by Louise Penny
Lacoste leaned forward, toward Patrick Evans. “Can you think who might have done this to your wife?”
“No.” He looked at her as a child might.
“Can you back off a little?” asked Lea. “Can’t you see he’s in shock?”
She poured him a scotch and he swallowed it in one go.
Lacoste studied Patrick for a moment. There was certainly something wrong with him. He seemed wrapped in cotton batting. Muffled. It could have been shock, compounded by a natural lassitude.
But judging by his pupils, it was more than that.
“What can you tell me about the cobrador?” she asked.
Patrick stared at her. “Conscience. Right?”
He looked at Matheo, but his eyes weren’t focusing and he was beginning to sway.
Beauvoir knelt down and looked in Patrick’s eyes. Patrick stared back, his mouth slightly open. His soft lips glistening with spittle.
“Have you taken something?” Beauvoir asked, speaking directly, slowly, clearly to Patrick, who just continued to stare.
“He did this,” slurred Patrick. “We all know who did this.”
“Who?” asked Beauvoir.
“He means the cobrador, of course,” said Matheo, bending over Patrick. “Right? Who else?”
“Monsieur Evans, look at me,” said Lacoste, speaking loudly, clearly. “Why was your wife in the church?”
“No one goes to church,” he said, his words barely intelligible.
Beauvoir turned to the Sûreté agent taking notes. “Get Dr. Harris, the coroner. Quickly.”
As he said it, Patrick slumped sideways, and Beauvoir caught him, cradled him, and lowered him, with Lacoste’s help, off the chair and to the floor.
“What’s he on?” Beauvoir asked, not looking up as he spoke, but quickly checking Patrick’s vitals.
Gamache took off his coat, rolled it, and placed it under Patrick’s head.
“I gave him an Ativan,” said Lea, her eyes wide. “Is he okay?”
“When?” asked Beauvoir.
“Just before you arrived. He was hyperventilating and beginning to panic. I wanted to calm him down.”
“Just one?” asked Beauvoir, looking from the unconscious man to his friends.
“One.” Lea rummaged through the large bag she’d dropped on the floor and found the pill bottle.
“But you also gave him a scotch,” said Lacoste.
“Shit,” said Lea. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I didn’t think.”
When Sharon Harris arrived, she took Beauvoir’s place beside the man.
Everyone backed off while she checked him.
“Who is he?” she asked as she worked.
“Katie Evans’s husband, Patrick,” said Lacoste, and got a swift glance from Dr. Harris. “We think it’s Ativan and scotch.”
The qualifier was not lost on the doctor, or the officers.
“Do you have the bottle?”
Lea handed her the pill bottle. She examined it, opening the top and pouring out a few pills. Replacing them, she handed it back to Lea. Without comment.
“He’s just passed out. Probably not used to tranquilizers. And the scotch didn’t help. We should get him to bed. Monsieur Evans?” Dr. Harris bent down and spoke into his ear. “Patrick. Wake up. We’re going to get you back to your bed.”
She pinched his earlobe and his eyes fluttered open, though they remained unfocused.
“Can we get him to his feet?”
Beauvoir and Matheo hauled him up and supported the man, who looked like a drunk. His head lolling, his eyes blinking. It was clear he was at least trying to come to the surface, though not quite making it.
Dr. Harris led them back out through the crowd in the bistro.
Lea made to follow, but Gamache called her back.
“Is he on something?” he asked, examining her closely.
“No.”
“Now’s the time to tell us.”
“I am telling you. Patrick’s the straightest of all of us. Barely even drinks.” She shook her head. “This’s my fault. It was stupid to give him that Ativan.”
And scotch, thought Gamache, studying the woman. She looked genuinely concerned.
“Everything okay?” asked Olivier, poking his head in and looking worried.
“Oui. Monsieur Evans is overcome,” said Gamache. “He needs to rest.”
“Anything I can do, just ask.”
