World of Curiosities

CHAPTER 32

Harriet and Sam went for a hike through the forest, along the trail that led up to François’s Seat, the highest point of the mountains that surrounded and protected and hid Three Pines from the outside world.

The trail was steep enough to leave her winded.

“Why’s it called François’s Seat?” Sam asked, catching his own breath.

They sat down on sun-warmed boulders and admired the view, which fanned out 360 degrees. From there they felt they could reach out and touch the Green Mountains of Vermont.

“I asked Auntie Myrna once, but she didn’t know.”

The mention of her aunt gave Harriet a pang. Of sadness. Perhaps guilt. She’d turned her back on the woman who’d been an important part of her life all her life in favor of a man she’d just met.

How could that happen, she wondered, that Sam could get so deep into her heart so quickly? And eclipse loved ones?

He seemed to understand her. She wasn’t afraid with him. He’d even shown interest in her odd hobby of collecting bricks, saying he had one himself.

“A hobby?” she’d asked.

“No, a brick. One I’ve had since I was a kid. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

He brought egg salad and peanut butter sandwiches wrapped in a damp dish towel out of his knapsack, and she pulled a large thermos of ice-cold water out of hers. They ate in silence, enjoying the view.

The warmth of the day was hitting the pines and balsams, bringing out the sweet fragrance of their new needles.

Harriet looked over the endless canopy of forest and saw unimaginable beauty. It was enchanting, bewitching. And if you weren’t careful, it would kill you.

A few steps off the path, perhaps to pick up pinecones or look at a wildflower, and you were lost. You’d turn around. And around. And the path would have disappeared.

At first there’d be disbelief, even perhaps mild amusement. And then, as the minutes turned to hours, there’d be a quickly mounting awareness. This was trouble. Then, as the sun went down, anxiety turned to fear turned to panic.

This can’t be happening.

Was that how Anne Lamarque felt when the priest turned her in, as the witnesses against her piled up? As her husband testified about the grimoire? Did her amusement turn to disbelief, turn to panic, turn to terror?

She’d strayed too far from the prescribed path, and this was her punishment.

Harriet looked over the forest and imagined a woman in long, torn skirts and a rough blouse, clutching a shawl to her breast with one hand and a burlap sack with the other.

Anne Lamarque’s face and hands were torn and bloody. Her clothing encrusted with muck and stinking of sweat and piss and shit. Her wild hair was thick with leaves and twigs, as though she were turning into the forest itself.

She finally looked like what she’d been accused of.

Before I was not a witch / But now I am one …

The witch woman was on the run, chased through the wilderness by beasts hungry for her body and demons hungry for her soul.

Every sound became a threat. The howls of the wolves, the scrambling and shrieking of strange creatures, the bright eyes staring at her in the moonlight. Flesh-eating flies buzzed around her head, tormenting her, biting her, driving her mad. Sending her running through the forest, over the edge of the known world and into insanity.

Until she’d finally fallen to her knees. Her head in her hands. Bent over small, like a child who’d seen the closet door drift open in the night. And knew the nightmare was real.

Anne Lamarque surrendered to her fate.

What then? Harriet wondered.

Had Anne heard the soft babble of the river and raised her head? Had she lifted her face from her filthy hands and seen soft light in the sky? Had she seen a clearing just ahead? A meadow with herbs and sweetgrass?

Had she, like so many after her, recognized in this hidden place a home?

Anne Lamarque had defied her tormentors. Instead of being damned, instead of dying, she’d made a home. Here. Found a home here. Built a home here, from stones pulled from the earth, and from trees that once seemed so fearsome, but now offered themselves as shelter.

According to Ruth, two other women eventually found their way to Anne. But Harriet suspected there were more. Many more.

A bouquet of them, perhaps. Young and old. Their common crimes were breasts and a womb. And a mind.

With the help of the grimoire, they survived, built a community where all were welcome. That was the real magic.

“What’re you thinking?” Sam asked, his voice soft, gentle.

“I was thinking that maybe it’s not so bad being a witch.” She glanced down at his knapsack. “What else have you got in there?”

It wasn’t quite empty, and she hoped maybe he’d brought a cake. It was the right shape for a lemon loaf, though it looked too heavy for that.

