World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 9

The party for Harriet Landers was in full swing on the village green.

Multicolored lanterns had been strung and a bonfire lit. There was music and dancing and a table full of food, where Henri and Fred and Gracie and all manner of other creatures, including children, lay, looking up every time one of the revelers took a brie burger or a honey-lime chicken kabob. Or a butter tart. There was a table for alcoholic and nonalcoholic punches, and a long metal feed trough of ice with beer and wine and soft drinks in impossible shades of purple and orange.

Many of the younger children were dozing off in sleeping bags, gummy bears stuck to their hands, and faces, and hair.

“Relatives?” Gabri asked Clara, who had mustard and chocolate down her sweater.

“Apprentices.”

Those not sleeping were chasing each other around and around the outer ring of the village green, ignored by parents who tried to pretend their progeny weren’t one jelly bean away from Lord of the Flies.

Three Pines smelled of charred hot dogs and sugar from the marshmallows that had melted off sticks and plunged, sizzling, into the bonfire.

While the younger people danced to keep themselves warm in the cool late-spring evening, the older ones sat in lawn chairs drawn up to the blaze.

“I remember my own graduation party,” said Robert Mongeau, the minister at St. Thomas’s.

“From divinity school?” asked Reine-Marie.

“No, I didn’t graduate from that until just a few years ago,” he said, with a laugh. “Late to the cloth. It was from Harvard Business School.”

“Really?” said Armand.

They’d been away in Paris when this new minister had been hired, and they hadn’t had much chance to talk with him. Though Armand and Reine-Marie had heard some of the broad strokes of this newcomer, who seemed both more worldly than the previous pious minister, and more caring. Here was a man battered to his knees, not by failure but by too much success.

Robert Mongeau was of medium height, and while not rotund, he was heading that way. His hair was thick and still flecked with brown. His beard was trim and white, and his eyes a sort of hazel. He was in his late sixties, Armand guessed. There was an ease about him, and his good humor was obvious to anyone who spent more than a minute with the man.

Though Armand knew it concealed a private anguish. That much was also obvious to anyone who looked at the Reverend and Madame Mongeau.

“Really,” said Mongeau, replying to Armand with amusement. Then he turned to his wife. “Shall we?”

“Always.” Sylvie Mongeau lifted her arms. He pulled her out of the chair, took her in his arms, and they swung away, joining the young people on the green.

The others watched, smiling. It was clear, and becoming clearer by the day, that Sylvie Mongeau was dying. Myrna and Clara and even Ruth had approached her within a month of their arrival in Three Pines with offers of friendship. And to talk. Sylvie had accepted the friendship but declined the implied offers to discuss her health.

Myrna and Billy Williams finished their dance and joined the others, having first stopped at the food table.

“I’ve never seen her look happier,” said Myrna after eating an asparagus roll. It tasted of every childhood picnic.

At first the others thought Myrna meant Sylvie Mongeau, but they quickly realized she was watching her niece. Harriet was dancing with abandon, her arms waving over her head, her face turned to the stars. There was a sort of wild ecstasy about her. It was joy, gilded by extreme relief. And awash in booze.

The worst was over. She’d done it.

The adults were quiet, each watching the young people. Each remembering their own dances. And that first kiss.

Armand put his hand on Reine-Marie’s and remembered his last first kiss.

Then, one by one, they turned to the Mongeaus. Swaying slowly. Even though it was a fast song. He held her, his cheek against hers. Their eyes closed.

Armand took a sharp breath against the sudden pain. He looked away. Had to. Toward the bright, the luminous, the joyful young people. Their lives ahead of them.

When the song ended, the Mongeaus returned to their lawn chairs. Sylvie with a fresh glass of rosé, Robert with a beer.

“Armand,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Who’s that? I haven’t seen him before.”

Mongeau had tipped his beer bottle toward a young man standing on the other side of the bonfire.

“That’s Fiona’s brother, Sam. He’s staying at the B&B.”

“Ah. Fiona is the young woman who stays with you from time to time?”

“Oui.”

“But he doesn’t?”

“Non.”

Mongeau examined Gamache and seemed about to say something, but the man’s face in profile, lit by the dancing flames as he watched Sam Arsenault, did not invite conversation.

The minister decided to change the subject. Slightly.

“How did you come to meet her? A friend of your daughter’s?”

“Non” came the answer, perhaps a bit too quickly. Then Armand turned to him and smiled. “We met a few years ago. Reine-Marie has become a sort of mother figure for her.”

“Lucky her.” Mongeau waited, but that seemed to be that.

“Harriet isn’t the only one celebrating,” said Olivier, who’d overheard their conversation. “Fiona also graduated today from the École Polytechnique. Armand and Reine-Marie helped get her in.”

It wasn’t the whole story, thought Armand. Olivier was being discreet. Though he suspected the minister would find out soon enough. It wasn’t exactly a secret.

What no one there knew, not even Reine-Marie, was why Armand felt as he did about Fiona’s brother. Sam Arsenault.

