Cruelest Month Read online

  But had everyone really let go of all their bitter thoughts? Was it possible someone was holding on to theirs, hoarding them? Devouring them, swallowing them until they were bloated with bitterness and had become a walking, breathing version of the house on the hill?

  Was there a human version of that wretched place, walking among them?

  What do I believe? she asked herself again. She had no answer.

  After a moment Gamache got up. ‘Where can I find Madame Chauvet, the medium?’ He reached into his pocket to pay for the sandwiches and drinks.

  ‘She’s staying at the B. & B.,’ said Olivier. ‘Should I get her?’

  ‘No, we’ll walk over. Merci, patron.’

  ‘I didn’t go,’ Olivier whispered to Gamache as he handed him his change at the till on the long wooden bar, ‘because I was too afraid.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. There’s something about that house.’

  ‘And that woman.’

  ‘Madeleine Favreau?’ Gamache found himself whispering now.

  ‘No. Jeanne Chauvet, the psychic. Do you know what she said to Gabri as soon as she arrived?’

  Gamache waited.

  ‘She said, “You won’t get laid here.”’

  Gamache absorbed the unlikely words.

  ‘Are you sure? It seems a strange thing for a psychic to worry about. It’s not—’

  ‘True? Of course not. In fact – well, never mind.’

  Gamache walked out the door into the splendid day with Olivier’s last whispered warning in his ears.

  ‘She’s a witch, you know.’

  The three Sûreté officers walked along the road that circled the village green.

  ‘I’m confused,’ Agent Lemieux said, running a little to keep up with Gamache’s strides. ‘Was it murder?’

  ‘I’m confused too, young man,’ said Gamache, stopping to look at him. ‘What are you doing here? I didn’t call you out.’

  Lemieux was taken aback by the question. He’d expected the Chief Inspector to be delighted, thanking him even. Instead Gamache was looking at him with patience and slight puzzlement.

  ‘He’s visiting his parents not far from here, for Easter,’ said Beauvoir. ‘A friend on the local Sûreté told him about the case.’

  ‘I came on my own. I’m sorry, have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing wrong. I just want to keep the investigation as discreet as possible, until we know whether it’s murder.’ Gamache smiled. His people needed to be self-starters, though perhaps not quite as eager as this one. But he’d grow out of it soon enough, and Gamache wasn’t sure if that would be a good day.

  ‘So we don’t know for sure?’ asked Lemieux, hurrying to catch up as Gamache resumed walking toward the large brick house on the corner.

  ‘I don’t want anyone to know yet, but she had ephedra in her blood,’ explained Gamache. ‘Heard of it?’

  Lemieux shook his head.

  ‘I’m surprised. You like sports, n’est-ce pas?’

  The young agent nodded. It was one of the things that had bonded him to Beauvoir. Their love of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. The Habs.

  ‘Ever heard of Terry Harris?’

  ‘The running back?’

  ‘Or Seamus Regan?’

  ‘The outfielder? Played for the Lions? They both died. I remember reading about it in Allô Sport.’

  ‘They took ephedra. It’s used in diet pills.’

  ‘That’s it. Harris collapsed during practice and Regan was actually playing. I was watching on TV. It was a hot day and everyone thought it was heat stroke. But it wasn’t?’

  ‘They were told by their coaches to lose weight fast, so they were taking diet pills.’

  ‘That was a couple of years ago,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Ephedra’s banned now, isn’t it?’

  ‘As far as I know, but I might be wrong. Can you check it out?’ Gamache asked Lemieux.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Gamache smiled as he walked to the attractive B. & B. He liked Lemieux’s enthusiasm. It was one of the reasons he’d asked the young man to join the team. Lemieux had been with the Cowansville detachment when Gamache was last down investigating a murder and had impressed him.

  The victim in that case had lived in the old Hadley house.

  They stepped onto the sweeping veranda of the B. & B. The three-story brick building had once been a stop on the stage coach route between Williamsburg and St-Rémy and sat on what was now called the Old Stage Road. Olivier had once told him that Gabri had made him buy it so he could tell friends he was ‘on the stage’.

