by Louise Penny
‘Monsieur Béliveau wasn’t with her?’
‘No, strange that. He was talking with Hazel and Sophie. He hadn’t seen Sophie in a while. I think they must be friends because Sophie made sure to sit next to him at dinner. As I walked I passed Odile standing on the road. Then I heard Odile and Madeleine talking behind me.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘Not unheard of, but I didn’t think they had much in common. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I have the impression Odile was sucking up. Telling Mad how lovely she was and popular. Something like that, but the funny thing is it seemed to upset Madeleine. I’m afraid I tried to hear more but couldn’t.’
‘What do you think of Odile?’
Clara laughed then stopped herself. ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t very nice. But every time I think of Odile I think of her poetry. I can’t imagine why she writes it. Do you think she thinks it’s good?’
‘It must be difficult to know,’ said Gamache, and Clara felt fear snake around her heart and into her head again. Fear that she was as delusional as Odile. Suppose Fortin shows up and laughs? He’d seen a few of her works but maybe he was drunk or not in his right mind. Maybe he’d seen Peter’s and thought they were Clara’s. That must be it. There’s no way the great Denis Fortin could really like her work. And what work? That wretched half-finished accusation in her studio?
‘Have Odile and Gilles been together long?’ asked Gamache.
‘A few years. They’ve known each other forever but only got together after his divorce.’
Clara was silent, thinking.
‘What is it?’ asked Gamache.
‘I was thinking of Odile. It must be difficult.’
‘What?’
‘I get the feeling she’s trying so hard. Like a rock climber, you know? But not a very good one. Just clinging on for dear life and trying not to show how scared she is.’
‘Clinging on to what?’
‘To Gilles. She only started writing poetry when they got together. I think she wants to be part of his world. The creative world.’
‘What world does she belong in?’
‘I think she belongs in the rational world. With facts and figures. She’s wonderful at running the store. Turned it around for him. But she won’t hear a compliment about that. She only wants to hear that she’s a great poet.’
‘It’s interesting she’d choose poetry when one of the greatest poets in Canada is a neighbor,’ said Gamache, watching as Ruth walked down the steps of her veranda. She paused, turned back, bent down, then straightened up.
‘I married one of the greatest artists in Canada,’ said Clara.
‘Do you see yourself in Odile?’ he asked, astonished.
Clara was silent.
‘Clara, I’ve seen your work.’ He stopped and looked at her directly and for an instant the snake retreated, her heart expanded, her head cleared, as she looked into his deep brown eyes. ‘It’s brilliant. Passionate, exposed. Full of hope, belief, doubt. And fear.’
‘I’ve got plenty of that for sale. Want some?’
‘I’m rather flush right now myself, thank you. But you know what?’ He smiled. ‘All will be as it should, if we just do our best.’
Ruth was standing on her front lawn, staring down. As they approached they saw the two baby birds.
‘Morning.’ Clara waved. Ruth looked up and grunted.
‘How’re the babies?’ Clara asked then she saw. Little Rosa was squawking around preening and parading herself. Lilium was standing still, staring ahead. She looked afraid, like that tiny bird in the old Hadley house. Gamache wondered whether maybe she’d been born with a caul.
‘They’re perfect,’ snapped Ruth, daring them to contradict her.
‘We’re having people over for dinner. Want to come?’
‘I was planning to anyway. I’m out of Scotch. You be there?’ she asked Gamache, who nodded.
‘Good. You’re like a Greek tragedy. I can take notes and write a poem. Your life will have meaning after all.’
‘You have relieved me, madame,’ said Gamache and gave her a small bow.
‘There’s someone else I’d like you to invite,’ he said as they resumed their walk. ‘Jeanne Chauvet.’
Clara kept walking, staring straight ahead.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘She scares me. I don’t like her.’
It was one of the few times Gamache had ever heard Clara say that. Above him the old Hadley house seemed to grow.
THIRTY-FOUR
Agent Isabelle Lacoste was tired of hanging around the lab. The report on the fingerprints was ready, she was assured. They just couldn’t find it.
She’d already been off to interview François Favreau, Madeleine’s husband. He was gorgeous. Like a GQ model in midlife. Tall and handsome and bright. Bright enough to give her straight answers to her questions.
‘I heard about her death, of course. But we hadn’t been in touch for a while and I didn’t really want to bother Hazel.’
‘Not even with sympathy?’
François moved his coffee cup a half-inch to the left. She noticed that his cuticles were ragged. Worry always finds its way to the surface.
‘I just hate that sort of thing. I never know what to say. Here, look at this.’ He took some papers from a nearby desk and handed them to her. On them he’d scrawled, I’m so sorry for your loss, it must leave a big –
Hazel, I wish –
Madeleine was such a lovely person, it must have been –
On and on, for three pages. Half-finished sentences, half-baked sentiments.
‘Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?’
He stared at her with a look she knew. It was the same one her husband used. Annoyance. It was obviously so easy for her to feel and to express it. And impossible for him.
‘What went through your mind when you heard she was murdered?’ Lacoste had learned that when people couldn’t talk of feelings they could at least talk about their thoughts, and often the two collided. And colluded.
