by Louise Penny
“‘Enjoying’ is perhaps not the word,” he said. “I’m just trying not to be overwhelmed. Let me ask you something. When you were first elected a couple of years ago, you sponsored a bill, one you felt strongly about, if I remember.”
“That’s right. Most new members have some legislation they’re personally attached to. Most are defeated.”
“Was yours?” asked Clara.
“It was. A bill to end overcrowding in emergency wards.”
“Actually, it was about the war on drugs,” said Armand.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right.”
“I read your bill closely,” said Gamache. “I was head of homicide at the time and a huge percentage of the crime, of the killings, in Québec are drug-related.”
“And what did you think?”
“I thought it offered creative solutions to an obviously failing situation.”
“Then why did her bill fail?” asked Gabri.
“A number of reasons,” said Gamache.
Senior Sûreté officers on the take. Corruption in government. The cartels getting more and more powerful and calling the shots.
But he wouldn’t say any of that to them. Though there was one reason that he could discuss.
“It might seem trivial, but one reason is that you named the bill after someone. I can’t remember who.”
“Edouard,” said Lea. “And why was that a problem?”
“It made it feel like a personal crusade by a member trying to make her mark, and not a sweeping solution to a growing social threat.”
“Other bills are named for people,” said Clara. “Lots of them.”
“Absolutely, but those that succeed already have broad public support. Their sponsors have done their legwork. Gotten the media, the public and fellow politicians behind them. You”—he turned to Lea—“did not.”
“True. If politics is an art, I was finger-painting.”
“So who was Edouard?” asked Reine-Marie.
“He was our roommate at Université de Montréal,” said Matheo.
“We all hung out,” said Lea. “Edouard was one of the crowd.”
“A little more than that, wouldn’t you say?” said Matheo.
Even in the candlelight they could see her color rise.
“I had a small crush on him,” said Lea. “We all did. Even you, I think.”
Matheo laughed and grinned. “He was very attractive.”
“What happened to him?” asked Myrna.
“Can’t you guess?” said Matheo.
There was a lull in the conversation.
“He must’ve been young,” said Clara, at last.
“Not even twenty,” said Lea. “He jumped off the roof of the residence. Fifteen stories up. Down. Stoned. It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” said Matheo. “We were all very proud that the first thing Lea did when elected was propose La loi Edouard.”
Edouard’s Law.
“It failed,” said Lea.
“But at least you tried,” said Gamache. “And now you’ve learned so much more about the process. Have you considered reentering your bill? Perhaps we can work together to craft an effective bill.”
“I look forward to that,” said Lea.
Gamache waited, then sat back in his chair. Considering.
Lea Roux had been polite, but did not seem all that interested in working with the head of the Sûreté to stop drug trafficking.
And why would that be, he asked himself. And why would she have apparently forgotten that her very first bill, her priority, was Edouard’s Law?
Appearances, again. Like the thing on the village green. They cloaked what was underneath.
CHAPTER 11
In the morning it was gone.
Armand stood on the verandah, in his coat and cap and gloves. Henri and little Gracie on leashes. Though from their perspective, Armand was the one on the leash.
All three stared at the empty village green, shrouded in early morning mist.
He looked around. At the homes, the gardens, down the quiet dirt roads that ran into and out of Three Pines like compass points, marking the cardinal directions.
Nothing stirred. Though there was birdsong now, and a few blue jays rested on the back of the bench on the green.
“Off you go,” he said, unclipping the dogs.
Henri and Gracie took off, down the steps, along the path, over the quiet road and onto the green, where they chased each other round and round the three tall pines.
Gracie ran a little like a hare, loping at speed.
She couldn’t be…? Armand wondered, as he watched.
Her back feet were larger than her front, it was true. And her ears were growing longer and longer.
It was still far from clear what Gracie was. But one thing wasn’t in question.
Whatever she was, she was theirs.
A slight movement off to his left caught his attention and he looked over. There, in an upper window, a large robed figure looked down on him.
Armand stared at it, his eyes sharp, his focus absolute. His body tense.
But when the figure took a step back and light fell on it, he saw that it was Myrna.
She waved and a minute later emerged wearing a wool coat, bright pink tuque with pompom, and carrying the largest mug of coffee he’d ever seen. Really, more a pail.
“Our friend has gone,” she said, her feet making a thucking sound as she yanked her rubber boots out of the mud with every step.
“Oui.”
“I guess Paul Marchand scared him off after all.”
“I guess so.”
He was relieved. But he was also curious, and as they walked slowly around the village green, he wondered if they’d ever know why the cobrador had appeared. And why it had disappeared.
The entire village seemed lighter, leavened. The sun was even trying to break through the chilly mist.
They’d grown almost used to the presence on the green, as one grew used to the smell of manure spread on fields. It was necessary. It might even be good. But that didn’t make it pleasant.
And now the cobrador, the Conscience, was gone. The great accusation in the center of their lives had left. And they had their little village back.
Beside him, Myrna took a long, deep breath, and exhaled. A warm puff in the fresh morning air.
