by Louise Penny
But now he felt he was finally getting closer. Closer. To the truth.
The Chancellor had not just invited Abigail to Québec, she’d invited her to speak. She’d invited her to stay at her home.
Abigail and Debbie.
And then she’d taken that last necessary, fateful step. Colette Roberge had invited them to the New Year’s Eve party.
To lure her into Gilbert’s hands so he could stop her crusade for mass euthanasia by stopping the woman?
Kill the woman. Kill the idea.
Haniya Daoud had protested her own innocence by saying that she knew that killing a person did not kill an idea. Often it only strengthened it, by making the person a martyr.
Maybe, in desperation, Vincent Gilbert thought it was the only option now open to him.
So why was Debbie Schneider dead and not Abigail Robinson? Was it mistaken identity? Or was she the intended victim all along?
There was, of course, the issue of the letter, the possible blackmail, as a motive.
Gamache shook his head. No. Gilbert would realize that even if Debbie had the paper on her, killing her would solve nothing. Abigail still knew about his work with Cameron.
And other letters still existed and would come to light. Like the Horton letter.
Debbie Schneider should not be lying dead. It should have been Abigail Robinson, because of her campaign. Or Vincent Gilbert, killed by Abigail in revenge.
This didn’t make sense. Only it did.
He was missing something. He’d blinked, or been looking in another direction, distracted, and had missed some small signpost.
The only thing that did seem clear was that without Colette Roberge, none of this would have happened. Abby and Debbie would be in Nanaimo, looking forward to a new year.
Gamache closed his eyes. He was deep in a dark cave now. He could hear scrambling, as the truth skittered away.
But it was in here with him, and he was close. He felt it. In his heart and in the hairs on the back of his neck. In the stale clammy air on his skin.
He tipped his head back, his eyes still closed in concentration. Taking a long, deep breath, he held it for a moment, then slowly released it. As he did, Abby Maria floated back.
Abby Maria.
A name first uttered by their mother, who’d bound the sisters together.
And then, decades later, uttered by Debbie Schneider at the gym, then again at the Chancellor’s home after the attack.
Another deep breath. Hold it. Exhale. Hold your ground. Don’t back away.
What’s in that cave with you? What’s scurrying around? Its claws scraping the walls. To get out.
Abby Maria was.
Debbie had said it again at the New Year’s Eve party. And, worst of all, Vincent Gilbert had picked up on it. Mocking the clear reference to Ave Maria. Hail Maria. Be well, Maria.
Was that why Debbie was killed? To keep Maria a secret? To not reveal an unwell, terribly disabled sister, and therefore hinder Abigail’s campaign?
But you don’t kill your best friend because she was letting something inconvenient slip out, something that anyone who went looking could find easily enough. Maria Robinson was no family shame locked away in an attic. Plenty of people in the community knew about her.
No, there was a secret, but it wasn’t Maria’s life. It was her death.
Was that it? Was that the secret Abigail was desperate to hide? That her beloved father was a murderer? And with each mention of Abby Maria, Debbie was inadvertently revealing it?
What would happen if the media began digging? Got hold of Maria’s death certificate. Saw that one word.
Petechiae.
And started asking questions. About her father. About what had really happened.
Lost in thought, lost in the cave, Gamache felt something slide across his face. And he suddenly remembered where he really was.
His eyes flew open, half expecting to come face-to-face with a snake.
But all he saw were pipes. And a cord hanging from a lightbulb in the ceiling. His heart thumping, he dropped his head and caught his breath and stared at the rough wall in front of him. And it stared back. Taunting him. Mocking him. The Old Hadley House seemed to be asking which of them was really trapped.
He turned away and tried to remember what he’d been thinking.
Was it about Colette? No. Not really. Maybe.
Striding back down the long room, he grabbed his coat. “I need some air.”
As he made his way outside, Armand tried to find that thread of a thought.
