by Louise Penny
Her gaze shifted to Gamache. The Chief Superintendent simply held those sharp eyes, without nodding. Imperceptibly or otherwise.
“You think the fellow in the costume killed her because of something she did?” asked Lacoste.
“It’d be ridiculous not to think that. He’s gone and she’s dead. Which would mean she did something so horrific she had to pay for it with her life. And he was here to collect. Now, whether she really had done something that bad or he was just crazy is another matter. I have to think someone who puts on a costume like that might not be all there.”
With great effort, Lacoste stopped herself from pointing out that Ruth might not be the best judge of “there.”
“If Madame Evans was the target all along, why not just kill her?” Lacoste asked. “Why the costume?”
“Have you never watched a horror film?” asked Ruth. “Halloween, for instance?”
“Have you?” she asked.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “Once Vincent Price died, the fun went out of them. But I know what they’re like.”
“Well, I’ve been investigating murders for years,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “I’ve never, in real life, seen a killer actually put on a costume, draw attention to himself, and then commit the murder. Have you?”
She turned to Gamache, who shook his head.
“Maybe the idea, at first, wasn’t to kill her,” said Ruth. “What’s a getup like that supposed to do? What’s its purpose?”
“To humiliate,” said Lacoste.
Ruth shook her head. “No, you’re thinking of the modern cobrador. The debt collector. He humiliates. But the old one? The original? What did he do?”
Lacoste thought back to what she’d been told about the dark men from those dark days. Following their tormentors.
“They terrify,” she said.
Ruth nodded.
Terror.
The cops and even the poet, and probably the duck, knew that terror wasn’t the act, it was the threat. The anticipation.
The closed door. The noise in the night. The shadowy figure half seen.
The actual act of terror created horror, pain, sorrow, rage, revenge. But the terror itself came from wondering what was going to happen next.
To watch, to wait, to wonder. To anticipate. To imagine. And always the worst.
Terrorists fed off threats more than actual acts. Their weapon of choice was fear. Sometimes they were lone wolves, sometimes organized cells. Sometimes the terror came from governments.
And the Conscience was no different. It joined forces with the person’s own imagination, and together they brewed dread. And if they were very successful, they took it one notch up, to terror.
“It wasn’t enough to kill her,” Ruth said quietly. “He had to torment her first. Let her know he knew. That he’d come for her.”
“And she couldn’t tell anyone. Couldn’t ask for help,” said Lacoste. “If what you say is true, this is a secret she’d kept for a very long time.”
“One that had literally come back to haunt her,” said Ruth.
Gamache listened and realized, with slight amusement, that Lacoste was treating Ruth as she would a colleague. As though the demented old poet was sitting in for Beauvoir.
Jean-Guy and Ruth were much alike actually, though he’d never, ever tell his son-in-law that he resembled a drunken old woman.
Despite the apparent antagonism, there was understanding there. Affection, and perhaps even love. Certainly an odd and old kinship neither could admit to, or escape.
Gamache wondered if Ruth and Jean-Guy had also been connected, through the ages, over lifetimes. As mother and son. Father and daughter.
Ducks in the same formation.
Isabelle Lacoste rose, as did Gamache, and thanked Ruth, who looked put out that she was being kicked out. Clutching Rosa to her pilled sweater, she marched across the church basement, the agents, rookies and veterans alike scattering before her.
Lacoste and Gamache sat back down. The young agent was dispatched to get the next person on the list while the senior officers considered.
“If the cobrador was here for her, why didn’t Madame Evans just leave?” asked Lacoste.
“Maybe she thought that would bring attention to herself,” said Gamache. “And maybe she knew that if the Conscience could find her here, he’d find her anywhere.”
“How did he find her here?”
“He must’ve followed her.”
“That must be it.” Lacoste thought for a moment. “How did he lure her to the church?”
“Suppose he didn’t lure her,” said Gamache. “Maybe he followed her.”
“Go on.”
“Suppose she came to the church for some peace,” said Gamache. “Thinking she was safe.”
“There is another possibility. Another reason Katie Evans might’ve come here.”
“Oui?”
He waited, as Lacoste’s eyes narrowed and she tried to see what the woman, at the end of her tether, might have done that night. Last night.
“Maybe she arranged to meet him here,” said Lacoste, seeing the thing in her mind.
The frightened woman, worn and frazzled. Realizing that someone knew her secret.
“Suppose she invited him here. Someplace private, where she knew they wouldn’t be disturbed. What was it Monsieur Evans said? No one goes into a church anymore. Maybe she wanted to talk to him. Maybe even to make amends. To get him to back off, go away.”
“And failing that,” said Gamache, following her thinking, “she’d have a plan B.”
A bat.
Lacoste leaned back in her chair and tapped a pen against her lips. Then she sat forward.
“So in this scenario, Katie Evans arranges a rendezvous here, in the church basement, last night. She hopes to give the cobrador what it wants. A full apology. And then he’d go away. But if that doesn’t work, she brings along a bat. But he gets it from her, and kills her with it. Then he takes off.”
“Why did he put her in his costume?” asked Gamache.
It came back to that.