Armand smiled. He felt the same way. Relaxed for the first time in days.
“Do you think he got what he came for?” asked Myrna.
“He must have, otherwise why leave? If he was willing to risk a beating from Monsieur Marchand, I can’t imagine what would make him suddenly give up.”
“I wonder what success for the cobrador would look like,” she said.
“I was wondering the same thing,” said Armand. “The modern one, the one with the top hat, knows when the debt has been paid. It’s a financial transaction. This debt is far different.”
Myrna nodded. “Okay, what I really want to know is who he came for, and what that person did. There, I admit it.”
“Well now, that’s not natural at all,” he said with a smile.
“You too?”
“Maybe just a little curiosity.”
They walked quietly for a moment.
“Not just curiosity, Armand. There’s something else. The Conscience is gone.”
“And that leaves someone here without one. Maybe.”
Neither seemed willing to go further. They both wanted to enjoy this moment. This especially fresh November morning, with the woodsmoke from fireplaces in the air. With the soft sun and cool mist infused with the scent of the musky, muddy earth and sweet pine.
“The children in the apple tree,” said Myrna, watching Henri and Gracie play among the pines. “Heard, half-heard, in the stillness.”
“Hmmm,” hummed Armand. Her thucking steps beside him, far from being annoying, were rhythmic. Like a calming metronome. “T. S. Eliot.”
More and more birds were returning to the village green, and now Henri h
ad Gracie on the wet grass, rolling her over as her tail wagged furiously and her little legs pretended to push him away.
“‘Little Gidding,’” said Myrna.
For a moment he thought she said “giddy.” That Gracie was a little giddy, which she was. But then he realized Myrna was talking about the poem she’d just quoted.
“I’ve been there, you know,” he said.
“To Little Gidding?” asked Myrna. “It’s a real place? I thought T. S. Eliot made it up.”
“Non. It’s not far from Cambridge. Huh,” he said, smiling.
“What is it?”
“The population of Little Gidding is about twenty-five. It reminds me a bit of here.”
They took a few more steps through the soft world.
“And all shall be well,” he quoted the poem. “And all manner of thing shall be well.”
“Do you believe it?” asked Myrna.
The poem, she knew, was about finding peace and simplicity.
“I do,” said Armand.
“Julian of Norwich said it first, you know,” said Myrna. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Her rubber boots kept the soothing rhythm, so that the words and the world fused.
“I believe it too,” she said. “Hard not to on a day like this.”
“The trick is to believe it in the middle of the storm,” said Armand.
And Myrna remembered that while the poem was about finding peace, it came only after a conflagration. A dreadful cleansing.
“Little Gidding” also spoke of a broken king. She looked at her companion, and remembered their conversation the night before. About conscience.
They had a broken king. In fact, they were all broken.
“I think everyone in this village believes that all shall be well,” Armand was saying. “That’s why we’re here. We all fell down. And then we all came here.”
He made it sound such a simple, reasonable, logical course of magical events.
“Ashes, ashes,” Myrna chanted under her breath, “we all fall down.”
Gamache smiled. “My granddaughters were playing that last time they visited. Right there.”
He pointed to the village green. And the exact spot where the cobrador had stood.
He could see Florence and her sister, Zora, dancing in a circle, holding hands with other village children, chanting the old folk song. There was something innocent but also disturbing about those old rhymes.
He could see the children laughing. And then falling to the ground. Sprawled there. Still.
He’d found it both funny and upsetting. To see those he loved lying, as though dead, on the village green. Reine-Marie said that the folk song was centuries old and originated in the Black Death. The plague.
“What is it?” Myrna asked, watching his face.
“Just thinking about the cobrador.”
But that wasn’t altogether true. He was thinking of the small plastic bag he’d pulled from Marchand’s pocket.
With the cobrador gone, he’d go in to work and call up the lab to see what was in the bag. But he knew the answer.
Fentanyl. The plague.
Ashes, ashes, he thought. We all fall down.
“All shall be well,” Myrna reassured him.
“Well, well,” said a familiar voice behind them, and both turned to see Ruth and Rosa waddling and limping down the hill, from tiny St. Thomas’s Church.
“You’re up early,” said Armand, as the old poet joined them.
“Don’t sleep much.”
Armand and Myrna exchanged glances. Their experience with Ruth was that she slept, or perhaps was passed out, most of the time. Waking up once an hour or so to hurl an insult, then back to sleep. The village cuckoo. Clock.
“Went to St. Thomas’s for some peace and quiet,” said Ruth.
Again, Armand and Myrna exchanged glances, wondering what riot could possibly be going on in her home, or more likely her head, that she needed to seek refuge.
“Was he gone when you came out?” asked Armand.
“Who?”
“Who do you think?” asked Myrna.
“You mean the toreador?”
“Yes,” said Myrna, not bothering to correct her, since she suspected Ruth knew perfectly well that a bullfighter hadn’t descended on the village. Though, God knew, they could use help fighting all the bull.
