by Louise Penny
The only thing Gamache had been missing was a motive. But Em and Mother had provided that.
Crie.
They had to save El’s granddaughter from the monster who was her mother. They’d heard Crie sing, and they’d heard CC crush and humiliate her. And they’d seen the girl themselves.
Crie was clearly dying, suffocating beneath layers of fat and fear and silence. She’d withdrawn into her own world so far she could barely get out any more. CC was murdering her daughter.
Now he watched as the middle dot, the smallest of them, sank to the ground. The others stumbled and tried to pull her up. To go on a little longer. Gamache felt his knees quaking and he longed to collapse onto the snow, to bury his horror in his hands. To look away as the Three Graces died.
Instead he stood erect, the snow insinuating itself down his collar and up his sleeves, plastering against his face and into his unblinking eyes. He forced himself to watch as first one then the other sank to her knees. He stayed with them, a prayer on his cracked lips, repeated over and over.
But another thought insinuated itself.
Gamache looked down at the letter crushed in his hand, then back at the black sprawls on the snow. He was frozen for a moment, stunned.
‘No,’ he screamed and started forward. ‘No,’ he shouted and spun round, looking at his car behind him half buried already in the snow. As were the women. He ran toward the car, frantic to reach it.
It was too late, he knew, but still he had to try.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Gamache turned the car and gunned it toward Williamsburg, making straight for a cantine on rue Principale.
‘I need help,’ he said at the door of the restaurant. All eyes turned to him, a large stranger covered in snow and making demands. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté. Three women are trapped on Lac Brume. We need snowmobiles to get them.’
After a moment’s pause a man rose from the crowd and said, ‘Em are ducks.’ It was Billy Williams.
‘I’m with you.’ Another man stood up. Soon the place was emptying and within minutes Gamache found himself clinging to Billy as the fleet of snowmobiles screeched along rue Principale and out onto Lac Brume.
The storm was howling and Gamache strained to see, to guide Billy to the fallen women. He prayed they hadn’t been buried by the snow.
‘They’re around here somewhere,’ Gamache cried into the side of Billy’s Canadian’s tuque.
Billy slowed down. Around them other snowmobilers were following their lead, careful not to run the women over. Billy stood and gracefully moved his machine through the deep snow, looking for a lump, a bump, a body.
‘High mechanics boat,’ Billy yelled, pointing to a spot invisible to Gamache. They were in a whiteout now. Williamsburg had gone, the shore had gone, the other snowmobilers had disappeared into the storm. Billy turned his machine and made straight for a spot that looked like any other spot on the lake to Gamache. But as they approached some contours appeared.
The women had fallen, holding each other, and now they were indeed covered in snow. But Billy Williams had found them. He tossed off his gloves and while Gamache staggered through the deep snow to the women Billy put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The sound cut through the howl of the storm. While Gamache fell to his knees and dug to get at Em and Mother and Kaye Billy whistled and by the time Gamache had uncovered the women, hands were reaching for them. The men hurried the three women back to their snowmobiles and within moments all were racing back to shore.
Gamache clung on to Billy. Everything was white. The snow was driving into them, making it near impossible to breathe never mind see. How Billy knew where the shore was was anyone’s guess. Gamache had the impression they were heading further out onto the lake, away from the shore. He opened his mouth to shout at Billy, but closed it again.
He was disoriented, he knew. And he knew that he needed to trust Billy. He hugged the man and waited for the machine to hit the shore and climb the slight rise onto rue Principale. But that didn’t happen. Five minutes went by, then ten, and Gamache knew then that they were in the middle of Lac Brume. Lost. In a storm.
‘Where are we?’ he screamed into the tuque.
‘Chairs might red glass,’ shouted Billy, and kept going flat out.
Three minutes later, though it seemed an eternity, the snowmobile thumped into a small hill and Billy turned left. Suddenly they were in among pine trees. The shore, they’d made the shore, thought Gamache with amazement. He looked behind and saw the line of other skidoos following in their tracks.
