by Louise Penny
‘I need your help,’ she said to Clara, who raised her eyebrows in surprise. And lowered them when she heard what Isabelle Lacoste wanted.
Myrna Landers was humming to herself and grinding coffee to press into her Bodum. Bacon was frying and two brown eggs sat on her wooden kitchen counter, ready to be broken into the frying pan. She didn’t often have more than toast and coffee but every now and then she set her face for a full breakfast. She’d heard someone say once that all the English secretly crave is breakfast three times a day. And for herself she knew it to be true. She could live on a diet of bacon, eggs, croissants, sausages, pancakes and maple syrup, porridge and rich, brown sugar. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and strong coffee. Of course, she’d be dead in a month.
Dead.
Myrna’s spatula hovered over the bacon she’d been prodding. It spat at her hand but she didn’t react. She was back in that dreadful room on that dreadful night. Turning Madeleine over.
‘God, that smells good,’ came a familiar voice from the other end of the loft. Myrna brought herself back and turned to see Clara and another woman standing there, taking off their muddy boots. The other woman was looking around in amazement.
‘C’est magnifique,’ said Lacoste, wide-eyed. Now all she wanted was to sit at the long refectory table, eat bacon and eggs and never leave. She took in the whole room. Exposed wood beams, darkened with age, ran above their heads. The four walls were brick, almost a rose color, with bold, striking abstracts on the walls, broken only by bookcases stuffed full and large mullioned windows. Worn armchairs sat on either side of the wood stove in the center of the room, with a large sofa facing it. The floors were wide-plank honey pine. Two doors led, Lacoste suspected, into a bedroom and a bathroom.
She was at home. Lacoste suddenly wanted to take Clara’s hand. Her home was here. In this loft. But it was also with these women.
‘Bonjour.’ The large, black woman in a caftan was walking toward her, arms outstretched and a smile on her lovely face. ‘C’est Agent Lacoste, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Oui.’ Lacoste gave and received kisses on each cheek. Then Myrna turned and exchanged hugs and kisses with Clara.
‘Come for breakfast? There’s plenty. I can put on more. What is it?’
She could see the strain in Clara’s face.
‘Agent Lacoste needs our help.’
‘What can I do?’ Myrna looked at the young woman, simply and elegantly dressed, like most young Québécoises. Myrna felt like a house next to her. A comfortable and happy home.
Lacoste told her, feeling as though her very words were soiling this wonderful place. When she’d finished Myrna stood very still and closed her eyes, and when she opened them she spoke.
‘Of course we’ll help, child.’
* * *
Ten minutes later, the bacon off the element, the kettle unplugged and Myrna fully dressed, the three women walked slowly through the gently stirring village. A slight mist hung over the pond and clung to the hills.
‘I remember when your neighbor died,’ Lacoste said to Clara, ‘you did a ritual.’
Myrna nodded. She remembered walking through Three Pines with a stick of smoking sage and sweetgrass. It was meant to invite joy back into a place burned by the brutal act of murder. It had worked.
‘An old pagan ritual from a time when pagan meant peasant and peasant meant worker and being a worker was a significant thing,’ said Myrna.
Agent Isabelle Lacoste was silent. She hung her head, looking down at her rubber boots as they squelched into the muddy road. She loved it here. Nowhere else could she walk in the very middle of a road and trust no one would run her down. She could smell the earth and the sweet pine forest on either side of them.
‘Was Madeleine murdered?’ Clara asked. ‘Is that why you want to do this?’
‘Yes, she was.’
Myrna and Clara stopped.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Myrna.
‘Poor Madeleine,’ said Clara. ‘Poor Hazel. She does so much for others and now this.’
If kind acts could protect us from tragedy, thought Lacoste, the world would be a kinder place. Enlightened self-interest, perhaps, but at least enlightened. Is that what I’m about now? Trying to buy favor? Trying to prove how kind I am to whatever power decides life and death and hands out rewards?
The three women looked once more at their destination, rising over the village. Goddamned Hadley house, thought Clara as they trudged forward. Taken another life.