‘I wondered who’d done it. Who could hate her that much.’
‘How do you feel about her now?’ She kept her voice soft, reasonable. Cajoling.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is that true?’
The silence stretched on. She could see him teetering on the verge of an emotion, trying not to fall in, trying to cling to the rational rock of his brain. But eventually that rock betrayed him, and both fell together.
‘I love her. Loved her.’ He put his head softly in his hands, as though cradling himself, his long, slim fingers poking out of his dark hair.
‘Why did you divorce?’
He rubbed his face and looked at her, suddenly bleary.
‘It was her idea, but I think I pushed her to it. I was too chicken shit to do it myself.’
‘Why did you want to?’
‘I couldn’t take it any more. At first it was wonderful. She was so gorgeous and warm and loving. And successful. Everything she did she was good at. She just glowed. It was like living too close to the sun.’
‘It blinds and burns,’ said Lacoste.
‘Yes.’ Favreau seemed relieved to have words. ‘It hurt being that close to Madeleine.’
‘Do you really wonder who killed her?’
‘I do, but…’
Lacoste waited. Armand Gamache had taught her patience.
‘But I’m not sure I was surprised. She didn’t mean to hurt people, but she did. And when you get hurt enough…’
There was no need to finish the sentence.
Robert Lemieux had stopped at the Tim Horton’s in Cowansville on his way to Three Pines and now a stack of Double Double coffees stood in the middle of the conference table along with cheerful cardboard boxes of doughnuts.
‘My man,’ exclaimed Beauvoir when he saw them, clapping Lemieux on the back. Lemieux had further ingratiated himself by starting the ancient cast-iron woodstove in the middle of the ro
om.
The place smelled of cardboard and coffee, of sweet doughnuts and sweet wood smoke.
Inspector Beauvoir called the morning meeting to order just as Agent Nichol arrived, late and disheveled as always. They gave their reports, and Chief Inspector Gamache ended by telling them about the coroner’s report.
‘So Madeleine Favreau had a bad heart,’ said Agent Lemieux. ‘The murderer had to have known that.’
‘Probably. According to the coroner three things had to come together.’ Beauvoir was standing next to an easel which held sheaves of large white paper. He wielded a magic marker like a baton and wrote as he spoke. ‘One: mega-dose of ephedra. Two: scare at the séance and three: bad heart.’
‘So why wasn’t she killed at the Friday night séance?’ asked Nichol. ‘All three elements were in place, or at least two of the three.’
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,’ said Gamache. He’d been listening and sipping his coffee. His fingers were a little sticky from a chocolate glazed doughnut. He wiped them with the tiny paper napkin and leaned forward. ‘Was the Good Friday séance a dress rehearsal? Was it a prelude? Did Madeleine say or do something that led to her murder two days later? Are the two séances connected?’
‘It seems too much of a coincidence that they’re not,’ said Lemieux.
‘Oh please,’ said Nichol. ‘Don’t try to suck up to him,’ and she flicked her hand toward Gamache.
Lemieux was silent. He’d been instructed to suck up. It was what he did best and did it, he thought, with great subtlety, but now this bitch actually called him on it in the middle of the morning meeting. His facade of reason and longsuffering was cracking under the mocking of Nichol. He despised her, and if he didn’t have a larger purpose he’d turn his attention to her.
‘Look,’ continued Nichol, dismissing Lemieux. ‘It’s so obvious. The question isn’t how they’re connected, but how they’re not. What was different about the two séances?’
She sat back, triumphant.
Oddly, no one jumped to congratulate her. The silence stretched on. Then Chief Inspector Gamache slowly got up and walked over to Beauvoir.
‘May I?’ He reached for the marker then turned and began writing on a clean sheet of paper, How are the two séances different?
Nichol smirked and Lemieux nodded, but beneath the table his hands clenched.
Isabelle Lacoste had gone from François Favreau directly to the high school in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It was a large red-brick building with an 1867 date stone. The building looked and felt nothing like her own high school. Hers had been modern, sprawling, French. Yet as soon as she stepped into the old building she was immediately back in the crowded halls of her school. Trying to remember her combination, trying to get her hair to stay down, or up or whatever the trend was. Always trying, like a kayaker shooting the rapids and feeling one stroke behind.
The sounds were familiar, voices bouncing off metal and concrete, shoes screeching on hard floors, but it was the smells that had transported her. Of books and cleaner, of lunches languishing and rotting behind hundreds of lockers. And fear. High school smelled of that more than anything else, even more than sweaty feet, cheap perfume and rotten bananas.
‘I put together a dossier for you,’ said Mrs Plant, the school secretary. ‘I wasn’t here when Madeleine Gagnon went to school. In fact, none of the teachers or staff is still here. That was thirty years ago. But all our archives are on computer now so I printed out her report cards and found some other things you might be interested in. Including these.’
She put her hand on a stack of yearbooks, the secular school’s Bible.
‘That’s very kind, but I think the report cards will be enough.’
‘But I spent half of yesterday in the storeroom finding these.’
‘Thank you. I’m sure they’ll be great.’ Agent Lacoste hoisted them into her arms, balancing the file on top precariously as they left the office.
