Cruelest Month Read online

  As he watched Gamache could almost see the inevitable horsemen on the hill, above Hazel, snorting and pounding the ground, straining to be released. They brought the end of everything Hazel knew, all that was familiar and predictable. This contained woman was courageously holding off the marauding army of grief, but soon it would break free and sweep down and over her, and nothing familiar would be left standing.

  ‘Clara Morrow called to see how I was doing and offer some food. She told me you might be coming.’

  ‘I could have brought the food. I’m sorry.’ He was trying to get his coat off without whacking Beauvoir, who was crammed against the now closed door. A few books fell from the case and Gamache rapped his knuckles on the armoire, but eventually the coat came off.

  ‘No need to be,’ said Hazel, taking the coat and trying to open the armoire. ‘Told her we have plenty. In fact I can’t talk long. Poor old Madame Turcotte’s had a stroke and I need to take her dinner.’

  They followed Hazel deeper into her home.

  The dining room was barely passable and when they finally broke through to the living room Gamache felt like an African explorer, having arrived in the Dark Continent. He hoped they could make camp here for a while. If they could clear enough space.

  The small room held two sofas, including the largest one he’d ever seen, as well as an assortment of chairs and tables. The tiny brick house was stuffed, crammed, bloated and dark.

  ‘It’s a little cozy in here,’ she said as the three of them sat, Gamache and Beauvoir on the massive sofa and Hazel in the worn wing chair opposite. A bag of mending sat at her feet. Her chair, Gamache knew. But it wasn’t the best chair in the room. That one was empty and sat nearest the fireplace. A book was splayed open on the table under the lamp.

  A book in French by a Québécois writer Gamache admired.

  Madeleine Favreau’s seat. The best in the room. Now how was that decided? Did she just take it? Did Hazel offer? Was Madeleine Favreau a bully? Was Hazel a professional victim?

  Or perhaps they were just good friends who decided things naturally and amicably and took turns taking ‘the best’.

  ‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said Hazel, sitting down as though her legs had given way. Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

  ‘Had you known Madame Favreau long?’

  ‘All my life, it seems. We met in high school. Had the same home room the first year and became friends. I was kind of shy but for some reason she took to me. Made my life easier.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Having a friend, Chief Inspector. All you need is one. Makes all the difference.’

  ‘You must have had friends before, madame.’

  ‘True, but not like Madeleine. When she was your friend something magical happened. The world became a brighter place. Does that make sense?’

  ‘It does,’ Gamache nodded. ‘A veil is lifted.’

  She smiled at him gratefully. He did understand. But now, slowly, she could feel the veil lowering again. Madeleine was barely dead and already the dusk was approaching and with it that emptiness. It was spreading across her horizon.

  One was dead and one was left behind. One. Again.

  ‘But you haven’t always lived together?’

  ‘Good Lord, no.’ Hazel actually laughed, surprising herself. Perhaps the dusk was just a threat. ‘We went our separate ways after high school but met up again a few years ago. She’s lived here almost five years now.’

  ‘Was Madame Favreau ever overweight?’

  He was getting used to seeing the baffled looks when he asked this question.

  ‘Madeleine? Not that I know of. She’d put on a few pounds over the years since high school, but that was twenty-five years ago. It’s natural. But she was never fat.’

  ‘Though you hadn’t seen her for a few years.’

  ‘True,’ Hazel admitted. ‘Why did Madame Favreau move in?’

  ‘Her marriage had failed. We were each living on our own so we decided to share. She was in Montreal at the time.’

  ‘Was it hard making space?’

  ‘Now I think you’re being diplomatic, Chief Inspector,’ and Hazel smiled. He realized he liked her. ‘Had she brought a toothpick we’d have been in trouble. Happily she didn’t. Madeleine brought herself, and that was enough.’

  There it was. Simple, unforced, private. Love.

  Across from him Hazel closed her eyes and smiled again, then her brows drew together.

