Cruelest Month

by Louise Penny

  ‘They’re gone,’ he said, though he didn’t look upset.

  ‘The yearbooks?’

  Gamache nodded and smiled. He hadn’t planned it, but this was good. Someone was rattled. Rattled enough to sneak into the B. & B., which everyone knew was never locked, and take the yearbooks from twenty-five years ago.

  ‘Yummy, yummy,’ said Gabri, placing the platters in front of his guests. Each held two eggs on a thick slice of Canadian back bacon which in turn rested on a golden toasted English muffin. Hollandaise sauce was drizzled over the eggs and fruit salad garnished the edges of each plate.

  ‘Mangez,’ said Gabri. Gamache reached out his hand and took Gabri’s wrist lightly. He looked up at the large, disheveled man. Gabri stood stock-still, staring. Then he lowered his eyes.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Eat. Please.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Beauvoir’s fork with a massive mound of egg, dripping hollandaise, stopped almost at his mouth. He stared at the two men.

  ‘There’s more. It’s the papers, isn’t it?’ said Beauvoir, suddenly knowing.

  Both men followed Gabri into the living room. He pulled a newspaper out from where he’d stuffed it behind a cushion on the sofa. Handing it to Gamache he walked over to the television and turned it on. Then he walked to the stereo and turned the radio on.

  Within seconds the room was full of accusations. Blaring from the stereo, from the morning news programs, from the newspaper headlines.

  Daniel Gamache under investigation. Criminal record.

  Annie Gamache on leave, her lawyer’s license suspended.

  Armand Gamache suspected of everything from murder to running a puppy mill.

  The picture on the front page this time wasn’t of Gamache, but of his son, in Paris, Roslyn behind him carrying Florence. All being jostled by reporters. Daniel looking angry and furtive.

  Gamache could feel his heart pounding against his chest. He took a huge, ragged breath, realizing he’d been holding it. On the television was a live picture of a young woman leaving an apartment building, her briefcase up to her face.

  Annie.

  ‘Oh, God,’ whispered Gamache.

  Then she lowered the case and stood still. This seemed to stun the reporters who preferred their prey on the run. She smiled at them.

  ‘No, don’t,’ whispered Beauvoir.

  Annie raised her arm and gave them the finger.

  ‘Annie,’ Gamache mouthed, but no sound came out. ‘I need to go.’

  He rushed upstairs and grabbed his cell phone. He was surprised to see his finger shaking, barely able to connect with the speed dial. It was answered on the first ring.

  ‘Oh, Armand, have you seen?’

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘I just got off the phone with Roslyn. They’ve taken Daniel into custody in Paris. He’s suspected of drug-dealing.’

  ‘All right,’ said Gamache, some calm returning. ‘All right. Let me think.’

  ‘They won’t find anything,’ said Reine-Marie.

  ‘They might.’

  ‘But that was years ago, Armand. He was a kid, experimenting.’

  ‘It’s possible someone’s planted something on him,’ said Gamache. ‘How was Roslyn?’

  ‘Stressed.’

  Reine-Marie didn’t say it, would never want to add to his burden, but Gamache knew she was worried for the unborn baby. Women can miscarry after a blow like this.

  There was silence.

  This was so much more than Gamache had dreamed would happen. What was Brébeuf doing? Was this his idea of trying to stop it? With an effort he stopped raging against Brébeuf. He knew that was just a convenient target. He knew his friend was doing his best but that their adversaries were far more vicious than Gamache had expected and than Brébeuf could hope to control.

  Someone had done their homework. Knew his family, knew Daniel’s conviction years ago on drug possession. Knew Daniel was in Paris and perhaps even knew of the pregnancy.

  ‘This has gone too far,’ said Gamache, finally.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to stop it.’

  After a moment Reine-Marie asked, ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll resign if necessary. They win. I can’t endanger the family.’

  ‘I’m afraid they’ll no longer be satisfied with your resignation, Armand.’

  He’d thought of that too.

  Gamache called Michel Brébeuf and asked him to call a meeting of the senior Sûreté council for that afternoon.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Armand,’ Brébeuf had said. ‘It’s what they want.’

