The Cruelest Month

by Louise Penny

  ‘But suppose it isn’t a bird,’ Gabri whispered to Hazel, who still couldn’t believe she was there.

  Now they stuck together like a giant crawling insect. Multi-ped and multi-feared they moved through the dank house, pausing now and then to get their bearings.

  ‘It’s upstairs,’ said Jeanne in a low voice.

  ‘It would be,’ said Gilles. ‘They’re never right by the door. Never in rose gardens in the summer or living in the ice cream man’s truck.’

  ‘This is like a game I used to play with Peter,’ said Clara to Myrna, who really didn’t care. She was trying to figure out whether, yet again, she’d be the slowest one out of there. Maybe Hazel would be slower, Myrna thought, brightening, and the demons would get her. But she’d probably put on a burst of speed if only to save her daughter. Myrna, as a psychologist, knew that mothers found amazing resources when it came to their kids.

  Fucking maternal instinct, thought Myrna, screws up my life again. She stepped onto the stairs, the carpet runner worn and moth-eaten, and as she mounted one agonizing step at a time she heard the furious beating of the wings growing louder.

  ‘Whenever we watch scary movies and people walk into a haunted house –’ Clara was still talking. Good, thought Myrna. The demons will zero in on her. ‘– we’d play “When would you leave?” Disembodied heads floating around, screams of pain, friends disemboweled, and still they stay.’

  ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘I am actually.’ Clara had managed to scare herself even more and wondered, if this was a movie, would Peter be screaming at the screen for her to leave.

  ‘In there.’

  ‘It would be,’ muttered Gilles.

  Jeanne was standing in front of a closed door. The only one closed on the whole floor. Now there was silence.

  Suddenly there was a mad flapping of wings against the door as though the thing had flung itself against it.

  Jeanne reached out but Monsieur Béliveau laid his long, slender hand on her wrist, taking her hand off the knob. Then he stepped in front of her and put his own hand on the knob.

  And opened the door.

  They could see nothing. Stare as they might their eyes wouldn’t adjust to the darkness. But something in there found them. Not the bird, which was silent for the moment. But something else. The room produced waves of chill and riding on them was the slightest hint of perfume.

  The room smelled of flowers. Fresh, spring flowers.

  At the door Clara was overtaken by melancholy, a sadness that seeped from deep down into the very earth of her. She felt the sorrow of the room. The longing of the room.

  Clara gasped for breath and realized she’d been holding it.

  ‘Come on,’ Jeanne whispered, her voice seeming in Clara’s head, ‘let’s do what we came for.’

  The group watched as first Jeanne then Clara stepped into the darkness. The rest followed and their flashlights soon lit the room in patches. Heavy velvet curtains hung askew at the windows. Against one wall stood a four-poster bed, still made up in cream and lace. The pillow was indented as though a head uneasily rested there.

  ‘I know this room,’ said Myrna. ‘And so do you,’ she said to both Clara and Gabri.

  ‘Old Timmer Hadley’s bedroom,’ said Clara, amazed she hadn’t recognized it. But such was the power of fear. Clara had been in this room many times, tending to the dying old woman.

  She’d hated Timmer Hadley. Hated the house. Hated the snakes she’d heard slithering in the basement. And a few years ago this house had almost killed her.

  Clara felt a wave of revulsion. A desire to put a torch to this cursed place. This place that harbored all their sorrow and anger and fear, but not because it was selfless. No. The old Hadley house first bred those things, sent sorrow and terror into the world, and its progeny was simply coming home, like sons and daughters at Easter.

  ‘Let’s leave,’ said Clara, turning to the door.

  ‘We can’t,’ said Jeanne.

  ‘Why not?’ said Monsieur Béliveau. ‘I’m with Clara. This doesn’t feel good.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Gilles. The large man stood in the center of the room, his eyes closed, his bushy red beard pointing to the wall as his head tilted back. ‘This is just a house,’ he said at last in a voice both calm and insistent. ‘It needs our help.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ said Hazel, trying to take Sophie’s hand though the girl kept shaking her off. ‘Is it just a house or does it need our help? It’s one or the other but not both. My house never asks for help.’

