The Cruelest Month

TWENTY-SIX

Hazel Smyth backed away from the door, wiping her hands on her gingham apron.

‘Come in,’ she smiled politely, but no more.

Beauvoir and Nichol followed her into the kitchen. Every pot was out, either in use or in the sink. On the stove stood a brown earthenware jar with handles on either side. Beans baked in molasses and brown sugar and pork rinds. A classic Québécois dish. The room was filled with the rich, sweet aroma.

Baked beans were a lot of work, but it looked as though Hazel’s drug of choice today was hard work. Casseroles lined the counter, like a battalion of tanks. And Beauvoir suddenly knew which battle they were fighting. The war against grief. The heroic and desperate effort to stop the enemy at the gates. But it was futile. For Hazel Smyth the Visigoths were on the hill and were about to sweep down, burning and destroying everything. Unrelenting, without mercy. She might delay grief, but she wouldn’t stop it. She might even make it worse by running away.

Jean Guy Beauvoir looked at Hazel and knew she was about to be overcome, overwhelmed, violated. Her own heart would finally betray her, and open the gates to grief. Sorrow, loss, despair were snorting and trampling, rearing and gathering for the final charge. Would this woman survive, Beauvoir wondered? Some didn’t. Most at the very least were changed forever. Some grew more sensitive, more compassionate. But many grew hard and bitter. Closed off. Never again risking this loss.

‘Cookie?’

‘Oui, merci.’ Beauvoir took one and Nichol took two. Hazel’s hands flew toward the kettle, the tap, the plug, the teapot. And she talked. Putting out a covering fire of words. Sophie had twisted her ankle. Poor Mrs Burton needed a drive to her chemo later this afternoon. Tom Chartrand was poorly and of course his own children would never come down from Montreal to help. On and on she went until Beauvoir didn’t know about grief, but he himself was about to surrender.

The tea was placed on the table. Hazel had made up a tray and was carrying it to the stairs.

‘Is that for your daughter?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘She’s in her room, poor one. Can’t move very easily.’

‘Here, let me.’ He took the tray and mounted the narrow stairs, lined with old floral wallpaper. At the top he walked along to a closed door and knocked with his foot. He heard two heavy steps and the door opened.

Sophie was standing there, a bored look on her face, until she saw him. Then she smiled, cocked her head to one side slightly and slowly, slowly lifted her hurt foot.

‘My hero,’ she said, limping backward and motioning him to put the tray on a dresser.

He looked at her for a moment. She was attractive, there was no denying that. Slim, her skin clear and her hair shiny and full. Beauvoir found her revolting. Sitting in her bedroom faking an injury and expecting her grieving mother to wait on her. And Hazel did. It was insane. What sort of person, what sort of daughter, did this? Granted Hazel was difficult to be around just now, what with the maniacal cooking and rapid-fire talking, but couldn’t Sophie at least be with her? She didn’t have to help necessarily, but she sure didn’t have to add to her mother’s burden.

‘May I ask you a few questions?’

‘Depends.’ She tried to make the word seductive. She was, Beauvoir decided, the artless sort who tried to make every word seductive, and failed.

‘Did you know Madeleine had had breast cancer?’ He placed the tray on the dresser, shoving a make-up bag to the edge.

‘Yeah, but, I mean, she’d gotten over it, right? She was fine.’

‘Really? I thought it took five years before people were given the all clear, and it hasn’t been that long, has it?’

‘Almost. She seemed fine. Told us she was.’

‘And that was enough for you.’ Were all twenty-one-year-olds this self-absorbed? This callous? She really didn’t seem to care that a woman who’d shared her home and her life had had cancer and had just been brutally murdered, right in front of her.

‘What was it like living here after Madeleine arrived?’

‘I dunno. I went away to university, didn’t I? At first Madeleine made a big deal when I came back, but after a while she and Mom didn’t care.’

‘I can’t imagine that’s true.’

‘Well it is. I wasn’t even going to go to Queens. I’d been accepted at McGill. Mom wanted me to go there. But Madeleine had been to Queens and she’d talked so much about it. The beautiful campus, the old buildings, the lake. She made it sound so romantic. Anyway, I applied without telling anyone and got accepted. So I decided to go to Queens.’