The costume. Why wear it himself, and why in the world would the killer put his victim in it?
“There’s something else,” said Gamache. “I didn’t come here to listen in on your interviews. Madame Gamache told me something just now and you need to know.”
“What?”
“She says there was no bat in the root cellar when she found the body.”
Chief Inspector Lacoste absorbed that information, then she called over the photographer.
“Can you find us the pictures and video you took of the crime scene?”
“Oui, patron,” he said, and went to a laptop.
“Could she have just missed it?” Lacoste asked.
“It’s possible,” admitted Gamache.
“But unlikely?”
“If she knelt down to make sure Katie Evans was dead, I suspect she’d have also seen the bloody bat too. Don’t you? It’s not a large room.”
“Here you go,” said the photographer, returning to the conference table with a laptop.
The images were clear.
Reine-Marie Gamache could not have missed the bat leaning against the wall. It looked like a bloody exclamation mark.
And yet—
And yet, Madame Gamache could not remember seeing it there.
“Which means,” said Lacoste, “it probably wasn’t there when she found the body.”
The “probably” was not lost on Gamache, but he understood the hesitation.
“It was there when Jean-Guy and I arrived an hour and a half later.”
“Madame Gamache locked the church,” said Lacoste. “And there’s only one way in and out. The front door. Someone else must have a key.”
“I’m sure there’re lots of keys floating around,” said Gamache. “But no one went into or out of that church. Myrna stood on our porch, making sure of that, until the local Sûreté arrived.”
“But there was
a small window of time,” Lacoste pointed out. “Of what? Ten minutes? Between when Madame Gamache locked the door and went home to call you, and when Myrna stood on the porch.”
“True. But it was broad daylight. For someone to walk a bloody murder weapon through the village, to replace it. Well, that would take—”
“A lot of balls?”
“And a pretty big bat,” said Gamache.
CHAPTER 21
Chief Superintendent Gamache had been on the witness stand all day in what had become, almost literally, a grilling.
In the stifling July heat of the Palais de Justice courtroom, it would be superhuman not to perspire. Gamache was sweating freely and willing himself not to take out his handkerchief and wipe his face. He knew the gesture could make him look nervous. He also knew they were coming to a pivotal point in the testimony.
He couldn’t risk anything that suggested weakness or vulnerability.
But eventually, when the sweat trickled into his eyes, he had no choice. It was either wipe it away or appear to be crying.
He could hear a small fan humming close by, but it was under Judge Corriveau’s desk and pointing uniquely at her. She needed it more than he did. Unless she was naked under her judicial robes, she’d be withering in the heat.
Still, the sound of the fan was a tease, the promise of a breeze just beyond his reach.
A single fly droned around, sluggish in the heavy air.
Spectators were fanning themselves with whatever sheets of paper they could find or borrow. Though they were longing for an ice cold beer in some air-conditioned brasserie, they refused to leave. They were stuck in place by the testimony, and the perspiration on their legs.
Even the jaded reporters listened, alert, sweat dripping onto their tablets as they took notes.
The minutes ticked by, the temperature rose, the fly sputtered along, and still the examination continued.
The guards had been given permission to sit down by the doors, and the jury had been given permission to remove any outer layers of clothes, and get down to just enough clothing to maintain modesty.
The defense attorneys sat motionless in their long black robes.
The Crown Prosecutor, Barry Zalmanowitz, had removed his jacket from beneath his own robes, though Gamache realized it would still be like a sauna under there.
His own jacket and tie remained in place.
It appeared a sort of game, a test, between the Chief Superintendent and the Chief Prosecutor. Who would wither first. The spectators and the jury watched with fascination as these two men melted, but refused to give in to the climate both had helped create.
But it was much more than a game.
Gamache wiped his eyes and brow and took a sip of the ice water, now tepid, that had been offered to him by Judge Corriveau earlier in the afternoon.
And still the examination continued.
Facing him, swaying slightly on his feet, the Crown Prosecutor swatted the fly away and gathered himself.
“The murder weapon was the bat, is that correct?”
“Oui.”
“This?” The Crown picked up a bat from the evidence table and took it to Gamache, who studied it for a moment.
“Oui.”
“I submit this into evidence,” said Zalmanowitz, showing it first to the judge then the defense attorneys before returning it to the evidence table.
In the gallery behind the Crown Prosecutor, Jean-Guy Beauvoir tensed. Never completely relaxed, he now sat stock-still, alert. Listening and glistening in the courtroom.
“It was found in the root cellar, leaning against the wall, not far from the body?” asked the Crown.
“It was.”
“Sort of casual, don’t you think?”
Beauvoir wondered if everyone could hear his breathing. It sounded, in his own ears, like bellows. Rapid, raspy. Unintentionally fanning the embers of his panic.
But the bellows breathing was almost drowned out by the beating of his heart. Pounding in his chest. In his ears.
They were closing in on the moment he’d dreaded. Glancing around, he thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that the most awful events could appear completely normal. To everyone else.
This was an instant that could change everything. Could change the course of events and the lives of everyone in the courtroom, and beyond.
Some for better. Some far worse.
And they had no idea.