She hoped it was satisfied, hoped it was full. She was glad she hadn’t had breakfast yet and hoped she didn’t smell of bacon and eggs.
‘Why do you do this?’ Myrna asked Lacoste, quietly.
‘Because I think it’s possible the…’ She stopped and tried again. ‘Because you never know…’
Myrna turned and took her hand. Agent Lacoste wasn’t used to suspects and witnesses holding her hand, but she didn’t pull back.
‘It’s all right, child. Look at us. We’re two old crones, Clara and I. We lit a fucking great pole of sage and sweetgrass and fumigated the village for evil spirits. I think we might understand.’
Isabelle Lacoste laughed. All her adult life she’d been ashamed of her beliefs. She’d been raised a Catholic, but one cold, dreary morning while looking at a purple stain on the asphalt where a young man had died in a hit and run she’d closed her eyes and spoken to the dead man.
Told him he was not forgotten. Never forgotten. She’d find out who did this to him.
That had been her first. It had seemed innocent enough, but another sort of instinct had kicked in. It had told her to be careful. Not of the dead, but of the living. And when she was caught by a colleague her fears had proved well founded. She’d been mocked and ridiculed mercilessly. She’d been hounded through the halls of the Sûreté, laughed and sneered at for communicating with spirits.
Just as she was about to quit, when she actually had the letter in hand and was waiting outside her supervisor’s office, the door opened and out came Chief Inspector Gamache. Everyone knew him, of course. Even without the notoriety of the Arnot case, he was famous.
He’d looked at her and smiled. Then he did the most extraordinary thing. He put out his large hand, introduced himself and said, ‘I’d consider it a privilege, Agent Lacoste, if you’d come and work with me.’
She’d thought he was kidding. His eyes never left her.
‘Please say yes.’
And she had.
She suspected Chief Inspector Gamache knew that at each and every homicide scene, when the activity subsided, the teams had gone home and the air had closed back in around the place, Isabelle Lacoste was still there.
Speaking to the dead. Reassuring them Chief Inspector Gamache and his team were on the case. They would not be forgotten.
Now, standing in the fresh, gentle light, holding Myrna’s rough hands and looking into Clara’s warm blue eyes, she let her guard down.
‘I think Madeleine Favreau’s spirit is still there.’ She looked over to the desolate house on the hill. ‘Waiting for us to free it. I want her to know we’re trying and we won’t forget her.’
‘It’s a sacred thing you do,’ said Myrna, squeezing her hands. ‘Thank you for asking us to help.’
Isabelle Lacoste wondered if they’d be thanking her in a few minutes. Finally the three women stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the old Hadley house.
‘Come on,’ said Clara. ‘It’s not going to get easier.’
She plunged down the uneven walkway to the front door and tried the knob.
‘It’s locked,’ she said, images of returning to Myrna’s and feasting on maple-cured bacon and eggs over easy and warm toast and homemade marmalade rising in her mind. They’d tried, they’d done their best, no one could –
‘I have the key,’ said Lacoste.
Damn.
At that same moment Armand Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir were entering the Cowansville Hospital. A few people were lounging
outside having cigarettes, one dragging an oxygen tank behind her. The two men gave her a wide berth.
‘What took you so long?’
Agent Yvette Nichol stood in the doorway of the gift boutique, her ill-fitting blue pant suit dirty at the cuffs from mud, her hair cut in a pageboy, out of fashion since the 1600s, and wearing lipstick that looked as though someone had taken a potato peeler to her lips.
‘Agent Nichol.’ Beauvoir nodded. That sullen, sulky face turned his stomach. He knew, just knew, Gamache had made a horrible mistake inviting her on the team. He was damned if he knew why the chief had done it.
But he could guess. It was Gamache’s personal mission to help every failing, falling, flawed creature. And not just help, like with a nice letter of recommendation, but actually put them on his team. He’d pick them up and put them on homicide, the most prestigious unit in the Sûreté, working for the most famous detective in Quebec.