“Merci, patron,” said Gamache, and when Olivier had left, he indicated a seat for Lea.
She sat, and Gamache and Lacoste joined her.
“Can you think of anyone who might want to harm Katie?” asked Gamache.
“I honestly can’t,” she said.
Lacoste, not the cynical sort, always felt a slight alarm go off when anyone answered “honestly” to an interrogation question. Though Lea Roux did seem sincere, and sincerely shocked.
Though she was, Lacoste reminded herself, a politician. And politics was theater.
Now it was Lea’s turn to examine them. Her sharp eyes took in the senior Sûreté officers.
“You think the cobrador killed Katie, don’t you?” She looked from one to the other.
“As does Monsieur Evans and your husband. But you don’t?”
“I don’t see why he would,” said Lea. “That would imply that the cobrador came here for Katie. That she was its target all along.”
“Maybe,” said Lacoste. “What we do know is that the man in the costume disappeared and Madame Evans was murdered. It seems a bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Lea Roux thought about it. “But that doesn’t mean she was his target. Maybe he just lashed out, and she was there. On her nightly walk.”
“But she wasn’t on her walk, was she?” said Lacoste. “She was in the church. Why was that?”
Lea sat back. Considering. “When we traveled, Katie often went into churches. As an architect, they fascinated her. Flying buttresses.” She smiled. “That’s all I can remember, and only because it became a running joke. Great big buttresses.”
She brought herself out of her reminiscence. “But that was Notre-Dame in Paris. Chartres. Mont St.-Michel. Not exactly your village chapel.”
Gamache crossed his legs and nodded. There certainly were no flying buttresses in St. Thomas’s, though it was a nicer place to sit than Notre-Dame. It all depended, of course, on what you were looking for.
“Then why do you think she was there?” he asked, repeating Lacoste’s question.
Lea shook her head. “Maybe she just needed some quiet time. Maybe it was cold and she went in to warm up. I honestly don’t know.”
Gamache noticed that Isabelle had not said that Katie was found in the basement, nor had she told them that Katie was in the cobrador costume.
A costume that was highly symbolic. It spoke of sin, of debt. Of the unconscionable and the uncollected. It spoke of revenge and shame. It was an accusation.
And it had been placed on the dead woman.
Not in error, but on purpose. With a purpose.
Yes, thought Gamache, there was a connection between Madame Evans and the cobrador.
The question was, did her friends know what it was?
“This’s my fault,” said Lea. “If I hadn’t protected him last night, he might’ve been scared away. Or beaten. But at least Katie would be alive.” Then she turned to Gamache. “It’s your fault too. You could’ve done something. But all you did was talk to him. You kept saying he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Well, now he has. If you’d stepped in, she’d still be alive.”
Gamache said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. He’d already explained many times to the villagers that there was nothing he could do. Though given what had happened, he knew he’d go back over it and over it. Wondering if that was really true.
He also knew that her rage was really directed at whoever had picked up that bat and killed her friend. He just happened to be a more convenient target.
So he
Lea Roux was in tears now, having opened the gates to her anger, her sorrow.
“Oh, shit,” she gasped, trying to regain control of herself, as though crying for a dead friend was shameful. “What have we done?”
“You did nothing wrong,” said Lacoste. “And neither did Chief Superintendent Gamache. Whoever did this is to blame.”
Lea took the tissue Lacoste offered and thanked her, wiping her face and blowing her nose. But still crying. Softer now. More sorrow. Less rage.
“You can’t really think the cobrador thing came here for Katie,” said Lea.
“Do you have another theory?” Lacoste asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe the cobrador did do it, but not on purpose. Maybe Katie followed him and found out who he was, and he killed her.”
Gamache nodded slowly. That had occurred to him as well.
But then, why put her in the costume?
And again, why kill her at all? It seemed an extreme overreaction to being exposed.
But that could mean that she recognized him.