She reached for it.

“I’m sending the family up to the lake with four agents,” said Jean-Guy. He named them and Armand nodded approval. They were good, they could be trusted. “I’m on my way back to Three Pines, but I had a thought.”

“Go on.”

“Suppose it’s Godin.”

“Fleming?” Gamache was about to point out that Monsieur and Madame Godin had been married for forty years and living in that house for fifteen. Godin could not be Fleming. But then he realized …

“Do we know for sure that is Monsieur Godin?” Beauvoir asked, just as Gamache got to that thought. “His ID checks out, but those could be faked. Fleming could have killed them both, then pretended to be Godin, knowing we’d show up.”

It could be, thought Armand. Godin was roughly the right age. He was taller, and heftier, but those could be changed with lifts in shoes and an intentional weight gain. Even eye color could be changed with contacts.

“There was her funeral,” said Gamache. “People would have seen that it wasn’t the real Godin. Their children would have seen it right away.”

“True,” said Beauvoir. “Maybe Fleming killed Madame Godin five weeks ago, but only killed Monsieur Godin a few days ago. Just before we arrived. Knowing we were coming.”

“But how could he know? We didn’t even know. At the time there’d been no crime, just the loft room and those items. It was strange, but not illegal. Billy and I were curious to speak to the Godins, that’s all. It wasn’t until we realized Madame Godin had been murdered that things changed.”

But then he thought about what Captain Moel had said. That Fleming was in control, manipulating them. It was possible hints were dropped that they didn’t even pick up on.

Yes, it was possible that Godin was Fleming. Just.

“Do we have a DNA sample of Monsieur Godin?” he asked.

“We do. And prints. I can check them against Fleming’s records.”

“That won’t work. The official records have been replaced.”

“Shit, of course. Fucking warden. We might be able to find one in the prosecutor’s office.”

“That’ll take time and probably a warrant. Still, worth trying. While you do that, I’ll go over to the Godin place.”

“Wait. Don’t go alone, patron. I can meet you there in forty minutes, maybe less.”

Armand paused and looked up the hill to the small chapel.

“All right. Park where he can’t see us. We need this to be a surprise.”

Though Gamache had the uneasy feeling that nothing they did would surprise John Fleming.

“One other thing. The warden told me that a woman passed messages to Fleming in the SHU, through the head guard. He said it was Fleming’s wife.”

“His wife? There’s nothing about that in the files, and nothing was said about a wife or family at his trial.”

Though there was definitely a woman in this somewhere, wife or not. The Mountweazel fiction.

“The last we see of her,” said Gamache, “was several months ago, when she ‘lost’ the Stone letter at the Norwich Castle Museum. Maybe her job’s done.”

They both knew what happened to people in Fleming’s orbit once that happened. What would he do with an old chair that was no longer needed?

“Why go through all that palaver with the letter?” Jean-Guy asked.

“‘Palaver’? Have you been talking to Ruth again?”

“Worse, I’ve been listening to her. Why didn’t this Mountweazel just send the letter to Billy herself, why get the museum to send it to the Godins?”

“One more degree of separation. Fleming wants us to know he’s pulling the strings, but he doesn’t want us too close.”

As Armand walked across the village green to his car, Ruth and Clara waved him over.

“There’s news,” said Ruth. “Did Robert tell you?”

“I haven’t spoken to him.” He could guess, though, remembering the minister’s slow gait, his lowered head, as though his thoughts were far too heavy to support.

“Sylvie died last night,” said Clara. “In her sleep. When Robert woke up, he found her.”

“He’s in shock,” said Ruth.

“So am I,” said Clara. “She was with us last night. She was weak but seemed okay.”

Myrna came out of her bookstore, looked around, saw them, and headed over.

“Have you seen Harriet?”

“No. Why?” asked Clara.

“I haven’t seen her since we had the fight.”

“Let me guess. About that young man?” said Ruth.

“Yes.” She seemed to notice their moods. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Sylvie Mongeau died last night,” said Clara.

“That can’t be. I was on my way over. She invited me last night when they left. She said she’d like to talk to me.”

“You?” said Ruth. “Why?”

“Besides the fact I’m good company?” said Myrna. “I actually don’t know. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t think it might be her last conversation.”

