by Louise Penny
“But if it works…” Zalmanowitz tried once again, pausing for her interruption and surprised when she allowed him to continue. “If it works, the cartel will be destroyed. The drug trade will be crippled, if not wiped out. We will have won.”
Judge Corriveau turned to the Chief Crown. She’d essentially dismissed him. Marginalizing him in this interview. But now she saw him with fresh eyes.
He was right.
And he was more than that. He cared so much for this province, for the men and women and children born and unborn, that he had sacrificed his career. Perhaps even his freedom.
Which was more than she had done.
The longer she stared at him, the more uncomfortable Zalmanowitz became, squirming slightly under the unrelenting gaze. Until he noticed the look in her eyes. Gentle now. Almost kindly.
Then she turned to Gamache, and before her swam the increasingly ugly headlines. The Enquête report on television. The questions screamed at the Chief Superintendent by reporters circling. Smelling blood and entrails. Hoping to prod him over the edge, with their sharp questions and innuendo.
The new head of the Sûreté, they proclaimed, was way out of his depth. Incompetent. A good man, perhaps, but past his prime. And maybe, they’d begun to suggest just recently, not a good man. He was allowing crime to run rampant. Maybe he, like his predecessors, was in on it.
Gamache had taken all that, and more. In fact, it was what he’d hoped would happen. He’d manufactured that image of himself and the Sûreté. The cartel had to believe he personally was no threat at all.
Québec had become Dodge City, and Marshal Dillon was napping.
But he wasn’t napping. He was waiting. And waiting. And quietly gathering forces.
And it wasn’t just the Chief Superintendent, she realized. It couldn’t be done without the agreement of at least a handful of senior officers. A small group of men and women.
Tiny. But powerful.
“You know who it is, the head of the cartel?” Judge Corriveau studied him. “Of course you do. Is it the defendant?” She thought for a moment and shook her head. “But that doesn’t make sense. The defendant came to you and pretty much confessed, right? Unless you’re lying about that.”
She looked at Gamache, then over to Zalmanowitz.
“Oh, the defendant murdered Katie Evans,” said Gamache. And this time Barry Zalmanowitz managed to not look at his co-conspirator. But he was surprised.
It was another lie. And one that, by now, probably didn’t matter. So much crap was flying around. So why lie about that? He remembered the whispered conversation a few minutes earlier between Gamache and his second-in-command.
And he remembered Gamache sinking to the hard bench, and lowering his head.
The end wasn’t close. It was here. The devil was among us.
It all, now, depended on Judge Corriveau. She knew, Zalmanowitz could tell, that she was being lied to. Not only in her chambers, but in the courtroom. It was a most serious crime. Perjury. The perversion of justice. No one knew that better than the three people in that room. Never mind her threat to arrest Gamache for murder. Though they all knew it was a charge that wouldn’t stick.
His intention, misguided or not, was to save lives, not take them.
But the perjury? That would stick.
They sat in silence, as Maureen Corriveau decided what to do. Arrest them? Call a mistrial? Free the defendant? All things she should do. No one knew that better than the three people in that room.
She sat absolutely still, but they could hear her breathing. Like someone who’d just climbed a steep flight of stairs.
“I need time,” she said. “To consider what you’ve told me.”
She stood, and they stood with her.
“I’ll get back to you with my decision before the trial resumes tomorrow morning. At eight. I think you know what I will likely decide. Prepare yourself.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Gamache. “Thank you for hearing us out.”
She held his hand, and squeezed it slightly, then her gaze widened to include the Chief Crown. “I’m sorry.”
As the door closed, Gamache looked at his watch and hurried down the corridor, Zalmanowitz keeping up with the long strides.
“That did not sound promising,” he said. “She’s going to come for us, isn’t she?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Gamache. “She has no choice. We brought this on ourselves and knew this almost certainly would happen. But what we didn’t know is that Judge Corriveau would do what she just did.”