The sun hit his face, and he turned to it, taking a deep breath of the crisp, fresh air. Up from the village came the sound of children laughing. From the brow of the hill, he heard screams, as toboggans were launched.
And on those rapturous cries he found it. What he’d been thinking. Abby Maria.
The one sister freed of her torment. The other freed to live her life.
The thread was tenuous. Thin and frayed. Armand had the sense that if he pulled too hard, or too soon, it would fall apart.
But if he was very, very careful, the other end could be tied to a killer.
CHAPTER 39
Reine-Marie and Haniya shared a box while Susan and James Horton each had their own.
They sat in the living room of the Horton home, surrounded by packing crates and newspaper and tape.
“I should have brought this back sooner,” Reine-Marie confessed, placing her hand on the file box filled with their mother’s things. “But to be honest, I was curious.”
“About the monkeys,” said Susan. “We opened the boxes you left, and James looked at the side of Mommy’s bed.”
Her brother was quiet. And quietly seething.
Did he know? Reine-Marie wondered. Was he old enough to remember his mother before, and his mother after?
Did he know what was in the box in front of them? The family secret that had somehow, as secrets often did, morphed into a shame.
“Why did she do that?” asked Susan. “Why draw monkeys? Even when she was dying? I don’t understand.”
Haniya Daoud shifted, trying to get more comfortable. But to do that, she was nudging Reine-Marie closer to the edge.
She’d introduced Haniya, but hadn’t explained who she was. It seemed, by his expression, that James vaguely recognized her, but couldn’t quite place her.
Susan, though, just stared at her. Unable, it seemed, to see beyond the disfigurement.
Now brother and sister waited for Reine-Marie to say something constructive.
* * *
Armand had allowed his feet to choose the path, this freed his mind to also choose its own way forward.
He was in the woods now, his boots sinking into the soft snow of the trail. It was quiet in there. Peaceful.
Abby Maria. Ave Maria. Hail Maria, full of grace.
Be well, Maria.
He allowed his thoughts to roam free, untethered by logic.
Ça va bien aller. All shall be well. Maria.
Gamache stopped, looked up, and saw where his feet, where the thread, had taken him. Up ahead was the hermit’s cabin. The home of the Asshole Saint.
A thick layer of snow lay on its roof. There was no smoke from the chimney. No light at the windows.
No sign of life. And yet it didn’t feel abandoned, or empty. It felt as though it was waiting for Vincent Gilbert to return. Home.
Gamache had visited Gilbert there a few times.
They’d sat on the porch in the summer sipping lemonade. They’d harvested vegetables in autumn, from the garden out back by the stream. He’d skied to the log cabin in winter. They’d drunk tea and eaten bread and honey Armand had brought from the village, while Vincent fed wood into the stove.
They’d talked about all sorts of things. Family. Paris. Emerson. Auden and Keller.
They’d talked about choice and chance and fate.
One of Gilbert’s favorite quotes was from Henry David Thoreau. The question is not what you l
ook at, but what you see.
And Armand had told Vincent one of his favorite Thoreau stories.
When Thoreau was arrested for protesting an injustice, Ralph Waldo Emerson had visited him in prison and said, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” And Thoreau had replied, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”
Vincent had laughed. As had Armand. But both appreciated what Thoreau was saying.
Came a time when people of conscience had to take a stand.
Had that time come for Vincent Gilbert? Had a crisis of conscience moved him from looking to seeing to acting?
Would he have to arrest the Asshole Saint for that act? And when he did, would Vincent Gilbert ask him what he was doing “out there”?
But Armand knew the answer to that. He was bringing a murderer to justice.
He heard footsteps behind him. Had heard them almost from the moment he’d veered off the road, onto the path through the woods.
Now they were close. Almost upon him.
“You don’t really believe what you said, do you?” said Armand. “About Paul Robinson. That he killed his daughter.”
The footsteps stopped. And there was silence for a moment. “Yes. I do.”
