by Louise Penny
“It’s not crap.” Though none of her friends backed her up.
Gabri had gone to the Halloween party as Ruth. He’d put on a gray wig and made up his face until he looked like a fiend from a horror show. He’d worn a pilled, moth-eaten sweater and carried a stuffed duck.
All night long he’d swilled scotch and muttered poetry.
“With doors ajar the cottage stands
Deserted on the hill—
No welcome bark, no thudding hoof,
And the voice of the pig is still.”
“That’s not mine, you sack of shit,” said Ruth. She wore a pilled, moth-eaten sweater and carried a real duck.
“A little blade of grass I see,” said Gabri. “Its banner waving wild and free.”
“Stop it,” said Ruth, trying to cover her ears. “You’ll murder my muse.”
“And I wonder if in time to come,” Gabri pressed ahead. “’Twill be a great big onion.”
The last word he pronounced un-ee-yun.
Even Ruth had to laugh, while in her arms Rosa the duck muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“I worked all day on that,” said Gabri. “This poetry stuff isn’t so hard.”
“So this was October thirty-first of last year,” asked the Crown attorney.
“Non. It was November first. We all stayed home on the actual Halloween night, to give out candy to the trick or treaters. This party is always the next night.”
“November first. Who else was there besides the villagers?” asked the Crown.
“Matheo Bissonette and his wife, Lea Roux.”
“Madame Roux, the politician,” said the Crown. “A rising star in her party, I believe.”
Behind him, Monsieur Zalmanowitz heard the renewed tapping on the tablets. A siren song. Proof he’d make the news.
“Yes,” said Gamache.
“Friends of yours? Staying with you?”
Of course the Crown knew the answer to all these questions. This was for the sake of the judge and jury. And reporters.
“Non. I didn’t know them well. They were there with their friends Katie and Patrick Evans.”
“Ahh, yes. The Evanses.” The Crown looked over at the defense table, then back at Gamache. “The contractor and his architect wife. They built glass houses, I believe. Also friends of yours?”
“Also acquaintances,” Gamache corrected, his voice firm. He did not like the insinuation.
“Of course,” said Zalmanowitz. “And why were they in the village?”
“It was an annual reunion. They’re school friends. They were in the same class at the Université de Montréal.”
“They’re all in their early thirties now?”
“Oui.”
“How long have they been coming to Three Pines?”
“Four years. Always the same week in late summer.”
“Except this year, they came in late October.”
“Oui.”
“Strange time to visit. No fall colors left and no snow yet for skiing. It’s pretty dreary, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps they got a better rate at the B&B,” said Gamache, with an expression of trying to be helpful. “It’s a very nice place.”
When he’d left Three Pines early that morning to drive into Montréal, Gabri, the owner of the bed and breakfast, had run over with a brown paper bag and a travel mug.
“If you have to mention the B&B, can you say something like ‘the beautiful B&B’? Or you could call it lovely.”
He had gestured behind him. It wouldn’t be a lie. The old stagecoach inn across from the village green, with its wide verandah and gables, was lovely. Especially in summer. Like the rest of the village, the B&B had a front garden of old perennials. Roses and lavender, and spires of digitalis and fragrant phlox.
“Just don’t say ‘stunning,’” Gabri advised. “Sounds forced.”
“And we wouldn’t want that,” said Gamache. “You do know this is a murder trial.”
“I do,” said Gabri, serious as he handed over the coffee and croissants.
And now Gamache sat in the trial and listened to the Chief Crown.
“What took the classmates to Three Pines initially?” Monsieur Zalmanowitz asked. “Were they lost?”
“No. Lea Roux and Dr. Landers grew up together. Myrna Landers used to babysit her. Lea and Matheo had visited Myrna a few times and came to like the village. They mentioned it to their friends and it became the site of their annual reunion.”
“I see. So Lea Roux and her husband were the ones who instigated it.” He made it sound somehow suspicious. “With the help of Madame Landers.”
“Dr. Landers, and there was no ‘instigation.’ It was a perfectly normal reunion.”
“Really? You call what happened perfectly normal?”
“Up until last November, yes.”
The Chief Crown nodded in a manner that was meant to look sage, as though he didn’t quite believe Chief Superintendent Gamache.
It was, thought Judge Corriveau, ridiculous. But she could see the jury taking it all in.
And again, she wondered why he would imply such a thing, with his own witness. The head of the Sûreté, for God’s sake.
The day was heating up, and so was the courtroom. She looked at the old air conditioners slumped in the windows. Turned off, of course. Too noisy. It would be distracting.
But the heat was becoming distracting too. And it wasn’t yet noon.
“When did it all, finally, strike you, Chief Superintendent, as abnormal?” asked Zalmanowitz.
Gamache’s rank was emphasized again, but now the Crown’s tone suggested a degree of incompetence.