‘Because of Madeleine?’

Sophie looked at him, her eyes hard, her lips white. It was as though her face was changing to stone. And he knew then. While her mother was desperately fighting to keep grief at a distance, Sophie had another battle. To keep grief in.

‘Did you love her?’

‘She didn’t care for me, not at all. She just pretended. I did everything for her, everything. Even changed my fucking school. Went all the way to Kingston. Do you even know where that is? It’s eight fucking hours’ drive away.’

Beauvoir knew Kingston wasn’t eight hours away. Maybe five or six.

‘Takes a day to get home.’ Sophie seemed to be losing control, the rock turning to lava. ‘At McGill I could’ve come home every weekend. I finally understood. God, I was so stupid.’ Sophie turned now and slapped the side of her head so hard it hurt even Beauvoir. ‘She didn’t care for me. She only wanted me out of the way. Far away. It wasn’t me she loved. I finally got that.’ Now Sophie balled up her fists and pounded them into her thigh. Beauvoir stepped forward and held her hands. He wondered how many bruises she carried, out of sight.

Armand Gamache stood at the bedroom door and looked in. Beside him the two agents stood, uneasily.

Mid-afternoon sunlight seeped in through the windows of the old Hadley house and seemed to stall part way. Instead of making the place bright and even cheerful, the shafts of light were thick with dust. Months, years, of neglect and decay swirled in the light, twisting as though alive. As the three officers had progressed further into the house the decay and dust grew thicker, kicked up by their steps, until the light itself dimmed.

‘I’d like you to look around and tell me if anything’s changed.’

The three officers stood at the door, the yellow police tape torn and hanging from the door frame. Gamache reached out and picked up a strand. It had been ripped and stretched. Not cut cleanly. Someone had clawed at it.

Beside him he could hear Agent Isabelle Lacoste breathing heavily, as though trying to catch her breath. On his other side Agent Robert Lemieux shifted from foot to foot.

Framed by the door was the murder scene. The heavy Victorian furniture, the fireplace with its dark mantelpiece, the four-poster bed that looked recently slept in though Gamache knew no resident had been in it in years. All those things were oppressive, but natural. Then his eyes shifted to the unnatural.

The circle of chairs. The salt. The four candles. And the addition. The tiny bird, fallen on its side, its small wings spread slightly as though struck down in flight. Its legs up around its reddish chest, its tiny eyes wide and staring. Had it stood on the chimney with its brothers and sisters, staring at the whole wide world in front of them, prepared to fly? Had the others, teetering on the edge, finally taken off? But what had happened to this little one? Instead of flying, had it fallen? Does one always fail, always fall?

It was a baby robin. A symbol of spring, of rebirth. Dead.

Had it too been scared to death? Gamache suspected it had. Did everything that entered this room die?

Armand Gamache stepped in.

Yvette Nichol began wandering around the kitchen. She couldn’t stand the talking any more. On and on the woman went. At first Hazel had sat with her at the Formica table but eventually she got up to check the cookies and put the cool ones into a cookie tin.

‘For Madame Bremmer.’ As though Nichol cared. While Hazel talked and worked Nichol wandered the room, looking at the cookbooks, the collection of blue and white dishes. She moved to the photo-laden fridge, covered with pictures, mainly of two women. Hazel and another. Madeleine, Nichol decided, though the smiling, attractive woman and the shrieking thing in the morgue looked not at all alike. Picture after picture. In front of the Christmas tree, at a lake, cross-country skiing, gardening in the summer, hiking. In each one Madeleine Favreau was smiling.

Yvette Nichol knew something then, something she knew no one else would see. Madeleine Favreau was a fake, a fiction, an act. Because Nichol knew no one could possibly be that happy.

She stared at one showing a birthday celebration. Hazel Smyth was fixated on something outside the frame and wearing a funny baby blue hat with sparklers; Madeleine Favreau was in profile, listening, her head resting on one hand. She was looking at Hazel with unmasked adoration. A fat young woman sat beside Madeleine, stuffing cake into her face.

Nichol’s cell phone vibrated and thrusting the photograph into her pocket she walked into the stuffed living room, kicking a sofa leg as she went.