  ‘I’m not a fool, Michel. I know what I’m doing.’

  Both men hung up, Gamache grateful his friend would help, and Brébeuf knowing Gamache was indeed a fool.

  The morning meeting was brief and tense.

  Agent Lacoste reported on her conversation with Madeleine’s doctor. She’d had an appointment two weeks before she was killed. The doctor confirmed that Madeleine’s cancer had returned and spread to her liver. She’d told Madame Favreau. She’d arranged for palliative treatments, but those hadn’t started by the time she was killed.

  She’d come to the appointment alone. And yes, the doctor had the impression that while the diagnosis was devastating it wasn’t a complete surprise.

  Agent Nichol hadn’t returned from Kingston yet and there wasn’t a report from the lab on the contents of the ephedra bottle, though there was one on fingerprints. Sophie’s and only Sophie’s.

  ‘Well, that seems to cinch it,’ said Lemieux. ‘She killed Madeleine Favreau out of jealousy. Came home, saw the opportunity with the séance, slipped her a few pills over dinner, and waited for the Hadley house to do the rest.’

  Everyone was nodding. Through the window of the old railway station Gamache could see Ruth and Gabri walking slowly across the Commons and onto the village green. It was early, with the first freshness of day still holding the village. Behind Ruth came a bouncy little ball, spreading its wings. Alone.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.’

  Everyone stared at Gamache. This was the most unsettling thing to happen yet. In all the years Beauvoir had known him Gamache had never, ever looked away from a conversation or meeting. He held their eyes and made them feel they were the only people on earth. He made his team feel precious and protected.

  But today his attention wandered.

  ‘What were you saying?’ Gamache asked, turning back to the group.

  ‘It seems clear Sophie Smyth is the murderer. Should we bring her in?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  The voice came from behind them. There, next to the immense red fire engine, stood a very small woman. Hazel. Though barely recognizable. Grief had finally caught her. Now she looked shrunken, her eyes large and desperate.

  ‘Please. Please don’t.’

  Gamache went to her, nodding to Beauvoir, and together they led Hazel into the tiny back room used for storage by the Three Pines volunteer fire department.

  ‘Do you know something, Hazel, that would help us?’ asked Gamache. ‘Something that would convince us your daughter didn’t kill Madeleine, because it certainly looks like it.’

  ‘She didn’t do it. I know that. She couldn’t have.’

  ‘Madeleine was given ephedra. Sophie had ephedra, and she was there.’ Gamache spoke very slowly and clearly though he doubted much of this was going in.

  ‘I can’t go on much longer,’ she whispered. ‘And I can’t lose Sophie too. If you arrest her I’ll die.’

  Gamache believed it.

  Jean Guy Beauvoir looked at Hazel. The exact same age as Madeleine though you’d never know it. She now seemed a fossil, something coughed up by the mountains around Three Pines. One of Gilles Sandon’s murmuring stones. No, not a stone. They were strong. This woman was more like what they’d been trying not to step on during their walk. And were about t
o crush now.

  ‘When the ephedra was found on Sophie you said, “Sophie, you promised,”’ said Beauvoir. ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘I said that?’ Hazel thought, trying to remember what she could possibly have meant. ‘Yes, I did. Madeleine had found a bottle of ephedra pills in Sophie’s bathroom a couple of years ago. It was just after one of the athletes had died and it was all over the news. Probably what gave Sophie the idea of using diet pills.’

  It was like dragging a memory from the bottom of the sea, yanking it up with great effort.

  ‘She sent away for them from some internet company. Madeleine found the bottle and took it away.’

  ‘How did Sophie react?’

  ‘Like any nineteen-year-old. She was angry. Mostly angry she said about her privacy being violated, but I think she was mostly embarrassed.’

  ‘Did it affect their relationship?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Sophie loved Madeleine. She could never kill her,’ said Hazel. She had one message left and she’d say it over and over. Her daughter was no killer.

  ‘We won’t talk to Sophie just yet,’ said Gamache. He reached out and lifted Hazel’s head so that she was looking him in the eyes. ‘Do you understand?’