  ‘Maybe you aren’t listening,’ suggested Gilles.

  ‘I want to stay,’ said Sophie. ‘Madeleine, what about you?’

  ‘Can we sit down?’

  ‘You can lie down if you like,’ said Gabri, flicking his flashlight over the bed.

  ‘No thank you, mon beau Gabri. Not just yet.’ Madeleine smiled and the tension was broken. Without further discussion the group got to work. Chairs were brought into the bedroom and placed in a circle.

  Jeanne put the bag she’d carried on one of the chairs and started unpacking while Clara and Myrna explored. They looked at the fireplace with its dark mahogany mantel and severe Victorian portrait above. The bookcase was full of leather-bound volumes from a time when people actually read them and didn’t just buy them by the yard from decorators.

  ‘I wonder where the bird is,’ said Clara, reaching for the items on the dresser.

  ‘Hiding from us, poor thing. Probably terrified,’ said Myrna, pointing her flashlight into a dark corner. No bird.

  ‘It’s like a museum.’ Gabri joined them and picked up a silver mirror.

  ‘It’s like a mausoleum,’ said Hazel. When they turned back to the body of the room they were astonished to see the place lit by candles. There must have been twenty of them scattered around the bedroom. It glowed, but somehow the candlelight, so warm and inviting at Clara and Peter’s, made a mockery of itself in this room. The darkness seemed darker and the flickering flames threw grotesque shadows against the rich wallpaper. Clara felt like dousing each candle, vanquishing the demons their own shadows created. Even her own, so familiar, was distorted and hideous.

  Sitting now in the circle, her back to the open door, Clara noticed that four candles remained unlit. After each person had chosen a chair Jeanne reached into a small sack. Then she walked about their circle scattering something.

  ‘This is now a sacred circle,’ she intoned, her face alternately in shadow and light, her eyes sunken into her head so that they looked to be empty black sockets. ‘This salt will bless the circle and keep all within safe.’

  Clara felt Myrna’s hand take hers. The only sound was the soft pelting as Jeanne scattered the salt round their circle. Clara’s head was tingling, alert to any sound. The thought of a bird swooping out of the darkness, talons extended, beak open and shrieking, was freaking her out. The skin on the back of her neck was crawling.

  Jeanne struck a match and Clara almost jumped out of her skin.

  ‘The wisdom of the four corners of the earth is invited into our sacred circle, to protect and guide us and watch over our work tonight as we cleanse this house of the spirits that are strangling it. Of the evil that’s taken hold here. Of all the wickedness, the fear, the terror, the hatred that binds itself to this house. To this very room.’

  ‘Are we having fun yet?’ Gabri whispered.

  Jeanne lit the candles one by one and returned to her seat, composing herself. She was the only one. Clara could feel her heart pounding and her breathing coming in short, jagged gulps. Beside her Myrna was squirming as though ants were crawling over her. All round their circle people were staring and pale. The circle might be sacred, thought Clara, but it’s definitely scared. She looked round and wondered, if this was a movie and she and Peter were watching it curled up on their sofa, which of them would get it first?

  Monsieur Béliveau, craven, gaunt, grieving?

  Gilles Sandon, massive and strong

, more at home in the woods than in a Victorian mansion?

  Hazel, so kind and generous. Or was it weak? Or her daughter, insatiable Sophie?

  No. Clara’s gaze landed on Odile. She would be the first one lost. Poor, sweet Odile. Already lost, really. The most needy and the least missed. She was genetically designed to be eaten first. Clara felt badly for the brutality of her thoughts. She blamed the house. This house that blocked out the good and rewarded the rest.

  ‘And now we call the dead,’ said Jeanne, and Clara, who didn’t think she could get more afraid, did.

  ‘We know you’re here.’ Jeanne’s voice was growing stronger and stranger. ‘They’re coming. Coming from the basement, coming from the attic. They’re all around us now. They’re coming down the hallway.’

  And Clara was sure she could hear footsteps. Shuffling, limping footfalls on the carpet outside. She could see the Mummy, arms out, bandages filthy and rotting, shuffling toward them, along the dark and damned corridor. Why had they kept the door open?

