by Louise Penny
“It is.”
“Why is that?”
“Most people who find a murder victim inadvertently disturb the scene—”
“By doing things like touching the body?”
“Or moving something. Or trying to clean up. People aren’t themselves when faced with a shock like that. Normally by the time we arrive, the damage is done.”
“Like in this case.”
“Non. Madame Gamache touched the body, but she had the presence of mind to do nothing else and to lock up. Then she called me.”
“Without removing the mask to see who it was?”
“That’s right.”
“Wasn’t she curious?”
“I don’t think curiosity was her main emotion.”
“And you told her not to wash the blood from her hands, or shoes.”
“So that we could take samples and be clear about what were her traces and what belonged to someone else.”
“How magnificent,” said the Crown. “To have your wife in such a horrible position, and still you chose your job over her comfort. Not only is she extraordinary, but you appear to be as well.”
Gamache did not respond, though his complexion did, the flush rising into his cheeks.
The two men glared at each other. The loathing no longer a matter of conjecture.
“I will, of course, be calling Madame Gamache as a witness later in the trial, but are you quite sure she didn’t touch anything else? And remember, you’re under oath.”
“I do remember that,” snapped Gamache, before hauling himself back. “Merci. And yes, I’m sure.”
At the defense desk, the lawyers stared at each other in disbelief. It seemed Monsieur Zalmanowitz was doing their job for them. Destroying if not the credibility, then the likability of his main witness.
“In the meantime,” said the Crown, “perhaps you can tell us what you found when you finally arrived.”
*
They passed the Sûreté car, parked by the church. And saw an agent standing at the foot of the stairs up to the door.
As Jean-Guy drove by the bistro, he noticed patrons standing at the window, staring.
Beauvoir had barely stopped the car when Gamache was out and walking swiftly, breaking into a run, down the path, past the agent, to his front door.
What had started as a misty though promising day had turned gloomy again. The clouds shutting out the tentative sun. The damp rolling down the hill and pooling in the village.
Reine-Marie was in the kitchen with Clara and Myrna. The woodstove pumping out heat. Mugs of tea in front of them.
“I’m sorry, mon coeur,” said Armand, as she stood and went to him and he took a step back, holding his hands up as though to ward her off. “I can’t—”
Reine-Marie stopped, her arms out for an embrace. And then she slowly lowered them.
Clara, standing a few steps behind Reine-Marie, thought she had never seen such sorrow in a man’s eyes.
Jean-Guy brushed by him, moving through the gulf between husband and wife, and quickly, efficiently took samples and photographs.
No one spoke until he had finished, and stepped away.
Then Armand stepped forward, embracing Reine-Marie, holding her tight. “Are you all right?”
“I will be,” she said.
“The police arrived about half an hour ago,” said Clara. “Until then, Myrna stood on the porch, making sure no one approached the church.”
“Good,” said Jean-Guy. “Did anyone?”
“No,” said Myrna.
Armand took Reine-Marie to the powder room, and together they washed the worst of the blood off her hands, his large fingers softly rubbing the now dried blood from her skin.
When they’d finished, he took her upstairs to their bedroom.
As she stripped down, he turned the shower on, making sure it wasn’t too hot.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You’re leaving? I’m sorry, of course you are. You have to.”
He held her, then stepping back he took her hands and looked down at them. There was still some blood stuck to her wedding ring. It was difficult not to see the symbolism.
This was what he’d brought into their marriage. Blood ran through their lives together. Like a river that sometimes broke its banks. Marring them. Staining them.
What would their lives have been like had he followed up his pre-law degree and not gone into the Sûreté? Had he stayed at Cambridge? Perhaps become a professor.
He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be standing there trying to scrape one last bit of dried blood from his wife’s hand.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly.
“Someone else did this, Armand. You’re here to help.”
He kissed her and nodded toward the shower. “Go.”
She nodded toward the door. “Go. Oh, you’ll need this.”
She took the key to the church out of her sweater pocket. It too had blood on it.
Armand grabbed a tissue and took the key.
Downstairs, Beauvoir was talking to Clara and Myrna.
“Who else knows?”
“Reine-Marie told us, of course. About the cobrador,” said Clara. “But no one else. Obviously everyone knows something’s happened, especially when the agents arrived. But not what, and the agents wouldn’t tell them anything.”
“Because they don’t know,” said Beauvoir. It was vital, he knew, to guard information. Sometimes from your own people.
“Everyone’s gathered at the bistro,” said Myrna. “Waiting for news. Waiting for you. Some came here, but the agent stopped them.”
“Who?”
“Gabri, of course,” said Clara. “Honestly? Almost everyone came over.”
Joining them, Gamache asked if they’d stay with Reine-Marie until he returned.
“Of course,” said Clara.
Then he and Beauvoir walked swiftly down the path from the front porch to the dirt road, pausing briefly to speak to the agent.
“Stay here, please.”
“Oui, patron.” He was one of the agents who’d been called to Three Pines the evening before.
