by Louise Penny
‘What was your God doing to the wall in the diner?’
‘He was writing.’
‘God wrote on the wall of the diner?’ Em was incredulous, though she didn’t know why. Her God walked around with a prefabricated construction sign.
Gamache nodded and remembered watching the grizzled, beautiful fisherman at the screen door to the fly-filled diner that smelled of the sea. He’d looked back at Gamache and smiled. Not the radiant, full frontal beam of a few minutes earlier, but a warm and comforting smile, as though to say He understood and that everything would be all right.
Gamache had gotten up and slid into the booth and read the writing on the wall. He’d pulled out his notebook, stuffed with facts about death, about murder and sorrow, and he’d written down the four simple lines.
He knew then what he had to do. Not because he was a brave man or a good man, but because he had no choice. He had to return to Montreal, to Sûreté headquarters, and he had to sort out the Arnot case. He’d known for months he had to do it, and yet he’d run from it and hidden behind work. Behind dead bodies and the solemn, noble need to find killers, as though he was the only one on the force who could.
The writing on the wall hadn’t told him what to do. He knew that. It’d given him the courage to do it.
‘But how do you know you did the right thing?’ Em asked, and Gamache realized he’d said all that out loud.
The blue eyes were steady and calm. But something had shifted. The conversation seemed to have another purpose. There was an intensity about her that hadn’t been there before.
‘I don’t know. Even now I’m not absolutely sure. Lots of people are convinced I was wrong. You know that. I’m sure you read about it in the papers.’
Émilie nodded. ‘You prevented Superintendent Arnot and his two colleagues from killing more people.’
‘I stopped them from killing themselves,’ said Gamache. He remembered that meeting clearly. He’d been part of the inner circle of the Sûreté then. Pierre Arnot was a senior and respected officer in the force, though not by Gamache. He’d known Arnot since his days as a rookie and the two had never gotten along. Gamache suspected Arnot thought him weak, while he thought Arnot a bully.
When it was obvious what Arnot and two of his top men had done, when even his friends couldn’t deny it any longer, Arnot had had one request. That they not be arrested. Not yet. Arnot had a hunting cabin in the Abitibi region, north of Montreal. They’d go there and not return. It was decided it was best, for Arnot, for the co-defendants, for the families.
Everyone agreed.
Except Gamache.
‘Why did you stop them?’ Émilie asked.
‘There had been enough death. It was time for justice. An old-fashioned notion.’ He looked up and smiled into her face. After a moment’s silence he continued. ‘I believe it was right, but I still struggle sometimes. I’m like a Victorian preacher. I have doubts.’
‘Really?’
Gamache looked into the fire again and thought long and hard. ‘I’d do it again. It was the right thing to do, at least for me.’
He looked back at her and paused.
‘Who was L, madame?’
‘Elle?’
Gamache reached into his satchel and brought out the wooden box, turning it over to reveal the letters taped to the bottom. He pointed to the L. ‘L, Madame Longpré.’
Her eyes, while still holding his, seemed to drift and focus on a spot in the distance.
Ice ahead. They were almost there now.
THIRTY-FOUR
‘She was our friend,’ said Émilie, holding Gamache’s eyes. ‘We called her El, but she signed her name with just the letter L.’ Em felt calm for the first time in days. ‘She lived next door to me.’ Em pointed to a small Québecois house with a steep metal roof and tiny dormers. ‘Her family sold it years ago and moved away. After El disappeared.’
‘What happened?’
‘She was younger than the rest of us. Very sweet, very kind. Some children like that get picked on. Other kids know they won’t fight back. But not El. She was one of those children who seemed to bring out the best in others. She was bright, in every way. A shining child. When she walked into a room the lights went on and the sun rose.’
Em could still see her, a child so lovely no one was even jealous of her. Perhaps, too, they all sensed that someone that kind and good couldn’t last long. There was something precious about El.