  Stepping inside he was met with wood floors, rich Indian rugs, and genteel faded fabrics. It felt like an old country house and invited relaxation.

  But he wasn’t there to relax. He was there to find out what had killed Madeleine Favreau. Was it a simple heart attack brought on by excitement or fear? Had she taken the ephedra herself? Or was something more sinister at work, hidden behind the pleasant facade of Three Pines?

  Olivier said Jeanne Chauvet was in the small bedroom on the main floor.

  ‘Stay here,’ Gamache ordered Lemieux while he and Beauvoir walked down the short corridor.

  ‘Think she might overpower us?’ Beauvoir whispered with a smile.

  ‘I think she might,’ said Gamache, seriously, and knocked on the door.

  FOURTEEN

  Silence.

  Gamache and Beauvoir waited. Sunlight and fresh air wafted through the slightly open window at the end of the corridor, the simple white sheers moving slightly in the breeze.

  Still they waited. Beauvoir was itching to knock again. Harder this time, as though insistence and impatience could conjure a person. Would that it were true. He was anxious to meet this woman who socialized with ghosts. Did she like them? Is that why she did it? Or perhaps no real person wanted to be with her? Maybe the only company she could find was the dead, who might not be as picky as the living. She had to be crazy, he knew. After all ghosts weren’t real. They don’t exist. Except maybe the Holy Ghost. But if— No. He wouldn’t go down that road. He looked over at Gamache’s patient profile, as though this was exactly how he wanted to spend his day. Standing in a corridor staring at a closed door.

  ‘Madame Chauvet? This is Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté. I’d like to speak to you.’

  Beauvoir smiled a little. It looked as though the Chief Inspector was addressing the door.

  ‘I see that smile, monsieur. Perhaps you’d like to try?’ Gamache stepped aside and Beauvoir stepped up to the door, pounding it with the heel of his hand.

  ‘Sûreté, open up.’

  ‘Brilliant, mon ami. Just what will appeal to a woman on her own.’ Gamache turned and walked down the corridor, looking back at Beauvoir. ‘I only let you do that because I know she’s not in there.’

  ‘And I only did it because I knew you’d be amused.’

  ‘There’s a key on the peg,’ Lemieux pointed out when they returned. ‘Couldn’t we let ourselves in?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Not without a warrant and not until we know it’s murder.’ Still, he liked Lemieux’s thinking. ‘What now?’ he asked Gamache.

  ‘Search the place.’

  While Beauvoir and Lemieux searched the dining room, gourmet kitchen, bathrooms and basement, Gamache walked into the living room and sat in the oversized leather chair.

  He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. He was worried. Where was Jeanne Chauvet? What was she doing? What was she feeling? Guilt? Remorse? Satisfaction?

  Was the séance a tragic failure or a spectacular success?

  Agent Robert Lemieux stood on the threshold between the living and dining rooms watching the Chief Inspector.

  At times young Agent Lemieux was racked with doubt. A kind of crisis of faith that his parents talked of suffering decades ago. But his church was the Sûreté, the place that had taken him in, given him purpose. While his parents eventually left their church, he’d never leave his. Never leave i
t, and never, ever betray it. His parents had raised him, fed him, disciplined and loved him. But the Sûreté had given him a home. He loved his parents and sisters, but only other officers knew what it was like to be in the Sûreté. To walk out of the door, all cocky and swaggering, but being careful to tell his cat he loved her, just in case.

  Watching Chief Inspector Gamache, eyes closed, head tilted back exposing his throat, so trusting, Lemieux wondered just for an instant. Had what he’d been told about Gamache really been true? Once, not so long ago, Lemieux had worshipped Gamache. On his first visit to headquarters as a recruit he’d seen the famous man striding down the hall, junior officers in tow, decoding the most intricate and brutal of cases. And yet he’d had time to smile and nod a greeting. They’d studied his cases. They’d watched and cheered as Armand Gamache had brought down the dirty Superintendent Arnot. And saved the Sûreté.