“What did you do with Monsieur Marchand, the man from last night?”
“As you asked. We kept him overnight. By morning he’d cooled down. Then drove him home.”
“What time?”
“Ten. He refused to tell us where he got the stuff in the packet. What was it?”
Gamache remembered the email, the lab report he’d been reading when Reine-Marie called. “Fentanyl.”
“Ffff—” But the agent stopped himself.
Chief Superintendent Gamache nodded agreement, then continued down his walkway, noticing Gabri approaching from the bistro, taking long strides toward them. Not exactly running. Gabri did not run. He lumbered at speed.
Still holding a dish towel, he intercepted Gamache and Beauvoir.
“What’s happened? The cops won’t tell us anything.” He looked accusingly at the agent, who pretended not to hear.
“And neither can I,” said Gamache.
“It’s something to do with Reine-Marie,” said Gabri. “Is she all right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, thank God for that. But someone isn’t…” He gestured toward the church, and the other agent.
Gamache shook his head and noticed more people heading their way, led by Lea Roux with Matheo close behind.
“You go. I’ll take care of this,” said Gabri. He turned to head them off, allowing Armand and Jean-Guy to escape.
The agent guarding the church was waiting for them. Behind her rose the small white clapboard chapel. Pretty. Innocuous. Like thousands of others in villages throughout Québec.
Only this one held not a relic, a saint’s knuckle or molar, but an entire body.
A dead creature from another time.
CHAPTER 14
Isabelle Lacoste, the head of homicide for the Sûreté, arrived just as Gamache and Beauvoir reached the churc
h. Her car, followed by the Scene of Crime van, pulled in behind the vehicle driven by the local agents.
Investigators unloaded equipment while Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste quickly consulted.
“Can you swab and fingerprint this?” Gamache handed an agent the key in the tissue.
“Tell me what you know,” said Lacoste, turning to Gamache.
Beauvoir suppressed a smile and wondered if either of them realized it was exactly what Gamache used to say when he was head of homicide.
“We haven’t been in yet,” said the Chief Superintendent. “Madame Gamache found the body in the basement, then locked the church. It appears to be the cobrador.”
“The what?” asked Lacoste.
Gamache, so familiar now with the thing, had forgotten that Isabelle Lacoste knew nothing about it.
“You’ll see,” he said.
“Done.” The forensics agent handed the large latchkey back to Gamache, who gave it to Lacoste.
At the top of the stairs, Gamache stepped aside while she unlocked the door and went in, followed by her Scene of Crime and forensics teams. As they streamed past him, Gamache turned and looked at the village and the villagers.
They were standing outside the bistro in a line, a semicircle. It looked, from where he stood, like a frown.
Sleet, part snow and part icy rain, was beginning to fall. And still they stood there, staring. A cluster of dark figures in the distance. Unmoving. Staring at him.
And then he went inside the church. A place that had offered peace and calm and sanctuary, even to an old woman praying for the Son of the Morning.
He went down the stairs, into near darkness.
*
The basement was really just one large room, with worn, scuffed linoleum floors, acoustic tile ceiling stained by water damage here and there, and fake wood siding on the walls. Chairs were stacked against the walls, and long tables, their legs folded up, leaned against one another.
Isabelle Lacoste looked around, her sharp eyes taking in the fact there was no other entrance, and while there were windows, they were covered in layers of grime. It would be easier for light, or an intruder, to enter through the walls.
But, windows aside, it was clean. Uncluttered. Didn’t even smell of mildew.
There was a kitchen at one end, with avocado appliances. And a door, open, off to the side of that.
She turned as she heard the familiar tread on the stairs, and saw Gamache walk into the room.
He gestured toward the open door.
“A root cellar,” he said, as they walked across the basement. “Madame Gamache came down looking for a vase. That’s when she found him.”
“What time?”
“About one forty-five. She locked the church and called me as soon as she got home, and Inspector Beauvoir called you.”
They both, instinctively, looked at their watches. It was three fifteen. An hour and a half.
Armand was familiar with the church basement. It was where funeral receptions were held. Where wedding feasts were often prepared. Where bridge clubs and exercise classes and bake sales took place.
It was a cheerful room that time, and taste, had left behind.
He had never been into the root cellar and didn’t even know it was there.
Chief Superintendent Gamache stood at the threshold, but didn’t go in. There was barely room for the investigators.
A light, fluorescent, artificial, had been left on by Reine-Marie. It was the only light in the small room. There were no windows here. The floor was dirt.
The space was lined with rough wooden shelves with a few vases, and rusty old tin cans, and milky preserves in mason jars.
He took all that in, but what he focused on, what everyone focused on, was the black lump in the corner. It looked as though something had erupted from the earth, been forced out of the ground.
A big black boulder.
Isabelle Lacoste turned to him, puzzled. “The cobrador?”
“Oui.”
Beauvoir was standing at the doorway with Gamache, throbbing. Wanting to go in, to join in. But when Gamache stepped back, so did he.