Only one other person knew that.

When Jean-Guy had heard that Sam was now in Three Pines, he’d offered to come down. But Armand had declined.

“I appreciate it, but it’ll be okay. Merci quand même,” Armand had said on the phone that afternoon. Thanks anyway.

Through his study window he could see Billy Williams assembling the wood into a sort of teepee for the bonfire that night.

“It might even be a good thing.”

“How so?” asked Jean-Guy.

“Running away only makes things worse. I suspect the more I see him, the more I’ll realize he’s just a regular young man. Nothing—” What to say? Nothing sinister? Nothing disturbing? Nothing monstrous? “—more.”

Jean-Guy had long suspected the Chief Inspector had it backward. Beauvoir quite liked Sam. It was Fiona …

Jean-Guy never could get his head around Armand’s reaction to the boy. It was as though he was afraid of him. Beauvoir tried to set that thought aside as ludicrous but could not quite shake it. And his father-in-law’s reaction, immediate and visceral, that afternoon at the graduation only underscored that there was more there than met the eye.

While his offer to go down to Three Pines was sincere, the truth was it was the last thing Jean-Guy wanted to do. He was exhausted. He’d arrived at the neighbors’ barbecue just as the last overcooked burger was dropped onto the grass by some kid and eaten by some dog.

Then he’d spent eternity chasing Honoré, who was fueled by devil’s food cake, around the yard while Annie held Idola and smiled. Jean-Guy’s need to corral chaos almost always amused her, especially now there were two young children in the house. And with Honoré, they’d given birth to mayhem.

That boy loved being dirty and hated baths. Idola, on the other hand, loved baths. Loved being clean. Loved being dirty. Loved being held up, loved lying down.

She was still very floppy. The specialist said she would be for a while but would eventually, with training, be able to sit up by herself.

As he spoke to his father-in-law, Jean-Guy carefully supported Idola’s head while she slept in his arms, secure in the knowledge that she was safe and loved.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir thought about the Arsenault siblings and all the other children who never felt that. In fact, were raised knowing the opposite was true.

“Now that’s interesting,” said Ruth, breaking into Armand’s thoughts, just as Billy put another log on the bonfire, sending sparks into the night sky.

Across the village green, they saw Harriet laugh and place her hand on Sam Arsenault’s forearm. She said something, and he laughed. Just touching her arm before removing his hand.

Armand and Myrna exchanged glances.

“Well,” said the Reverend Mongeau, getting to his feet, “time to get to bed, I think.”

Again, he helped Sylvie up, and everyone rose to say goodbye. It seemed a good time for the adults to leave the party to the kids. Best not to see what happened next, they thought, remembering their own dances.

“Wait!” Harriet was walking quickly, if a little unsteadily, over. “You can’t leave yet, Auntie Myrna. I have something for you.”

She bent down and picked up a package wrapped in a towel that was under her chair.

“When I first came here, I was afraid of everything and everyone. It was all you could do to get me out of the bookstore.”

“Spiders!” said Clara. “Remember the spider incident? You got out fast enough then.”

“Peppermint toothpaste,” said Monsieur Béliveau, who ran the general store. “I had to hide it behind cans of mushroom soup. Actually, you were afraid of mushroom soup too.”

“Mushrooms could be poison,” said Harriet, as though that was reasonable.

“Heights.”

“Holes.”

“Okay, I give,” laughed Harriet. “Was I really afraid of peppermint toothpaste?”

Monsieur Béliveau nodded. “And Ivory soap. You thought it was made from elephants.”

“You thought guacamole was made from lawyers,” said Myrna.

“Well, that’s just sensible,” said Harriet. “Avocado. Avocats. I’m still not convinced…”

“And yet, you still order it,” said Olivier.

“Meh,” she said. “It’s tasty. What can I tell you.”

“I also have eaten my share of—” began Gabri before Olivier snapped.

“Stop it!”

“I felt safe here, for the first time in my life. Not physically. I knew that bad things can happen, do happen, anywhere.” She looked at the bouquet of white roses on the banquet table. Then she looked around at the homes and shops. At the three huge pines. “Bad things can happen even here.”

“She got that right,” said Ruth, and Rosa nodded. Though ducks often did.

“But I knew if something did happen, I’d be okay. Because I wasn’t alone.”

She approached her aunt and handed her the towel. Myrna unwrapped it, then stared at the object in her hands.

“Is it a sculpture?” asked Clara. “A work of art?”

“Is it a cake?” asked Gabri. It was hard to see in the demi-light.

“A book?” asked Sylvie Mongeau.

“Is it a joke?” asked Ruth. “For fuck’s sake, the woman paid for four years of university, and you give her that?”

Everyone was so focused on the gift, no one noticed the expression on Armand’s face.

Well, that was not totally true. Two people did. The brother and sister standing across the festive village green were watching him.

While he stared at the brick in Myrna’s hands.

It wasn’t over yet, Gamache knew.

