by Louise Penny
Constance followed the voice. The mullioned windows were letting in whatever daylight was available, but it was still dim. Her eyes went to the large stone hearths at either end of the bistro, lit with cheery fires and surrounded by comfortable sofas and armchairs. In the center of the room, between the fires and sitting areas, antique pine tables were set with silverware and mismatched bone china. A large, bushy Christmas tree stood in a corner, its red, blue, and green lights on, a haphazard array of baubles and beads and icicles hung from the branches.
A few patrons sat in armchairs nursing cafés au lait or hot chocolates, and read day-old newspapers in French and English.
The shout had come from the far end of the room, and while Constance couldn’t yet clearly see the woman, she knew perfectly well who had spoken.
“I got you a tea.” Myrna was standing, waiting for them by one of the fireplaces.
“You’d better be talking to her,” said Ruth, taking the best seat by the fire and putting her feet on the hassock.
Constance hugged Myrna and felt the soft flesh under the thick sweater. Though Myrna was a large black woman at least twenty years her junior, she felt, and smelt, like Constance’s mother. It had given Constance a turn at first, as though someone had shoved her slightly off balance. But then she’d come to look forward to these embraces.
Constance sipped her tea, watched the flames flicker, and half listened as Myrna and Ruth talked about the latest shipment of books, delayed by the snow.
She felt herself nodding off in the warmth.
Four days. And she had two gay sons, a large black mother, a demented poet for a friend and was considering getting a duck.
It was not what she’d expected from this visit.
She became pensive, mesmerized by the fire. She wasn’t at all sure Myrna understood why she’d come. Why she’d contacted her after so many years. It was vital that Myrna understand, but now time was running out.
“Snow’s letting up,” said Clara Morrow. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to tame her hat head, but she only made it worse.
Constance roused and realized she’d missed Clara’s arrival.
She’d met Clara her very first night in Three Pines. She and Myrna had been invited over for dinner, and while Constance yearned for a quiet dinner alone with Myrna, she didn’t know how to politely decline. So they’d put on their coats and boots and trudged over.
It was supposed to be just the three of them, which was bad enough, but then Ruth Zardo and her duck had arrived and the evening went from bad to a fiasco. Rosa, the duck, had muttered what sounded like “Fuck, fuck, fuck” the whole night, while Ruth had spent the evening drinking, swearing, insulting and interrupting.
Constance had heard of her, of course. The Governor General’s Award–winning poet was as close as Canada came to having a demented, embittered poet laureate.
Who hurt you once / so far beyond repair / that you would greet each overture / with curling lip?
It was, Constance realized as the evening ground on, a good question. One she was tempted to ask the crazy poet, but didn’t for fear she’d be asked it in return.
Clara had made omelettes with melted goat cheese. A tossed salad and warm, fresh baguettes completed the meal. They’d eaten in the large kitchen, and when the meal was over and Myrna made coffee, and Ruth and Rosa retired to the living room, Clara had taken her into the studio. It was cramped, filled with brushes and palettes and canvasses. It smelled of oil and turpentine and ripe banana.
“Peter would’ve pestered me to clean this up,” said Clara, looking at the mess.
Clara had talked about her separation from her husband over dinner. Constance had plastered a sympathetic look on her face and wondered if she could possibly crawl out the bathroom window. Surely dying in a snow bank couldn’t be all that bad, could it?
And now here Clara was again talking about her husband. Her estranged husband. It was like parading around in her underwear. Revealing her intimates. It was unsightly and unseemly and unnecessary. And Constance just wanted to go home.
From the living room she heard, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She didn’t know, and no longer cared, whether it was the duck or the poet who was saying it.
Clara walked past an easel. The ghostly outline of what might become a man was just visible on the canvas. Without much enthusiasm, Constance followed Clara to the far end of her studio. Clara turned on a lamp and a small painting was illuminated.
At first it seemed uninteresting, certainly unremarkable.
“I’d like to paint you, if you don’t mind,” Clara had said, not looking at her guest.
Constance bristled. Had Clara recognized her? Did she know who Constance was?
“I don’t think so,” she’d replied, her voice firm.
“I understand,” Clara had said. “Not sure I’d want to be painted either.”
“Why not?”
“Too afraid of what someone might see.”
Clara had smiled, then walked back to the door. Constance followed, after taking one last look at the tiny painting. It was of Ruth Zardo, who was now passed out and snoring on Clara’s sofa. In this painting the old poet was clutching a blue shawl at her neck, her hands thin and claw-like. The veins and sinews of her neck showed through the skin, translucent, like onion paper.
Clara had captured Ruth’s bitterness, her loneliness, her rage. Constance now found it almost impossible to look away from the portrait.
At the door to the studio she looked back. Her eyes weren’t that sharp anymore, but they didn’t have to be, to see what Clara had really captured. It was Ruth. But it was someone else too. An image Constance remembered from a childhood on her knees.
It was the mad old poet, but it was also the Virgin Mary. The mother of God. Forgotten, resentful. Left behind. Glaring at a world that no longer remembered what she’d given it.
Constance was relieved she’d refused Clara’s request to paint her. If this was how she saw the mother of God, what would Clara see in her?
