by Louise Penny
Gamache shook his head and reached into his pocket for his iPhone. As he brought it out, something fell to the linoleum floor.
The napkin from lunch that day.
He and Beauvoir both bent for it, Jean-Guy getting there first and handing it to Gamache. But not before noticing some words in the chief’s distinctive handwriting.
“Merci,” said Gamache, taking the napkin. He carefully refolded and replaced it in his pocket. Then he scrolled through his iPhone.
“I took this picture Saturday morning and sent it to Jean-Guy, asking him to see what he could find out.”
He showed it to Lacoste.
She was trained not to react to sights, sounds, words. To take things in, but give nothing away. Most people watching her would not see any noticeable change as she studied the image.
But Gamache did, as did Beauvoir, being so close to her.
The very, very slight widening of her eyes. The very, very slight compression of her lips.
For a highly trained homicide investigator, it was the equivalent of a yell.
She raised her eyes from the iPhone and looked from Gamache to Beauvoir and back again.
“It looks like Death,” she said, her voice neutral, almost matter-of-fact.
“Oui,” said Gamache. “That’s what we thought too.”
The figure in the photograph was powerful, threatening. But there was also something almost majestic about it. There was a calm, a certainty. An inevitability about it.
A stark contrast to the rumpled mound in the root cellar. One looked like Death. The other actually was.
“What did you do?” Lacoste asked.
Gamache shifted slightly on the hard chair. It was the first time he’d have to officially answer that question, though he suspected it was far from the final. And he could already sense the expectation that the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté should have done something. Anything. To prevent this.
“I spoke to him. Asked who he was and what he wanted. But he didn’t answer. He just continued standing there. Staring.”
“At what?”
“At the shops. I wasn’t sure which one.”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing. It just stood there.”
“For two days,” said Beauvoir.
“Pardon?” asked Lacoste.
“It stood there for two days,” said Beauvoir.
“Dressed like that?”
“Well, not the whole time,” said Gamache. “I stayed up that first evening, to watch. Sometime in the night it disappeared, but it was too dark to see it go. I went to bed and in the morning it was back.”
Lacoste took a deep breath, then looked behind her at the misshapen lump on the floor of the root cellar, and the coroner kneeling beside it. Him. Her.
It looked pathetic now, drained of all life and any menace it once had. Like an animal curled in a corner to die.
But there was nothing natural about this ruined creature.
“You called it a cobrador,” she said. “I’ve never heard of it. Spanish, you say?” Gamache told her about the cobrador del frac. The Spanish debt collector, who followed and shamed people into paying their debts.
As Lacoste listened, her brows drew together in concern.
When he’d finished, she said, “So the cobrador was here to shame someone into paying a debt?”
“Not exactly,” said Gamache. “The modern cobrador does that. But what we had here was older. The ancestor. The original.”
“And what was that?”
Gamache turned to Jean-Guy, who picked up the story. Telling Lacoste what he’d found out. The island. The plague victims, lepers, babies with birth defects, the witches. And the conscience the authorities created.
“The cobradors were arrested,” said Gamache. “And tortured, to tell them who they were and where they came from. But none talked. Those who didn’t die under torture were executed. But others kept coming, taking their place. Finally the authorities figured out where they were coming from and sent soldiers to the island. They killed everyone.”
“Everyone?” asked Lacoste.
The problem with having an imagination was being able to imagine scenes like that. Men. Women. Children.
“But it seems some escaped,” said Gamache. “Maybe even helped by soldiers sickened by what they’d been ordered to do.”
Tormented, he thought, by their own conscience.
“Now, you’re not telling me what you had on the village green was some sort of ancient avenger,” said Lacoste. “From the Dark Ages.”
“You don’t believe it?” asked Gamache, then smiled slightly before Lacoste could answer. “Non. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that someone knew about the ancient cobrador and decided to use it to get what they wanted.”
“That someone being Katie Evans,” said Lacoste.
“No,” said Gamache. “It couldn’t have been her. I saw her at the boulangerie and in the bookstore when the cobrador was on the village green. And Reine-Marie saw her and her husband heading for dinner in Knowlton last night.”
“So if Katie Evans wasn’t the cobrador, who was?”
It was a question impossible to answer at the moment.
“And if she wasn’t the cobrador,” said Lacoste, “she must’ve been his target. But what’s she doing in his costume?”
They shook their heads.
“Whoever did this will be long gone by now,” said Beauvoir.
“I’m afraid so,” said Gamache. “We’ll hear more from the coroner, but it must’ve happened sometime in the night. The cobrador wasn’t there this morning when I walked Henri and Gracie.”
“What time was that?” asked Lacoste.
“Just after seven.”
“And when did you last see it?”
Gamache thought. “Last night, but I can’t tell you when it left.”
“But it wasn’t there this morning,” said Lacoste. “What did you think had happened to it?”
“I thought it left because it got what it wanted.”
“And what it wanted was Katie Evans,” said Lacoste.
“It would seem so.”
“I wonder what she did,” said Lacoste, “that was so bad.”
