by Louise Penny
Armand Gamache was speaking, his voice deep and pleasant. Brault noted the graying of the dark hair at the temples and the obvious balding head, without attempt to comb it over. His dark moustache was thick, well trimmed and also graying. His face was lined with care, but also laughter, and his deep brown eyes, looking at Brault over his half-moon glasses, were thoughtful.
How does he survive? Brault wondered. Brutal as the world inside the Montreal police could be, he knew the Sûreté du Québec could be even worse. Because the stakes were higher. And yet Gamache had risen to run the largest and most distinguished department in the Sûreté.
He’d go no further, of course. Even Gamache knew that. But unlike Marc Brault, who was ambition itself, Armand Gamache seemed content, even happy with his life. There had been a time, before the Arnot case, when Brault had suspected Gamache was a bit simple, a bit beyond his depth. But he didn’t think that any more. He knew now what was behind the kind eyes and calm face.
He had the strangest feeling just then that Gamache understood everything that was going on, in Brault’s head and in the labyrinthine minds at the Sûreté.
‘I suggest we give each other our unsolved cases and spend a few days reading over them. See if we can find something.’
Brault took a sip of his cognac and leaned back in his chair, thinking. It was a good idea. It was also unconventional and would probably cause a stink if anyone found out. He smiled at Gamache and leaned forward again.
‘Why? Don’t you have enough work through the year? Or maybe you’re desperate to get away from your family at Christmas.’
‘Well, you know if I could I’d move into my office and live off vending machine coffee. I have no life and my family despises me.’
‘I’ve heard that about you, Armand. In fact, I despise you.’
‘And I you.’
The two men smiled. ‘I would want someone to do this for me, Marc. It’s pretty simple and pretty selfish. If I was murdered I’d like to think the case wouldn’t just sit unsolved. Someone would make an extra effort. How could I deny someone else that?’
It was simple. And it was right.
Marc Brault reached out and shook Gamache’s large hand. ‘Done, Armand, done.’
‘Done, Marc. And if anything happened to you, it wouldn’t remain unsolved.’ It was said with great simplicity and it surprised Brault how much it meant.
And so for the past few years the two men had met in the parking lot at Sûreté headquarters to exchange boxes, ironically, on Boxing Day. And each Boxing Day Armand and Reine-Marie opened the boxes and looked for murderers inside.
‘Now this is odd.’ Reine-Marie lowered her dossier and caught him staring at her. She smiled and continued. ‘Here’s a case from just a few days ago. I wonder how it made it into the pile.’
‘Christmas rush. Someone must have made a mistake. Here, give it to me and I’ll put it in the out tray.’ He held out his hand, but her eyes had dropped once again to the file and she was reading. After a moment he lowered his hand.
‘I’m sorry, Armand. It’s just that I knew this woman.’
‘No.’ Gamache set his own dossier aside and came beside Reine-Marie. ‘How? What’s the case?’
‘She wasn’t a friend or anything. You probably knew her too. That bag lady down by the Berri bus station. You know, the one with all the layers in all weather. She’d been there for years.’
Gamache nodded. ‘Still, it can’t be considered an unsolved case yet. You say she’s only been dead a few days?’
‘She was killed on the twenty-second. And this is strange. She wasn’t at the Berri bus station. She was over on de la Montagne, by Ogilvy’s. That’s a good, what? Ten, fifteen blocks away.’
Gamache resumed his seat and waited, watching Reine-Marie as she read, a few strands of her graying hair falling across her forehead. She was in her early fifties and lovelier than when they’d married. She wore little make-up, comfortable with the face she’d been given.
Gamache could sit all day watching her. He sometimes picked her up at her job at the Bibliothèque nationale, intentionally arriving early so he could watch her going over historic documents, taking notes, head down and eyes serious.
And then she’d look up and see him watching her and her face would break into a smile.
‘She was strangled.’ Reine-Marie lowered the file. ‘Says here her name was Elle. No last name. I can’t believe it. It’s an insult. They can’t even be bothered to find her real name so they call her She.’