‘Her name was Eleanor, wasn’t it?’ Gamache asked, though he was certain of the answer.
‘Eleanor Allaire.’
Gamache sighed and closed his eyes. There. He’d done it.
‘El, short for Eleanor,’ he whispered.
Émilie nodded. ‘May I?’ Her tiny hands reached across the table and took the box, holding it in open palms as though inviting it to fly away. ‘I haven’t seen this in years. Mother gave it to her when El left the ashram in India. They went there together, you know.’
‘She was the L in B KLM, wasn’t she?’
Em nodded.
‘Mother Bea is B, Kaye is K and you’re M. Bea, Kaye, El and Em.’
‘You’re very clever, Chief Inspector. We would have been friends anyway, but the coincidence of our names all sounding like letters of the alphabet appealed to us. Especially since we all adored reading. It also seemed romantic, a kind of secret code.’
‘Is that where Be Calm came from?’
‘You figured that out as well? How?’
‘There were too many references to Be Calm in this case. Then I visited Mother’s meditation center.’
‘Be Calm.’
‘Yes, but it was the writing on the wall that gave it away.’
‘That seems to happen to you a lot. Must be helpful in your trade to have the answers written on the wall.’
‘It’s recognizing them that’s the trick. It was a misquote and that didn’t seem in character. Mother might give the impression of being not of this world, but I suspect she’s very much here. She’d never have put Be calm, and know that I am God on her wall unless she meant to.’
‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ quoted Em correctly. ‘That was El’s problem. She couldn’t be still. Kaye was the one who noticed that we could put our letters together and make a word, sort of. B KLM. Be calm. Close enough to make sense to us, and far enough away to make it a secret. Our secret. But you figured it out, Chief Inspector.’
‘Took me far too long.’
‘Is there a time limit on these things?’
Gamache laughed. ‘No, I suppose not, but sometimes my own blindness takes my breath away. I’d been staring at these letters for days, knowing they were significant to El. I even had the example of Ruth’s poetry book. I’m FINE. The capital letters all stand for some other word.’
‘Mais non. What?’
‘Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Egotistical,’ he said, slightly embarrassed about using a swear word in front of such a dignified woman, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she was laughing.
‘J’adore Ruth. Just when I think she’s loathsome she does something like that. Parfait.’
‘I kept staring at the letters on the box and assumed the space between the B and the KLM wasn’t significant. But it was. It held the answer. It lay in what wasn’t there. In the tiny space between letters.’
‘Like those wild flowers in the land God gave to Cain,’ said Em. ‘You have to look hard to see it.’
‘I didn’t think it was a deliberate space. I thought that was where the C went,’ Gamache admitted.
‘The C?’
‘Open the box.’
Em did and stared for a very long time. She reached into the box and brought out a tiny letter. Balancing it on her finger she showed it to Gamache. A C.
‘She put her daughter into the box too,’ said Em. ‘This is what love looks like.’
‘What happened?’
Em cast her mind back again, to the days when the world was new. ‘
El was a pilgrim soul. While the rest of us settled down, El grew more restless. She seemed frail, fragile. Sensitive. We kept pleading with her to be calm.’
‘You even called your curling team Be Calm,’ said Gamache. ‘That was another clue. You only ever spoke of three members of the original team, but a curling team has four. Someone was missing. When I saw Clara Morrow’s picture of the three of you as the Graces there seemed to be someone missing. There was a hole in the composition.’
‘But Clara never met El,’ said Émilie. ‘Never even heard of her as far as I know.’
‘That’s true, but as you said, Clara sees things others don’t. She created the work with the three of you forming a sort of vase, a vessel she called it. Only there’s a piece missing, a crack. Where El would be.
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There’s a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
’
‘What an extraordinary poem. Ruth Zardo?’
‘Leonard Cohen. Clara used it in her piece. She wrote it on the wall behind the three of you, like graffiti.’
‘There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,’ said Émilie.