Armand turned and faced Jean-Guy. He smiled. He’d known from that first footfall who it was. He recognized the gait. And, more than that, he knew that Jean-Guy would, if he could, always be there. Close by.
* * *
Isabelle Lacoste barely noticed the gloom in the Incident Room anymore. She was preoccupied with her thoughts. With her questions.
She picked up the phone.
“Barry? It’s Isabelle. You know that photograph that was in Debbie Schneider’s desk? Can you see if anything’s written on the back? A date or something?”
“It’s packed away in the boxes, ready to be shipped to you.”
“Can you find it?”
He heaved a sigh. “Yes. It’ll take a little while.”
“Please, as soon as you can.”
He must have finally heard the urgency in her voice. “I’ll go down now.”
“And can you send a list of the other items in the drawer with it?”
“I have it here on my computer. There were some staples. Two printer cartridges. A ruler, an agenda, some birthday cards, a box of paper clips, and that picture. I’ll forward you the list.”
“Merci. When you find the box, can you also scan those cards?”
She hung up and stared ahead.
* * *
“You don’t believe Paul Robinson killed his daughter,” said Armand.
“I do.”
“The truth, Jean-Guy.”
“I think Paul Robinson killed his daughter. He regretted it, and he tried to justify it, but yes, I think he did it.”
“Think. You think that. But what do you feel? What do you believe, in here.”
Gamache tapped Beauvoir’s chest. The gesture, the insistence, infuriated Jean-Guy. He hated it, hated it, when Gamache pushed him like that. Not physically, but pushed him to consider feelings. Beliefs. Emotions. When Gamache insisted that they could possibly be as important as thoughts. As facts.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir had strong feelings about feelings, and Gamache knew it. But insisted anyway.
“All right. You want to know what I feel? This’s what I came to show you.”
He pulled out his phone, tapped, and shoved it into Gamache’s face, almost hitting him.
It was the image of Paul Robinson that Jean-Guy had found when he’d googled the man. Robinson was at a conference, standing in front of a poster showing a bunch of graphs. He was smiling, in an exaggerated, silly sort of way.
“Look at the banner behind him,” demanded Jean-Guy. “This’s the week before, maybe days before, Maria died. That’s not the face of a father in such despair he’s considering killing his youngest daughter.”
Gamache took the phone and examined the picture. Then handed it back.
“This proves nothing, Jean-Guy. Like you said, if Paul Robinson smothered Maria, it was in a moment of madness. A psychotic break.”
“You’re right,” said Beauvoir. “That’s what I think too. But you asked me what I feel. And I feel that man did not go home and put a pillow over his daughter’s face.”
Armand stared at his second-in-command. His son-in-law.
“Then who did?”
* * *
Isabelle Lacoste was at her desk going over the latest forensic reports when a text came in from Beauvoir asking her to meet them in the bistro.
She found the Chief and Beauvoir in a private corner. Heads together, deep in discussion. Perhaps about the case. More likely, she thought, about what to order.
“Are you here to see me, ma belle?” Olivier asked, kissing her on both cheeks.
Try as he might, every time Olivier saw Isabelle, he first saw her lying on the floor of their bistro. Bleeding. Dying. As shots exploded all around them.
Now, when she walked into the bistro, it felt like a resurrection.
“Of course, mon beau,” she said, and whispered, “Getting to see you is the only reason I stay in the Sûreté.”
He laughed, took her coat, and nodded to the corner. “You know where they are. What would you like?”
“A tisane and—”
He held up a hand. “I know. They’re just out of the oven. You can probably smell them. You’re like a bakery hound.”
The bistro was quiet. It was between meals, and only a few tables were taken by parents and children having hot chocolate, something the parents would soon regret. The Sûreté officers had the place virtually to themselves.
Isabelle pulled up an armchair and waited until Olivier had brought her chamomile tea, with honey, and put a plate of fresh baked brownies on the table. Once he’d withdrawn, she placed copies of the photograph in front of each of them.