The coroner arrived, and after greeting Gamache, she looked at Beauvoir.
“Nice glasses.”
Then Dr. Sharon Harris walked past them and entered the root cellar.
“What did she mean by that?” asked Jean-Guy, adjusting his glasses.
“She likes them,” said Gamache automatically. “We all like them.”
Beauvoir stepped away. Unable to just stand idle and watch, he began pacing the periphery of the large room, like a predator in a cage. Smelling blood.
Once the videos and photos and samples were taken, Dr. Harris knelt beside the body.
“He’s wearing a mask,” she said, looking up into the faces.
Lacoste knelt down to get a better look, the videoing agent right beside her.
*
“I warn you,” said the Crown. “This next part is pretty bad. You might want to look away.”
Everyone in the courtroom leaned forward.
The video, not particularly steady but clear, showed Isabelle Lacoste, her second-in-command, and Dr. Harris bending over the dark mound.
Chief Superintendent Gamache stepped forward and knelt beside Lacoste. The shadow of another figure, Inspector Beauvoir, could be seen.
And then the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the black mass.
It was difficult to distinguish a shape, until the camera moved in even closer, on the mask.
It was cracked.
Some of the spectators in the courtroom lowered their eyes.
“I’m going to remove the mask,” Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste narrated.
More people dropped their gazes to their hands.
There was some difficulty getting it off, and the spectators saw glimpses of flesh.
More people lowered their eyes. Some closed them altogether.
Finally, by the time the mask was removed, no one in the courtroom was watching. Except the court officers.
Judge Corriveau forced herself to look, glancing over quickly to the jury and feeling sorry for the poor buggers. Who’d started the trial excited at being involved in a murder case. And would end it traumatized. Or, worse, numb to such horror.
The Crown, who’d seen this video often, stood at his desk, his lips pressed together and his hands made into fists at his sides.
Chief Superintendent Gamache narrowed his eyes. It was slightly easier to watch on video than in person, but not much.
Beauvoir, sitting in the courtroom, had his own mask on. Of professional detachment.
One of the defense lawyers shot a quick glance at the defendant, then looked away, hoping no one in the jury had seen the revulsion in his face as he’d stared at the person he was meant to defend.
The person he privately suspected had done this.
The camera zoomed in even more, in a merciless close-up.
At that stage, even Gamache looked away, then forced himself back, to stare at the giant face on the large screen.
*
Isabelle Lacoste handed the mask to her head of forensics, and turned to Gamache.
“You’re surprised.”
He nodded.
There was a lot of damage, but the face was recognizable.
Not a man, but a woman.
“You know her?” asked Lacoste.
“Oui. That’s Katie Evans. She’s staying at the B&B.”
Lacoste got up, and so did Gamache.
Isabelle Lacoste cast an experienced eye over the root cellar, then motioned toward the door.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said to the coroner and her second-in-command. At the door she paused. “I take it the cause of death is obvious.”
They all looked at the bloody bat, propped casually against one of the shelves, next to a stained mason jar of peaches.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything else,” said Dr. Harris. “But what’s wi
th…”
She gestured at the costume.
“I think I’m about to find out,” said Lacoste, and followed Gamache and Beauvoir into the larger room.
*
On the huge screen in the courtroom, the camera followed the senior officers as they left the root cellar. Just before the camera swung back to the body, it captured Chief Superintendent Gamache as he turned and looked into the room.
An expression of extreme bewilderment on his face.
CHAPTER 15
They set up one of the long tables in the center of the church basement, positioned so they could still see inside the root cellar.
“Who is Katie Evans?” Lacoste asked.
“She’s a visitor,” said Gamache. “From Montréal. An architect. Staying at the B&B with her husband and two friends.”
Lacoste took no notes. They’d get official statements later. Now she just listened. Very closely.
“And the mask and cloak she’s wearing? You called it a—”
“Cobrador,” said Gamache.
He and Beauvoir looked at each other. How to explain this?
“It’s Spanish. A debt collector of sorts,” said Gamache.
“We just found the body,” said Lacoste. “How do you know this?”
“Because the cobrador has been here for a while,” he said.
“A while? How long?”
“A few days.”
“You’re going to have to explain this to me,” said Lacoste. “This Katie Evans was a debt collector? And she wore a costume?”
Again, Gamache and Beauvoir looked at each other. This was going to be more difficult than they thought. Mostly because they themselves had no idea what was going on.
“No,” said Gamache. “She wasn’t a debt collector. She was an architect.”
“Then why is she in the costume?”
The men shook their heads.
Lacoste stared at them, momentarily at a loss. “Okay, let’s go back. Walk me through this.”
“The cobrador showed up the night after Halloween,” said Gamache. “At the annual costume party here in Three Pines. We didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. No one knew who he was, or what he was supposed to be. There was a general feeling of unease, but nothing more. Until the next morning, when we woke up to find him on the village green.”
“Passed out?” asked Lacoste. “Drunk?”