Cruelest Month

by Louise Penny

  As Inspector Beauvoir entered the empty shop he noticed a strange unnatural smell. It was a musky, dark aroma as though the various herbs and dried flowers, incense and powders were locked in battle.

  In short, it stank.

  A pretty, pudgy woman in her late thirties or early forties was standing behind the counter, her hand flat on a closed exercise book. Cheaply cut and dyed hair sat limply around her face. She looked pleasant and unremarkable. For the briefest moment she also looked annoyed, as though he’d entered her private space. Then she smiled. It was the practiced smile of someone used to pleasing.

  ‘Oui? Est-ce que je peux vous aider?’

  ‘Are you…’ He brought out the piece of paper the Chief Inspector had given him with the names of everyone who was at the séance. He looked down at it, drawing the performance out slightly. He wanted her full attention. He knew perfectly well what her name was, of course. He just wanted to mess with her mind. Get her off balance. Now he looked up only to see her looking down at the red notebook under her hand. She’d escaped in the moment he’d taken to pause. Her mind, far from being messed with, had actually wandered back to her own business.

  ‘Are you Odile Montmagny?’ he asked loudly.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled pleasantly, almost vacuously.

  ‘My name is Inspector Beauvoir. I’m with the Sûreté du Québec. Homicide.’

  ‘Not Gilles?’ She was transformed. Her body went rigid, her face focused and frightened. Her hand moved from the notebook to the wooden counter and her fingers tried to dig into the surface.

  ‘Gilles?’ he repeated. He knew immediately what she was thinking and didn’t yet want to ease her mind.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she pleaded.

  Odile thought she was going to pass out. Her head had gone numb and her heart was throwing itself against her ribcage as though desperate to break out, to find Gilles.

  ‘I’m here about Madeleine Favreau.’

  He watched her closely. Her flaccid, empty face had come alive. Her eyes shone, her brain was focused. She looked brilliant. And terrified. And gorgeous. Then it all dissolved. Her head, thrust forward toward him in desperation, sagged. All the muscles collapsed. In a blink the old Odile had returned. Pretty, dull, eager. But he’d seen what was under there. He’d seen what he suspected few knew existed, perhaps even Odile herself. He’d seen the brilliant, gorgeous, dynamic woman who lived trapped beneath the safe layer of dullness and smiles, of dye and sensible goals.

  ‘Madeleine was murdered? But she had a heart attack, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Oui, c’est vrai. But her heart attack was helped. She was given a drug that caused it.’

  ‘A drug?’

  Had no one called Odile from Three Pines? Everyone had converged on Olivier’s Bistro to get the latest news. It was their broadcast center, with Gabri as the anchor. Beauvoir had found himself interviewing the only person in the area no one thought to call. Beauvoir felt suddenly very sorry for this woman and her eager, searching face. He felt sorry for her and slightly repulsed. Losers always repulsed him which was one of the reasons he’d never liked Agent Nichol. From the moment he’d met her a few years earlier he’d known she wasn’t just trouble, but worse than that. She was a loser. And in Beauvoir’s experience losers were the most dangerous people. Because eventually they got to the stage where they had nothing more to lose.

  ‘It’s called ephedra,’ he said.

  She seemed to consider the word. ‘And it stopped her heart? Why would someone kill her that way?’

  Not ‘why would someone kill her?’ but ‘why do it that way?’ It was the way, not the woman, that seemed to surprise Odile.

  ‘How well did you know Madame Favreau?’

  ‘She was a customer. Used to buy her fruit and vegetables here. There were some vitamins she’d pick up too.’

  ‘A good customer?’

  ‘Regular. She’d come about once a week.’

  ‘Did you see each other socially?’

  ‘Never. Why?’ Did she seem defensive?

  ‘Well, you had dinner together Sunday night.’

  ‘That’s true, but it wasn’t our idea. Clara invited us over before the séance. We didn’t even know Madeleine would be there.’

  ‘Would you have gone had you known?’ Beauvoir knew he was on to something. Could feel it. Could see the defensiveness in her face, could hear it in her tone.