“It really began during that Halloween party in the bistro,” said Gamache, ignoring the provocation. “Some of the guests wore masks, though most were recognizable, especially when they spoke. But one was not. One guest wore heavy black robes down to the floor, and a black mask. Gloves, boots. A hood was pulled up over his head.”
“Sounds like Darth Vadar,” said the Crown, and there were chuckles in the gallery.
“We thought that, at first. But it wasn’t a Star Wars costume.”
“Then who did you think it was supposed to be?”
“Reine-Marie”—Gamache turned to the jury to clarify—“my wife—” They nodded. “—wondered if it was the father from the film Amadeus. But he wore a specific hat. This person just had the hood. Myrna thought he might be dressed as a Jesuit priest, but there wasn’t a cross.”
And then there was his manner. While around him people partied, this figure stood absolutely still.
Soon people stopped speaking to him. Asking about his costume. Trying to work out who it was. Before long, people stopped approaching him. And a space opened up around the dark figure. It was as though he occupied his own world. His own universe. Where there was no Halloween party. No revelers. No laughter. No friendship.
“What did you think?”
“I thought it was Death,” said Armand Gamache.
There was silence now, in the courtroom.
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Death comes to visit and the head of the Sûreté, the former Chief Inspector of homicide, does nothing?”
“It was a person in a costume,” said Gamache with patience.
“That’s what you told yourself that night, perhaps,” said the Crown. “When did you realize it really was Death? Let me guess. When you were standing over the body?”
CHAPTER 2
No. The figure at the Halloween party was disconcerting, but Gamache had really begun to think something was very wrong the next morning, as he’d looked out their bedroom window into the damp November day.
“What’re you looking at, Armand?” asked Reine-Marie, coming out of the shower and walking over to him.
Her brow dropped as she looked out the window. “What’s he doing there?” she asked, her voice low.
Where everyone else had gone home, gone to sleep, the f
igure in the dark cloak had not. He’d stayed behind. Stayed there. And was still there. Standing on the village green in his wool robes. And hood. Staring.
Gamache couldn’t see from that angle, but he suspected the mask was also in place.
“I don’t know,” said Armand.
It was Saturday morning, and he put on his casual clothes. Cords and shirt and a heavy fall sweater. It was the beginning of November and the weather wasn’t letting them forget it.
The day had dawned gray, as November often did, after the bright sunshine and bright autumn leaves of October.
November was the transition month. A sort of purgatory. It was the cold damp breath between dying and death. Between fall and the dead of winter.
It was no one’s favorite month.
Gamache put on his rubber boots and went outside, leaving their German shepherd Henri and the little creature Gracie to stare after him in bewilderment. Unused to being left behind.
It was colder than he’d expected. Colder even than the night before.
His hands were icy before he’d even reached the green, and he regretted leaving his gloves and cap behind.
Gamache placed himself right in front of the dark figure.
The mask was in place. Nothing visible except the eyes. And even those were obscured by a sort of gauze.
“Who are you?” he asked.
His voice was calm, almost friendly. As though this were a cordial conversation. A perfectly reasonable situation.
No need to antagonize. Time enough for that later, if need be.
But the figure remained silent. Not exactly at attention, it wasn’t that wooden. There was about it a sense of confidence, of authority even. It was as if it not only belonged on that spot, but owned it.
Though Gamache suspected that impression came more from the robes and the silence than the man.
It always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert. But he didn’t have the luxury of silence himself.
“Why are you here?” Gamache asked. First in French, then in English.
Then waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty-five seconds.
*
In the bistro, Myrna and Gabri watched through the leaded-glass window.
Two men, staring at each other.
“Good,” said Gabri. “Armand’ll get rid of him.”
“Who is he?” Myrna asked. “He was at your party last night.”
“I know, but I have no idea who he is. Neither does Olivier.”
“Finished with that?” asked Anton, the dishwasher and morning busboy.
He reached for Myrna’s plate, now just crumbs. But his hand stopped. And, like the other two, he stared.
Myrna looked up at him. He was fairly new to the place but had fit in quickly. Olivier had hired him to do the dishes and bus, but Anton had made it clear he hoped to be head chef.
“There is only one chef,” Anton had confided in Myrna one day while buying vintage cookbooks at her shop. “But Olivier likes to make it sound like there’s a fleet of them.”
Myrna laughed. Sounded like Olivier. Always trying to impress, even people who knew him too well for that.
“Do you have a specialty?” she asked as she rang up the total on her old cash register.
“I like Canadian cuisine.”
She’d paused to look at him. In his mid-thirties, she thought. Surely too old, and too ambitious, to be a busboy. He sounded well educated, and was well turned out. Lean and athletic. With dark brown hair trimmed on the sides and longer on top so that it flopped over his forehead in a way that made him look more boyish than he actually was.
He was certainly handsome. And an aspiring chef.
Had she been twenty years younger …
A gal can dream. And she did.
“Canadian cuisine. What’s that?”
“Exactly,” Anton had said, smiling. “No one really knows. I think it’s anything that’s native to the land. And rivers. And there’s so much out there. I like to forage.”