Gamache was staring straight ahead of him. Not into the root cellar, but into space.
“What is it?” asked Jean-Guy.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Really?” he said. “A guy in a black cape and mask doesn’t make sense?”
Gamache gave him a stern look, then turned to Isabelle Lacoste. “A modern cobrador is a debt collector, not a killer. And the original cobrador, from the time of the plague, was a conscience. Not a killer. Even when provoked, even to save its own life, it didn’t resort to violence. And neither did this one, last evening.”
He told them about the mob.
“So why did this one kill?” asked Beauvoir.
His question was met with silence.
CHAPTER 16
Olivier stood at the window of the bistro and watched the Sûreté officers walking down the road from the church.
He wasn’t alone. The rest of the village, and those from outlying farms, had gathered in the bistro, the focal point for the community, in good times and bad.
And it was very clear which one they were now in.
They watched, silently, as Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste walked toward them through the cold November drizzle that turned, every now and then, into sleet. Then back again.
Olivier and Gabri had been handing out coffee and tea, juices, and fresh, warm cookies from Sarah’s bakery. No alcohol. No need to feed already heightened emotions.
A fine mist had accompanied the drizzle so that Three Pines appeared socked in.
Both fireplaces, on either end of the bistro, were lit. And now the only sound, besides some labored breathing, was the cheery crackle of the logs.
The place smelled of woodsmoke and rich coffee. And wet wool
from those who’d arrived late, hurrying through the damp afternoon.
On any other day, in any other circumstances, the bistro would’ve felt snug and safe and comforting. A refuge. But today, it did not.
They looked out the window, toward the trinity, and the bad news appearing out of the mist.
Then Olivier looked behind him.
At Patrick Evans. He was sitting, his legs no longer able to hold him. Lea sat beside him, holding his hand, and Matheo stood, his hand on Patrick’s shoulder.
But someone was missing. The only one not there.
Katie.
Though they were fairly sure they knew where she was.
At that moment, she was still alive.
But as soon as the Sûreté officers arrived, and began to speak, she would die. They all knew that whatever had happened, however it had happened, the “who” was not in doubt.
Patrick’s breathing was fast, shallow. His hands cold. His eyes wide.
As he waited.
*
“When you arrived at the restaurant, Chief Superintendent, did you get the impression the people there already knew?” asked the Crown.
“I did.”
“But how? Had Madame Gamache told them?”
“No, she did not.”
“Then how did they know? All they’d seen was a bunch of patrol cars. Why automatically think it was a murder?”
He obviously doesn’t know Three Pines, thought Gamache.
“When the local Sûreté agents arrived and positioned themselves at the church and my home, the villagers knew something was going on. And they knew that Madame Evans was missing. When I showed up, followed by Chief Inspector Lacoste, well, their fears were confirmed.”
“Ahhh, of course. That was stupid of me,” said the Crown, turning once again to the jury and trying to look humble. “For a moment I’d forgotten how well the villagers know you and your work and your colleagues. They’d know Chief Inspector Lacoste was now the head of homicide. But while they know you, Chief Superintendent, you also know them. Well.”
He said it with his back to Gamache, but the insinuation was clear.
The normal, the healthy, the necessary line between cops and suspects was blurred, if not erased altogether. And that was, the Crown seemed to be suggesting, highly unprofessional, perhaps even suspicious.
“That’s a good point,” said Gamache. “And, as it turns out, a great advantage. Murder might be calculating, but it’s not calculus. It isn’t the sum of evidence. What tips someone over into murder?”
Now Armand Gamache was addressing the jury directly, and they’d turned their attention from the Crown Prosecutor to the Chief Superintendent.
Monsieur Zalmanowitz, sensing this shift, turned and glared at Gamache.
“What makes someone kill isn’t opportunity, it’s emotions.” Gamache spoke quietly, softly even. As though confiding in a good friend. “One human kills another. Sometimes it’s a flash of uncontrollable anger. Sometimes it’s cold. Planned. Meticulous. But what they have in common is an emotion out of control. Often something that has been pent up. Buried. Clawing away at the person.”
The men and women on the jury were nodding.
“We’ve all had resentments like that,” said Gamache. “And most of us have felt, at least once in our lives, that we genuinely wanted to kill someone. Or, at the least, we wanted them dead. And what stops us?”
“Conscience?” mouthed a young woman in the second row of the jury box.
“Conscience,” said the Chief Superintendent, looking at her and seeing her smile just a little. “Or maybe cowardice. Some think they’re the same thing. That the only thing that stops us from doing something awful is the fear of getting caught. What would we do, after all, if we were guaranteed not to get caught? If we knew there’d be no consequences. Or if we didn’t care. If we believed the act was justified. If we believed, as Gandhi did, that there’s a higher court than a court of justice.”
“I object,” said the Crown.
“On what basis?” Judge Corriveau asked.
“Irrelevance.”
“He’s your own witness, Monsieur Zalmanowitz,” the judge reminded him. “And you’re the one who asked the question.”