  Odile hesitated. ‘Probably. I didn’t have anything against Madeleine. As I said, she was a customer.’

  ‘But you didn’t like her.’

  ‘I didn’t know her.’

  Beauvoir let the silence stretch. Then he looked around the shop more closely. It was a jumble of items. Food and produce seemed to be on one side and clothing and furniture on the other. On the food side he could see clay pots with wooden lids and scoops hanging from them. He could see coarse sacks and on the wooden shelves climbing the walls were hundreds of glass jars filled with what looked like grass. Could they be dope? He walked closer, noticing Odile staring at him, and peered at the jars. They had names like ‘Bee Balm’ and ‘Ma Huang’ and ‘Beggar’s Button’ and his favorite, ‘Cardinal Monkeyflower’. He took it down and opening the lid he sniffed tentatively. It smelled sweet. He couldn’t believe the Pope had ordained a Cardinal Monkeyflower. He wondered if there was a village named after him near Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses.

  A bookcase held volumes on how to run a small organic farm, how to build an off-grid home, how to do your own weaving. Why would anyone want to do that?

  Jean Guy Beauvoir wasn’t completely insensitive to the environmentalist movement, and had even contributed to a few fundraisers on the ozone layer or global warming or something. But to choose to live a primitive life, thinking that would save the world, was ridiculous. However, one thing did attract him. A simple wooden chair. Its wood was burled and polished and smooth to the touch. Beauvoir caressed it and didn’t want to lift his hand. He looked at it for a long while.

  ‘Try it,’ said Odile, still stationed behind the counter.

  Beauvoir looked back at the chair. It was deep and inviting, like an armchair, only wood.

  ‘It’ll hold you, don’t worry.’

  He wished she’d stop talking. Just let him enjoy looking at this marvelous piece of furniture. It was like a work of art he actually understood.

  ‘Gilles made it.’ She interrupted his thoughts again.

  ‘Gilles Sandon? From here?’

  She smiled cheerily. ‘Yes. My Gilles. That’s what he does.’

  ‘I thought he worked in the woods.’

  ‘Finding trees to make furniture.’

  ‘He finds his own trees?’

  ‘Actually, he says they find him. He goes for walks in the woods and listens. When a tree calls him he goes to it.’

  Beauvoir stared at her. She’d said this as though that’s what Ikea did too. As though it was perfectly natural and normal to hear trees, never mind listen to them. He looked back at the chair.

  Are they all nuts? wondered Beauvoir. The chair no longer spoke to him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Agent Robert Lemieux waited his turn at Monsieur Béliveau’s general store. At first he thought he’d find a dépanneur, filled with junk food, cigarettes, cheap beer and wine, odds and ends people suddenly found they needed, like envelopes and candles for cake. But instead he found a real grocery store. One his grand-mère would have recognized. The dark wood shelves held neatly displayed cans of vegetables and preserves, cereals and pastas and jams and jellies, soups and crackers. All good quality, all neat and orderly. No overcrowding, no gluttony. The floors were scuffed but clean linoleum and a fan moved slowly round on the tongue-in-groove ceiling.

  Behind the counter a tall, older man stooped to listen while an even older woman counted out change on the counter to pay for her groceries, talking nonstop. She told him about her hips. She told him about her son. She told him about the time she’d visited South Africa and how muc
h she’d loved it there. And finally, in a soft and kindly voice, she told him she was sorry for his loss. And she reached one spotted hand out, the veins bulging and blue, and laid it on his long, thin, very white fingers. And held it there. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t withdraw his hand. Instead he looked into her violet eyes and smiled.

  ‘Merci, Madame Ferland.’

  Lemieux watched her leave, grateful she’d finally stopped talking, then took her place.

  ‘Nice lady.’ He smiled at Monsieur Béliveau, who was watching Madame Ferland swing open the door to the store, stand on the veranda, look both ways as though lost, then walk very slowly away.

  ‘Oui.’

  The whole village knew that Madame Ferland had lost her son the year before, though she chose not to talk about it. Until today. When she talked about him to Monsieur Béliveau, who recognized the gift of sorrow shared.