Gamache returned his gaze to the fog outside. Far from being oppressive, he found it soothing. Enveloping, not smothering.
Was Katie Evans’s murder premeditated? Had she been the target all along? Or was it the impulsive act of a person who’d been found out? Cornered in that church basement?
“So you can’t think of anyone who might wish your friend harm?” asked Lacoste.
“Not that I know of. She was an architect. She built homes.”
“Did any project go badly wrong? An accident maybe? A collapse?”
“No, never.”
“Her marriage to Patrick,” said Gamache. “Was it a happy one?”
“I think so. She wanted children but he didn’t. You might’ve noticed, he’s a bit of a child himself. Not in a playful way, more in a needy way. He needed mothering. Katie gives him that. She gives us all that. She’s very maternal. Would’ve made a wonderful mother. She’s godmother to our eldest. Never forgets a birthday.”
Lea looked down at the tissue, twisted into shreds in her hands.
“I think their relationship was good,” she said. “I couldn’t see it myself. Especially when—” She looked at Lacoste, then over at Gamache.
They remained silent, waiting for her to finish the sentence.
“When she could’ve had Edouard.”
“Your friend from college,” said Gamache. “The one who killed himself.”
“Or just fell,” she said. It was something she had to believe. Struggled to believe. Lea gave a huge sigh. “Love. What can you do?”
Gamache nodded. What could you do?
Beauvoir, Matheo and Dr. Harris returned, having gotten Patrick to bed.
“He’ll be fine,” said Sharon Harris. “Needs sleep is all.”
“I’ll walk you out,” said Gamache, putting on his coat.
Instead of going through the crowded bistro, they took the doors out onto the patio, and around the back of the shops.
In the bakery next door, through the window, they saw Anton and Jacqueline, talking.
“Monsieur Evans’s friend,” said the coroner. “The woman. Is that Lea Roux, the politician?”
“It is.”
“She said she gave him one Ativan. I’ve never seen a collapse like that in an adult from just one.”
“You think she gave him more?”
“Two at least. Of course, she might’ve been embarrassed to admit it, or maybe she gave him the bottle and he helped himself.”
“I doubt that, don’t you? Is it possible it’s not Ativan, but something else?”
She stopped and considered it.
Gamache could feel the mist creep down his collar and up his sleeves.
“It could be. You suspect a pharmaceutical, an opioid? Without a blood test, I can’t tell. Is there a reason you suspect it?”
“Not really. There’s just so much of it about.”
“You have no idea,” said the coroner, who saw victims every day on her stainless steel gurney.
Gamache didn’t say anything, but he actually had a far better idea than Dr. Harris.
He walked her to her car, but before she got in, she turned to him. “Monsieur Evans kept repeating something about a bad conscience. Is that significant, Armand?”
“The costume the victim was in was something to do with a conscience” was all he said, and she could tell it was all she was going to get.
There wasn’t time, or need, to tell Dr. Harris about the cobrador.
What could sound like a confession on Patrick Evans’s part was simply, almost certainly, a warning. There was a bad, a very bad, conscience at work.
“Merci,” he said. “Your report?”
“As soon as I can. I hope to have something to you by morning.”
When he returned to the back room of the bistro, he found Matheo and Lea sitting facing Lacoste and Beauvoir. Not exactly, explicitly, adversarial. But close.
Lines had been drawn.
He joined Lacoste and Beauvoir.
“We’ve been thinking, assuming, the cobrador killed Katie,” said Matheo. “But maybe not.”
“Go on,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.
“The cobrador came here for someone. Someone who’d done something terrible. Isn’t it possible he killed Katie?”
“Why would he?” asked Lacoste. “Wouldn’t he be more likely to kill the guy in the costume?”
“Maybe he did,” said Lea. “And maybe Katie saw it happen.”
“Then where is he?” asked Lacoste. “The fellow in the costume? Why leave Katie’s body behind, but hide his?”
