‘Like that comment about Quebecers who move to Paris, thinking they’re better than others.’

‘You heard that too. He knows Daniel’s moved there. Was that a dig?’ If so, it was just one of many from Michel lately. Why?

He’d searched his memory and couldn’t come up with any reason Michel might have for hurting him. He couldn’t remember doing anything to bring this on.

‘He loves you, Armand. Just give him space. Catherine says they’re worried about their son’s marriage. They’ve separated.’

‘Michel didn’t tell me,’ said Gamache, surprised that that hurt. He thought they told each other everything. He wondered whether maybe he should be more circumspect himself, but caught that instinct. How easy it is, he thought, to retaliate. He’d give Michel as much space and time as he needed, and let him take out some of his frustration on him. It was natural to lash out at people close by.

Michel was worried about his son. Of course it would be something like that. It couldn’t possibly be about him, about their friendship.

But now, hanging up the phone, Gamache smiled. Michel had sounded like his old self. His old buoyancy was back. Whatever had come between them was gone.

Michel Brébeuf hung up the phone and stared at the wall, smiling.

There it was. Brébeuf had the answer to the question that had tormented him for months. How? How was he supposed to bring down a contented man?

Now Michel Brébeuf knew.