  Hazel looked into his deep brown eyes and willed him never to look away. But, of course, he did. And she was alone again.

  They called Clara to collect Hazel, to keep her company for the day. Clara showed up and led Hazel back to the Morrows’ house where she listened to her then asked if Hazel would like to lie down. Hazel had never felt so tired and gratefully she put her head on the sofa. Clara raised her legs, got a blanket, tucked her in and watched until she was certain the suddenly old woman, younger actually than herself, was asleep.

  Then Clara walked slowly back to her studio and started painting again. More slowly now, the lines firm and deliberate. An image was appearing, but more than the features, something else was coming to life on the canvas.

  ‘Sophie Smyth is well liked at Queens. Even volunteers at the help center. She works part time at the bookstore on campus and seems like a regular student.’

  Yvette Nichol had returned. She sat at the conference table sipping the Double Double coffee she’d bought for herself.

  ‘Grades?’ asked Beauvoir.

  ‘Decent, not phenomenal. I was too late to speak to the office but I talked to her roommates and some classmates and they said Sophie’s a solid student.’

  ‘Illnesses?’ asked Gamache. He noticed Agent Lemieux was uncharacteristically silent, his arms crossed tightly, almost violently, across his chest.

  ‘None,’ said Nichol. ‘Not a sore throat, not a bruise, not a limp. Never visited the infirmary or the Kingston Hospital. As far as her friends know she never even took a day off school, unless she was skipping class for fun.’

  ‘Perfectly healthy,’ said Gamache, almost to himself.

  ‘So that Landers woman was right,’ said Nichol. ‘Sophie put on an act when she was home, trying to get Mom’s attention away from Madeleine.’

  ‘You dropped the pill bottle off?’ asked Beauvoir.

  ‘Of course,’ said Nichol, eating her cream-filled doughnut, oblivious of the hungry stares around her.

  ‘Could you call and see if they have the results yet?’ Gamache asked Beauvoir.

  While he did Gamache handed out assignments then walked to his desk. All eyes were on him, he knew. Watching, he supposed, in case he exploded or dissolved. Instead he looked at them. Lacoste, Lemieux, Nichol. So young. So eager. So human. And he smiled.

  Lemieux smiled back. Eventually Lacoste did too, though not very happily. Nichol looked as though she’d been insulted.

  Gamache found what he was looking for. Whoever had gone into the B. & B. and taken the yearbooks hadn’t taken them all. The most important one was still on his desk. The one Nichol found at Hazel’s home. Madeleine’s graduation yearbook. He sat and read it, going immediately to the back of the book and the grad photos. But it wasn’t Hazel or even Madeleine he wanted to see. It was another girl. A cheerleader.

  ‘I have the results,’ said Beauvoir, throwing himself into a seat at the conference table and slapping his notebook down. ‘The ephedra from Sophie’s pills is probably not the stuff that killed Madeleine.’

  Gamache leaned forward and put the yearbook down. ‘No?’

  ‘The lab isn’t totally sure yet, they want to run a full spectrum analysis, but it seems Sophie’s contained another material, what the lab called a binding agent. Since ephedra’s really a plant, a kind of herb, the companies need to distill it then put it in pill form. Different companies use different binding agents. This one was different from the chemicals found in Madeleine.’

  Gamache was bright-eyed now. ‘What a fool I’ve been. Did she say anything about the chemicals used to kill Madeleine?’

  He waited, almost holding his breath.

  ‘She said the ephedra was from a generation back. More natural but less stable.’

  Gamache nodded. ‘More natural. They would be.’

  He called Lemieux over, asked a few questions, then turned to Beauvoir.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Odile Montmagny was just opening when Beauvoir and Gamache arrived.

  ‘Come to hear more poetry?’

  Beauvoir couldn’t tell whether she was serious. He ignored the question.

  ‘Have you ever heard of ephedra?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘I asked you about it after Madeleine died. You know it was used to kill her,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes, I heard about it from you, but never before.’ They were in the musky store now. It smelled of too many teas and spices. And herbs.