  The room suddenly ached. Gamache wanted to take her composed hands in his. Any other senior officer in the Sûreté would think this not only weakness, but folly. But Gamache knew it was the only way he could find a murderer. He listened to people, took notes, gathered evidence, like all his colleagues. But he did one more thing.

  He gathered feelings. He collected emotions. Because murder was deeply human. It wasn’t about what people did. No, it was about how they felt, because that’s where it all started. Some feeling that had once been human and natural had twisted. Become grotesque. Had turned sour and corrosive until its very container had been eaten away. Until the human barely existed.

  It took years for an emotion to reach that stage. Years of careful nurturing, protecting, justifying, tending and finally burying it. Alive.

  Then one day it clawed its way out, something terrible.

  Something that had only one goal. To take a life.

  Armand Gamache found murderers by following the trail of rancid emotions.

  Beside him Beauvoir squirmed. Not, Gamache thought, because he was impatient. Not yet anyway. But because the sofa seemed to have found a life of its own and was sending out tiny spikes.

  Hazel opened her eyes and looked at him, smiling a little in thanks, he thought, for not interfering.

  Upstairs they heard a thump.

  ‘My daughter, Sophie. She’s visiting from university.’

  ‘She was at the séance last night, I believe,’ said Gamache.

  ‘It was stupid, stupid.’ Hazel hit the arm of her chair with her fist. ‘I knew better.’

  ‘Then why did you go?’

  ‘I didn’t go to the first one, and tried to stop Madeleine—’

  ‘The first one?’ Beauvoir sat up and actually forgot that a million little pins were sticking into his bottom.

  ‘Yes, didn’t you know?’

  Gamache was always amazed and a little disconcerted that people seemed to think they knew everything immediately.

  ‘Tell us, please.’

  ‘There was another séance on Friday night. Good Friday. At the bistro.’

  ‘And Madame Favreau was at that?’

  ‘Along with a bunch of other people. Nothing much happened though so they decided to try another. This time at that place.’

  Gamache wondered whether Hazel Smyth deliberately didn’t name the old Hadley house, like actors who call Macbeth ‘the Scottish Play’.

  ‘Do they do many séances in Three Pines?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Never before as far as I know.’

  ‘So why two in one weekend?’

  ‘It was that woman’s fault.’ As she spoke a chunk fell from her facade and he glimpsed something inside. Not sorrow, not loss.

  Rage.

  ‘Who, madame?’ Gamache asked, though he knew the answer.

  The needles stuck deeper into Beauvoir’s bottom and were heading forward.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Hazel asked. ‘Was Madeleine murdered?’

  ‘Who are you talking about? What woman?’ Gamache repeated firmly.

  ‘That witch. Jeanne Chauvet.’

  All roads lead back to her, thought Gamache. But where was she?

  FIFTEEN

  Armand Gamache opened the door to Madeleine Favreau’s bedroom. He knew this was as close as he would ever come to meeting the woman.

>   ‘So, was Madeleine murdered?’

  The words came along the upstairs hallway and met them at the bedroom door.

  ‘You must be Sophie,’ said Beauvoir, walking toward the young woman who’d spoken, her long dark hair moist from a recent shower. Even a few paces away he could smell the fruity, fresh fragrance of the shampoo.

  ‘Good guess.’ She smiled fully at Beauvoir and cocked her head to one side, extending her hand. Sophie Smyth was slim and dressed in a white terrycloth robe. Beauvoir wondered if the young woman knew the effect this had.

  He smiled back and thought she probably did.

  ‘Now, you were asking about murder.’ Beauvoir looked thoughtful, as though he was seriously contemplating her question. ‘Do you have many dangerous thoughts?’

  She laughed as though he’d said something both riotous and clever and pushed him playfully.

  Gamache slipped into Madeleine’s room, leaving Jean Guy Beauvoir to work his dubious magic.

  The bedroom smelled slightly of perfume, or more likely an eau de toilette. Something light and sophisticated. Not the fulsome, heady aroma of young women that he’d caught in the hallway.

