World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 20

The investigators were gathered in the Old Train Station. The photograph of Ruth, taken when she’d won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, glared down at them.

Jean-Guy had contacted a conservator at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal, who’d be arriving first thing in the morning. The painting was now safely locked away in the Incident Room along with the other items from the attic. Except the grimoire. Reine-Marie still had that.

Crime scene tape had been placed across the hole in Myrna’s wall. When asked why, since no crime had actually been committed, neither Gamache nor Beauvoir explained fully, preferring to say it was a precaution.

The autopsy report on Patricia Godin hadn’t yet arrived, but the investigators were assured it would before morning, and analysis of the Stone letter was under way at the Sûreté labs.

That too would arrive the next day.

“Come over to our place for dinner,” Gamache said to Amelia. “But first, check into the B&B. There’s a young man staying there, Sam Arsenault. I want you to get to know him. You have any marijuana on you?”

“Me? Marijuana?”

It was now legal in Canada. Gamache understood the hypocrisy of him enjoying a scotch after work but discouraging his agents from relaxing with a joint. Which he did.

“Yes, you.”

He’d consider himself lucky if all she had was a joint, though in joining homicide she’d pledged to be clean.

“Why? You want some?” she asked.

He smiled thinly. “If you do, offer it to him. Imply that you’re breaking my rules.”

“I would be,” she said. “No need to imply.”

“It’s not a rule,” he said. “Just a strong suggestion.”

She smiled at the all-but-nonexistent distinction. “For what it’s worth, I’m clean, but I know where I can get some.”

“Good. But don’t you use.”

Chief Inspector Gamache knew Agent Choquet well. Very well. Knew her better than she realized.

He was the one who’d reviewed her application to the Sûreté Academy. He’d seen her all-too-obvious flaws. Her frailties. Her drug use, her petty crimes. She’d dropped out of high school and ended up on the street, at times resorting to prostitution.

He’d seen the tattoos, many obviously self-administered. Not as body art but as a form of self-mutilation. The piercings and studs, the tears and scars.

But he’d also seen that she’d read every school textbook she could get her hands on, either borrowed or stolen. She’d devoured books on philosophy, math, literature. Art. Poetry. She’d taught herself ancient Greek and read Socrates, and Italian and read Italo Calvino in the original. Her favorite, and his, was, If on a winter’s night a traveler.

She spoke Russian and learned Mandarin.

She’d passed her high school equivalency with such high marks the education board had given her, just out of curiosity, the test to get into McGill University. She wrote her answers upside down and backward. Once her examiners figured it out, they saw that she had scored higher than anyone else that year. McGill offered her a scholarship.

She’d accepted, then didn’t show up. Amelia Choquet had disappeared back into the sewer of inner-city Montréal.

But then she’d bobbed up again, one last time, and applied to, of all things, the Sûreté Academy.

At first, Gamache thought it was a joke. A dare perhaps. Then he’d looked deeper and seen it wasn’t a joke, it was a lifeboat. He saw the totality of her application. Of her life. It was immediately apparent that Amelia Choquet was an omnivore, the greatest autodidact Armand Gamache had ever come across.

She was clearly a genius. Or perhaps she was mad. Gamache couldn’t decide.

In the end, he’d rejected her application. As the new head of the Sûreté Academy at the time, he was responsible for all the cadets. He could not risk letting Amelia Choquet into an Academy already riven with deceit and corruption. Armand Gamache was very aware of the effect of one bad apple. And there was the smell of rot about Amelia Choquet.

He had a duty to protect the other students. Had to protect a fragile institution from an unstable, disruptive, even dangerous influence.

The truth, though, was far more complex, and far less noble.

He’d ultimately changed his mind and admitted her. Not everyone thought it was the wisest of decisions. And even he took a long time making peace with it. With her.

Now they sat in armchairs Agent Choquet had wrangled from Olivier. At least, they assumed Olivier was aware she’d taken them. The chairs now formed a sitting area in the Incident Room, along with a rug, side tables, and lamps. Also from the bistro.

Beauvoir brought over drinks from the well-stocked mini-fridge, and had to admit it was not only the most efficient Incident Room he’d ever worked in, it was about the most comfortable.

Though that was not saying much. Over the years, he and the Chief Inspector had worked out of pigsties, spider-infested toolsheds, hotels they were pretty sure were haunted. At least, Beauvoir was.

They’d once dug a quinzhee out of snow when caught in a blizzard while investigating a murder in Nunavut. It was so comfortable they ended up using the snow hut as their Incident Room. Far better than the two-hole outhouse they’d been forced to use in the Gaspé.

Annie refused to believe that was true, but it was.

“I want you to bad-mouth me to Sam Arsenault,” said Gamache, taking a fistful of nuts Amelia had put out in bowls, along with chips. “Subtly.”

“Do you do subtle?” asked Beauvoir.

Amelia spread her arms and smirked. Her tongue stud clicked against her teeth.

She was tapping out, Subtle, c’est moi. Gamache wondered if she realized he too knew Morse code.

“I want Sam Arsenault to think you’re unhappy,” said Gamache. “That you’re only in the Sûreté to steal drugs. Evidence. Whatever. You can figure that out. But be careful. He’s smart. He has a rare ability to see into people. To find their triggers. To manipulate.”

Jean-Guy shifted and inhaled. They both looked at him.

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“Who’s this Sam guy?” asked Amelia.

Gamache nodded to Beauvoir, who told her about the investigation into the death of Clotilde Arsenault and the fallout.

Amelia listened. It was a just-the-facts account, and when he’d finished, she said to Gamache, “But you don’t believe it? You don’t think the sister did it.”