“This was found in the search of Debbie’s home. Locked in her desk drawer.”
There were Debbie and Abigail, young teenagers. Side by side. As though attached at the hip. On the other side of Abigail was her father. But the center of the photograph, the center of attention, was the little girl in her wheelchair.
This was the first time they’d seen Maria.
She was eight, maybe nine years old. Thin. Her arms bent and rigid, her hands and fingers twisted, as was her mouth. But there was no denying the pleasure, the gaiety, in her expression. In her bright brown eyes. Nor was there any mistaking the intelligence.
Whatever had caused her physical disabilities had clearly not affected her mind.
Here was a happy, inquisitive girl.
Armand moved his gaze over to Paul Robinson, whose expression was calm, his smile relaxed. A father enjoying a day out with the family.
One hand was resting on Maria’s chair, and the other was on Abigail’s shoulder.
Abigail’s left hand was on Maria’s shoulder in a sisterly, protective gesture.
Debbie was looking at Abigail, her hands holding Abigail’s arm. Both girls were laughing. One of them had just said or done something funny.
It looked like any one of a hundred pictures each of them had of their own families. It was both heartwarming and disturbing, given what would soon happen.
“Is it dated?” Beauvoir asked.
“I don’t know,” said Isabelle. “I’ve asked the Nanaimo detective to see if anything’s written on the back.”
“You say this was locked in Debbie’s desk?” said Gamache.
“Oui.”
The victim, Armand realized, had gone from “Madame Schneider,” to “Debbie Schneider,” and now “Debbie.” It was a sort of watershed, as they got to know her better and better. A relationship had developed with the dead woman that was far more intimate than they’d ever have had with a live Debbie Schneider.
“What else was in the drawer?”
Isabelle brought out her phone and read from the inventory. “Staples. Two ink cartridges for a printer. An agenda. A ruler. Some birthday cards
and a box of paper clips.”
“Birthday cards?” asked Beauvoir. “Why keep those locked away?”
“Why lock away any of it?” asked Isabelle.
“Were there other pictures of Maria in the house?” Gamache asked.
“No. Ones of Abigail, and of Debbie’s family, but none of Maria.”
Just then her phone beeped with a text. “It’s from Nanaimo.” After reading it, she said, “The birthday cards are from Debbie to Abigail.”
“Unsent,” said Gamache. “And the picture?”
“No date, but someone wrote, The last one. It doesn’t seem to be in Debbie’s handwriting, judging by the writing on the cards. He sent a photograph of one of the cards.”
She showed it to them.
Dear Abby. Happy seventeenth. Love, Debbie.
A heart had been drawn over the i in “Debbie.”
“Doesn’t say much,” said Jean-Guy.
“The handwriting doesn’t match,” agreed Gamache, comparing the card with the back of the photograph. “We must have examples of Abigail’s writing somewhere.”
Beauvoir found a sample and they compared. It didn’t match her writing either.
“So who wrote, The last one?” asked Jean-Guy. “The father?”
“Must be.” Isabelle clicked her phone off. “But why would he give that picture to Debbie? And why did she lock it away?”
All three looked down at the photograph of the happy family. The last one.
“I have a picture to show you,” said Jean-Guy. He produced the one of Paul Robinson at the conference.
Isabelle studied it. “The conference ends the day Maria died.” She looked up at her colleagues. “He doesn’t look like he’s about to—”
“No, he doesn’t,” said Gamache. “Now here’s a question, Isabelle. If Paul Robinson didn’t kill Maria—”
“Then who did?”
“Any theories?” Gamache asked.
“Hello, numbnuts.”
Beauvoir almost jumped out of his skin. He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t seen Ruth coming, and had not crossed his legs.
She grinned at him before turning to Armand. “I was just at your home.”
Ruth went to sit down, but a look from Armand stopped her.