  Now he turned back to the fresh young man in front of him. His dark hair was conservatively cut, his face clean-shaven and likeable. He looked nice.

  ‘My name is Robert Lemieux. I’m with the Sûreté.’

  ‘Oui, monsieur. I gathered that. You’re here about Madame Favreau.’

  ‘I understand you had a special relationship with her.’

  ‘I did.’ Monsieur Béliveau saw no reason to deny it now, though he wasn’t sure exactly what his relationship had been with Madeleine, at least not her side. He was certain only about how he’d felt.

  ‘And what was that relationship?’ Agent Lemieux asked. He wondered whether he was being too blunt, but he also knew he might not have this man’s attention for long. Another customer would walk in at any moment.

  ‘I loved her.’

  And there the words sat in the space between them, where Madame Ferland’s loose change had warmed a spot.

  Agent Lemieux was ready for this response. It’s what the chief had told him was probably the case. Or at least that their relationship was more than casual. Still, looking at the gaunt, gray, solemn old man in front of him he couldn’t figure it out. This man must be over sixty and Madeleine Favreau had been in her early forties. But age wasn’t the difference that surprised him. From the pictures he’d seen of the victim she’d been beautiful. All of them had her smiling or laughing, enjoying herself. Full of life and delight. Lemieux suspected she could have had anyone she wanted. So why had she chosen this caved-in man, this elderly, stooped, quiet man?

  Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps he’d loved her and she’d felt differently. Perhaps she broke his heart, and he’d attacked hers.

  Had this one who smelled of crackers and looked like a dried-up washcloth killed Madeleine Favreau? For love?

  Young Agent Lemieux couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Were you lovers?’ The very thought disgusted him, but he put on his sympathetic face and hoped he’d remind Monsieur Béliveau of a son.

  ‘No. We had not made love.’ Monsieur Béliveau said it simply, without embarrassment. He was beyond caring about things like that.

  ‘Do you have a family, monsieur?’

  ‘No children. I had a wife. Ginette. She died two and a half years ago. October twenty-second.’

  Chief Inspector Gamache had sat Robert Lemieux down when he’d first joined homicide, and given him a crash course in catching killers.

  ‘You must listen. As long as you’re talking you’re not learning, and this job is about learning. And not just the facts. The most important things you learn in a homicide investigation you can’t see or touch. It’s how people feel. Because,’ and here the Chief Inspector had leaned forward and Agent Lemieux had had the impression this senior officer was about to take his hands. But he didn’t. Instead he looked squarely into Lemieux’s eyes. ‘Because, we’re looking for someone not quite right. We’re looking for someone who appears healthy, who functions well. But who is very sick. We find those people not by simply collecting facts, but by collecting impressions.’

  ‘And I do that by listening.’ Agent Lemieux knew how to tell people what they wanted to hear.

  ‘There are four statements that lead to wisdom. I want you to remember them and follow them. Are you ready?’

  Agent Lemieux had taken out his notebook and, pen poised, he’d listened.

  ‘You need to learn to say: I don’t know. I’m sorry. I need help and I was wrong.’

  Agent Lemieux had written them all down. An hour later he was in Superintendent Brébeuf’s office, showing him the list. Instead of the laughter he’d expected the Superintendent’s lips had grown thin and white as he clenched his jaws.

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ said Brébeuf. ‘Our own chief told us those things when we first joined. That was thirty years ago. He said them once and never again. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Well, they’re hardly worth remembering,’ said Lemieux, judging that was what the Superintendent wanted to hear. He was wrong.

  ‘You’re a fool, Lemieux. Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with? Why the hell did I think you could do anything against Gamache?’

  ‘You know,’ Lemieux said, as though he hadn’t heard the reproach, ‘it almost seems as though Chief Inspector Gamache believes those things.’

  As I did once, said Brébeuf to himself. Once, when I loved Armand. When we trusted each other and pledged to protect each other. Once, when I could still admit I was wrong, I needed help, I didn’t know. When I could still say, I’m sorry.

  But that was long ago now.