They had the weapons. The cell phones. They had Dagenais. They’d regained control of the building. But it was temporary. There were off-duty agents, Dagenais’s officers, out there. Once they got wind of what was happening, things might change. And not for the better.

The Chief Inspector knew the only reason Dagenais had called off his people was to buy time. To regroup and give them another chance to attack.

It wasn’t a surrender, it was a tactical retreat.

He could, of course, go back on his promise to let the agents go. That seemed a pledge it would be insane to keep.

But. But.

Gamache knew there were holes in their case. A clever lawyer might get these agents off, claiming they were just defending their captain. Their detachment. That it was reasonable for them to assume they were under attack from Gamache and his people.

There were two pieces of crucial evidence they had to find if they were going to build a solid case.

Clotilde’s records and the weapon Dagenais or one of his agents had used to kill her. The brick.

There was work to be done and done quickly. He took Chernin aside. “Get a search warrant for Dagenais’s house. Fast.”

“Oui, patron.”

To Beauvoir he said, “Lock him in a cell.”

“Oui. What about them?” Beauvoir looked at the agents glaring back through the window in Dagenais’s office.

Gamache considered. “Lock them in, and bring the hikers to me.”

Then he got on the phone to Agent Moel.

“Hardye, get the children and all the evidence and go to the airport. Fly back to Montréal. Send the rest of the team here to the detachment. Let me know when you’re in the air. Hurry.”

“The forensics team isn’t—”

“Just do it.”

“Yessir.”

He had to get the children out before another attack was mounted. And, if possible, get the rest of them out too. But they could not leave until all the evidence was collected.

While he waited for word that Moel and the children were on the plane and in the air, the forensics team had arrived at the detachment and been brought up to speed. They started the investigation into wrongdoing at the detachment, while Gamache and Chernin interviewed the man and woman.

Turned out they were who they said they were. At least as far as it went.

Longtime activists with the environmental group Assez, they’d volunteered to drive up to begin organizing the protest to protect the old-growth forest.

No, they’d never been there before. They’d arrived that morning. What was happening?

Well, yes, they smoked weed, but nothing more. No, they didn’t deal. What was happening?

Did they know the dead woman? No. And, by the way, what was happening?

“Can we leave? We’re not under arrest, are we?” the man asked.

“No,” said Gamache. “But for your own safety, you need to stay here with us.”

It was possible that the off-duty agents were already outside the station. Waiting for someone to leave. Waiting to take someone hostage, or worse.

“Safety?” asked the woman. “What’s happening?”

“Some officers have been found to be involved in criminal activity.” Gamache figured they had a right to know something, if not everything. “We need to get the situation under control. Then you can leave.”

They stared at him, barely believing what they were hearing.

Taking Chernin aside, he said, “Check their records. I want to know more about them.”

“You’re not convinced?”

Gamache told her his thoughts about the children’s father. And what he might do if he found out what his ex had done to their children.

“You think he’s”—Chernin glanced behind her at the male hiker—“the father?” She considered. “He’s the right age. I’ll see what I can find out. I’m also looking into Clotilde’s history. Where she lived before coming here. Where the children were born.”

“Bon.”

Gamache looked at his watch. Still no word from Agent Moel.

He occupied himself by studying photos of the house. The children’s rooms seemed unexpectedly typical. Not unlike his son Daniel’s and daughter Annie’s rooms at home.

That, not surprisingly, made this worse.

Fiona had put up wallpaper with butterflies, as well as posters of boy bands. Sam seemed interested in puzzles and model planes and cars. He’d taken a crayon and drawn on the walls.

Daniel had done the same thing. No doubt testing his parents. But it was his room, and they had decided as long as it wasn’t offensive, Daniel could do what he wanted.

Clotilde had either come to the same conclusion or, more likely, simply didn’t care. Or notice. Gamache looked more closely at the drawings on Sam’s walls, but it was difficult to make out the images.

“They’re in the air, Chief,” said Chernin.

“Excellent. The warrant?”

“I’ll check.”

Gamache could wait no longer. He walked over to Agent Beauvoir, who was guarding the door to Dagenais’s office. “Unlock it, please.”

When Beauvoir did, the Chief Inspector stepped inside and, without preamble, said, “You three are staying here. You three”—he pointed to the most aggressive, including the one who’d almost killed him—“can leave.”

Beauvoir looked at the agents, then at Gamache. Had the man lost his mind? Was his brain oxygen-starved?

“Chief—” he began.

“You have their Sûreté ID?” Gamache said. Beauvoir nodded. “You’ve searched their vehicles?”

“Oui. We found assault rifles.” Illegal, Gamache knew, for ordinary Sûreté agents.

“We’re sure they’re now unarmed?”

“Absolutely, but in their homes there might—”

“Good.” Gamache waved at the agents. “Leave. Now. Just you three. Before I change my mind.”

Beauvoir looked around for Chernin. Surely the Inspector could stop this madness. But she was busy on the phone.

The three agents looked at each other in disbelief, then hurried out the door and into the darkness.