“Haul us up?” asked Zalmanowitz.
“No.” Gamache stopped, and turned to the Crown. “Let us go.” He put out his hand. “This is where I leave you.”
“Can I come?”
“You, monsieur, have done more than enough. A whole lot of scorn is going to be heaped on you, no matter what happens, by people you care about. Colleagues. Friends. Family maybe. I hope you know in your heart that you did the right thing.”
Barry Zalmanowitz stood quietly, and smiled, just a little. “I do. I might have difficulty answering to them, but I can at least answer to my big stinking conscience.”
He took Gamache’s hand, and felt the slight squeeze.
“It’s tonight, isn’t it?”
When Gamache didn’t answer, Zalmanowitz gripped tighter for an instant and said, “Good luck.” Then added, “Merde.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Zalmanowitz,” said Gamache, in a surprisingly accurate imitation of Judge Corriveau. Then in his own voice, “Merci.”
*
In her chambers, Maureen Corriveau sat back down and stared ahead of her. Knowing what she’d just done.
It was unjustifiable, what Gamache and Zalmanowitz had confessed to. Subverting justice, and in the Palais de Justice itself. But perhaps there was, as Gandhi had said, a higher court.
What Gandhi hadn’t mentioned, and what would have been helpful, was that it wasn’t just the court that was high, so was the price. Almost too high to contemplate.
She thought about the original cobradors, burned at the stake for the justice they sought.
Was the cobrador who showed up in that little village of Three Pines a travesty, a mockery of that courage? Or the embodiment of it?
Were the cop and Crown a travesty, or an example of what citizenship should be?
And did it matter? Her job wasn’t to write the laws, but to uphold them. And in doing that, was she keeping vigilantes and chaos at bay? Or was she just following orders?
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Why is it so difficult to know?”
“You finished for the day, Your Honor?” the clerk asked, knocking and then poking his head into her office.
“Not just yet,” she said. “You go. What’re you up to tonight?”
“Beer and burgers, and we’ll get the sprinklers going for the kids. Which reminds me. If you hear banging and swearing, they’re working on the AC.”
“Perfect,” she said with a smile.
Perfect, she thought, as the door clicked shut.
She sat back and tried to make sense of what had just happened, what she’d just heard from the Chief Superintendent and the Chief Crown.
Maureen Corriveau felt as though the lies, like goblins, were swarming. Laying siege to all that was familiar. And comfortable.
The law. The courts. Order. Justice.
She stared at the small antique carriage clock on her desk. A gift from her law offices when she’d ascended to the bench.
The fine hands were almost at the five. She’d given Gamache until the next morning. Fifteen hours.
Was it enough? Was it too much? Tomorrow at this time, would they all be arrested? Would they all still be alive?
When she left to go home to Joan that evening, would a cobrador fall into step behind her, down the long, stifling corridor? For doing too much? For doing too little?
She wished now she hadn’t invited them into her chambers. Hadn’t forced the truth, and the li
es, from them. She wished she could hide in happy ignorance. Go home to beer and burgers.
The one question the Chief Superintendent hadn’t answered was who the defendant really was. And how the murder of Katie Evans was connected to all this.
But she knew she’d find out soon enough.
CHAPTER 28
Down in Myrna’s bookstore there was a sudden banging, and up the stairs to the loft came Jean-Guy, stomping and snarling and shaking snow from his boots and coat.
Isabelle Lacoste followed him, shaking her head. It was as though each November came as a surprise to him. Some investigator.
“It’s awful out there,” he said, as he and Lacoste took off their coats.
Myrna smiled and watched, knowing that while Armand had two children by birth, these two were just as equally his son and daughter. Always had been. Always would be.
“How did it go in Montréal?” asked Gamache, getting up off the sofa.
“It’s done,” said Beauvoir, clearly not wanting to talk about the visit to Katie’s sister and parents. “I’ll tell you more over dinner. There is dinner, isn’t there?”