  ‘I’m not such a fool, you know,’ said Agent Lemieux softly.

  Brébeuf waited for the inevitable whining, the doubts, the need for reassurance, yes we’re doing the right thing, yes Gamache betrayed the Sûreté, you’re a clever young man, I know you see through his deceit. Brébeuf had needed to repeat these things so often to the beleaguered Lemieux he almost believed them himself.

  He stared at the agent and waited. But Brébeuf saw a poised, self-contained officer.

  Good. Good.

  But a tiny, cool breeze enveloped Brébeuf’s heart.

  ‘One other thing he told me,’ said Lemieux at the door now, smiling disarmingly. ‘Matthew 10:36.’

  Brébeuf watched, stone-faced, as Agent Lemieux closed the door softly behind him. Then he began breathing again, shallow, fast breaths, almost gasps. Looking down he saw he’d made a fist of his hand, and filling that fist, crumpled and balled, was the paper with the four simple statements.

  And filling his head, like a fist, were Lemieux’s last words.

  Matthew 10:36.

  He’d forgotten that too. But what he knew he’d remember for a very long time was the look on Lemieux’s face. What he’d seen there wasn’t the familiar squirrely, needy, pleading look of a man who wanted to be convinced. Instead, he’d seen the look of a man who no longer cared. It wasn’t cleverness he’d surprised there, but cunning.

  Now Agent Lemieux listened and waited for Monsieur Béliveau to tell him more, but the old grocer seemed content to also wait.

  ‘How did your wife die?’

  ‘Stroke. High blood pressure. She didn’t die immediately. I was able to bring her home and care for her for a few months. But she had another one and that took her. She’s buried up behind St Thomas’s church in the old cemetery there, with her parents and mine.’

  Agent Lemieux thought there would be nothing worse than to be buried here. He planned to be buried in Montreal or Quebec City, or Paris, the retired and revered President of Quebec. Up until recently the Sûreté had provided him with a home, a purpose. But Superintendent Brébeuf had unwittingly given him something else. Something missing from his life. A plan.

  Robert Lemieux’s plan didn’t include being with the Sûreté long. Just long enough to rise through the ranks, make a name for himself, then run for public office. Anything was possible. Or would be, once he brought down Gamache. He’d be a hero. And heroes were rewarded.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Béliveau.’ Myrna Landers came in, filling the store with sunshine and smiles. ‘Am I interrupting?’


  ‘No, not at all.’ Agent Lemieux closed his notebook. ‘We were just having a small talk. How are you?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ She turned to Monsieur Béliveau. ‘How are you doing? I hear you had dinner with Clara and Peter last night.’

  ‘I did. It was a comfort. I’m doing exactly as you might expect.’

  ‘It’s a sad time,’ said Myrna, deciding not to try to jolly Monsieur Béliveau out of his rightful sorrow. ‘I’ve come for a paper. La Journée, please.’

  ‘There’s quite a call for that paper today.’

  ‘There’s a strange article in it.’ She wondered whether she should keep it quiet but decided that horse had bolted. She paid for the paper and flipped through the pages until she found the city column.

  All three leaned over it then all three rose, like devotees after ancient prayers. Two were upset. One was ecstatic.

  Just then a quacking sound took them to the swinging screen door and out onto the veranda.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Monsieur Sandon,’ Inspector Beauvoir called for the gazillionth time. He was getting a little worried. He was deep in the woods outside St-Rémy. Odile had told him where to find Gilles’s truck and his trail through the woods. The truck had been easy. Beauvoir had only gotten lost twice on the way to this cul-de-sac, but finding the man was proving more difficult. The trees were just beginning to bud so his view wasn’t obscured by the leaves, but it was heavy going what with downed trees, swamps, and rocks. It wasn’t his natural habitat. He scrambled over slimy stones and stumbled through mud puddles, hidden under a layer of decaying autumn leaves. His fine leather shoes, not sensible he knew but he couldn’t yet lower himself to rubber, were filled with water, mud and sticks.

  Odile, as he’d stepped into the fresh air from the cloying aromas of the organic store, had shouted a phrase that still resonated in his ears.