‘These things are difficult,’ he said.
‘Which is probably why kindergarten children aren’t homicide detectives.’
He had to laugh as she said it.
‘They didn’t even try, Armand. Look at this.’ She held the dossier up. ‘It’s the thinnest file there. She was just a vagrant to them.’
‘Would you like me to try?’
‘Could you? Even if it’s just to find her name.’
He found the box for Elle’s case, stacked with the others from Brault against one wall of his office. Gamache put on gloves and removed the contents, spreading them on the floor of his office. Before long it was full of rancid, putrid clothing, and a smell that put their blue cheese to shame.
Old newspapers, curling and filthy, sat next to the clothing. Used for insulation, Gamache suspected, against the brutal Montreal winter. Words could do many things, he knew, but they couldn’t halt the weather. Reine-Marie joined him and together they sifted through the box.
‘She seems to have literally surrounded herself with words,’ said Reine-Marie, picking up a book. ‘Those papers for insulation and even a book.’
Opening it she started to read at random.
‘Long dead, and buried in another town,
my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.’
‘May I see that?’ Gamache took the book and looked at the cover. ‘I know this poet. I’ve met her. It’s Ruth Zardo.’ He looked at the cover. I’m FINE.
‘The one from that small village you liked so much? She’s one of your favorite poets, isn’t she?’
Gamache nodded and flipped to the beginning of the book. ‘It’s one I don’t have. Must be new. I don’t think Elle even read it.’ He looked up the publication date and noticed the inscription: ‘You stink, love Ruth.’
Gamache went to the phone and made a call.
‘Is this the Ogilvy bookstore? I’m calling to find out about – yes, I’ll hold.’ He cocked his head at Reine-Marie and smiled. She was putting on evidence gloves and reaching for a small wooden box that had also come out of the evidence box. It was simple and worn. Reine-Marie turned it over and found four letters stuck to the bottom.
‘What do you make of that?’ she asked, showing it to Armand.
B KLM
‘Does it open?’
She gently pried the top off and looked inside, and her face grew even more puzzled.
It was full of letters of the alphabet.
‘Why don’t you – yes, hello?’ He raised his eyebrows in apology. ‘I’m calling about Ruth Zardo’s latest book. That’s right. Many people? I understand. Well, merci.’ He hung up. Reine-Marie had turned the contents of the box onto his desk and was organizing the letters into neat piles.
Five of them. Bs, Cs, Ms, Ls and Ks.
‘The same as the bottom, except the Cs,’ she said. ‘Why these letters and why capitals?’
‘Do you think it’s significant they’re all capital letters?’ Gamache asked.
‘I don’t know, but I know from the documents I handle at work when a series of capital letters is used it’s because each letter represents a word.’
‘Like RCMP or DOA.’
‘Always a cop, but that’s the idea. For instance, I’m FINE,’ she pointed to Ruth’s book now on Gamache’s desk. ‘I bet that stands for something else. What did the bookstore say?’
‘Ruth Zardo launched this book a few days ago, at the Ogilvy store. December twenty-second.’
‘The day Elle died,’ said Reine-Marie.
Gamache nodded. Why would Ruth give a copy to a vagrant and sign it ‘love Ruth’? He knew the old woman well enough to know she didn’t toss around the word ‘love’. He reached for the phone again, but it rang just as he touched it.
‘Oui, allô? Gamache here.’
There was silence for a moment on the other end.
‘Oui, bonjour?’ He tried again.
‘Chief Inspector Gamache?’ A voice came down the line. ‘I didn’t think you’d answer your own phone.’
‘I’m a man of many parts.’ He laughed disarmingly. ‘How may I help you?’
‘My name is Robert Lemieux. I’m the duty officer at the Cowansville police station in the Eastern Townships.’
‘I remember. We met during the Jane Neal investigation.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘What can I do for you, son?’
‘There’s been a murder.’
After getting the information Gamache hung up and looked at his wife. She sat in the chair composed and calm.
