by Louise Penny
Isabelle Lacoste’s eyes traveled over the old village and came to rest on the little white clapboard church on the hill. The scene of the murder of Katie Evans, and so much else.
All of which would come to a head that night.
Justice, she thought. A few months ago she knew exactly what that meant. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Who’re they?” she asked Olivier.
Two men were sitting quietly in front of the empty hearth, enjoying a meal. Anton was speaking with them, perhaps describing the food he’d made.
They looked over at her and she smiled, and raised her glass to Anton, who waved back.
“Don’t know,” said Olivier. “Just passing through, I think. Not staying at the B&B. You know Gabri. One set of guests is more than enough.”
“So there is someone at the B&B?” she asked, smelling the refreshing tonic water, and gin, and lemon.
“Oui. Lea and Matheo are down.”
“Really? Did they say why?” She tried to sound casual, not letting Olivier see her whirring mind.
“I didn’t ask, but it’s probably something to do with the trial. We’re reading the reports. Seems they’re giving Armand a hard time. Lea and Matheo might want to have words with him. They seem pretty tense.”
Yes, thought Lacoste. That was one explanation.
Around her there was the hum of conversation. Many patrons were now finding the terrasse too hot and were retreating into the cool interior. They chatted, but there was little outright laughter. The trial, so far away, was felt very keenly in the village. Some of the villagers would be called as witnesses. Thankfully the investigators had headed off the Crown’s desire to call Ruth Zardo to the stand.
Lacoste’s own testimony was scheduled for the next day, though she knew it would never come to that. Not after the night to come.
Chief Inspector Lacoste hadn’t been in court that day and so hadn’t heard Gamache’s testimony. But she’d certainly heard reports. From colleagues, and on the news.
She’d heard about the increasing acrimony between the Chief Crown and the Chief Superintendent. To the point where they’d both been hauled into the judge’s chambers.
What had happened there? What had Gamache said?
Had he told Judge Corriveau what had really happened that November night, when he’d returned to the basement of St. Thomas’s?
Had he told the judge the secret they’d been so desperate to conceal, to the point of Gamache perjuring himself?
It had started as an offhand remark by a crazy old poet and had developed, over drinks in Myrna’s loft, into a suspicion. Which grew into an action.
*
Once in the church basement, Gamache took off his coat, embedded with snow, and tossed it over a chair. Then he led Beauvoir across the room to the root cellar.
“Can you get an evidence kit, please? And two sets of gloves.”
While Jean-Guy did that, Gamache turned on the industrial lamps installed that day by the Scene of Crime technicians, then he paused on the edge of the room.
All murder scenes had a solemnity, a gravity, about them, often at odds with the actual surroundings. A terrible killing in a cheerful place was especially horrible.
This little room, windowless, with a dirt floor and shelves sagging with forgotten preserves, and cobwebs made by long-dead spiders, was never going to be a cheerful place. The root cellar was meant to be cold, but the killing of Katie Evans made it all the more chilling.
It was not a place even a seasoned homicide investigator would want to spend much time in.
Gamache looked at the spot on the floor where the crumpled figure of Katie Evans, dressed in the cobrador costume, had been found. The former head of homicide for the Sûreté never forgot that this was not simply a job. A puzzle. An exercise for the reason and intellect.
A young woman had taken her last breaths, here. Lying in the dirt and dark, in the cold cellar. Not in bed, surrounded by loved ones, at the age of ninety, as she might have hoped.
“Madame Gamache didn’t see a bat when she found Katie Evans’s body. But it was there when Lacoste arrived. That means it was replaced, without anyone else seeing. This’s the back wall of the church.” Gamache walked up to it. “So it must be here.”
“What must?”
Gamache turned to Beauvoir. “Bootlegged alcohol was moved in and out of the church during Prohibition. They didn’t take it out the front door.”
Beauvoir’s eyes widened as he realized what Gamache was saying. “Shit.”
The two men began to carefully examine the shelving.
“Got it,” said Jean-Guy.
“Wait,” said Gamache. He picked up the Scene of Crime camera and recorded the moment Inspector Beauvoir swung out one of the shelves, then pushed on it.
A low door, built into the wall, opened.
Beauvoir got on his knees to look through it and a gust of snow blew into his face. Squinting, he saw the woods just a few steps away.
It was a fairly short haul through the forest to the American border. A smuggler’s dream.
“So that’s how the baseball bat got out, then back in,” said Beauvoir.
Gamache clicked off the video and handed the camera to Jean-Guy, who began documenting what they found.
“It’s perfect,” Gamache said under his breath, as he looked around at the windowless room.
For the cobrador and for the killing.
“Patron?” came Lacoste’s voice, from the Incident Room.
“We’re in here,” said Jean-Guy.
“I’ll just get my computer going and start downloading emails,” she called. “Be right with you.”
Gamache looked around and saw the small door just closing. And as it did, the shelf neatly, soundlessly, fell back into place.
He bent closer and examined the hinges.
In the Incident Room, Lacoste took off her coat and clicked on the email, then, on hearing a sound, she looked over to the stairway.
