by Louise Penny
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To Hope Dellon,
a great editor, an even better friend.
Goodness Exists
CHAPTER 1
“Hell is empty, Armand,” said Stephen Horowitz.
“You’ve mentioned that. And all the devils are here?” asked Armand Gamache.
“Well, maybe not here, here”—Stephen spread his expressive hands—“exactly.”
“Here, here” was the garden of the Musée Rodin, in Paris, where Armand and his godfather were enjoying a quiet few minutes. Outside the walls they could hear the traffic, the hustle and the tussle of the great city.
But here, here, there was peace. The deep peace that comes not just with quiet, but with familiarity.
With knowing they were safe. In the garden. In each other’s company.
Armand passed his companion a tartelette au citron and glanced casually around. It was a warm and pleasant late-September afternoon. Shadows were distancing themselves from the trees, the statues, the people. Elongating. Straining away.
The light was winning.
Children ran free, laughing and racing down the long lawn in front of the château. Young parents watched from wooden benches, their planks turned gray over the years. As would they, eventually. But for now they relaxed, grateful for their children, and very grateful for the few minutes away from them in this safe place.
A less likely setting for the devil would be hard to imagine.
But then, Armand Gamache thought, where else would you find darkness but right up against the light? What greater triumph for evil than to ruin a garden?
It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Do you remember,” Stephen began, and Armand turned back to the elderly man beside him. He knew exactly what he was about to say. “When you decided to propose to Reine-Marie?” Stephen patted their own bench. “Here? In front of that.”
Armand followed the gesture and smiled.
It was a familiar story. One Stephen told every chance he got, and certainly every time godfather and godson made their pilgrimage here.
It was their best-loved place in all of Paris.
The garden on the grounds of the Musée Rodin.
Where better, the young Armand had thought many years earlier, to ask Reine-Marie to marry him? He had the ring. He’d rehearsed the words. He’d saved up six months of his measly salary as a lowly agent with the Sûreté du Québec for the trip.
He’d bring the woman he loved best, to the place he loved best. And ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.
His budget wouldn’t stretch to a hotel, so they’d have to stay in a hostel. But he knew Reine-Marie wouldn’t mind.
They were in love and they were in Paris. And soon, they’d be engaged.
But once again, Stephen had come to the rescue, lending the young couple his splendid apartment in the Seventh Arrondissement.
It wasn’t the first time Armand had stayed there.
He’d practically grown up in that gracious Haussmann building, with its floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Hôtel Lutetia. The vast apartment had herringbone wood floors and marble fireplaces and tall, tall ceilings, making each room light and airy.
It was an inquisitive child’s paradise, with its nooks and crannies. The armoire with the fake drawers made, he was sure, just for a little boy to hide in. There were assorted treasures to play with, when Stephen wasn’t looking.
And furniture perfect for jumping on.
Until it broke.
Stephen collected art, and each day he’d choose one piece and tell his godson about the artists and the work. Cézanne. Riopelle and Lemieux. Kenojuak Ashevak.
With one exception.
The tiny watercolor that hung at the level of a nine-year-old’s eye. Stephen never talked about it, mostly because, he’d once told Armand, there wasn’t much to say. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, like the others. Yet there was something about this particular work.
After a day out in the great city, they’d return exhausted, and while Stephen made chocolat chaud in the cramped kitchen, young Armand would drift over to the paintings.
Inevitably, Stephen would find the boy standing in front of the small watercolor, looking into the frame as though it was a window. At the tranquil village in the valley.
“That’s worthless,” Stephen had said.
But worthless or not, it was young Armand’s favorite. He was drawn back to it on every visit. He knew in his heart that anything that offered such peace had great value.
And he suspected his godfather thought so, too. Otherwise he’d never have hung it with all the other masterpieces.
At the age of nine, just months after both Armand’s parents had been killed in a car accident, Stephen had brought the boy to Paris for the first time. They’d walked together around the city. Not talking, but letting the silent little boy think his thoughts.
Eventually, Armand had lifted his head and begun to notice his surroundings. The wide boulevards, the bridges. Notre-Dame, the Tour Eiffel, the Seine. The brasseries, with Parisians sitting at round marble-topped tables on the sidewalks, drinking espresso or beer or wine.
At each corner, Stephen took his hand. Holding it firmly. Until they were safe on the other side.
And slowly young Armand realized he was safe, would always be safe, with this man. And that he would get to the other side.
And slowly, slowly, he’d returned to life.
Here. In Paris.
Then one morning his godfather had said, “Today, garçon, we’re going to my very favorite place in all of Paris. And then we’ll have an ice cream at the Hôtel Lutetia.”
They’d strolled up boulevard Raspail and turned left onto rue de Varenne. Past the shops and patisseries. Armand lingered at the windows, looking at the mille-feuilles and madeleines and pains aux raisins.