“I didn’t ask for a lecture on the nature of murder and conscience.”
“Maybe you should have,” she said, and looked down at the clock embedded into the judge’s desk. “This is probably a good time to break for lunch. Back in an hour, please.”
She stood up, and in the hubbub of chairs scraping the floor, she whispered to Gamache, “I’ve given you enough leeway. Watch yourself.”
He bowed very slightly to show he’d heard, and caught the eye of the Crown, who was at his desk angrily stuffing papers into his briefcase.
When the judge had gone and the jury was just being shown out, Monsieur Zalmanowitz finally erupted, striding across the courtroom to Gamache, who was just descending the steps from the witness box.
“What the hell was that about?” the Crown demanded. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Gamache glanced over at the jury, the last few of whom were filing through the door, and had clearly heard.
“Not here,” he said to the Crown.
“Yes, here.”
Gamache turned and walked past him, but the Crown reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Oh, no, you don’t.”
Gamache jerked free and swung around to face him.
The journalists, still in the room, were staring. Those on the court beat had never seen anything like this.
“Why’re you sabotaging my case?” demanded Zalmanowitz.
“Not here. If you want to talk, come with me.”
He turned to Beauvoir. “Please find—”
“I’ll find a room, patron,” said Beauvoir, and took off, with Gamache following him, not bothering to see if the Crown was indeed behind him.
Monsieur Zalmanowitz glared after the Chief Superintendent and muttered, “Prick,” just loud enough for the reporters to hear.
Then he grabbed his briefcase and followed.
*
The two men were left alone in the office.
The Chief Crown Prosecutor and the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté. Allies by decree and bureaucratic structure. But not by nature or choice.
When the door had closed, Gamache walked over and locked it. Then turned to Zalmanowitz.
“Lunch, Barry?”
He pointed to a tray on a coffee table, with sandwiches and cold drinks.
Zalmanowitz raised his brows in surprise. Then he smiled. It was not an altogether friendly smile.
He took a salmon with dill and cream cheese on a St-Viateur bagel.
“How did you know I’d start a fight?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” said Gamache, reaching for a smoked meat from Schwartz’s delicatessen. “But if you hadn’t, I would’ve.”
He took a large bite, famished, and followed it with a long drink of iced tea.
“Well,” said Zalmanowitz after finishing half the bagel. “You’re fucking up this case nicely.”
“I think you’re doing an even better job.”
“Merci. I am doing my worst.”
Gamache smiled tightly, and leaning back on the sofa, he crossed his legs and regarded the Crown.
“I think Judge Corriveau is beginning to suspect,” he said.
Zalmanowitz wiped his mouth with a thin paper napkin and shook his head. “She’d never guess. It’s far too outrageous. We’re both lucky we have pensions. We’re going to need them.”
He picked up his perspiring glass and tipped it toward the Chief Superintendent. “To a higher court.”
Gamache lifted his glass. “To burning ships.”
*
Over lunch in a nearby café, having found a shady corner of an outdoor terrasse, Maureen Corriveau confided in her partner.
“I think something’s up.”
“Something’s up?” asked Joan w
ith amusement. “Like the jig?”
“I wish,” said Maureen. “That would at least mean I’d know what’s going on.”
Joan’s face clouded over. “What do you mean? Are you lost? Is the case too much?”
“I can’t believe you asked that,” said Maureen, genuinely hurt. “You think I’m not up to a murder trial?”
“Not at all, but you’re the one who said you didn’t know what was going on. Okay, let’s regroup. What’s bothering you?”
“The Crown Prosecutor, who is also the head of the office for the whole province, has taken to attacking the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté in the witness box. And, as the door was closing for the break, I heard him insult him, in front of everyone.”
“His own witness? But that doesn’t make sense.”
“Worse than that, it could lead to a mistrial. I think some jury members also heard. That’s what I meant. They’re experienced enough to know better, and old enough to keep their personal feelings in check. They’re on the same side, after all. I can’t get a handle on what’s happening and why. Especially in a case that should be so simple. The head of the Sûreté himself was practically a witness to the crime. His wife found the body, for God’s sake.”
She shook her head and pushed her salad away.
“Maybe they just don’t like each other,” said Joan. “It happens. Two bull elephants, two alpha males. They must’ve butted heads before. Lots of times.”
Maureen was nodding, but in a distracted manner. “I’d heard rumors that they don’t get along. Cops and prosecutors often don’t. But it’s more than that. I can’t explain it. They’re crossing a line. One they both know is there. I just—” She ran her hand up and down the moist glass of ice water.
“What is it?”
“It’s ridiculous, but the thought crossed my mind as I walked over here that they might be doing it on purpose.”
“To screw up the case?” asked Joan. “Not only is the jig up, but they’re in cahoots?”
Maureen gave one short grunt of laughter. “You’re quite a dame.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mock. It just seems unlikely, don’t you think? Why would they do that? If you’re right, they’re actually trying to throw a murder trial. Gamache made the arrest. The Crown laid the charges. And now two men who don’t even like each other are intentionally messing it up?”