Billy gunned his machine along a path and onto a street, not yet cleared of snow, though empty of vehicle traffic. Gamache looked for his car, knowing he had a long drive ahead of him to Cowansville hospital. But Billy had taken them another way.
Damn the man, thought Gamache. He’s gotten us lost on the lake and now God only knows where we are.
‘Loudspeaker,’ shouted Billy, and gestured ahead.
There was a huge blue lighted sign. H. Hospital.
Billy Williams had taken them through the storm, across the lake and straight to the hospital.
‘How did you know?’ Beauvoir asked Gamache as the two men looked down at Kaye Thompson. She was hooked up to machines and IVs and bundled in a silver heating blanket. She looked like a baked potato. Like her father before her, she’d faced certain death and beaten the odds.
Gamache took from his pocket a balled up and sodden piece of paper. Handing it to Beauvoir, Gamache turned back to stare at Kaye and wonder what the last few days must have been like for her. Knowing what they almost certainly would do.
Beauvoir sat down and gently pried apart the paper until it again resembled a letter. It was written in a clear, old-fashioned hand, in beautiful French, by Émilie. It explained it all. How Crie had reminded Émilie of her son, David. So gifted, so joyous when creating music. When they’d heard CC attack Crie after the Christmas Eve service they knew they had no choice. They had to kill CC to save Crie.
‘That explains a lot,’ said Beauvoir, finishing the letter. ‘The complexity of the crime, why Kaye claimed not to have seen anything. It all makes sense. It needed all three of them. The niacin was in Mother’s tea, Émilie controlled when Mother would make all that noise at the curling, drawing everyone’s attention away from CC. Kaye leaned on the chair, making it crooked. They knew CC would have to straighten it.’ Beauvoir pointed to the letter on his lap. ‘Madame Longpré begs you to let them kill themselves, and you were going to.’
He had no gift for subtlety, but he tried to make it sound less harsh than it was.
Gamache moved out of the emergency room and into the busy hallway. Doctors and nurses were rushing up and down, the emergency room clogged with car accident victims, skiers with broken bones, people suffering hypothermia and frostbite from the storm. The two men found a couple of chairs and sat down.
‘You’re right, I was going to let them die.’ He could barely believe he was saying that. ‘I knew yesterday that they were the only ones who could have killed CC. Em’s letter only confirmed what I’d guessed. But as I watched them struggle onto the lake I thought of Inuit elders and how they’d get on an ice flow and drift to their deaths, to save the community in a time of starvation. They’d give up their lives so that others would live. Then there were CC’s boots.’
‘The mukluks. Inuit boots. You’re not saying there’s an Inuk involved somehow?’ Beauvoir wondered who that might be.
‘No.’ Gamache gave him a small smile.
‘Good. So there were only three of them. I was afraid the whole village was involved.’
A young doctor hurried down the corridor toward them, wiping his hands.
‘Chief Inspector Gamache? I’ve just come from Madame Mayer. It looks as though she’ll live. Looks soft, but she’s tough as nails. She has frostbite, of course, and moderate exposure. Interestingly enough, the snow might have saved them. It created a blanket when it fell and that helped ins
Gamache had known. When he’d lifted her up she’d been impossibly light. He’d felt he had to hold on to her otherwise she’d float out of his arms. As he held her he’d poured all his prayers into her. But the vessel was cracked too deeply.
Émilie Longpré was curled in Gus’s arms now, warm and safe and happy, listening to David play Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D Major. Em was home.
‘Madame Mayer’s awake if you’d like to talk to her.’
‘Very much.’ Gamache started down the hall, following the doctor.
‘Just one more thing,’ said the doctor as they approached the door. ‘Madame Mayer keeps repeating something over and over and I wonder if you can help us.’
‘Namaste,’ said Beauvoir. ‘It means, the God in me greets the God in you.’ Gamache turned to him, surprised. ‘I looked it up.’
‘No, I know namaste,’ said the doctor, opening the door.