They stopped at one, and Stephen bought them each a tartelette au citron, giving Armand the small paper bag to carry.
And then they were there. At an opening in a wall.
After paying the admission, they went in.
Armand, his mind on the treat in the bag, barely registered his surroundings. This felt like duty, before the reward.
He opened the bag and looked in.
Stephen put his hand on the boy’s arm and said, “Patience. Patience. With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power.”
The words meant nothing to the hungry little boy, except to say that he couldn’t yet have the pastry.
Reluctantly, Armand closed the bag, then looked around.
“What do you think?” Stephen asked when he saw his godson’s eyes widening.
He could read the boy’s mind. It wasn’t, in all honesty, all that difficult.
Who’d have thought such a place existed anywhere, never mind tucked, essentially hidden, behind tall walls, in the middle of the city? It was a world unto itself. A magic garden.
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Had he been alone, Armand would have walked right by, mind on the uneaten pastry, never discovering what lay inside. Never seeing the beautiful château with its tall windows and sweeping terrace.
While not at all jaded, the child was by now used to magnificent buildings in Paris. The city was thick with them. What astonished him were the grounds.
The manicured lawns, the trees shaped like cones. The fountains.
But unlike the huge jardin du Luxembourg, created to impress, this garden was almost intimate.
And then there were the statues. Come upon here and there among the greenery. As though they’d been waiting patiently. For them.
Now and then the wail of a siren could be heard, coming from the world outside. The blast of a horn. A shout.
But all that did was intensify, for Armand, the sense of extreme peace he’d found, he felt, in the garden. A peace he hadn’t known since that quiet knock on the door.
They walked slowly around, Stephen, for the first time, not leading but following, as Armand stopped in front of each of Rodin’s statues.
But the boy kept glancing over his shoulder. To the cluster of men at the entrance, and exit, to the garden.
Eventually, Armand led them back there, and stood transfixed in front of the statue.
“The Burghers of Calais,” Stephen had said, his voice hushed, soothing. “In the Hundred Years’ War, the English King, Edward, laid siege to the French port of Calais.”
He looked at Armand to see if he was listening, but there was no indication either way.
“It was a crisis for the citizens. No food, no provisions could get past the English blockade. The French King, Philip, could have parleyed. Could have negotiated, to relieve the city. But he did nothing. He left them to starve. And they did. Men, women, children began to die.”
Now Armand turned and looked up at Stephen. The boy might not really understand war. But death he understood.
“The King did that? He could’ve done something, but he let them die?”
“Both kings did. Yes. In order to win. Wars are like that.” He could see the confusion, the upset, in the boy’s deep brown eyes. “Do you want me to go on?” Stephen asked.
“Oui, s’il vous plaît.” And Armand turned back to the statue and the men frozen in time.
“Just as complete catastrophe threatened, King Edward did something no one expected. He decided to have mercy on the people of Calais. But he asked one thing. He’d spare the town if the six most prominent citizens would surrender. He didn’t say it exactly, but everyone knew they’d be executed. As a warning to anyone else who might oppose him. They’d die so that the rest could live.”
Stephen saw Armand’s shoulders rise, then fall.
“The most prominent citizen, Eustache de Saint-Pierre, volunteered first. That’s him, there.” He pointed to one of the statues. A thin, grim man. “Then five others joined him. They were told to strip to their undergarments, put nooses around their necks, and carry the keys to the city and castle to the great gates. Which they did. The Burghers of Calais.”
Armand raised his head and stared up into the eyes of Eustache. Unlike all the other statues he’d seen around Paris, here he didn’t see glory. There were no angels ready to lift these men to Paradise. This was no fearless sacrifice. They were not marching, heads high, into splendid martyrdom.
What the boy saw was anguish. Despair. Resignation.
The burghers of this seaside town were afraid.
But they did it anyway.
Armand’s lower lip began to tremble and his chin pucker, and Stephen wondered if he’d gone far too far in telling this boy this story.
He touched his godson’s shoulder, and Armand swung around and buried his face in Stephen’s sweater, throwing his arms around him, not in an embrace but in a grip. As one might cling to a pillar, to stop from being swept away.
“They were saved, Armand,” said Stephen quickly, dropping to his knees and holding on to the sobbing boy. “They weren’t executed. The King spared their lives.”
It took Armand a few moments to absorb that. Finally pulling away, he dragged his sleeve across his face and looked at Stephen.
“Really?”
“Oui.”
“Really truly?” Armand gulped, his breath coming in fits as it caught in his throat.
“Really truly, garçon. They all lived.”
The little boy thought, looking down at his sneakers, then up into Stephen’s clear blue eyes. “Would you?”