  He turned around, taking it in. The room was small and bright, even in the waning sun. Slight white curtains framed the window and were meant to obscure, not block, the light. The room was painted a clean, refreshing white and the bedspread was chenille, with its tell-tale bumps. The bed was a double – Gamache doubted larger would have fitted – and brass. It was a good antique and as he walked by it he allowed his large hand to drag along the cool metal. Lamps stood on the bedside tables, a stack of books and magazines on one, an alarm clock on the other. The digital clock said 4:19 p.m. He pulled a hanky from his pocket and pressed the alarm button. It flashed to 7 a.m.

  In her closet hung rows of dresses and skirts and blouses. Most size 12, one a size 10. In the honey pine chest of drawers the top one contained items of underwear, clean but not folded. Next to those were bras and socks. In other drawers were some sweaters and a few T-shirts though it was clear she hadn’t yet made the switch from winter to summer. And wouldn’t now.

  ‘So,’ Beauvoir leaned against the hallway wall, ‘tell me about last night.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Sophie leaned as well, about a foot from him. He felt uncomfortable, his personal space violated. Still, he knew he’d asked for it. And it was better than that sofa with its pricks.

  ‘Well, why did you go to the séance?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Three days here, in the middle of nowhere with two old women? Had they said we were going to swim in boiling oil I’d have gone.’

  Beauvoir laughed.

  ‘I’d actually been looking forward to coming home. You know, like, with laundry and stuff. And Mom always makes me my favorite food. But, God, after a few hours, enough already.’

  ‘What was Madeleine like?’

  ‘When, this weekend or always?’

  ‘Was there a difference?’

  ‘When she first came here she was nice, I guess. I was only here for about a year then went to university. Only saw them on holidays and in the summer after that. I liked her at first.’

  ‘At first?’

  ‘She changed.’ Sophie turned from her side and leaned her back against the wall, her chest and hips thrust out, and stared at the blank wall opposite. Beauvoir was quiet. Waiting. He knew there was more and he suspected she wanted to tell him.

  ‘Not as nice this time. I don’t know.’ She looked down, her hair falling in front of her face so that Beauvoir could no longer see her expression. She mumbled something.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I’m not sorry she’s dead,’ Sophie said into her hands. ‘She took things.’

  ‘Like what? Jewelry, money?’

  ‘No, not those things. Other things.’

  Beauvoir stared at Sophie’s hair then lowered his gaze to her hands. One clasped the other as though she needed to be held and no one else was offering.

  Gamache picked up the books on Madeleine’s bedside table. English and French. Biographies, a history of Europe after World War Two, and a work of literary fiction by a well-known Canadian. An eclectic taste.

  Then he shoved his long arm between box-spring and mattress, sweeping it up and down. In his experience, if people were going to have books, or magazines, that embarrassed them, this was where they were hidden.

  The next hiding place was less for ‘hiding’ and more for simple privacy. The drawer in the bedside table. Opening it up he found a book there.

  Now why didn’t she keep it with the rest? Was it a secret? It looked harmless enough.

  Picking it up he looked at the cover photo of a smiling elderly woman in tweeds and long, exuberant necklaces. In one eloquent hand she held a cocktail. Paul Hiebert’s Sarah Binks, the cover said. He flipped it open and read at random. Then he sat on the side of the bed and read more.

  Five minutes later he was still reading and smiling. At times laughing out loud. He looked around guiltily, then closed the book and slipped it into his pocket.

  After a few minutes he’d completed his search, ending up at the dresser by the door. Madeleine kept a few framed photographs there. He picked one up and saw Hazel with another woman. She was slim with very short dark hair and gleaming brown eyes. Doe eyes, made larger by the haircut. Her smile was full and without artifice or agenda. Hazel was also relaxed and smiling.

  They looked natural together. Hazel calm and content and the other woman radiant.

  At last Armand Gamache had met Madeleine Favreau.

  * * *

  ‘Sad house,’ said Beauvoir, looking in the rearview mirror. ‘Was it ever happy, do you think?’