Gamache turned to Beauvoir. ‘The Inuit boots. Émilie Longpré didn’t mention them in her letter. She didn’t know about them until I told her, and even then she didn’t see the significance.’ Gamache disappeared into Beatrice Mayer’s room.
Beauvoir stood on the threshold of the room, alone. What was the chief saying?
And then it hit him. Like the Inuit, the Three Graces had tried to kill themselves to save someone else. To save the real murderer.
They hadn’t killed CC. Someone else had.
From inside the room he heard Beatrice Mayer’s voice.
‘Fuck the Pope!’
Beauvoir brought the car up to the house, yet again. It skidded as he applied the brakes, as though it too didn’t really want to stop there.
The old Hadley house was in near darkness, the path to the front door unshoveled and without footprints. No one had been in or out of the place all day.
‘Should I call for backup?’
‘No. I don’t think he’ll be surprised to see us. He might even be relieved.’
‘I still don’t understand why CC married him,’ mumbled Beauvoir, looking at the closed door.
‘His name,’ said Gamache. ‘Nichol gave me that answer.’
‘How’d she figure it out?’
‘Well, she didn’t really, but she told me that she went into the fire to save Saul Petrov because of his name. Saul. She had an Uncle Saul and there’s a collective guilt in her family about those who died in Czechoslovakia. Including Uncle Saul. It worked on a primal level. It wasn’t rational.’
‘Nothing she does makes sense.’
Gamache stopped, halfway up the path, and turned to Beauvoir. ‘Everything makes sense. Don’t underestimate her, Jean Guy.’ He held the younger man’s gaze a moment longer than necessary then continued his story. ‘This whole case has been about belief and the power of the word. CC de Poitiers married the only man she could. She married another royal. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s favorite son was Richard Coeur de Lion. Richard the Lionhearted. Richard Lyon.’
‘She was attracted to the name, not the man?’
‘Happens all the time. If you like someone named Roger, suddenly you feel kindly toward all Rogers.’
Beauvoir snorted. He couldn’t remember ever feeling kindly, period.
‘And the opposite is true,’ Gamache continued. ‘You hate a Georges, chances are you won’t like any Georges at first. I know I do that. Not proud of it, but it happens. One of my best friends is Superintendent Brébeuf. Every time I meet a Michel I think of him, and immediately like the person.’
‘You immediately like everyone. It doesn’t count. Give me a bad example.’
‘Okay. Suzanne. A Suzanne in junior school was mean to me.’
‘Oh, she was mean to you?’ Beauvoir’s face was writhing in laugh lines.
‘Very mean.’
‘What did she do? Knife you?’
‘She called me names. For four years. She followed me down the halls, through the arches of the years, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind.’
‘That last was a quote, wasn’t it?’ Beauvoir accused him.
‘Afraid so. “The Hound of Heaven”. And maybe she was. She taught me that words wound and sometimes they kill. And sometimes they heal.’
They were at the door and ringing the bell and it opened.
‘Monsieur Lyon,’ said Beauvoir, stepping across the threshold. ‘We need a word.’
Gamache knelt beside Crie. A purple bathing suit was strangling her arms and legs.
‘Who’ll look after her?’ Lyon asked. ‘Will she be all right without me?’
Beauvoir almost demanded why he should suddenly care. Look what life with him had brought her to. Surely this could only be an improvement. But seeing Lyon’s face, resigned, afraid, defeated, Beauvoir held his tongue.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Gamache, straightening up slowly. ‘She’ll be looked after.’
‘I should have stopped CC earlier. Never let it come to this. From the time Crie was born CC had it in for her. I tried a few times to speak to CC.’ Lyon looked at Gamache, pleading for understanding. ‘But I couldn’t.’
All three men looked down at Crie sitting on the side of her bed surrounded by candy and wrappers, as though a chocolate storm had hit. She’s the end of the line, thought Gamache, the final repository of all the fears and fantasies of her mother and grandmother. This was what they’d created. Like Frankenstein’s monster. A patchwork of their own horrors.