Later in the evening, Constance had drifted, apparently aimlessly, back to the studio door.
The single light still shone on the portrait, and even from the door Constance could see that her host hadn’t simply painted mad Ruth. Nor had she simply painted forgotten and embittered Mary. The elderly woman was staring into the distance. Into a dark and lonely future. But. But. Just there. Just slightly out of reach. Just becoming visible. There was something else.
Clara had captured despair, but she’d also captured hope.
Constance had taken her coffee and rejoined Ruth and Rosa, Clara and Myrna. She’d listened to them then. And she’d begun, just begun, to understand what it might be like to be able to put more than a name to a face.
That had been four days ago.
And now she was packed and ready to leave. Just one last cup of tea in the bistro, and she’d be off.
“Don’t go.”
Myrna had spoken softly.
“I have to.”
Constance broke eye contact with Myrna. It was altogether too intimate. Instead, she looked out the frosted windows, to the snow-covered village. It was dusk and Christmas lights were appearing on trees and homes.
“Can I come back? For Christmas?”
There was a long, long silence. And all Constance’s fears returned, crawling out of that silence. She dropped her eyes to her hands, neatly folded in her lap.
She’d exposed herself. Been tricked into thinking she was safe, she was liked, she was welcome.
Then she felt a large hand on her hand and she looked up.
“I’d love that,” Myrna said, and smiled. “We’ll have such fun.”
“Fun?” asked Gabri, plopping onto the sofa.
“Constance is coming back for Christmas.”
“Wonderful. You can come to the carol service on Christmas Eve. We do all the favorites. ‘Silent Night.’ ‘The First Noël’—”
“‘The Twelve Gays of Christmas,’” sa
“‘It Came Upon a Midnight Queer,’” said Myrna.
“The classics,” said Gabri. “Though this year we’re practicing a new one.”
“Not ‘O Holy Night,’ I hope,” said Constance. “Not sure I’m ready for that one.”
Gabri laughed. “No. ‘The Huron Carol.’ Do you know it?” He sang a few bars of the old Québécois carol.
“I love that one,” she said. “But no one does it anymore.”
Though it shouldn’t have surprised her that in this little village she’d find something else that had been all but lost to the outside world.
Constance said her good-byes, and to calls of “À bientôt!,” she and Myrna walked to her car.
Constance started it to warm up. It was getting too dark to play hockey and the kids were just leaving the rink, wobbling through the snow on their skates, using their hockey sticks for balance.
It was now or never, Constance knew.
“We used to do that,” she said, and Myrna followed her gaze.
“Play hockey?”
Constance nodded. “We had our own team. Our father would coach us. Mama would cheer. It was Frère André’s favorite sport.”
She met Myrna’s eyes. There, she thought. Done. The dirty secret was finally out in the open. When she returned, Myrna would have lots of questions. And finally, finally, Constance knew she would answer them.
Myrna watched her friend leave, and thought no more of that conversation.
THREE
“Think carefully,” said Armand Gamache. His voice was almost neutral. Almost. But there was no mistaking the look in his deep brown eyes.
They were hard, and cold. And unyielding.
He stared at the agent over his half-moon reading glasses and waited.
The conference room grew quiet. The shuffling of papers, the slight and insolent whispering, died out. Even the amused glances stopped.
And all focused on Chief Inspector Gamache.
Beside him, Inspector Isabelle Lacoste shifted her glance from the Chief to the assembled agents and inspectors. It was the weekly briefing for the homicide department of the Sûreté du Québec. A gathering meant to exchange ideas and information on cases under investigation. Where once it had been collaborative, now it was an hour she’d come to dread.
And if she felt like that, how did the Chief Inspector feel?
It was hard to tell anymore, what the Chief really felt and thought.
Isabelle Lacoste knew him better than anyone else in the room. Had served with him longest, she realized with surprise. The rest of the old guard had been transferred out, either by request or on the orders of Chief Superintendent Francoeur.
And this rabble had been transferred in.
The most successful homicide department in the nation had been gutted, replaced with lazy, insolent, incompetent thugs. Or were they incompetent? Certainly as homicide investigators they were, but was that really their job?
Of course not. She, and she suspected Gamache, knew why these men and women were really there. And it wasn’t to solve murders.
Despite this, Chief Inspector Gamache still managed to command them. To control them. Just barely. The balance was tipping, Lacoste could feel it. Every day more new agents were brought in. She could see them exchanging knowing smiles.
Lacoste felt her bile rise.
The madness of crowds. Madness had invaded their department. And every day Chief Inspector Gamache reined it in and took control. But even that was slipping. How much longer could he hold out before losing his grip completely?
Inspector Lacoste had many fears, most to do with her young son and daughter. Of something happening to them. She knew those fears were for the most part irrational.
But the fear of what would happen if the Chief Inspector lost control was not irrational.
She caught the eye of one of the older agents as he slumped in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. Apparently bored. Inspector Lacoste gave him a censorious look. He lowered his eyes and turned red.
Ashamed of himself. As well he should be.
As she glared, he sat upright and uncrossed his arms.