  But things weren’t always as they seemed.

  ‘Nothing.’ Beauvoir brushed by Lemieux into the living room. Gamache opened his eyes and looked at the two men, his gaze resting on Lemieux. Their eyes held.

  Then Gamache blinked and he rocked himself out of the chair.

  ‘You’ve had enough rest. Time to work. Agent Lemieux, please stay here in case Jeanne Chauvet comes back. You and I’, he said to Beauvoir as they made for the door, ‘are going to see Hazel Smyth.’

  As he watched Gamache and Beauvoir walk to their car Lemieux hit the speed dial on his cell phone.

  ‘Superintendent Brébeuf? It’s Agent Lemieux.’

  ‘Anything?’ the confident voice came down the line.

  ‘A couple of things I think might be helpful.’

  ‘Good. Any sign of Agent Nichol?’

  ‘Not yet. Should I ask?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, of course you shouldn’t. Tell me everything.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. Brébeuf clenched his jaw. He was not a patient man, though he’d waited this long to get Gamache. They’d grown up together, joined up together, risen through the ranks together. They’d both gone after the Superintendent’s job, Brébeuf remembered with satisfaction. It was the little gift he kept in the back of his mind and unwrapped in moments of stress. Now he did it again. Unfolding the layers of his smiling, nodding, forelocktugging manner toward his best friend. And then he reached the great and unexpected gift. He’d prevailed. He’d won the promotion over the great Armand Gamache. And it had been enough, for a while. Until the Arnot case. Quickly he replaced the wrapping and shoved the comforting thought to the back of his mind. He needed to focus, to be careful now.

  ‘You know, son, why we’re doing this.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Don’t be charmed by him, don’t be fooled. Most are. Superintendent Arnot was, and look what happened to him. You need to focus, Lemieux.’

  When Lemieux had related the events of the day Brébeuf paused, thinking.

  ‘There’s something I want you to do. It’s a risk, but not, I think, a very big one.’ He gave Lemieux his instructions. ‘This will all be over soon,’ he said kindly, ‘and when it is, the officers with the courage to stand up for what they believe in will be rewarded. You’re a brave young man and, believe me, I know how difficult this is.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Brébeuf hung up. As soon as this case was over he’d have to figure out what to do with Robert Lemieux. The young agent was really too impressionable.

  Agent Lemieux hung up, a strange sensation in his chest. Not the tightening he’d had ever since Superintendent Brébeuf had appealed for his help, but a loosening, a euphoria.

  Had Superintendent Brébeuf just offered him a promotion? Could he do what was best and benefit at the same time? How far up could he ride this? It might turn out all right after all.

  Hazel Smyth was waiting for Madeleine to come home. Each footfall, each creak of the floorboards, each turn of a knob was her.

  Then not. Every minute of the day Hazel lost Madeleine again. And now the door to the living room opened and Hazel looked up, expecting to see Mad’s cheery face and a tea tray – it was tea time after all. But instead she saw her daughter’s cheery face.

  Sophie stepped in holding a huge glass of red wine for herself and made her way around the crowded room until she’d reached the sofa.

  ‘So, what’s for dinner?’ she said, flopping into a chair and picking up a magazine.

  Hazel stared at this stranger. It was as though she’d lost both of them last night. Madeleine dead and Sophie possessed. This wasn’t the same girl. What had happened to morose, selfish Sophie?

  The thing in front of her was radiant. It was as though the spirit of Madeleine had entered Sophie. Only without the heart. Without the soul. Whatever was radiating from Sophie wasn’t joy or love or warmth.

  But it was happiness. Madeleine was dead, horribly, grotesquely dead. And Sophie was happy.

  It scared Hazel almost to death.

  Beauvoir drove while Gamache navigated, trying to read the map while the car bounced along the heaved and holed road. He saw nothing of their progress except lurching squiggles and dots. It was fortunate he didn’t get car sick.