Beauvoir himself had been the first.
He’d been so disliked at his detachment in Trois-Rivières, he’d been permanently assigned to the evidence cage. Literally a cage. The only reason he hadn’t quit was because he knew his very presence pissed off the bosses. He was full of rage. A cage was probably where he belonged.
Then the Chief Inspector had found him, taken him onto homicide and a few years later promoted him to inspector and his second in command. But Jean Guy Beauvoir never totally left the cage. Instead it had moved inside and in it he kept the worst of his rage, where it couldn’t cause damage. And beside that cage sat another, quieter cage. In it, curled up in a corner, was something that frightened him far more than his fury. Beauvoir lived in terror that one day the creature in there would escape.
In that cage he kept his love. And if it ever got out it would go straight to Armand Gamache.
Jean Guy Beauvoir looked over at Agent Nichol and wondered what she kept in her cage. Whatever it was, he hoped it was well locked. The stuff she allowed out was malevolent enough.
They descended to the lowest level of the hospital, into a room that held nothing natural. Not light, not air, which smelled of chemicals, not the furniture, which was aluminum. And not death.
A middle-aged technician matter-of-factly slid Madeleine Favreau from a drawer. He casually unzipped the bag then reeled back.
‘Oh, shit,’ he shrieked. ‘What happened to her?’
Even though they were prepared it still took a moment for the hardened homicide investigators to climb back into their bodies. Gamache was the first to recover, and speak.
‘What does it look like to you?’
The technician inched forward, craning his head to the limits of his neck, then peeked inside the bag again.
‘Fuck me,’ he exhaled. ‘I don’t know, but I sure don’t want to go that way.’ He turned to Gamache. ‘Murder?’
‘Scared to death,’ said Nichol, entranced. She couldn’t stop staring at that face.
Madeleine Favreau was stuck in a scream. Her eyes bulging, her lips stretched across her teeth, her mouth wide and silent. It was hideous.
What could cause that?
Gamache stared back. Then he took a deep breath.
‘When will Dr Harris be in?’ he asked. The technician consulted the work schedule.
‘Ten,’ he said, gruffly, trying to make up for his little shriek earlier.
‘Merci,’ Gamache said and walked out, the other two in his wake along with the stench of formaldehyde.
Myrna, Lacoste and Clara made straight for the stairs. Clara’s short legs strained to keep up with Myrna who was hauling herself up two at a time. Clara tried to stay hidden behind Myrna hoping the fiends would find her friend first. Unless they were coming up behind. Clara looked behind and rammed into Myrna, who’d stopped dead in the corridor.
‘Had my father seen that,’ she said to Clara, ‘he’d insist we get married.’
‘Nice that there are still some old-fashioned men.’
Myrna had stopped because Agent Lacoste, in the lead, had stopped. Suddenly. Halfway down the corridor.
Clara looked around her protective Myrna and saw Lacoste standing very alert.
Oh, God, she thought. What now?
Slowly Lacoste edged forward. Myrna and Clara edged with her. Then Clara could see it. Yellow strips of tape, scattered on the floor. Yellow strips of tape dangling from the frame of the door.
The police tape had been violated, not simply removed, or even cut. It had been shredded. Something had wanted very badly to get in.
Or to get out.
Through the open doorway Clara could see the dim room. Lying in the center of their chairs, on the salt circle, was a tiny bird, a robin.
Dead.
EIGHTEEN
Agent Robert Lemieux shoved more wood into the massive black stove in the center of the old railway station. Around him technicians set up desks and chalk boards, computer terminals and printers. The space was almost unrecognizable as an old station abandoned by the Canadian National Railways. It was even hard to recognize as the current home of the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Department, except for the huge red fire truck. Technicians were carefully removing posters on fire safety and a few celebrating the Governor General’s Award for Literature. There, glowering from one of them was their own fire chief, Ruth Zardo, on the occasion of receiving the GG. She looked as though someone had thrown excrement on her.