“He was gone,” said Ruth. “But Michael was hanging around. Making a pest of himself.”
“The archangel?” asked Armand.
“Who else? Man, that angel can talk. God this, God that. So I went to the chapel to get away.”
“From God?” asked Myrna, looking at the rumpled woman. “What did you do there?”
“I prayed.”
“Preyed?” Myrna mouthed at Armand, making a talon gesture with her hands.
Armand flattened his lips to stop from smiling.
“What for?” he asked the old poet.
“Well, I start off praying that anyone who’s pissed me off meets a horrible end. Then I pray for world peace. And then I pray for Lucifer.”
“Did you say Lucifer?” asked Myrna.
“Why so surprised?” asked Ruth, looking from one to the other. “Who needs it more?”
“I can think of a few who deserve it more,” said Myrna.
“And who are you to judge?” asked Ruth, not completely unkindly. Though Myrna was now a little afraid she’d be added to that prayer list. “The greatest sinner. The most lost soul. The angel who not only fell to earth, he fell so hard he broke through.”
“You pray for Satan?” Myrna asked again, still unable to get past that, and beseeching Armand for help. But he only shrugged as though to say, “She’s all yours.”
“Shithead,” muttered Myrna.
Then something occurred to her. “For him? Or to him?”
“For him. For him. For him. Jeez, and they call me demented. He was Michael’s best friend. Until he got into trouble.”
“And by trouble, you mean the war in heaven where Lucifer tried to overthrow God?” asked Myrna.
“Oh, you know the story?”
“Yes, there was a movie of the week.”
“Well, none of us is perfect,” said Ruth. “We all make mistakes.”
“That would seem bigger than most,” said Myrna. “Especially since Lucifer hardly seems repentant.”
“And is that a reason not to forgive?” asked Ruth. She seemed genuinely perplexed by the question. Losing herself for a moment. “Michael says Lucifer was the most beautiful, the brightest of them all. They called him the Son of the Morning. He was luminous.”
Ruth looked around, at the cottages, the gardens, the forest. The fragrant mist, and the struggling sun.
“Stupid, stupid angel,” she muttered, then turned to them. “It’s generally thought that a conscience is a good thing, but let me ask you this. How many terrible things are done in the name of conscience? It’s a great excuse for appalling acts.”
“Did your friend Lucifer tell you that?” asked Myrna.
“No, the Archangel Michael told me that, just before he asked me to pray for the greatest sinner of all.”
“Who had no conscience,” Myrna pointed out.
“Or a warped one. A conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?”
“And you think that’s what we had here?” asked Armand. “A conscience gone astray?”
“How should I know? I’m a crazy old woman who prays for Satan and has a duck. It would be nuts to listen to me, wouldn’t it? Come on, Rosa, time for breakfast.”
The two limped and waddled over to the Gamache home.
“A conscience guides us,” Myrna called after her. “To do the right thing. To be brave. To be selfless and courageous. To stand up to tyrants whatever the cost.”
Ruth s
topped and turned back to look at them.
“You might almost say it’s luminous,” she said, pausing on the steps up to the porch. Holding their eyes. “Sometimes all is not well.”
CHAPTER 12
With the Conscience gone, Chief Superintendent Gamache felt it safe to return to Montréal and work. Driving through the November mist that persisted, he arrived at Sûreté headquarters and went about his day, getting caught up on the paperwork and meetings that had been put on hold while the cobrador had occupied Three Pines.
He had lunch with the new head of Serious Crimes at a bistro in Old Montréal. Over the soup of the day and grilled sandwiches, they discussed organized crime, cartels, drugs, money laundering, terrorism threats, biker gangs.
All on the rise.
Gamache pushed his sandwich aside and ordered an espresso, while Superintendent Toussaint finished her grilled cubain.
“We need more resources, patron,” she said.
“Non. We need to use what we have better.”
“We’re doing the best we can,” said Toussaint, leaning forward toward the Chief Superintendent. “But it’s overwhelming.”
“You’re new to this post—”
“I’ve been in the Serious Crimes division for fifteen years.”
“But being in charge is different, non?”
She put down her sandwich, wiped her hands, and nodded.
“You’ve been handed a huge task. But it’s also a great opportunity,” said the chief. “You get to reinvent your entire department. Organize it, define it, put your stamp on it. Toss out all the old ideas, and begin fresh. I chose you because you stood up to the corruption and paid the price.”
Madeleine Toussaint nodded. She’d been on her way out when Armand Gamache had reached down and pulled her back.
She wasn’t so sure she should thank him.
All sorts of eyes were on her.
The first woman in charge of Serious Crimes. The first Haitian to head up any department.
It was, her husband had made clear, an impossible task. It was as though a ship filled with shit was sinking in an ocean of piss.
And she’d just been promoted to captain.
“They chose you because you’re a black woman,” her husband had said. “You’re expendable. If you fail, that’s okay. You can do their dirty work, clean up their house, as Haitians have for decades. And you know what you’ll get?”