‘We have some pictures of her on the wall, you know.’ Mrs Plant walked ahead. The halls were beginning to fill and the place echoed with unintelligible shouts as kids hailed and assailed each other.
‘Down here. All sorts of pictures. I have to get back to the office. Will you be all right?’
‘You’ve been very helpful. I’ll be fine.’
For the next few minutes Lacoste moved slowly down the long, concrete corridor, looking at old photographs framed and hung, of victorious school teams and school government. And there was young Madeleine Favreau, née Gagnon. Smiling, healthy, with every expectation of a long and exciting life. Jostled by the kids now crowding into the halls Agent Lacoste wondered what high school must have been like for Madeleine. Did she also smell of fear? She didn’t look it, but then the most fearful people often didn’t.
* * *
Gamache took his seat again and reached for his coffee. They all looked at the new list. Under the heading How are the two séances different? he’d written,
Hazel
Sophie
Dinner party
Old Hadley house
Jeanne Chauvet more serious
He explained that on being interviewed the psychic had said she wasn’t prepared for the first, it had been Gabri’s little surprise, and so she hadn’t taken it seriously. She’d judged they were really just a bored group of villagers looking for titillation. So she’d given them the cheap, Hollywood version. Silly melodrama. But when someone later told her about the old Hadley house and somehow the idea of contacting the dead there had come up, she’d taken it seriously.
‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.
‘You’re not really that thick,’ snapped Nichol. ‘The old Hadley house is supposedly haunted. She contacts ghosts for a living. Hello?’
Beauvoir, ignoring Nichol, got up and wrote,
Candles
Salt
‘Anything else?’ he asked. He liked writing things on the board. Always had. He liked the smell of magic marker. The squeak it made. And the order it created from random ideas.
‘Her incantations,’ said Gamache. ‘They’re important.’
‘Right,’ said Nichol, rolling her eyes.
‘For setting atmosphere,’ said Gamache. ‘That was a major difference. From what I understand the Good Friday séance was frightening, but the Sunday night one was terrifying. Maybe the murderer tried to kill Madeleine Friday night but it just wasn’t scary enough.’
‘So who suggested the old Hadley house?’ asked Lemieux and shot Nichol a look, daring her to mock him again. She just sneered and shook her head. He could feel the rage rising from his chest, boiling there and bubbling to his throat. It was bad enough to be mocked, to be insulted, to be accused of sucking up. But to be dismissed as pathetic was the worst.
‘I don’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ve asked and no one can remember.’
‘But if you think the move to the old Hadley house was key then that lets out Hazel and Sophie,’ said Beauvoir.
‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.
‘They weren’t there to suggest it.’
There was a pause.
‘But Sophie’s the only person who’s different from the first to the second séance,’ said Nichol. ‘I don’t think the first had anything to do with murder. I think it only occurred to someone later. And that’s because that someone wasn’t at the first séance.’
‘But Sophie isn’t the only new person,’ said Lemieux. ‘Her mother was only at the second séance as well.’
‘But she could have been at the first. She was invited. If she’d wanted to kill Madeleine then she would have been there.’
‘And maybe that was why she went to the second,’ said Gamache. ‘The first didn’t work, so she had to make sure the second did.’
‘And bring along her own daughter? Come on.’ Nichol opened her notebook and brought out the photo she’d taken off the fridge door at the Smyth place.
‘Look at this.’ She flicked it onto the table. Beauvoir handed it dow
n the table to Gamache who stared at it. The photo showed three women. Madeleine in the middle in profile looking with great and open affection at Hazel, who was wearing a silly hat and smiling. Happy and delighted, a look of great affection on her face too. She was also in profile, looking off camera. At the other end of the picture sat a plump young woman, a piece of cake about to go into her mouth. In the foreground sat a birthday cake.
‘Where’d you get this?’
‘The Smyth place, from the fridge.’
‘Why’d you take it? What interests you about it?’ Gamache was leaning forward, watching Nichol intently.
‘It’s the face. It says it all.’
Nichol waited to see whether the others would get it. Would they see that Madeleine Favreau, so pretty and smiling and attentive, was a fake? No one was really that happy. She had to be pretending.
‘You’re right,’ said Gamache, turning to Beauvoir. ‘Do you see? Her?’ Gamache put his large finger close to the photo.
Beauvoir leaned in and studied the picture then his eyes opened wide.
‘That’s Sophie. That girl taking a bite of cake. It’s Sophie.’
‘Heavier,’ Gamache nodded.
He turned the photograph over. Across the back was written the date the picture was taken. Two years ago.
In only two years Sophie Smyth had dropped twenty, thirty pounds?
Gamache’s phone rang just as the meeting was breaking up.
‘Chief, it’s me,’ said Agent Lacoste. ‘I finally have the report on the fingerprints. We know who broke into the room at the old Hadley house.’
Hazel Smyth seemed to have trouble functioning now. Like a toy whose connections were faulty, she lurched from full speed to stop, then top speed again.
‘We have some questions, Madame Smyth,’ said Beauvoir. ‘And we’ll need to do a thorough search. A few officers from the Cowansville detachment will be here soon. We have a warrant.’