The Cruelest Month

TWENTY-EIGHT

Gamache hummed a little as he walked through the kitchen of the old Hadley house. The hum was neither loud enough to scare a ghost, nor tuneful enough to be comforting. But it was human and natural and company.

Then Gamache ran out of kitchen and comfort. He faced another closed door. As a homicide officer he’d grown wary of closed doors, both literal and figurative, though he knew answers lived behind closed doors.

But sometimes something else lurked there. Something old and rotted and twisted by time and necessity.

Gamache knew people were like homes. Some were cheerful and bright, some gloomy. Some could look good on the outside but feel wretched on the interior. And some of the least attractive homes, from the outside, were kindly and warm inside.

He also knew the first few rooms were for public consumption. It was only in going deeper that he’d find the reality. And finally, inevitably, there was the last room, the one we keep locked, and bolted and barred, even from ourselves. Especially from ourselves.

It was that room Gamache hunted in every murder investigation. There the secrets were kept. There the monsters waited.

‘What took you so long?’ Michel Brébeuf spoke into his phone, frustrated and angry. He didn’t like being kept waiting. And he sure as hell didn’t like it when junior officers ignored his calls. ‘You must have known it was me.’

‘I did, but I couldn’t answer. There’re other things happening.’

Robert Lemieux’s tone had stopped being obsequious. Since that last interview in Brébeuf’s office something had changed. The power had somehow shifted and Brébeuf couldn’t figure out how. Or why. Or what to do about it.

‘Don’t let it happen again.’

Brébeuf had meant it to be a warning, but instead it had come out petulant and whiny. Lemieux solidified his position by ignoring the comment.

‘Where are you now?’ Brébeuf asked.

‘In the old Hadley house. Gamache is searching the rest of the house and I’m in the room where the murder happened.’

‘Is he close to solving the case?’

‘Are you kidding? A few minutes ago he was communing with a dead bird. The Chief Inspector’s a long way from figuring this out.’

‘Have you?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Figured out who murdered the woman.’

‘That’s not my job, remember?’

Superintendent Brébeuf noticed there was no longer any pretense about who was in charge. Even the ‘sir’s had disappeared. The likeable, malleable, ambitious but slightly stupid young officer had turned into something else.

‘How’s Agent Nichol doing?’

‘She’s a disaster. I don’t know why you wanted her here.’

‘She serves a purpose.’ Brébeuf felt his shoulders drop from where they’d crept up around his ears. He had one secret from Lemieux anyway. Yvette Nichol.

‘Look, you need to tell me why she’s here,’ said Lemieux, then after a pause, ‘Sir.’

Now Brébeuf was smiling. God bless Agent Nichol. Wretched, lost Agent Nichol.

‘Has the Chief Inspector seen the newspaper?’

There was a pause as Lemieux struggled with letting the Nichol thing go. ‘Yes. He talked about it at lunch.’

‘And?’

‘Didn’t seem to bother him. Even laughed.’

Gamache laughed, thought Brébeuf. He’d been clearly and personally attacked, and he’d laughed.

‘That’s all right. What I expected, actually.’

And it was. But he’d hoped for something else. In his daydreams he’d seen that familiar face stunned and hurt. Had even imagined Gamache phoning his best friend for support and advice. And what advice had Michel Brébeuf prepared and practiced?

‘Don’t let them win, Armand. Focus on the investigation and leave the rest to me.’

And Armand Gamache would relax, knowing his friend would protect him. He’d turn his attention fully to finding the killer, and not see what was creeping up behind him. Out of the long, dark shadow he himself created.

So far Gamache had peered into the attic, shining his light and scaring a few bats, and himself. He’d glanced around all the bedrooms and bathrooms and closets. He’d stridden purposefully through the cobwebbed living room with its heavy mantelpiece and moldings and into the dining room.

A strange thing happened in there. He could suddenly smell the appetizing aroma of a well-prepared dinner. It smelled of a Sunday roast, with warm gravy and potatoes and sweet parsnips. He could smell the caramelized onions and fresh, steaming bread, and even the red wine.

And he could hear laughter and conversation. He stood, mesmerized, in the dark dining room. Was the house trying to seduce him, he wondered? Make him lower his guard? Dangerous house that knew food would do that to him. But still the strange impression remained, of a dinner served long ago to people long dead and buried. People who’d been happy here, once. It was his imagination, he knew. Just imagination.