“Maybe it’s not hidden, really,” said Matheo. “Maybe you just haven’t found it.”
Lacoste raised her brows. She was actually a few steps ahead of them, having ordered the woods around the village searched.
“What can you tell us about Madame Evans?” asked Lacoste.
“Can’t tell you much about her childhood,” said Matheo. “I know she was raised in Montréal. Has a sister. Her parents— Oh,” he sighed, when he realized they would have to be told.
“Do you have their address?” asked Gamache, and took it down from Lea.
“We met, as we told you last night,” Matheo said to Gamache, “at university. We were taking different courses but were in the same dorm. A wild place. My God, I can’t believe we survived.”
Though, thought Gamache, not all of them did.
“Away from home for the first time,” said Matheo. “Young. No rules. No boundaries. All the restraints were off, you know? We went wild. But Katie was calm. She was always up for stuff, but she had self-control. Not a prude, more like common sense. The rest of us had sorta lost our minds.”
“Katie was our safe harbor,” said Lea.
Gamache nodded. What they described were almost exactly the same qualities that had attracted him to Reine-Marie.
A settled warmth, a stability that wasn’t staid. A calm in the maelstrom that was youth. And sometimes middle age.
“Some of the shit we did,” said Matheo, still back in those days. “No one to tell us to stop. It was a bit like Lord of the Flies.”
“But who among you was Ralph and who was Jack?” asked Gamache.
“And who was the unfortunate Piggy?” asked Matheo.
“I don’t understand,” said Lea.
“I’m sorry,” said Gamache. “That was a digression. My apologies.”
But Beauvoir, who also did not understand the references, did understand one thing. Monsieur Gamache never made an unintentional detour.
He added Lord of the Flies to things he needed to look up.
“There were drugs, of course,” asked Gamache.
“Oh, yes, there were drugs. Quite a lot at one stage, but that calmed down after a while. It sorta blew itself out, you know?”
Gamache did know. From his own experiences, but also from his own children. Especially Daniel, his eldest.
University was a time of education, and not all of it in a classroom. It was a time to experiment. To grab life. To consume at random, like the first time at a buffet. And then to stagger to a stop, overstuffed and nauseous. And sometimes unable to pay the bill.
They got the drugs, the booze, the random sex and the consequences out of their system. And began to make more thoughtful choices.
But some never quite managed to push away from the buffet.
What were the chances that four of them would go wild, and all four of them would find their way back to civilization?
Wasn’t there a pretty good chance one of them wouldn’t make it all the way back?
And then he remembered. There was one. A fifth.
“Tell us about Edouard.”
“What?” said Matheo. “Why?”
“It was a tragedy,” said Gamache. “And those reverberate.”
“But it wasn’t Katie’s fault,” said Lea. “She wasn’t even there when he fell. She and Patrick had snuck off into his dorm room. If it was anyone’s fault, it was the dealer who sold Edouard the drugs.”
“And who was he?” asked Lacoste.
“You’re kidding, right?” said Matheo. “That was fifteen years ago. I barely remember the names of my professors. And the guy took off right after Edouard died. As soon as the cops started asking questions.”
“So you don’t know his name?” asked Beauvoir.
“No. Look, Edouard died years ago. It can’t have anything to do with Katie today.”
“You might be surprised,” said Gamache, “how many murders start in the distant past. They have time to fester, to grow. To become malformed and grotesque. Like those men and women abandoned on the island off Spain. But they always come back.”
He commanded the quiet room, the only sound the slight tip-tap of sleet on the panes.
“Where were you last night?” Lacoste asked.
“At the Gamaches’ for dinner,” said Matheo. “And then bed.”
“You didn’t hear Madame Evans leave the B&B or return?”
“Non, I heard nothing,” said Matheo, and Lea nodded.
The Sûreté officers walked Lea and Matheo to the door.
When they’d left, Lacoste and Beauvoir turned to Gamache.
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