‘Do you have your long underwear?’ she asked.
‘I do, madame.’ He slid open his top desk drawer to reveal a lump of deep blue silk.
‘Don’t most officers keep guns there?’ she asked.
‘I find long underwear protection enough.’
‘I’m glad.’ She gave him a hug. ‘I’ll leave you, my dear. You have work to do.’
At the door she watched as he made his calls, his back to her, staring out the window at the Montreal skyline. She watched him move in ways she knew, and she noticed how his hair curled slightly at his neck and she watched his strong hand as it held the phone at his ear.
Within twenty minutes Armand Gamache was on his way to the scene, his second in command Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir at the wheel as they drove over the Champlain bridge and onto the autoroute for the hour and a half trip into the heart of the Eastern Townships.
Gamache stared out the window for a few minutes then opened the book once again, finishing the poem Reine-Marie had begun reading to him.
When my death us do part
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,
Or will it be, as always was, too late?
NINE
‘Her name was Cecilia de Poitiers,’ said Agent Robert Lemieux in answer to Gamache’s first question. ‘But everyone called her CC. This is where it happened, sir.’ Lemieux was trying not to sound too eager. But best not to sound blasé either. He stood up straighter and tried to look like he knew what he was doing.
‘Here?’ Gamache was bending over the snow.
‘Yes sir.’
‘How do you know?’ Jean Guy Beauvoir asked. ‘It all looks the same to me.’
And it did. Snowy footprints everywhere. The Santa Claus parade might as well have marched through his murder scene. Beauvoir shoved his black ski hat further down his head and tugged the ear flaps into place. It was the closest thing he could find to an attractive hat that was also almost warm. Jean Guy Beauvoir was constantly at war with himself, at odds over his need to wear clothes that showed off his slender, athletic build, and his need not to freeze his tight ass off. It was nearly impossible to be both attractive and warm in a Quebec winter. And Jean Guy Beauvoir sure didn’t want to look like a dork in a parka and stupid hat. He looked at Gamache, so composed, and wondered whether he was as cold as Beauvoir, but just didn’t show it. The chief was wearing a gray tuque, a yellow cashmere scarf and a long Arctic-weight parka in soft British khaki. He looked warm. And Beauvoir was struck by how attractive warm looked at minus ten, parka, funny hat, bulbous gloves and all. He began to suspect maybe he was the one who looked funny. But he pushed that unlikely thought away as a gust of wind tore through his attractive bomber jacket and lodged deep in his bones. He shivered and stomped his feet. They were standing on a frozen lake, bleak and cold. The shore was a hundred yards behind them and the far shore just a dark strip in the distance. Beauvoir knew that round the rugged point of land off to their left was the town of Williamsburg, but standing there now he had the impression they were very far from civilization. They were certainly standing at a spot where something very uncivilized had take place.
Someone had been murdered right there.
It was a shame no one had realized it at the time.
‘Tell me what you know,’ said Gamache to Lemieux.
This was one of Beauvoir’s favorite moments. The beginning of another mystery. But Gamache knew this mystery, like all murders, had begun long ago. This was neither the beginning nor the end.
Gamache walked a few paces further onto the frozen lake, his boots breaking through the thin crust of snow to the softer layer beneath. Gamache felt the telltale trickle down his ankles and knew snow had found its way into his boots.
‘According to witnesses the victim simply collapsed,’ said Lemieux, watching the chief, trying to read whether he was satisfied with his answers. He looked uncomfortable and Lemieux privately cringed. Had he done something wrong already? ‘They tried to revive her, thinking it was a heart attack, then they got her into a truck and took her to the hospital.’
‘So they trampled all over the murder scene,’ said Beauvoir, as though it had been Lemieux’s fault.
‘Yes sir. They were doing their best, I think.’
Lemieux waited for another rebuke, but none came. Instead Beauvoir huffed and Gamache said, ‘Go on.’