She nodded. A victory, though small and doubtless temporary. But even those, these days, counted.
Inspector Lacoste turned back to Gamache. His large hands were folded neatly on the table. Resting on the weekly report. A pen, unused, lay beside it. His right hand trembled slightly, and she hoped no one else noticed.
He was clean-shaven and looked every inch what he was. A man on the far side of fifty. Not necessarily handsome, but distinguished. More like a professor than a cop. More like an explorer than a hunter. He smelled of sandalwood with a hint of rose and wore a jacket and tie in to work every day.
His dark hair was graying and groomed and curled a little at the temples and around his ears. His face was lined, from age and care and laughter. Though those lines weren’t getting much of a workout lately. And there was, and always would be, that scar at his left temple. A reminder of events neither of them could ever forget.
His six-foot frame was large, substantial. Not exactly muscular, but neither was he fat. He was solid.
Solid, thought Lacoste. Like the mainland. Like a headland, facing a vast ocean. Was the now relentless buffeting beginning to wear deeper lines and crevices? Were cracks beginning to show?
At this moment Chief Inspector Gamache showed no sign of erosion. He stared at the offending agent, and even Lacoste couldn’t help feeling just a little sympathy. This new agent had mistaken the mainland for a sandbar. And now, too late, realized what he’d come up against.
She could see the insolence turn to disquiet, then to alarm. He turned to his friends for support, but like a pack of hyenas, they backed off. Almost anxious to see him torn apart.
Until this moment, Lacoste hadn’t realized how willing the pack was to turn on their own. Or, at least, to refuse to help.
She glanced at Gamache, at his steady eyes not leaving the squirming agent, and she knew that was what the Chief was doing. Testing them. Testing their loyalty. He’d cut one from the pack and waited to see if any would come to the rescue.
But they did not.
Isabelle Lacoste relaxed a little. Chief Inspector Gamache was still in control.
Gamache continued to stare at the agent. Now the others fidgeted. One even got up with a sullen “I’ve got work to do.”
“Sit down,” said the Chief, not looking at him. And he dropped like a rock.
Gamache waited. And waited.
“Désolé, patron,” said the agent at last. “I haven’t interviewed that suspect yet.”
The words slid down the table. A rotten admission. They’d all heard this agent lie about the interview, and now they waited to see what the Chief Inspector would do. How he’d maul this man.
“We’ll talk about this after the meeting,” said Gamache.
“Yessir.”
The reaction around the table was immediate.
Sly smiles. After a display of strength on the Chief’s part, they now sensed weakness. Had he ripped the agent to shreds they’d have respected him. Feared him. But now they only smelled blood.
And Isabelle Lacoste thought, God help me, even I wish the Chief had humiliated, disgraced this agent. Nailed him to the wall, as a warning to anyone else who’d cross Chief Inspector Gamache.
This far and no farther.
But Isabelle Lacoste had been in the Sûreté long enough to know how much easier it was to shoot than to talk. How much easier it was to shout than to be reasonable. How much easier it was to humiliate and demean and misuse authority than to be dignified and courteous, even to those who were themselves none of those things.
How much more courage it took to be kind than to be cruel.
But times had changed. The Sûreté had changed. It was now a culture that rewarded cruelty. That promoted it.
Chief Inspector Gamache knew that. And yet he’d just exposed his neck. Was it on purpose? Lacoste wondered. Or was he really so weakened?
She no longer knew.
What she did know was that over the past six months the Chief Inspector had watched his department being gutted, bastardized. His work dismantled. He’d watched those loyal to him leave. Or turn against him.
He’d put up a fight at first, but been pounded down. Time and again, she’d seen him return to his office after arguing with the Chief Superintendent. Gamache had come back defeated. And now, it seemed, he had little fight left in him.
“Next,” said Gamache.
And so it went, for an hour. Each agent trying Gamache’s patience. But the headland held. No sign of crumbling, no sign this had any effect at all on the Chief. Finally the meeting was over and Gamache rose. Inspector Lacoste rose too and there was a hesitation before first one then the rest of the agents got to their feet. At the door the Chief Inspector turned and looked at the agent who’d lied. Just a glance, but it was enough. The agent fell in behind Gamache and followed him to the Chief’s office. Just as the door closed Inspector Lacoste caught a fleeting look on the Chief’s face.
Of exhaustion.
* * *
“Sit down.” Gamache pointed to a chair, then he himself sat in the swivel chair behind his desk. The agent tried on some bravado, but that faded before the stern face.
When he spoke, the Chief’s voice carried an effortless authority.
“Are you happy here?”
The question surprised the agent. “I suppose.”
“You can do better than that. It’s a simple question. Are you happy here?”
“I have no choice but to be here.”
“You have a choice. You could quit. You’re not indentured. And I suspect you’re not the fool you pretend to be.”
“I don’t pretend to be a fool.”
“No? Then what would you call failing to interview a key suspect in a homicide investigation? What would you call lying about it to someone you must have known would see through that lie?”
But it was clear that the agent never thought he’d be caught. It had certainly never occurred to him that he’d find himself alone in the Chief’s office, about to be chewed out.
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