‘What happened to El?’ He remembered the autopsy photographs. A filthy, emaciated, pathetic old drunk on the slab. A world away from the shining young woman Em had described.
‘She wanted to go to India. She thought maybe there her mind would still and she’d find peace. The rest of us drew straws and it was decided Mother would go with her. It’s ironic that El didn’t much like India but Mother found the answers to questions she didn’t even know she had.’
‘Mother,’ said Gamache. ‘Beatrice Mayer. Very clever as well. I asked Clara why everyone calls Bea Mother and she suggested I figure it out for myself.’
‘And you did.’
‘Took me a long while. It wasn’t until I was watching The Lion in Winter that I got it.’
‘How so?’
‘It was made by MGM. Metro, Goldwyn, Mayer. Mayer. It’s pronounced the same way as mère. French for mother. Beatrice Mayer became Mother Bea. I knew then I was in the company of people who loved not only books, but words. Spoken, written, the power of words.’
‘When Kaye asked why her father and the other boys would have screamed “Fuck the Pope” as they ran to their deaths you said maybe it was because they knew that words could kill. Kaye dismissed it, but I think you were right. I know words can kill. I saw it on Christmas Eve. You might consider it melodramatic, Chief Inspector, but I saw CC murder her daughter with words.’
‘What happened to El?’ he asked again.
Beauvoir brought the car to a halt and sat for a moment. The heater was on and the car seats had warmed. On the stereo Beau Dommage was singing ‘La complainte du phoque en Alaska’. He’d necked to that at school dances. It was always the last song and always brought the girls to tears.
He didn’t want to leave. Not just because the car was so comfortable, filled with warm and sticky memories, but because of what awaited him. The meditation center sat bathed in sharp morning sun.
‘Bonjour, Inspecteur.’ Mother smiled, opening the door before he knocked. But the smile didn’t extend to her eyes. It barely left her lips, which were tight and white. He could sense her tension and felt himself relax. He had the advantage now and knew it.
‘May I come in?’ He was damned if he was going to ask, ‘Mother, may I?’ He was also damned if he was going to ask why everyone called her Mother, though he was dying to know.
‘I was under the impression this wasn’t your favorite place,’ she said, regaining some ground on him. Beauvoir didn’t know what it was with this woman. She was squat and unattractive. She wobbled instead of walked and her hair stuck out in all directions. And she wore sheets, or perhaps curtains, or maybe they were slipcovers. By all standards she was ludicrous. And yet there was something about her.
‘I came down with the flu when I was last here. I’m sorry if I behaved badly.’ Although it caught in his throat to apologize Gamache had pointed out that it actually gave him an advantage. And he’d noticed, over the years, that it was true. People felt a certain superiority if they thought they had something on you. But as soon as you apologized they had nothing. Pissed them off.
Now Beauvoir felt equal to Madame Mayer.
‘Namaste,’ she said, putting her hands together in prayer and bowing.
Damn her. He felt off balance again. He knew he was meant to ask, but didn’t. Taking his boots off he strode through to the large meditation room with its soothing aqua walls and warm green-carpeted floor.
‘I have some questions for you.’ He turned to watch Madame Mayer waddle toward him. ‘What did you think of CC de Poitiers?’
‘I’ve already told the Chief Inspector about that. In fact, you were here, though I suppose you might have been too ill to listen.’
She was exhausted. Her compassion was spent. She didn’t care any more. She knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer, and now she yearned for the end. She no longer woke in the middle of the night and worried. Now she simply didn’t go to sleep.
Mother was dead tired.
‘CC was delusional. Her entire philosophy was crap. She’d taken a bunch of teachings and mashed them together and come up with this poisonous idea that people shouldn’t show emotions. That’s ridiculous. We are emotion. That’s what makes us who we are. Her idea that truly evolved people feel no emotions is ridiculous. Yes, we want to be in balance, but that doesn’t mean not feeling or showing things. It means the opposite. It means,’ now Mother was getting worked up, too exhausted to contain herself any longer, ‘it means feeling things fully, passionately. It means embracing life. And then letting go.