‘The emergency room physician, Dr Lambert, called the police about half an hour later. At around eleven thirty this morning. He said he had a suspicious death. Said he’d called in the coroner and it looked as though the victim had been electrocuted. As I said, officially he called it a suspicious death, he has to until it’s ruled a homicide, but when we arrived he made it clear he had no doubts. She was murdered.’
‘Please use her name, agent,’ said Gamache, without reproach. ‘We need to see Madame de Poitiers as a person.’
‘Yes sir. She, Madame de Poitiers, was electrocuted right here.’
It was what Lemieux had said on the phone, and hearing it in his office had sounded strange enough to Gamache, but standing at the scene it was even more bizarre.
How does someone get electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake? You used to be able to electrocute someone in a bathtub but that was before most appliances had automatic shut-offs. Toss a toaster into your spouse’s bath these days and all you’ll get is a blown fuse, a ruined appliance and a very pissed-off sweetheart.
No. It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas. To do it on a frozen lake, in front of dozens of witnesses, was lunacy.
Someone had been insane enough to try.
Someone had been brilliant enough to succeed.
How? Gamache turned slowly, but nothing new presented itself. Certainly there were no vintage televisions or toasters smoldering on the ice. But there were three aluminum lawn chairs sitting on the snow, one toppled over. Towering behind the chairs was what looked like a huge chrome mushroom, fifteen feet high. About twenty feet off to the left was a set of bleachers.
Everything was facing onto the lake toward a clearing on the ice twenty feet or so in front of the bleachers. Gamache walked toward it, trying to avoid more deep snow, and saw it was a rectangle, long and narrow, with large round stones scattered about.
Curling.
Gamache had never played the sport, but he’d watched the Briar on television and knew enough to recognize a curling stone when he saw one. The rink had an eerie feel to it now, as all abandoned sites did. Gamache could almost hear the rocks roll down the ice, the voices of the team members, calling to each other. Just hours ago this place had been full of happy people. Except one. One had been so unhappy, so wretched and dis-eased, he’d had to take a life. Gamache tried to imagine what that person had done. Where had he sat? With the others in the bleachers, or had he distanced himself from the rest, knowing he was about to commit an act that would mark him for ever as different? Was he excited or scared to death? Had he planned the murder to the last detail or suddenly been overtaken with a rage so profound he’d had to act? Gamache stood very still and listened carefully now to see whether he could hear the voice of the murderer, whether it distinguished itself from the ghostly laughter of the children and the collegial calls of the team-mates.
But he couldn’t. Yet.
And maybe there were no voices, just the wind as it skittered across the surface of the lake whisking up snow and creating small, frozen waves.
Technicians were putting out the yellow crime scene tape, photographing every inch of the terrain, picking up anything that looked like evidence. Measuring and bagging and fingerprinting, not an easy task at minus ten Celsius. They were racing time, Gamache knew. It was almost two thirty, three hours since the murder, and the elements were closing in. Any murder scene outside was difficult but a lake in the middle of winter was particularly hard.
‘How can someone be electrocuted here?’ Beauvoir asked petulantly. ‘What do the witnesses say?’
‘The curling started at about ten,’ said Lemieux, consulting his notebook. ‘Maybe ten thirty by the time everyone was here. Almost everyone was in the stands over there but the victim and another woman were sitting in those chairs.’
‘The victim in the one that was overturned?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘I don’t know.’ It killed Lemieux to admit it. Strangely enough it was the first time Gamache looked at him with more than polite interest. ‘The first anyone knew there was a problem was when the other woman sitting there called out. At first no one heard because of all the noise at the rink.’
‘There was a curling riot?’ asked Beauvoir, incredulous. The only riot he could imagine was a stampede to leave.
‘I guess someone made a good shot,’ said Lemieux.
‘Best not to guess,’ said Gamache quietly.
‘Yes sir.’ Lemieux lowered his head and tried not to look too upset by the simple criticism. He didn’t want to appear like an eager schoolboy. This was a delicate time. It was important to give just the right impression.
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