Deep breath in, he commanded himself. Deep breath out.
He now regretted not learning meditation, but he had heard that a mantra was helpful. Something to repeat over and over. To lull.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity, fuck, fuck, he repeated to himself. It did not help.
He was beginning to feel light-headed.
“The killer made no effort to hide the murder weapon?” asked the Crown.
“Apparently not.”
“So it was just sitting there, for all to see?”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir rose to his feet. Feeling sick to his stomach, as though he was about to throw up. He grasped the wooden railing to steady himself.
Annoyed huffs and glances were shot his way as he moved quickly out of the row, stepping on toes as he went.
“Pardon. Pardon. Désolé,” he whispered, leaving winces and grunts in his wake.
Once in the aisle, he headed to the large double doors of the courtroom. They were closed and seemed to recede into the distance, even as he moved toward them.
“Chief Superintendent, I asked you a question.”
Behind Beauvoir there was silence.
He wanted to stop. To turn around. To stand there in full view, in the middle of the aisle. In the middle of the cauldron that was the courtroom. So that the Chief Superintendent, so that Armand Gamache, could see him. And know he was not alone. Know he was supported.
Whatever he chose to do. However he chose to answer.
They all knew this question would be asked. None of the other members of the inner core at the Sûreté had dared ask what Chief Superintendent Gamache intended to do when it was.
They preferred not to know and Chief Superintendent Gamache had preferred not to tell them. And certainly not to consult any of them. So that, when the inevitable investigation was held, this decision could be proven to be his, and his alone.
But Jean-Guy had asked.
It was a sunny summer afternoon just before the trial began, and the two men were working in the back garden of the Gamaches’ home in Three Pines.
The roses were in full bloom and their scent hung in the air, as did a hint of lavender, though Jean-Guy could not have named it. But it smelled nice. Familiar without being cloying. It conjured lazy days when he was very young. Weeks spent at his grandparents’ home in the country. Away from bickering parents and bullying brothers and moody sisters, and teachers and tests and homework.
If safety had a smell, this would be it.
Jean-Guy was kneeling on the grass, trying to twist a thick rope through a hole in a piece of wood. He and his father-in-law were making a swing, to be hung from the branch of the oak tree at the far end of the garden.
Honoré was with them, beside his father on the grass. Every now and then, his grandfather would pick him up and bob him slightly, up and down, whispering to him.
“Really,” said Jean-Guy, “don’t feel you need to help.”
“I am helping,” said Armand. “Aren’t I?” he asked Honoré, who really didn’t care.
Gamache strolled around, whispering to his grandson.
“What’re you saying?” asked Jean-Guy. “Dear God, tell me it’s not Ruth’s poetry.”
“Non. A. A. Milne.”
“Winnie the Pooh?”
Reine-Marie, grand-maman, read Honoré to sleep with the stories of Christopher Robin, and Pooh, and Piglet, and the Hundred Acre Wood.
“Sort of. It’s a poem by A. A. Milne,” said Armand. He turned once again to the infant in his arms and whispered, “When We Were Very Young.”
Jean-Guy paused in his task of cramming the large rope through the too-small hole on one side of the seat, and watched.
“What’re you going to say on the witness stand?”
“About?”
“You know what about.”
The lavender had made him ask. Excessive calm. Contentment. It had made him either brave or foolhardy.
Beauvoir stood up, wiped his sleeve across his forehead and picked up his lemonade from the table. When Gamache didn’t answer, Beauvoir shot a quick glance back toward the house. His wife, Annie, and her mother, Reine-Marie, were sitting on the back porch with their own lemonades, talking.
Even though he knew they couldn’t hear them, he lowered his voice.
“The root cellar. The bat. What we discovered.”
Armand thought for a moment, then handed Honoré back to his father.
“I’ll tell them the truth,” he said.
“But you can’t. That’ll blow the whole thing. Not just the chance of a conviction in the murder of Katie Evans, but the entire operation of the past eight months. We’ve put everything into it. Everything.”
He saw Annie glance his way and realized he’d raised his voice slightly.
Modulating it again, he rasped, “If you tell the truth, they’ll know we know, and it’ll be over. We’re so close. It all hinges on that. All our work will be for nothing, if you tell the truth.”
Jean-Guy knew he didn’t have to tell Gamache that. He was the architect of the plan, after all.
Beauvoir felt Honoré’s tiny hand grasp his T-shirt, and make a fist. And he smelled the baby powder. And felt the soft, soft skin of his son. It was even more intoxicating than lavender.
And Jean-Guy knew why Armand had handed the child back to his father. So that the infant, his grandson, wouldn’t be tainted by the lie he’d just been forced to tell.
“It’ll be all right, Jean-Guy,” said Armand, holding his son-in-law’s gaze before his eyes shifted and softened, as they rested on Honoré. He leaned toward the child. “It isn’t really Anywhere! It’s somewhere else / Instead! Isn’t that right?”
“And now it is now,” came a voice over the garden fence just ahead of the head. Gray and lined, though the eyes were bright. “And the dark thing is here.”
“You’re not kidding,” said Beauvoir, then said to Honoré, “It’s a Heffalump.”