Gamache had left the dining room. If there was someone, or something, hiding in this house he knew where he’d find it.

The basement.

He reached out for the doorknob. It was ceramic and cold to the touch. The door creaked open.

‘You’re back.’ Agent Lacoste greeted Beauvoir with a wave, ignoring Nichol. ‘How’d it go?’

‘Brought this back.’ He tossed the yearbook onto the conference table then told Lacoste about his interviews with Hazel and Sophie.

‘What’d you think?’ Lacoste asked after reflecting on what she’d heard. ‘Did Sophie love Madeleine or hate her?’

‘Don’t know. It seems confused. Might be either.’

Lacoste nodded. ‘Lots of girls get crushes on older women. Teachers, writers, athletes. I had a crush on Helen Keller.’

Beauvoir had never heard of Helen Keller, but the idea of Lacoste in a steamy relationship with this Helen gave him pause as he took off his coat. He could see their glistening bodies, intertwined –

‘She was blind and deaf,’ said Lacoste, knowing him enough to guess his reaction. ‘And dead.’

That certainly changed the image in his mind. He blinked to blank it out.

‘What a catch.’

‘She was also brilliant.’

‘But dead.’

‘True. It crippled the relationship, I’m afraid. But I still adore her. Amazing woman. She said, “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence.”’ Lacoste remembered herself. ‘What were we talking about?’

‘Crushes,’ said Nichol and could have kicked herself. She wanted them to forget she was there.

Beauvoir and Lacoste turned to look at her, surprised she was there and surprised she’d said something helpful.

‘So you really had a crush on Helen Keller?’ said Nichol. ‘She was nuts, you know. I saw the movie.’

Lacoste shot her a look of complete dismissal. Not even disdain. She made Nichol disappear.

Darkness and silence, thought Nichol. It’s not always wonderful.

She watched as Inspector Beauvoir and Agent Lacoste turned their backs to her and walked away.

‘You say it’s natural for a girl Sophie’s age to be confused?’ Beauvoir asked Lacoste.

‘Lots are. Emotions are all over the place. It’d be normal for her to love Madeleine Favreau and then hate her. Then adore her again. Look at the relationships most girls have with their mothers. I called the lab,’ said Lacoste. ‘The report from the break-in won’t be ready until the morning but the coroner emailed her preliminary report and said she’d drop by on her way home. Wants to meet the chief in the bistro in about an hour.’

‘Where is he?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Still at the old Hadley house.’

‘Alone?’

‘No. Lemieux’s there too. I need to talk to you about something.’ She shot a look at Nichol, now sitting at her desk, staring at her screen. Playing free cell, Lacoste guessed.

‘Why don’t we walk? Get some air before the storm,’ said Beauvoir.

‘What storm?’

She’d followed him to the door. He opened it and nodded.

Lacoste could only see blue sky and the odd cloud. It was a beautiful day. She looked at him in profile, staring at the sky as well, his face grim. Lacoste looked more closely. And there, just above the dark pine forest on the ridge of the hill, behind the old Hadley house, she saw it.

A black slash rising, as though the sky was a dome, cheerful and bright, and artificial. And someone was opening that dome.

‘What is that?’

‘Just a storm. They look more dramatic in the country. In the city with the buildings we can’t see all that.’ He waved casually toward the slash as though all storms looked like something wicked approaching.

Beauvoir put his coat back on, and once out the door turned to walk over the stone bridge into Three Pines but Lacoste hesitated.

‘Do you mind if we walk this way?’ She pointed in the opposite direction, away from the village. He looked and saw an attractive dirt road winding into the woods. The mature trees arched overhead, almost touching. In the summer it would be gently shaded but now, in early spring, the branches held only buds, like tiny green flares, and the sun shot through easily. They walked in silence into a world of sweet aromas and birdsong. Beauvoir remembered Gilles Sandon’s claim. That trees spoke. And maybe, sometimes, they sang.

Finally Lacoste was certain no one, especially Nichol, could overhear.

‘Tell me about the Arnot case.’

Gamache looked into the darkness and silence. He’d been in the basement once before. He’d opened this same door in the middle of a fierce storm, in the dark, desperate to find a kidnapped woman. And he’d stepped into a void. It was like every nightmare coming true. He’d crossed a threshold into nothingness. No light, no stairs.

And he’d fallen. As had the others with him. Into a wounded and bloody heap on the floor below.