  ‘Be here,’ Jeanne growled. ‘Now!’ She clapped her hands.

  A shriek was heard inside the room, inside their sacred circle. Then another.

  And a thud.

  The dead had arrived.

  NINE

  Chief Inspector Armand Gamache looked over the top of his newspaper and stole a peek at his infant granddaughter. She was sitting in the mud on the edge of Beaver Lake, sticking her filthy big toe into her mouth. Her face was covered in either mud or chocolate, or something else entirely that didn’t bear thinking of.

  It was Easter Monday and all of Montreal seemed to have the same idea. A morning walk around Mont Royal, to Beaver Lake at the summit. Gamache and Reine-Marie sunned themselves on one of the benches and watched as their son and his family enjoyed a last day in Montreal before flying back to Paris.

  With a shriek of laughter little Florence toppled into the water.

  Gamache dropped his paper and was halfway out of his seat when he felt a restraining hand.

  ‘Daniel’s there, mon cher. It’s his job now.’

  Armand stopped and watched, still poised to act. Beside him his young German shepherd, Henri, got to his feet, alert, sensing the sudden shift in mood. But sure enough Daniel laughed and scooped his tiny, dripping daughter into his large, safe arms and plunged his face into her belly making her laugh and hug her daddy’s head. Gamache exhaled and turning to Reine-Marie bent down and kissed her, whispering, ‘Thank you,’ into the crown of her graying hair. He then reached out and smoothed his hand along Henri’s flank, and kissed him too on the top of his head.

  ‘Good boy.’

  Henri, no longer able to contain himself, jumped up, his feet almost up to Gamache’s shoulders.

  ‘Non,’ commanded Gamache. ‘Down.’

  Henri dropped immediately.

  ‘Lie down.’

  Henri lay down, contrite. There was no doubt who was the alpha dog.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Gamache again and gave Henri a treat.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Reine-Marie to Gamache.

  ‘Where’s my treat?’

  ‘In a public park, monsieur l’inspecteur?’ She looked at the other families walking leisurely through Parc Mont Royal, the beautiful mountain rising in the very center of Montreal. ‘Though it probably wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘For me it would.’ Gamache smiled and blushed a little, glad Daniel and his family couldn’t hear.

  ‘You’re very sweet, in a brutish kind of way.’ Reine-Marie kissed him. Gamache heard a shuffling and suddenly noticed the book section of his paper taking flight, one sheet at a time. Leaping up he lunged here and there, trying to stomp on the pages of his paper before they blew away. Florence, wrapped in a blanket now and watching this, pointed and laughed. Daniel put her on the ground and she stomped her feet as well. Gamache then exaggerated his actions until Daniel, his wife Roslyn and little Florence were all lifting their legs high and lunging after imaginary rogue papers, Gamache after the real thing.

  ‘It’s a good thing love is blind,’ laughed Reine-Marie after Gamache returned to the bench.

  ‘And not very bright,’ agreed Gamache, squeezing her hands. ‘Warm enough? Would you like a café au lait?’

  ‘Actually I would.’ His wife looked up from her own paper, La Presse.

  ‘Here, Dad, let me help.’ Daniel handed Florence to Roslyn and the two men strode off to the pavilion in the forest, not far from the lake. Joggers squelched along the trails of Mont Royal, here and there a rider appeared and disappeared through the bridle paths. It was a brilliant spring day with actual warmth in the young light.

  Reine-Marie watched them go, two peas in a pod. So alike. Tall, sturdy like oaks, Daniel’s brown hair just beginning to thin and Armand’s almost gone on top. The sides, trim and dark, were graying. In his mid-fifties Armand Gamache held himself with ease and his son, now incredibly thirty, did too.

  ‘Do you miss him terribly?’ Roslyn sat beside her mother-in-law and looked into the comfortable, lined face. She loved Reine-Marie and had from the first dinner the older woman had prepared for her. Newly dating, Daniel had introduced her to his family. She was petrified. Not simply because even then she knew she loved him but at the thought of meeting the famous Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. His firm, fair handling of the toughest homicide cases had made him practically a legend in Quebec. She’d been raised with his face staring at her across the breakfast table as her own father read about Gamache’s exploits. Gamache had aged in those pictures over the years, the hair receding and graying, the face expanding a bit. A trim moustache showed up and lines not corresponding to creases in the paper had begun to appear.