  ‘It’s just beyond here.’ Gamache folded the map and looked through the windshield. ‘Watch out.’

  Beauvoir yanked the steering wheel but they hit the pothole anyway.

  ‘You know I was doing just fine before you looked up,’ he said.

  ‘You hit every hole between here and Three Pines. Watch out.’

  The car rammed into another hole and Gamache wondered how long his tires would hold.

  ‘We go through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses and out the other side. There’s a turn off to the right. Chemin Erablerie.’

  ‘Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses?’ Beauvoir couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘You expected maybe St-Roof Trusses?’

  At least Three Pines made sense, thought Beauvoir. Williamsburg and St-Rémy made sense. Weren’t Roof Trusses something to do with building?

  Goddamned English. Trust them to choose a name like that. Like calling a village Royal Bank or Concrete Foundation. Always building, always bragging. And what was with this case? Didn’t anyone die a normal death in Three Pines? And even their murders weren’t normal. Couldn’t they just haul off and stab each other, or use a gun or a bat? No. It was always something convoluted. Complicated.

  Very unQuébécois. The Québécois were straightforward, clear. If they liked you they hugged. When they murdered you they just whacked you over the head. Boom, done. Convicted. Next.

  None of this ‘is it’ or ‘isn’t it’ shit.

  Beauvoir was beginning to take this personally, though he was grateful the case had taken him away from the Easter egg hunt with his in-laws. There weren’t actually any children. Just him and his wife, Enid. Her parents had expected them to spend the morning searching for chocolate eggs they’d hidden all over the house. They’d even kidded that it should be easy for him since he was an investigator, after all. He thought the easiest way would be to simply put his gun to his father-in-law’s head and force him to say where the goddamned eggs were. But then the miraculous call had come. His calling.

  He wondered how poor Enid was doing. Well, too bad. They were her crazy parents.

  They were through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses in no time. Sure enough there was a huge faded sign in the yard of a small factory advertising ‘Roof Trusses’. Beauvoir shook his head.

  The old brick house overlooked the road, a few large maples on the front lawn and what Gamache suspected would be lush perennial beds full of flowers in a few weeks close to the house and along the drive. It was a tiny, tidy home that today spoke of potential. Leaves not yet out, flowers not yet up, grass not yet growing.

  Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case. To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space. The colors, the decorations. The aromas. Were there books? What sort?

  H
ow did it feel?

  He’d been in shacks in the middle of nowhere, carpets worn, upholstery torn, wallpaper peeling off. But stepping in he’d also noticed the smell of fresh coffee and bread. Walls were taken up with immense smiling graduation photos and on rusty pocked TV trays stood modest chipped vases with cheery daffodils or pussy willows or some tiny wild flower picked by worn hands for eyes that would adore it.

  And he’d been in mansions that felt like mausoleums.

  He was anxious to see how Madeleine Favreau’s home felt. From the outside it felt sad, but he knew most places felt just a little sad in spring, when the bright and playful snow had gone and the flowers and trees hadn’t yet bloomed.

  The first thing that struck him on entering the house was that it was almost impossible to move. Even in the narrow mudroom they’d somehow managed to stuff an armoire, a bookcase and a long wooden bench under which piles of muddy boots and shoes had been thrown.

  ‘My name is Armand Gamache.’ He bowed slightly to the middle-aged woman who opened the door.

  She was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater. Comfortable, conventional. She smiled a little as he brought out his warrant card.

  ‘It’s all right, Chief Inspector. I know who you are.’ She stepped aside and let them in. Gamache’s first impression was of a decent person trying to find her way in an indecent situation. She spoke French to them, though with a heavy English accent. She was courteous and contained. The only sign of something amiss were dark circles under her eyes, as though grief had physically struck her.

  But Armand Gamache knew something else. Grief sometimes took time to tell. The first days for relatives or close friends of murder victims were blessedly numb. They almost always held together, going through the motions of a normal life, so that a casual observer would never know disaster had just rammed into them. Most people fell to pieces gradually, like the old Hadley house.