“I believe they killed their mother. As to who delivered the actual blow, I don’t know. I’m willing to believe it was Fiona, but I don’t think that part matters. Those children were tortured, abused, broken. They were acting in self-defense. I believe the justice system failed them both, but especially Fiona.”

“Then what’s with this Sam Arsenault stuff?” she asked. “You want me to get close to him. Sounds like you suspect him of something. You think Sam Arsenault was the one who should’ve been in prison?”

“Non.” Gamache’s voice was curt and clear. “Absolutely not. He was ten at the time, sexually abused, prostituted out by his own mother. No. Here was a child deeply traumatized. There’s no way he could be considered guilty. They were both victims. But I think he needed far more intensive counseling and oversight than he got.”

“Désolé, patron,” said Beauvoir, “but it’s more than that. You think he was beyond help.”

“By then, by the time we first met him…” Gamache considered. “Yes.” He nodded his head slowly. There were very few people he felt were beyond redemption. Even at ten, Sam, he sensed, was one of those people. Born bad and made worse.

Beauvoir looked at Amelia and weighed what to say next. He decided on the truth.

“The Chief Inspector and I differ on this. I think Fiona Arsenault got what she deserved. I think she was the planner. I think she controlled her mother’s business when Clotilde was too far gone. The ledger we found in the house has her handwriting and the little stickers she collected. I think she murdered her mother so that she could take over prostituting her brother and was probably grooming other kids.”

“What we do agree on,” said Gamache, “is that we’re pretty sure the only reason Clotilde’s body was put where it would be found is so the children could collect the insurance.”

“You think she set up one of the molesters for the murder,” said Choquet. “The one she sold the car to. Not a very good attempt.”

“She wasn’t exactly a criminal mastermind,” said Beauvoir, grabbing some corn chips. “She probably didn’t think anyone would suspect children. It was a shitty mess.”

“It was a tragedy,” said Gamache.

“But you arrested her,” Amelia said.

“I did. I had to. To be honest, I never dreamed the prosecutor would go so hard on her.”

“And if you had known,” said Amelia, “what would you have done?”

Gamache smiled and shook his head at her. It was a question he would not answer. Could not answer. He didn’t really know the answer.

“The whole thing makes me sick,” he said. “Despite my arguments, the prosecution tried Fiona as an adult.”

“You really don’t think she was guilty?” said Amelia.

“I think, I believe, Sam instigated it, battered his own head against the brick wall in the alley, then blamed his sister. His injuries, while dramatic, were not all that serious.”

“Why did she accept the blame? Why not fight back? Why not tell them that Sam was responsible?”

“Because she loved him,” said Gamache. “Because she felt she needed to protect him. Maybe felt guilty about not being able to protect him against their mother. Against what happened. And maybe because she knew in her heart what he really was and was afraid of him.”

“And what is he?” asked Amelia.

A monster, he almost said, but did not. Instead, he said, “I’m not a good judge.”

“No, but you’ve obviously judged that the sister is safe. You’ve taken her under your wing.”

“Not just that,” said Beauvoir. “He watched over her, visited her in prison, helped her get parole and graduate with an engineering degree from the École Polytechnique.”

“Jesus,” said Amelia. “We should all be arrested by you.”

“And be wrongly convicted,” Gamache reminded her. “Which in your case is unlikely.”

She laughed. Then grew serious. “Why do you believe that Sam was behind the murder of their mother?”

It was, Gamache knew, a fair question. Could he possibly say it was because the boy had winked at him that day long ago, when his sister had been found guilty?

That he could feel Sam’s presence inside his head. Messing about. Moving objects around in there so that the Chief Inspector was stumbling about. Struggling to see clearly.

But despite all the mind games, Gamache had seen, could still see, clearly enough to know that Sam Arsenault was unbalanced. Unwell. Malevolent. And time had only made him worse.

“I have no evidence,” he admitted. “Just a feeling. I didn’t encourage the prosecutor to arrest Sam. I never mentioned my suspicions. I did not arrest him. In fact, I tried to get him help. But I knew it was useless. He was beyond our reach in every way.”

Amelia didn’t pursue it further. How do you pursue a feeling, after all? She knew this man well enough by now to know he saw hope where others saw only malevolence.

But he could also see evil where others saw a ten-year-old boy.

“You”—Armand turned to Beauvoir—“were the one who came closest to reaching him.”

Jean-Guy took another handful of chips and nodded. “I liked the kid. Felt for him.”

He remembered that moment when the child had clung to him, clutched at him, and sobbed.

Was Sam a model citizen? Probably not. Who could be after that?

Was he taking this opportunity to mind-fuck the man who’d seen what they’d done and arrested his sister? Maybe. That wasn’t okay, but neither, from what Beauvoir could see, was it dangerous.

Was he a psychopath? No. Was his sister? That, for Jean-Guy, was an open question.

It worried him a lot that his father-in-law could not see it.

“But how’s this connected to that.” Agent Choquet waved toward the locker, with its assortment of curiosities. “And the murder of Madame Godin?”

“Probably isn’t.” The Chief Inspector checked his watch. “Dinner’s in an hour.”

“Great.” She dumped the remaining nuts into her pocket. “I might get the munchies.”

They crossed the bridge over the Rivière Bella Bella and walked toward the light in the night that was the Gamache home. Then Amelia left them and headed to the B&B.

When she was out of earshot, Jean-Guy whispered, “What have you done?”

It was clearly said in jest, unleashing Amelia on an unsuspecting public.

“You’re the one who assigned her here,” Gamache pointed out.

But as he walked through the June evening, Armand wondered, What have I done?