Chief Inspector Gamache took her hand and held it, staring into those blank eyes.
‘Crie, why did you kill your mother?’
Crie felt the hot sun tanning her face and her long, lithe body as she lay on the beach. Her boyfriend reached out and took her hands in his and held them as he looked with such kindness into her eyes. His young body gleamed and glistened as though enlightened and he drew her to him, kissing her gently and holding her.
‘I love you, Crie,’ he whispered. ‘You’re everything anyone could want. I don’t think you know how beautiful you are, and talented, and brilliant. You’re the most wonderful girl in the world. Would you sing for me?’
And Crie did. She raised her voice and the young man in her arms sighed and smiled with delight.
‘I’ll never leave you, Crie. And I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.’
And she believed him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The door opened even before Gamache and Reine-Marie knocked.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ said Peter.
‘It’s a lie,’ shouted Ruth from inside the cozy cottage. ‘We started drinking and eating without you.’
‘Actually, she never stopped,’ whispered Peter.
‘I heard that,’ shouted Ruth. ‘Just because it’s the truth doesn’t make it less insulting.’
‘Bonne année,’ said Clara, kissing the Gamaches on both cheeks and taking their coats. This was her first time meeting Reine-Marie and she was exactly as Clara had imagined. Smiling and warm, kind and elegant in her tailored and comfortable skirt and shirt with camelhair sweater and silk scarf. Gamache wore a tweed jacket and tie and flannels. Beautifully cut and worn with easy elegance.
‘Happy New Year.’ Reine-Marie smiled. She was introduced to Olivier and Gabri, Myrna and Ruth.
‘How’re Mother and Kaye?’ Peter asked, leading them into the living room.
‘Recovering,’ said Gamache. ‘Still very weak, and feeling adrift without Em.’
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Olivier, perching on the arm of Gabri’s chair. The fire crackled and a tray of drinks was on the piano. The Christmas tree made the always inviting room even cheerier.
‘The oysters are on the piano, away from Lucy,’ Clara explained. ‘Only a Morrow would have a dog who loves oysters.’
‘We saw the barrel as we came in,’ Reine-Marie admitted, remembering the wooden keg full of oysters sitting in the snow near the Morrows’ front door. She hadn’t seen one of those in years, since her own childhood in the countryside. Barrels of oysters on New Year’s Day. A Québecois tradition.
After getting plates of oysters on the half shell, thin slices of pumpernickel lightly buttered and wedges of lemon, the two joined the others in front of the hearth.
‘How’s Crie?’ Clara asked, settling in beside Peter.
‘She’s in a psychiatric unit. Won’t stand trial for a while, if ever,’ said Gamache.
‘How did you know she’d killed her mother?’ asked Myrna.
‘I thought it was the three women,’ Gamache admitted, sipping his wine. ‘They completely fooled me. But then I remembered those baby sealskin boots.’
‘Wicked,’ said Ruth with a slurp.
‘In her letter Émilie described the niacin, the anti-freeze, the booster cables. But she left out one crucial thing.’ Gamache had their undivided attention. ‘Had they done all the things they describe in that letter, CC would still be alive. In her letter Émilie didn’t mention the boots. But CC had to have been wearing the Inuit mukluks with the metal claws. They were the key to this whole murder. I told Émilie about them yesterday and she was sickened. More than that, she was surprised. She’d heard CC clicking down the path after the Christmas Eve service, but she couldn’t see her. She had no idea what had caused the sound.’
‘None of us did,’ said Clara. ‘It sounded like a monster, with claws.’ As she listened to Gamache a familiar Christmas carol moved through her mind. Sorr’wing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb. Ironically, Clara realized, it was from ‘We Three Kings’.
‘I realized the women couldn’t have killed CC. But they knew who had,’ Gamache said, his listeners, even Lucy, silent and staring. ‘Mother told us everything. Kaye would only give us her name, rank and serial number, which was actually her phone number. Couldn’t get a straight answer out of her.’
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