In the silence of the church, the footfalls on the stairs made an eerie sort of tattoo.
Buh-boom. Buh-boom. Like a heartbeat approaching.
And then Beauvoir appeared.
Isabelle’s eyes widened and she jerked her head back in a sight so comical, Jean-Guy laughed.
“Désolé,” he said.
She looked over at Gamache, who was standing at the door of the root cellar. He raised his hands slightly, to indicate that he had nothing to do with this.
“He was here,” Gamache offered.
“And now I’m here,” said Beauvoir.
Lacoste stared, from Gamache to Beauvoir, then she got up and walked over to Jean-Guy.
“Tell me how you did that.”
“I’ll show you.” Jean-Guy led her across the room to Gamache and the root cellar. “It was the chief who figured it out.”
“Though I had nothing to do with…” Gamache danced his finger toward and around Beauvoir.
Lacoste was far from sure about that. If ever two men were made for cahoots, it was these two. They were cahootites.
“Well,” she said, after being shown the hidden door. “Well, well. You’ve taken samples?”
Beauvoir pointed to the evidence kit and nodded.
She walked back into the Incident Room in silence, Gamache and Beauvoir following, and when she turned around she said, “Made by the bootleggers Myrna told us about.”
“Exactly,” said Gamache.
“And used by the murderer.”
“And the cobrador,” said Gamache.
“They’re probably the same person,” said Lacoste. “But how did he know about the hidden door? You didn’t even know. No one did, except Ruth and Myrna.”
“They didn’t know about the door,” Gamache pointed out. “Only about the Prohibition story. To them it was an interesting bit of history, but nothing more.”
“Myrna or Ruth must’ve told someone else,” said Lacoste. “And that person put it together and found the door. But wh
y would anyone go looking for a hidden door in a church basement?”
Gamache was wondering the same thing.
Sometimes people stumbled onto things by accident. Like those who found Three Pines.
But most of the time something was found because they were looking, and they were looking because there was a need. Necessity drove discoveries.
It was slowly dawning on Gamache what that need might be.
When Prohibition had been repealed, those secret rooms had been abandoned. Forgotten. Those who’d created them were long dead, though the fortunes remained, as did the rooms.
On the border. Waiting. For some new need to arise.
The border was porous. Always had been. And what poured across it now was a lot more powerful, and more lucrative, than booze.
Beauvoir went to his desk to download emails.
“Antonio Ruiz is back in Spain,” Beauvoir reported. “The Guardia Civil just confirmed it.”
He got up and took a seat at the conference table with them, bringing with him the photo he’d taken from the Evans’s home.
Gamache examined it. The smiling faces. Familiar, of course. Younger, of course. Happier.
His gaze lingered on Edouard, the ghost, the bright shadow that followed the friends.
Jean-Guy told him about his conversation with Katie’s sister.
“Still nothing that would justify a cobrador,” said Gamache. His eyes went back to the photo. This time shifting from Edouard’s face, to his arm, around Katie. “I wonder why she kept this one? They look still together.”
“And I wonder why Patrick was apparently happy to keep it,” said Jean-Guy. “There must’ve been other pictures of them all together. Ones less…”
“Intimate?” Gamache nodded. Why this one, he wondered.
“I had a talk with Anton, the dishwasher, just now,” said Beauvoir. “When he brought the dinner over. He admitted that he knew about the cobrador.”
“How?” asked Lacoste.
“Antonio Ruiz had been followed by one in Spain.”
Beauvoir told them about the video and what Anton had said.
“Money laundering?” said Gamache.
That almost certainly meant organized crime. Racketeering. Gambling. Drugs.
“And Jacqueline also knew?” asked Lacoste.
“Oui. She made Anton promise not to say anything because then people would ask questions, want to know how they knew, and then they’d have to say something about Ruiz,” said Beauvoir. “They seem afraid of him, and not just because of the confidentiality agreement.”
“If he’s involved in organized crime, they have reason to be afraid,” said Gamache.
“Anton told me something else,” said Beauvoir. “He thought the cobrador was here for him.”
“That’s not exactly news. Everyone in the village thought the Conscience was here for them,” said Gamache. “Including me.”
“But Anton had good reason.” Beauvoir leaned across the table, closer to them. “He knew Katie Evans.”
“How?” asked Lacoste.
“From years ago,” said Beauvoir. “He knew all of them. He wasn’t sure at first. He only saw them at a distance since he works in the kitchens, and it’d been so long, but when he heard them talk about the Université de Montréal, he knew for sure. He was a student when they were there. Then when the cobrador showed up, he thought he was in big trouble. He thought the four of them had sent it. To collect his debt.”
“What debt?” asked Lacoste, then quickly raised her hand. “Wait. Don’t tell me.”
She thought about it for a moment, then she put her elbows on the table, her eyes bright.
“He’s the one who sold Edouard the drugs,” she said, and Beauvoir nodded.
“When Edouard died and questions were asked, he took off,” said Jean-Guy. “Ended up in treatment.”