He’d said it with a deliberate leer, as a voyeur might have said, “I like to watch.”
Myrna had laughed, blushed slightly, and charged him a dollar for both cookbooks.
Now Anton, stooping over their table at the bistro, stared out the window.
“What is that?” he asked in a whisper.
“Weren’t you at the party last night?” Gabri asked.
“Yes, but I was in the kitchen all night. I didn’t come out.”
Myrna looked from the thing on the village green to this young man. A party just through the swinging doors, and he’d been stuck doing dishes. It sounded like something out of a Victorian melodrama.
He seemed to know what she was thinking and turned to smile at her.
“I could’ve come out, but I’m not big on parties. Being in the kitchen suits me.”
Myrna nodded. She understood. We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent. Hers was her bookstore. Olivier’s was the bistro. Clara’s was her studio.
Sarah’s, the bakery. And Anton’s was the kitchen.
But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.
“What’s he saying?” Anton asked, taking a seat and gesturing toward Gamache and the robed figure.
*
“Is there something I can help you with?” Armand asked. “Someone you’d like to speak to?”
There was no answer. No movement. Though he could see steam coming from where the mouth would be.
Evidence of life.
It was steady. Like the long, easy plume of a train moving forward.
“My name is Gamache. Armand Gamache.” He let that rest there for a moment. “I’m the head of the Sûreté du Québec.”
Was there a slight shift in the eyes? Had the man glanced at him, then away?
“It’s cold,” said Armand, rubbing his frigid hands together. “Let’s go inside. Have a coffee and maybe some bacon and eggs. I live just over there.”
He gestured toward his home. He wondered if he should have identified his home, but realized this person probably already knew where he lived. He’d just come from there, after all. It was hardly a secret.
He waited for the robed figure to respond to his breakfast invitation, wondering briefly what Reine-Marie might think when he brought home his new friend.
When there was no response, Armand reached out to take hold of his arm. And coax him along.
*
All conversation had stopped in the bistro, the morning service grinding to a halt.
Everyone, patrons and servers alike, was staring out at the two men on the village green.
“He’s going to drag the guy away,” said Olivier, joining them.
Anton made to get up, but Olivier waved him back down. There was no rush anymore.
They watched as Armand lowered his hand, without touching the man.
*
Armand Gamache stood perfectly still himself now. And while the robed figure stared at the bistro, the bookstore, the boulangerie, and Monsieur Béliveau’s general store, Gamache stared at him.
“Be careful,” Armand finally whispered.
And then he turned, and returned home.
*
The robed figure was still there in the afternoon.
Armand and Reine-Marie passed him on their way to Clara’s home, on the other side of the village green.
An invisible moat had formed around the man. The village had slowly ventured out and gone about its business. Though a wide circle was circumscribed around him, beyond which no one went.
No children played on the grass and people walked faster than usual, averting their eyes as they passed by.
Henri, on his leash, gave a low growl and moved to the far side of Armand. His hackles up. His huge ears were forward, then he laid them back on his large and, it must be admitted, slightly vacuous head.
Henri kept everything important in his heart. He mostly kept cookies in his head.
But the shepherd was smart enough to keep his distance from the robed figure.
Gracie, who’d been found in a garbage can months earlier, along with her brother Leo, was also on a leash.
She stared, as though mesmerized by the figure, and refused to move. Reine-Marie had to pick her up.
“Should we say something?” Reine-Marie asked.
“Let’s leave him be,” said Armand. “It’s possible he wants attention. Maybe he’ll go away when we don’t give it to him.”
But she suspected that wasn’t the reason Armand wanted to ignore it. Reine-Marie thought Armand didn’t want her to get that close to it. And truthfully, neither did she.
As the morning had progressed, she’d found herself drawn to the window. Hoping it would be gone. But the dark figure remained on the village green. Unmoving. Immovable.
Reine-Marie wasn’t sure when it had happened, but at some point she’d stopped thinking of him as “him.” Any humanity it had had drained away. And the figure had become “it.” No longer human.
“Come on in,” said Clara. “I see our visitor is still there.”
She tried to make it light, but it was clearly upsetting her. As it was them.
“Any idea who he is, Armand?”
“None. I wish I had. But I doubt he’ll stay much longer. It’s probably a joke.”
“Probably.” She turned to Reine-Marie. “I’ve put the new boxes in the living room by the fireplace. I thought we could go through them there.”
“New” wasn’t completely accurate.
Clara was helping Reine-Marie with what was becoming the endless task of sorting the so-called archives of the historical society. They were actually boxes, and boxes, and boxes, of photographs, documents, clothing. Collected over a hundred years or more, from attics and basements. Retrieved from yard sales and church basements.
So Reine-Marie had volunteered to sort through it. It was a crapshoot of crap. But she loved it. Reine-Marie’s career had been as a senior librarian and archivist with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and, like her husband, she had a passion for history. Québec history in particular.