‘Merde. Oui, allô?’

‘Did you just swear at me?’

‘No.’ She reacted rapidly, habitually, to the rebuke.

‘Can you talk?’

‘A little. We’re at a suspect’s house.’

‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘Slowly. You know Gamache. He plods along.’

‘But you’re back with him now. That’s good. Don’t lose track of him. There’s too much at stake.’

Nichol hated these calls, hated herself for answering the phone. Hated even more the excitement she felt when the phone rang. And then the inevitable letdown. Treated like a child yet again. There was no way she could admit she was really with Beauvoir. She was supposed to be with the Chief Inspector then at the last minute the two had gone into the tiny office off the Incident Room and when they’d come out Beauvoir had stridden to the door calling for her to join him.

And so she found herself alone in the oppressive living room. It felt like the homes of so many aunts and uncles, stuffed with belongings. From the Old Country, they’d said, but who could smuggle a matching living room/dining room set out of Romania or Poland or Czechoslovakia? Where would you hide the plush pink carpets and heavy curtains and garish pictures as you stole across the border? But somehow their infinitesimal homes were crammed full of things that had become family heirlooms. Chairs and tables and sofas were scattered about like litter, dropped on the floor as another person might drop a Kleenex. Each time Nichol visited her aunts and uncles more heirlooms had appeared until there seemed little room for people. And perhaps that was the point.

She had the same impression here. Things. Too many things. But one thing caught her eye. A yearbook, sitting on the sofa. Open.

A shriek tore through the stillness of the room. Lacoste froze. Beside her Chief Inspector Gamache turned to face whatever caused it.

‘Sorry.’ Lemieux stood sheepishly at the door with a length of yellow tape in his hand, after ripping it from the wood. ‘I’ll try to do it more quietly.’

Isabelle Lacoste shook her head and could feel her heart subsiding to its normal beat.

‘Has the room changed?’ Gamache asked her.

Lacoste looked around. ‘Looks the same to me, patron.’

‘Someone broke in. I can’t imagine they came into this place without a purpose. But what was it?’

Armand Gamache looked slowly around the room, now familiar though far from comfortable. Was anything missing? Why would someone break the police tape to get in? To take something? Or to replace something?

Was there another reason?

The only thing obviously different about the room was the bird. Had it been killed on purpose? Was this a ritual sacrifice? But why a little bird? Weren’t sacrifices larger? Cattle or dogs or cats? He realized he was just making that up. He actually had no idea about sacrifices. The whole thing seemed macabre.

He knelt down, his feet crunching the coarse salt on the carpet as he tilted his head to get a better look at the bird.

‘Should I bag it?’ Lacoste asked.

‘Eventually, yes. Do you have any thoughts?’

Gamache knew Lacoste had been there that morning not to check on the scene, but to do her own private ritual.

‘The bird looks terrified, but that might be just my imagination.’

‘We have a bird feeder on our balcony,’ said Gamache, straightening up. ‘We have our morning coffee out there in good weather. Every bird who comes to it looks terrified.’

‘Well, you and Madame Gamache are very frightening people,’ said Lacoste.

‘I know she is.’ He smiled. ‘Petrifies me.’

‘Poor man.’

‘Unfortunately, I don’t think we can read too much into the facial expression of the dead bird,’ said Gamache.

‘Good thing we still have tea leaves and entrails,’ said Lacoste.

‘That’s what Madame Gamache always says.’

His smile faded as he looked down at the bird curled at his feet, a dark stain on the white salt, its eye staring black, blank. He wondered what it had last seen.

Hazel Smyth closed the yearbook and smoothed its faux leather cover, hugging it to her chest, as though that might staunch the wound, stop whatever it was that was flowing out of her. Hazel could feel it. Could feel herself weakening. The solid, angular book bit into her soft breasts as she pressed harder and harder, no longer hugging but gripping it now, thrusting the yearbook with all their young dreams deeper and deeper into her chest. Relieved by the physical pain, she wished the edges sharper so they’d actually cut instead of simply bruise. This was pain she could understand. The other was terrifying. It was black and empty and hollow and stretched on forever.

How long could she live without Madeleine?

The full horror of her loss was just coming into view.