Inspector Beauvoir had called the night before and ordered him to get to Three Pines early to help set up the space. So far all he’d done was stay out of everyone’s way and light the fire. He’d also stopped at the local Tim Horton’s in Cowansville and picked up Double Double coffees and boxes of doughnuts.
‘Good, you’re here.’ Inspector Beauvoir marched in, followed by Agent Nichol. Nichol and Lemieux glared at each other.
Try as he might he couldn’t think what he’d done to create such hostility in her. He’d tried to be her friend. Those had been Superintendent Brébeuf’s orders. To ingratiate himself with everyone. And he had. He was good at it. All his charmed life he’d made friends easily. Except her. And it bugged him. She bugged him, perhaps because she actually showed what she felt and this confused and upset him. She was like a dangerous new species.
He smiled at Nichol now and received a sneer in return.
‘Where’s the Chief Inspector?’ Lemieux asked Beauvoir. Five desks were set in a circle with a conference table in the center. Each desk had its own computer now and the phones were just being hooked up.
‘He’s with Agent Lacoste. They’ll be here soon. Here they are now.’ Beauvoir nodded to the door. Chief Inspector Gamache, in his field coat and tweed cap, was walking across the room, Agent Lacoste behind him.
‘We have a problem,’ said Gamache after nodding to Lemieux and removing his cap. ‘Sit down please.’
The team assembled around the conference table. The technicians, all familiar with Gamache, tried to keep their noise level down.
‘Agent Lacoste?’ Gamache hadn’t bothered to take off his coat, and now Beauvoir was alert to something serious. Isabelle Lacoste, also still in her coat and rubber boots, took off her light gloves and spread her hands on the table in front of her.
‘Someone’s broken into the room at the old Hadley house.’
‘The crime scene?’ asked Beauvoir. This almost never happened. Few people were that stupid. Instinctively he looked toward Nichol but dismissed the idea.
‘I had my kit with me so I took pictures and fingerprints. As soon as the technicians are ready I’ll send these off to the lab, but here, you can see the pictures.’
She handed round her digital camera. It would be far clearer when the images were transferred to their computers, but still it was enough to hush them. Gamache, who’d already seen them, went and had a word with the technicians who changed their priority to the communications.
For a moment even Inspector Beauvoir was speechless.
‘The tape wasn’t just torn, it was shredded.’ He hat
ed the way his body felt. All numb, and his head felt light as though something had detached itself and was floating above him. He wanted it back, and he clenched his fists harder and harder until his short nails were biting into his palms.
It worked.
‘What’s that,’ said Nichol. ‘Looks like someone shit.’
‘Agent Nichol,’ said Gamache. ‘We need constructive, not childish, comments.’
‘Well, it does,’ said Nichol, looking at Lemieux and Lacoste, who weren’t about to help her even if they agreed. And Beauvoir for one did. Sitting on the floor in the center of the chairs was a small dark mound. It looked like a small pile of shit. Was it bear poop? Was that what had shredded the tape? Had a brooding bear found shelter in the old Hadley house?
It made sense.
‘It’s a bird,’ said Lacoste. ‘A baby robin.’
Beauvoir was glad he’d kept his mouth shut. Bear. Baby bird. Whatever.
‘Poor thing,’ said Lemieux and received a withering look from Nichol and a small smile from Gamache.
‘This one’s ready to go, sir.’ A technician signaled from one of the computers. The tech sat down and held out his hand. Lacoste handed him the camera and the fingerprint kit. Within moments the prints had been sent to Montreal and the photos were up on the screen. Soon, one by one, each computer came to life, each with the same disturbing scene, like a ghoulish screen saver. From the hallway a picture of the shredded police tape in the foreground and the tiny bird, dead in the middle of the circle of chairs.
What does that house want? Gamache wondered. Anything that went in alive came out either dead or different.
‘Alors,’ said Beauvoir when they were back around the conference table. ‘As you all know, this is now a murder investigation. Let me bring you up to speed.’ He reached forward and took one of the large cups, expertly pinning back the plastic lip to sip from, then opened a box of chocolate glaze doughnuts.