Stephen, who knew what he was asking, almost said, Yes, of course. But stopped himself. This boy deserved the truth.
“Give up my life? For people I love, yes.” He squeezed the thin shoulders and smiled.
“For strangers?”
Stephen, just getting to know his godson, was realizing that he would not be satisfied with the easy answer. There was something quietly relentless about this child.
“I hope so, but honestly? I don’t know.”
Armand nodded, then turning to the statue, he squared his shoulders.
“It was cruel.” He spoke to the burghers. “What the King did. Letting them think they’d die.”
His godfather nodded. “But it was compassionate to spare them. Life can be cruel, as you know. But it can also be kind. Filled with wonders. You need to remember that. You have your own choice to make, Armand. What’re you going to focus on? What’s unfair, or all the wonderful things that happen? Both are true, both are real. Both need to be accepted. But which carries more weight with you?” Stephen tapped the boy’s chest. “The terrible or the wonderful? The goodness or the cruelty? Your life will be decided by that choice.”
“And patience?” asked Armand, and Stephen caught something he hadn’t noticed before. A hint of the mischievous.
The boy listened after all. Took everything in. And Stephen Horowitz realized he’d have to be careful.
There was no bench in front of the burghers, so Stephen had taken Armand over to his own favorite work by Rodin.
They opened the brown paper bag and ate their tartelettes au citron in front of The Gates of Hell. Stephen talked about the remarkable work while brushing powdery icing sugar off Armand’s sweater.
“I still can’t believe,” Stephen said fifty years later as they sat in front of the same statue, and ate their tartelettes au citron, “that you decided to propose to Reine-Marie in front of The Gates of Hell. But then the idea did spring from the same mind that thought it was a good idea to take her mother a toilet plunger as a hostess gift the first time you were introduced.”
“You remember that.”
But of course he did. Stephen Horowitz forgot nothing.
“Thank God you came to me for advice before proposing, garçon.”
Armand smiled. He hadn’t actually gone up to Stephen’s office, high above Montréal, that spring day thirty-five years ago, for advice. He went there to simply tell his godfather that he’d decided to ask his girlfriend of two years to marry him.
On hearing the news, Stephen had come around his desk and pulled the young man to him, holding him tight. Then Stephen gave a brusque nod and turned away. Bringing out a handkerchief, he glanced, for just a moment, out the window. Over Mount Royal, which dominated the city. And into the cloudless sky.
Then he turned back and considered the man he’d known since birth.
Taller than him now. Sturdy. Clean-shaven, with wavy dark hair, and deep brown eyes, both solemn and kind. With, yes, still that hint of the mischievous.
Armand had been to Cambridge to learn English, but instead of taking law, or business, as his godfather had advised, young Armand had, upon his return to Québec, entered the Sûreté academy.
He’d made his choice.
And he’d found wonderment. It came in the form of a junior librarian at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales in Montréal named Reine-Marie Cloutier.
Stephen had taken his godson out for lunch at the nearby Ritz, to celebrate.
&nbs
p; “Where will you propose?” Stephen had asked.
“Can you guess?”
“Paris.”
“Oui. She’s never been.”
Armand and his godfather had returned to Paris every year. Exploring the city, discovering new haunts. Then ending the day eating ice cream at the Hôtel Lutetia, which was just across the street from Stephen’s apartment. The waiters always made a fuss of the boy, even when he grew into a man.
Armand’s adopted grandmother, Zora, who raised him, didn’t approve of his going to the hotel, though it would be years before Armand understood why.
“It’ll be our little secret,” Stephen had said.
Zora also did not approve of Stephen. Though, again, it would be many years before Armand learned the reason. And learned that crème glacée at the Lutetia was the least of his godfather’s secrets.
Over a glass of champagne in the Ritz in Montréal, Armand had told Stephen his plans for the proposal.
When he’d finished, his godfather stared at him.
“Jesus, garçon,” Stephen had said. “The Gates of Hell? Dear God, and they gave you a gun?”
Stephen had been in his late fifties by then and at the height of his powers. The business magnate intimidated all around him. Armand suspected even the furniture cowered when Stephen Horowitz entered a room.
It wasn’t simply the force of his personality and the immense wealth he was busy acquiring and wielding, but his willingness to use both power and money to destroy those he felt were crooks.
Sometimes it took him years, but eventually, he brought them down. Power. And patience. Stephen Horowitz had command of both.
He was genuinely kind and openly ruthless. And when he turned those intense blue eyes on a quarry, they quaked.
But not Armand.
Not because he’d never been in the crosshairs, but because what Armand was most afraid of wasn’t being hurt by Stephen. He was afraid of hurting him. Disappointing him.
He’d argued with Stephen. Explaining that he loved Reine-Marie, and loved the tranquil garden in the middle of Paris.
“Where better to propose?”