  ‘I think it was a very happy house once,’ said Gamache.

  Beauvoir told the chief about his conversation with Sophie. Gamache listened then looked out the window, seeing only the odd light in the distance. Night fell as they bumped back to Montreal.

  ‘What was your impression?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘I think Madeleine Favreau squeezed Sophie out of her own home. Not on purpose, maybe, but I think there wasn’t enough room for her. There’s barely room in there to move and the addition of Madeleine was too much. Something had to give.’

  ‘Something had to go,’ said Gamache.

  ‘Sophie.’

  Gamache nodded into the darkness and thought about a love so all-consuming it ate up and spat out Hazel’s own daughter. How would that daughter feel?

  ‘What did you find?’ Beauvoir asked.

  Gamache described the room.

  ‘But no ephedra?’

  ‘None. Not in her room, not in the bathroom.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Gamache picked up his cell phone and dialed. ‘I think Madeleine didn’t take the ephedra herself. She was given the dose.’

  ‘Enough to kill.’

  ‘Enough to murder.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ Daniel’s harried voice came through the phone. ‘Where’s her bunny? We can’t sit on the plane for seven hours without the bunny. And the gar.’

  ‘When’re you heading to the airport?’ Gamache asked, looking at the time on the Volvo console.

  Five twenty.

  ‘We should’ve left half an hour ago. Florence’s gar is missing.’

  This made perfect sense to the Chief Inspector. Florence’s other grandfather, Papa Grégoire, had given her a yellow pacifier which she loved. Papa Grégoire had said in passing that Florence sucked on it the way he used to suck on cigars. Florence heard and it became her ‘gar’. Her most precious possession. No gar, no flight.

  Gamache wished he’d thought of hiding it.

  ‘What, honey?’ Daniel’s voice, off the mouthpiece, called. ‘Oh, great. Dad, we found them. Gotta go. Love you.’

  ‘I love you too, Daniel.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Want me to drive to the airport?’ Beauvoir asked.

  Ga
mache looked at the time again. Their flight to Paris was at seven thirty. Two hours.

  ‘No, it’s all right. Too late. Merci.’

  Beauvoir was glad he asked, and even happier the chief had said no. A small blossom of satisfaction opened in his chest. Daniel was gone. The chief was all his again.

  *

  Despond not, though times be bale,

  And baleful be,

  Though winds blow stout –

  Odile stared at the bags of organic cereal on the shelves, for inspiration. ‘Though winds blow stout,’ she repeated, stuck. She had to find something that rhymed with ‘gale’.

  ‘Pale? Pail? Shale? Though winds blow stout like a great big whale?’ said Odile, hopefully. But no, it was close, but not quite right.

  All day in the store that she and Gilles ran in St-Rémy she’d been inspired to write. It had flooded out of her so that now the counter was awash with her works, scribbled on the backs of receipts and empty brown paper bags. Most, she felt sure, were good enough to be published. She’d type them up and send them off to the Hog Breeder’s Digest. They almost always accepted her poems, often without change. The muse wasn’t always so generous, but today Odile found her heart lighter than it had been in months.

  All day people had visited the shop, most wanting a small purchase and a lot of information, which Odile was happy to supply, after being prodded. Wouldn’t do to appear too anxious. Or pleased.

  ‘You were there, dear?’

  ‘It must have been horrible.’

  ‘Poor Monsieur Béliveau. He was quite in love with her. And his wife barely two years gone.’

  ‘Was she really scared to death?’

  That was the one memory Odile didn’t want to revisit. Madeleine frozen in a scream, as though she’d seen something so horrible it had turned her to stone, like the whatever it was from those myths, the head with the snakes. It had never seemed that scary to Odile, whose monsters took human shape.

  Yes, Madeleine had been scared to death and it served her right for all the terror she’d visited upon Odile in the last few months. But now the terror was gone, like a storm blown over.

  A storm. Odile smiled and thanked her muse for coming through again.