“I asked Olivier to take over a casserole,” said Gamache. “Let me just see where that’s at.”
Beauvoir popped a slice of baguette piled with brie and ripe pear into his mouth, mumbled something that sounded like, “I’ll go,” and grabbing his coat, he disappeared.
Isabelle poured a glass of red wine and wedged herself into the sofa between Myrna and Clara.
“Long day?” asked Myrna.
“And not over yet. I’m glad you’re here,” she said to the Gamaches. “I was going to come over here anyway.”
“Really?” asked Clara. “Why?”
“I need some information from someone who knew Madame Evans and her friends. I’ve been reading over the interviews. Hard at this stage to know what’s important, but nothing leaps out. You know you’re in trouble when the only interesting thing said was from Ruth.”
“Really?” said Gamache, who’d been present at most of that interview and couldn’t remember anything at all useful.
“Well, interesting but not relevant.” She turned to Reine-Marie. “Did you know the church was used by rum runners during Prohibition?”
“It was?” said Reine-Marie.
“Really?” said Clara. “That’s news to me.”
“I knew it,” said Myrna. “Ruth told me.”
“Come on,” said Clara. “When? While you were doing her dishes?”
As far as they could tell, Ruth still didn’t know Myrna’s name or what she did, beyond a recurring suspicion that Myrna ran a lending library and was someone’s maid.
“She told me in a roundabout way,” Myrna admitted.
Since Ruth was not known for subtlety, they looked at her with disbelief.
“I prayed to be good and strong and wise,
for my daily bread and deliverance
from the sins I was told were mine from birth,
and the Guilt of an old inheritance.”
“One of Ruth’s?” asked Reine-Marie when Myrna finished reciting. “I don’t recognize it.”
“Unpublished,” said Myrna. “I found it in one of her notebooks when I was…”
Again, they stared.
“You were what?” asked Clara. “Snooping?”
“Worse,” admitted Myrna. “I go over Wednesday mornings and clean her house.”
That brought whoops of laughter, which eventually died down in the face of Myrna’s face. Which was bashful and uncomfortable.
“Wait a minute,” said Clara. “You’re telling the truth? You go over there every week—”
“Actually, every second week.”
“And clean?”
“She’s an elderly woman on her own and needs the help,” said Myrna. “That’ll be us one day.”
“Yeah, and you know what?” said Clara. “Ruth’ll still be alive. She’s indestructible. I know. I’ve tried. She’ll bury us all.”
“But it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” asked Reine-Marie. “Even for one as nimble as you, ma belle. How did you get from those beautiful lines of poetry to Prohibition?”
“I asked her about the poem. What it meant to her. This was a couple of years ago—”
“You’ve been doing it for that long?” asked Clara, both astonished and annoyed that her friend hadn’t told her. Then something occurred to her. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“You must’ve done something awful in this life, or a past one, to have to put on that hair shirt.”
“No, not penance. I think I might be a saint.” She peered, dewy-eyed, into the distance, a beatific look on her face. “Saint Myrna—”
“Among the Éclairs,” said Clara.
“I’d go to that church,” said Reine-Marie.
“You were saying?” Isabelle brought the conversation back to earth. Though she agreed with Reine-Marie.
“Strangely enough, that’s what Ruth and I talked about. Church. She told me she’d sit in St. Thomas’s as a child, and pray to be normal. Pray to fit in.”
“Sometimes the magic works…” said Clara.
Armand remembered Ruth’s admission the evening before.
About the ice. The cousin.
The guilt of an old inheritance.
“The church warden sort of adopted her and told her all about the history of the place,” said Myrna.
“Which is how she knew about Prohibition,” said Isabelle. “I actually assumed she was one of the rum runners.”
Myrna laughed.
“I’d love to find out more,” said Reine-Marie. “For the archives. Not exactly the first church along the border used for that. Churches were a favorite among the bootleggers.”