The old Hadley house protected itself. It seemed to tolerate, with ill grace, minor intrusions. But it grew more and more malevolent the deeper you went. Instinctively his hand went into his pants pocket, then came out again, empty.

But he remembered the Bible in his jacket and felt a little better. Though he didn’t himself go to church, he knew the power of belief. And symbols. But then he thought about the other book he’d found and brought with him from the murder scene and whatever comfort he’d felt evaporated, seemed to be pulled from him and disappear into the void in front of him.

He shone the flashlight down the stairs. At least this time there were stairs. Putting his large foot tentatively on the first rung he felt it take his weight. Then he took a deep breath, and started down.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Beauvoir.

‘I need to know about the Arnot case,’ said Lacoste.

‘Why?’ He stopped in the middle of the country road and turned to look at her. She faced him squarely.

‘I’m no fool. Something’s going on and I want to know.’

‘You must have followed it on TV or in the papers,’ said Beauvoir.

‘I did. And in police college it was all anyone was talking about.’

Beauvoir’s mind went back to that dark time, when the Sûreté was rent. When the loyal and cohesive organization started making war on itself. It put its wagons in a circle and shot inwards. It was horrible. Every officer knew the strength of the Sûreté lay in loyalty. Their very lives depended on it. But the Arnot case changed everything.

On one side stood Superintendent Arnot and his two co-defendants, charged with murder. And on the other, Chief Inspector Gamache. To say the Sûreté was split in half would be wrong. Every officer Beauvoir knew was appalled by Arnot, absolutely sickened. But many were also appalled by what Gamache did.

‘So you know it all,’ said Beauvoir.

‘I don’t know it all, and you know that. What’s wrong? Why are you freezing me out of this? I know there’s something going on. The Arnot case isn’t dead, is it?’

Beauvoir turned and walked slowly down the road, further into the woods.

‘What?’ Lacoste called after him. But Beauvoir was silent. He brought his hands behind his back and held them, walking slowly and thinking it through.

Should he tell Lacoste everything? How would Gamache feel about that? Did it matter? The chief wasn’t always right.

Beauvoir stopped and looked behind him to Isabelle Lacoste standing firmly in the middle of the road. He gestured her to him and as she approached he said, ‘Tell me what you know.’

The simple phrase surprised him. It was what Gamache always said to him.

‘I know Pierre Arnot was a superintendent in the Sûreté.’

‘He was the senior superintendent. He’d come up through narcotics and into serious crime.’

‘Something happened to him,’ said Lacoste. ‘He became hardened, cynical. Happens a lot, I know. But with Arnot there was something else.’

‘You want the inside story?’

Lacoste nodded.

‘Arnot was charismatic. People liked him, loved him even. I met the man a few times and felt the same way. He was tall, rugged. Looked like he could take down a bear with his hands. And smart. Whip smart.’

‘What every man wants to see in the mirror.’

‘Exactly. And he made the agents under him feel powerful and special. Very potent.’

‘Were you drawn to him?’

‘I applied to his division but was turned down.’ It was the first time he’d told anyone that, except Gamache. ‘I was working in the Trois-Rivières detachment at the time. Anyway, as you’ve probably heard, Arnot commanded a near mythic loyalty among his people.’

‘But?’

‘He was a bully. Demanded absolute conformity. Eventually the really good agents dropped out of his division. Leaving him with the dregs.’

‘Bullies themselves or agents too scared to stand up to a bully,’ said Lacoste.

‘Thought you said you didn’t know the inside story.’

‘I don’t, but I know school yards. Same everywhere.’

‘This was no school yard. It started quietly at first. Violence on native reserves unchecked. Murders unreported. Arnot had decided if the natives wanted to kill themselves and each other then it should be considered an internal issue and not interfered with.’

‘But it was his jurisdiction,’ said Lacoste.

‘That’s right. He ordered his officers on the reserves to do nothing.’

Isabelle Lacoste knew what that meant. Kids and sniff. Glue and gasoline-soaked rags inhaled until their young brains froze. Numb to the violence, abuse, despair. They didn’t care any more. About anything, or anyone. Boys shot each other and themselves. Girls were raped and beaten to death. Perhaps calling the Sûreté post desperate for help and getting no answer. And the officers, almost always a kid on his or her first assignment, were they staring at the phone with a smile knowing they’d satisfied their boss? One less savage. Or were they scared to death themselves? Knowing that more than a young native was being killed. They too were dying.

‘What happened then?’