“Maybe as a therapist,” said Clara. “She was obviously getting close…”

“But not that close,” said Myrna.

“Taking the book with you?” Armand motioned to the thick volume in Myrna’s hand.

Myrna looked at it, almost surprised to see it there. “Yes.”

“Did she ask for it specifically?” he asked.

Myrna was a little surprised by Armand’s interest in a book when clearly the headline was the death of the woman who’d asked for it.

“Yes. She saw it on your shelf, Clara, and asked if I could bring a copy with me. Said she’d always wanted to read it.”

“She could’ve borrowed mine,” said Clara.

Armand left them then and walked slowly up the hill to the small church. His thoughts going to Robert. And to Sylvie. And to her request to read The Mists of Avalon.

A great book, he knew. A retelling of the Arthur legend from the point of view of the women. In the traditional story, told by a man, they’re witches. In the retelling, told by a woman, they’re sages.

But it wasn’t the plot of the book that struck him so much as the fact that a very sick woman would ask for a very long book. One she expected to have time to read.

Sylvie Mongeau had absolutely no inkling that she would be dead within hours. But then, he wondered, would he? Would anyone?

As he got closer to St. Thomas’s, Armand heard a nails-on-blackboard sort of sound.

He looked up and saw the caretaker at the top of the steps scraping white paint off the clapboard.

“Bonjour,” called Armand as he mounted the stairs.

The man ignored him.

At the top, he paused and looked over the village. To the roofline of the shops below.

“You were the one who noticed that there’s an attic room attached to the bookstore,” he said to the caretaker.

Still the man continued to work, his knobbly backbone visible under the worn work shirt.

Armand realized he’d never actually spoken to him, and had only really seen him at a distance. Now he looked more closely. At the thinning gray hair. The almost fragile frame.

His age indeterminant, but well north of middle age.

The only reply was the screeching of the scraper, as though the man was torturing the building.

Gamache stepped between the caretaker and the wall. The man had to stop, unless he wanted to scrape the Chief Inspector’s legs.

The caretaker slowly straightened up. He was at least four inches shorter than the six-foot-one Gamache.

He glanced down at the village and shrugged. “I said the roof would soon need replacing. I never mentioned a hidden room.”

“But it doesn’t,” said Gamache. “Look.”

The man did not. “I made a mistake. I’m not a roofer.”

Gamache stared at him, but the man kept dropping his eyes.

“Your name is Claude, is that right?”

“Oui.”

“And your last name?”

The man hesitated. It was clear to Gamache that there was enmity there. This man did not like him. At all. And yet Gamache could not imagine why that would be.

“Boisfranc.”

“Monsieur Boisfranc, where were you before you came here?”

Now he did raise his eyes and met Gamache’s. “Piss off.”

Gamache raised his brows. “Pardon?”

“You heard me. Piss off. Fuck off. I don’t have to answer any questions. Get out of my way. I have a job to do.” He brandished the scraper as though it were a shiv.

Gamache looked deep into Claude Boisfranc’s eyes and saw … nothing. Well, he didn’t see a monster, a lunatic. He did see anger, but that was not uncommon for a cop.

This aggression was a puzzle but not, Gamache felt, a worry.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you.” Stepping aside, he opened the door to the church.

It was dark and cool inside and smelled of old books and wax polish. It smelled of calm and, best of all, stability.

Robert Mongeau sat in a pew, surrounded by cheery light through the immortal boys.

Armand joined him. The two sat in silence for a few moments before Armand whispered, “Désolé.”

At Heathrow Airport, awaiting their return flight, Reine-Marie got a call from the museum.

“Oui, allô,” she said.

“Madame Cloutier? It’s Cecil Clarke. I just was looking at The Paston Treasure and I noticed something.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not sure how long they’ve been there, but there are markings on the clockface.”

“Words?”

“No, just lines, not even pictures. Squiggles. You didn’t…”

“Put them there? Of course not. We were never alone with it, even if we’d wanted to. Can you take a photo of them, please?”

“Why?”

“Please, just do it.” As soon as it arrived, she forwarded it, with shaking fingers, to Armand, Jean-Guy, and Amelia. Then she studied it herself. The doodles of a madman.