‘She thought she was so great, coming here and lording it over us. Li Bien this, Be Calm that. All her tasteful white clothes and furnishings and bedding linens and stupid aura pillows and calming baby blankets and God knows what other crap. She was sick. Her emotions were denied and stunted and twisted and made into something grotesque. She claimed to be so balanced, so grounded. Well, she was so grounded it killed her. Karma.’
Beauvoir wondered whether karma was an Indian word for irony.
Mother radiated anger. It was how he liked his suspects. Out of control, liable to say and do anything.
‘And yet you and CC both called your places Be Calm. Doesn’t calm mean placid? Showing nothing?’
‘There’s a difference between flat and calm.’
‘I think you’re just playing word games. Like you did with that.’ He pointed to the wall where the quote was stenciled. Then he walked over to it.
‘Be calm, and know that I am God. You told Chief Inspector Gamache it came from Isaiah, but doesn’t it actually come from Psalms?’
He loved this part of the job. He could see her deflate in front of him, surprised she didn’t make a little squealing sound. Slowly he brought out his notebook.
‘Psalm 46 verse 10. Be still, and know that I am God. You lied and you intentionally put a misquote on your wall. Why? What does Be Calm really mean?’
They were both still then. Beauvoir could hear her breathing.
Then something happened. He saw what he’d just done. He’d broken an elderly woman. Something shifted and he saw before him a beaten old lady, with wild hair and a plump sagging body. Her face was very white and wrinkled and soft and her hands were veined and bony and trembling.
Her head was bowed.
He’d done this. He’d done it on purpose and he’d done it gleefully.
‘Eleanor and Mother stayed at the commune for six months,’ Em told Gamache, her hands suddenly restless, playing with the handle of her espresso cup. ‘Mother was getting deeper and deeper into it but El started to get agitated again. Eventually she left, came back to Canada, but not back home. We lost track of her for a while.’
‘When did you realize she was unstable?’
Gamache asked.
‘We’d always known that. Her mind would race. She couldn’t concentrate on any one thing, but hopped about from project to project, brilliant at them all. But, to be fair, if she found something she liked she’d become possessed by it. She’d bring all her talents, all her energies, to bear. And when she did that she was formidable.’
‘Like Li Bien?’ Gamache brought a cardboard box from his satchel.
‘What else have you got in there?’ Em leaned around the table to look at his leather satchel. ‘The Montreal Canadians?’
‘Hope not. They’re playing tonight.’ Em stared at his huge, careful hands as they peeled back the wrap, slowly revealing the object below. It stood on the table next to the wooden box, and for a golden moment Émilie Longpré was in her young body, staring at the Li Bien ball for the first time. It was luminous and somehow unreal, its beauty imprisoned beneath the layer of invisible glass. It was both lovely and horrible.
It was Eleanor Allaire.
Young Émilie Longpré had known then that they’d lose her. Had known then their luminous friend couldn’t survive in the real world. And now the Li Bien ball had returned to Three Pines, but without its creator.
‘May I hold it?’
Gamache placed it in her hands as he had the box and again she held it, but this time in hands closed tightly round it, as though hugging and protecting something precious.
He reached into his satchel for the last time and withdrew a long leather cord, stained with dirt and oils and blood. And dangling from it was an eagle’s head.
‘I need the whole truth, madame.’
Beauvoir was sitting next to Mother now, listening intently as he had when as a child his own mother had read stories of adventure and tragedy.
‘When CC first came here,’ Mother explained, ‘she showed an almost unnatural interest in us.’
Beauvoir knew instinctively that by ‘us’ she meant Émilie, Kaye and herself.
‘She’d drop in and seem to interrogate us. It wasn’t a normal sort of social call even for someone as maladroit as CC.’