With Mad she’d found a life full of kindness and thoughtfulness. She was a different person with Mad. Carefree, relaxed, lighthearted. She actually voiced her opinions. Actually had opinions. And Madeleine had listened. Hadn’t always agreed, but had always listened. From the outside theirs must have been an unremarkable, even dull life. But from the inside it was a kaleidoscope.

And slowly Hazel had fallen in love with Madeleine. Not in a physical way. She had no desire to sleep with Mad, or even kiss her. Though sometimes when Mad sat on the sofa at night with her book and Hazel was in her wing chair with her knitting, Hazel could see herself getting up, walking to the sofa and putting Madeleine’s head on her breast. Just where the yearbook was now. Hazel stroked the book and imagined the lovely head lying there instead.

‘Madame Smyth.’ Inspector Beauvoir interrupted Hazel’s daydream. The head on her chest became cold and hard. Became a book. And home became cold and empty. Once again Hazel lost Madeleine. ‘May I see the book?’

Beauvoir held out his hand tentatively.

Agent Nichol had found the yearbook sitting open in the living room and had brought it into the kitchen with her, not expecting Hazel’s reaction. It was a reaction no one could have expected.

‘That’s mine. Give it to me,’ Hazel had growled, approaching Nichol with such venom the young agent handed it over without hesitation. Hazel took it and sitting down she hugged it to her. For the first time since they’d arrived the room was silent.

‘May I?’ Beauvoir reached for it. Hazel seemed not to understand. She looked as though he wanted her to detach her arm. Finally she let go of the book.

‘It’s from our graduating year.’ Hazel leaned across him and flipped the pages to the graduation pictures. ‘Here’s Madeleine.’

She pointed to a smiling, happy girl. Below her picture was typed, Madeleine Gagnon. Most likely to end up in Tanguay.

‘It was a joke,’ said Hazel. Tanguay was the women’s prison in Quebec. ‘Everyone knew Mad would be a success. They were poking fun at her.’

Jean Guy Beauvoir was willing to accept that Hazel believed it, but he knew most jokes had some basis in truth. Did some of Madeleine’s high school friends see something else in her?

‘Do you mind if we take this with us? You’ll get it back.’

Hazel very obviously minded, but shook her head.

The book reminded Beauvoir of something else. Something Gamache had asked him to ask Hazel.

‘What do you know about Sarah Binks?’

He could see by Hazel’s face the question sounded like nonsense. Blahdity-blah, blah-binks.

‘The Chief Inspector found a book called Sarah Binks in Madeleine’s bedside drawer.’

‘Really? That’s odd. No, I’ve never heard of it before. Was it a—’

‘A dirty book? I don’t think so. The Chief Inspector’s been reading it and laughing.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help.’ It was said politely but Beauvoir could see something else at work. Hazel was disconcerted. By the book or the fact her best friend had kept something secret?

‘You’ve told us about the night Madeleine died, but there was another séance, a few days earlier.’

‘On Friday night at the bistro. I wasn’t there.’

‘But Madame Favreau was. Why?’

‘Didn’t I tell you this before? With the Chief Inspector?’

It was all a bit of a blur to Hazel.

‘You did, but sometimes people’s minds are a little cloudy when we first talk to them. It’s good to hear the story again.’

Hazel wondered if that was true. Her mind, far from clearing, was becoming more and more befuddled.

‘I don’t really know why Mad went. Gabri had put up a notice in the church and the bistro telling everyone that the great psychic Madame Blavatsky was staying at his place and had agreed to bring back the dead. For one night only.’ Hazel smiled. ‘I don’t think anyone took it seriously, Inspector. Certainly not Madeleine. I think it was just a fun evening. Something different.’

‘But you didn’t approve?’

‘I think there’re some things best not toyed with. At best it would be a waste of time.’

‘And at worst?’

Hazel didn’t answer right away. Instead her eyes flitted around the kitchen as though seeking some place safe to land. But finding nothing she returned to his face.

‘It was Good Friday, Inspector. Le Vendredi saint.’

‘So?’

‘Think about it. Why is Easter the most important Christian holy day?’

‘Because that’s when Christ was crucified.’

‘No. Because that’s when Christ rose.’