  Gamache walked over to the bins with labels like Devil’s Claw, St John’s Wort, Ginkgo biloba. He took a plastic bag, but instead of using the scoop provided he reached into his pocket for tweezers then carefully dropped some in the bag. He then labeled it.

  ‘I’d like to buy this, s’il vous plaît.’

  Odile looked as though she could have used a Ruth-sized drink.

  ‘It’s so small you can just take it.’

  ‘No, madame. I need to pay.’ Gamache handed the small sample to her to weigh.

  The label said Ma Huang.

  ‘The Chinese herb Lemieux told us about that first morning,’ said Beauvoir when they were back in the car. ‘It’s ephedra.’

  ‘Used for hundreds, maybe thousands of years for other purposes,’ said Gamache. ‘Until the pharmaceuticals found it and turned it into a killer. Ma Huang. The coroner, Dr Harris, told me about it too. Every time we discussed ephedra with someone who actually knew anything they talked about it being an herb. Used in Chinese medicines and others. But I was so focused on the diet supplements I barely heard. It was here all along.’

  ‘Well, you’re ahead of me,’ said Beauvoir, trying to avoid a frog on the wet road, though Gamache wasn’t sure if he was trying to avoid it or swerved to get it. ‘I had visions of Sandon boiling down a ginkgo tree.’

  ‘The caul doesn’t always work, I guess.’

  ‘Seems to slip over my eyes, it’s true,’ said Beauvoir. ‘What does this Ma Huang mean? Did Odile use it to kill Madeleine? And what about the psychic? Is it just a coincidence she has the same name as those magical caves in France? I’m confused.’

  ‘We see through a glass darkly,’ said Gamache. ‘But soon we’ll see all.’

  ‘I know that one,’ said Beauvoir, as though he’d won a game show. ‘First Corinthians. We read it at our wedding. It’s the one on love. But it’s not the same passage Ruth read last night. What should we do with that?’ He gestured to the bag of Ma Huang.

  ‘I’ll take it to the lab when I go into Montreal,’ said Gamache.

  ‘Careful. The media sees you with that they’ll think you’re Daniel’s best customer.’

  Beauvoir shut up, appalled at himself for making a joke like that.

  ‘On days like this I wish that was true,’ Gamache l
aughed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’ll all work out.’

  ‘Through a glass darkly,’ said Beauvoir, almost to himself. ‘What a great description. You really think that window will soon be clear?’

  ‘I do,’ said Gamache. But he also knew St Paul wasn’t talking about a window, but a mirror.

  FORTY

  The conference room on the top floor of the Sûreté headquarters was familiar to Gamache. How many coffees had turned cold as he’d struggled with the ethical and moral issues facing the Sûreté? The constant barrage of questions that finally reduced to one: how far to go to protect a society? Safety versus freedom.

  He had great respect for the people in this room. Except one.

  A wall of windows looked out over east end Montreal and the thrusting arm of the Olympic stadium, like some prehistoric creature come to agonizing life. Inside, the oblique wooden table was surrounded by comfortable captain’s chairs. Each equal.

  That was the conceit.

  Though seats were never assigned each man knew his place. A few of the senior officers looked at Gamache, a couple shook his hand, but most ignored him. He’d expected nothing more. These were people he’d worked with all his life, but he’d betrayed them. Gone public with the Arnot case. He’d known even as he did it what it meant. He’d be cast out. Sent from the tribe.

  Well, he was back.

  ‘Alors,’ said Superintendent Paget, their titular leader. ‘You’ve asked us here, Armand, and we’ve come.’

  He sounded so matter-of-fact, as though they were about to discuss vacation schedules. Gamache had seen this moment coming from a long way off, like a storm at sea. He’d been an anxious mariner, waiting. But the wait was finally over.

  ‘What do you want?’ Superintendent Paget asked.

  ‘This must stop. The attacks on my family must stop.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with us,’ said Superintendent Desjardins.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Brébeuf, turning to the man beside him. ‘We can’t stand by while a senior officer is attacked.’

  ‘The Chief Inspector has always made it clear he doesn’t need our advice or help.’ The voice was deep and reasonable. Calming even. Most of the men turned to look at the speaker, a few stared down at their notes.