“A safe place, I guess,” said Clara. “Who’d raid God’s house?”
“We think of those days with a sort of charm,” said Reine-Marie. “Speakeasies and Keystone Kops. But they were brutal. Fortunes were made. But only by the most vicious. Prohibition might not have created the Mob, but it led to their rise and their power.”
Gamache listened and knew she was right. The drug smuggling today had, as its godparents, the bootleggers nearly a hundred years ago. The syndicates, the systems, the psyches were created back then.
“You’ve researched St. Thomas’s,” he said. “But you’ve found nothing to support what Ruth says?”
“I doubt the church kept records of crates of booze in and out of the basement,” said Reine-Marie.
“True.” He lapsed into silence.
Thinking about bottles. And bats. In and out of the basement.
*
Beauvoir walked over to the shining wooden bar and, taking a seat, he caught Olivier’s attention.
“Any chance of that casserole the chief ordered?”
“I’ll check in the kitchen. Anton’s in charge of that.”
“The dishwasher?”
“That’s the one.”
This did not bode well, but Jean-Guy was so hungry, he didn’t care if the casserole was made of old dishrags and the gunk in the sink drain.
“Can I get a hot chocolate while I wait?”
“Bien sûr,” said Olivier, and went into the kitchen.
Beauvoir surveyed the bistro. It was packed and, of course, all the conversation was about one subject. The discovery of Katie Evans’s body just hours earlier.
He scanned the room for the dead woman’s husband and friends, but they’d obviously taken refuge in the B&B.
Jean-Guy found an armchair in a quiet corner and settled in.
A couple minutes later the hot chocolate, with freshly whipped cream piled on top, and a bright pink maraschino cherry on top of that, was placed on the wooden table in front of him.
“I thought I was bringing this for a child,” said the voice that accompanied the hand, and Beauvoir looked up.
Anton stood there, in a blue apron with thin white stripes.
“The
casserole’s just coming out of the oven. I can take it over in about five minutes.”
“I’ll be here.” Beauvoir took the cherry off the whipped cream. “With my cocktail. Let me know when it’s ready and I can help carry.”
“Thanks.” Anton hesitated. Then looked at the hot chocolate. “Nothing stronger?”
“Non,” said Beauvoir, popping the cherry in his mouth.
Anton hung there, but when Beauvoir didn’t offer more conversation, he left.
A few minutes later, the two men were walking carefully across the village green, their feet crunching through the layer of snow and freezing rain. Trying not to slip and drop the dinner. Beauvoir in particular was moving slowly, the precious cargo fragrant and warm in his gloved hands.
*
“So.” Isabelle turned to Myrna, who towered over her even in the seated position. “Let’s leave Prohibition behind. I came here to ask you about Madame Evans’s friends. Your friends. I’ve been over the interviews, but I wanted to speak to someone who knows them well.”
“I’ve known them for a while, especially Lea,” said Myrna. “But can’t say I know them well. I only see them once a year. Like everyone else.”
Myrna felt slightly guilty saying that, as though she was denying them, distancing herself from them. But it was the truth. She didn’t know them well. And there was a chance at least one of them she didn’t know at all.
“But you’ve known Lea Roux since she was four.”
“Yes. And now you think she might be a murderer?”
“I don’t think they’re blaming you,” said Clara.
“Even killers were children once,” said Isabelle.
“Even Eichmann,” said Clara.
“Eichmann?” asked Isabelle.
“The Nazi war criminal,” said Clara.
Isabelle stared at her for a moment, far from sure why Clara would mention a Nazi war criminal.
“Yes. Even Eichmann was a child,” agreed Isabelle, baffled but vowing not to be taken off piste again. She turned back to Myrna. “Let me start off with an easy question. They normally come in the summer. Any idea why the date for the reunion was changed?”
“I asked Lea and she said that it’s tough to fit everyone’s schedules. These were the only dates that worked this year.”