  But then, unbelievably, it was time to meet the three-dimensional man.

  ‘Bienvenue.’ He’d smiled at her and given a little bow as he opened the door of their apartment in Outremont. ‘I’m Daniel’s father. Come in.’

  He wore gray flannels, a comfortable cashmere cardigan, a shirt and tie for the Sunday lunch. He smelled of sandalwood and his hand felt warm and solid, like slipping into a familiar chair. She knew that hand. It belonged to Daniel as well.

  That had been five years ago, and so much had happened since. They’d married, had Florence. Daniel had come home one day hopping with the news that a management company had offered him a job in Paris. Just a two-year contract, but what did she think?

  She didn’t have to think. Two years in Paris? They were one year into it now and loving it. But they missed their family and knew how excruciating it had been for both sets of grandparents to kiss tiny Florence goodbye at the airport. To miss her first steps and words, to miss the first teeth and her ever-changing face and moods. Roslyn had expected her own mother to be the hardest hit, but she thought perhaps Papa Armand was the worst. Her heart broke as she’d walked down the glass corridor to the plane and seen his palms pressed against the waiting room window.

  But he’d said nothing. He’d been happy for them, and he’d let them know it. And he’d let them go.

  ‘We miss you all.’ Reine-Marie held her hand and smiled.

  And now there was another child on the way. They’d told both sets of parents at supper on Good Friday and there’d been a roar of excitement. Her father had brought out champagne and Armand had rushed off to the store to get her some non-alcoholic apple cider and they’d toasted their great good fortune.

  While they waited for their order Armand put his hand on his son’s arm and guided him a little way into the pavilion, away from any onlookers. He reached into his Barbour jacket and handed Daniel an envelope.

  ‘Dad, I don’t need it,’ Daniel whispered.

  ‘Please take it.’

  Daniel slipped it into his own coat. ‘Thank you.’

  Son hugged father, like Easter Island megaliths come together.

  But Gamache hadn’t moved far enough away. Someone was watching.

  Roslyn and Florence had joined another young family and Daniel wandered over while Gamache subsided onto the bench again, handing his wife her coffee and picking up his paper. Reine-Marie had disappeared into the front section of La Presse. It was unusual for her not to greet him, but he knew that both of them often got caught up in reading. Henri was asleep in the sunlight at his feet and sipping his coffee he watched the people stroll by.

  It was an exquisite day.

  After a few minutes Reine-Marie lowered the newspaper. Her face was troubled. Frightened almost.

  ‘What is it?’ Gamache reached over and put his large hand on her forearm, searching her eyes.

  ‘Did you read the paper?’

  ‘Just the book section so far, why?’

  ‘Is it possible to be scared to death?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Apparently someone has been. Frightened to death.’

  ‘Mais, c’est horrible.’

  ‘In Three Pines.’ Reine-Marie searched his face. ‘In the old Hadley house.’

  Armand Gamache paled.

  TEN

  ‘Come in, Armand. Joyeuses Pâques.’ Superintendent Brébeuf shook hands and closed the door.

  ‘Et vous, mon ami.’ Gamache smiled. ‘Happy Easter.’

  The surprise of Reine-Marie’s news had worn off. He’d read the story and just as he’d finished his cell phone had rung. It was his friend and superior at the Sûreté du Québec, Michel Brébeuf.

  ‘A case has come up,’ Brébeuf had said. ‘I know Daniel and his family are with you, I’m sorry. Can you spare some time?’

  It was a courtesy, Gamache knew, for his boss to ask. He could have commanded. But then the two had grown up together, been best friends forever and gone into the Sûreté together. They’d even gone after the Superintendent’s job together. Brébeuf had prevailed, but it had not affected their friendship.

  ‘They’re returning to Paris tonight. Not to worry. We’ve had a good visit though never long enough. I’ll be in shortly.’

  He’d said his goodbyes to his son, his daughter-in-law and his Florence.

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