“Did Madame Evans and the others recognize him?” Gamache asked.
“If they did, they didn’t say anything to him,” said Beauvoir.
“Or to us,” said Lacoste. “Now why would they keep that a secret?”
“Maybe they didn’t realize who he was,” said Beauvoir.
“Just seems a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?” said Gamache. “Here we are in a tiny village few even know exists, and who arrives but the only four people on earth who can tie Anton to that death.”
Lacoste and Beauvoir nodded. Coincidences were not uncommon in murder investigations. Just as they weren’t uncommon in life. It would be foolish to read too much into it. But it would be equally foolish not to wonder.
“We need to go back to the B&B and see if they did recognize Anton,” said Lacoste.
“Though that wouldn’t make them responsible for the cobrador,” said Gamache. “The cobrador didn’t just show up. It must’ve been months in the planning, maybe longer. Madame Evans and the others would have only just recognized Anton in the last few days.”
“And how does Katie Evans’s murder fit into this?” Lacoste asked.
The cobrador, the Conscience, had rattled this secret loose from Anton, about his role in Edouard’s death fifteen years earlier. But it was possible someone there had an even bigger, nastier secret.
Lacoste looked over toward the root cellar. “We need to seal up the hidden door so no one can use it.”
Gamache, deep in thought, watched them head across the room. “Wait,” he called and got up. “I think we should leave it.”
“But whoever used it could come back,” said Lacoste.
“And do what?” he asked, joining them at the door to the root cellar.
“Well,” she said, feeling instinctively that an intruder must do harm, but now that she thought about it, she couldn’t come up with anything, at least not anything serious.
They had all the samples, all the photos.
“Our computers,” said Beauvoir.
“You have a password,” said Gamache. “Besides, if the murderer comes back, it probably won’t be to take anything. He wouldn’t risk being found with laptops stolen from the Sûreté.”
He’d met killers who were that stupid, but they were unfortunately quite rare.
“Let’s at least take our notes and erase the board,” said Lacoste, pointing to the whiteboard, on which were written flowcharts and suspects and ideas.
“No, leave that too.”
“But he’ll know where we’re at,” said Beauvoir.
“And he’ll discover that we’re lost,” said Gamache.
“We’re not lost.”
“No. But he wouldn’t know that, would he, if he read your reports, or looked at that.” Gamache pointed to the board.
“Non,” she admitted.
“There’s something to be said for appearing to be lost,” said Gamache, almost to himself. “For appearing incompetent. To even appear to have given up. Puts criminals at ease. Lowers their defenses. Makes them overconfident.” He looked at them with a touch of wonderment. “And then they make mistakes.”
“You’re not suggesting we give up, patron?” said Lacoste.
“Just the opposite,” he said, distracted. “I think.”
And he did appear to be thinking, hard.
Beauvoir caught Lacoste’s eye with a questioning glance.
“I think,” said Gamache, turning to face them, “that we should keep what we found tonight to ourselves. In fact, I know we should. We tell no one about the hidden door. Not even other members of the team.”
“Pardon?” they both asked at once. It was unprecedented, to keep a valuable piece of evidence from their own investigation team.
“Just for now,” said Gamache. “Give me tonight. I need time.”
“I’m going to put a camera up in the corner of the room,” said Beauvoir. “If anyone does come in, we’ll at least see who it is.”
While he did that, Lacoste checked her messages.
“The lab says we won’t get results from the cobrador costume until tomorrow morning. There’re mul
tiple DNA samples on it.”
“Probably rented,” came Beauvoir’s voice from the root cellar. “God knows when it was last cleaned.” His voice carried all the disgust of a well-groomed man.
“But,” said Lacoste, reading further down the report, “we do have the results from the bat.”
She spoke slowly, reading as she went.
Gamache stood behind her, his expert eyes finding the pertinent lines buried in among the scientific jargon.
Lacoste swung around in her chair and looked up at him.
“What do you make of that?” she asked.
“What?” asked Jean-Guy, striding across the Incident Room to join them.
He read in silence, then he too straightened up, his brows deeply furrowed.
“It’s not enough to make an arrest,” said Lacoste. “Not yet. But at least now we know who handled the murder weapon, and who almost certainly killed Katie Evans.”
“But what do you make of that?” asked Gamache, pointing to another line on the report.
“That’s just a trace,” said Lacoste. “The lab says that it’s probably incidental.”
“It’s slightly more than a trace,” said Gamache. Though not much more. And Lacoste was right, the technicians, expert in the field, concluded it was a bit of DNA that had probably fallen from the murderer, but did not belong to the killer.
The other two results were clear. One belonged to Katie Evans. The other to her killer.
And yet.
“Why was the bat removed from the scene?” he asked. “And then replaced? At great risk.”
It was a question that had plagued them.
There were a few reasons the murderer might do that. He was panicked. Or distracted. The way people sometimes walked out of a shop with an unpaid article in their hands. By mistake.
And when the murderer realized what he’d done, how very incriminating the bat was, he’d returned it.
That was the most likely reason.
But still, why not just burn it? Why risk returning it?