A Fatal Grace (15 page)

Lyon reddened a little. ‘Crie, I’m speaking to you. Please leave…’

‘Perhaps we should go to another room.’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘Yes it is,’ Gamache said gently and got up. He held out his arm, guiding Lyon before him. The little man waddled ahead and across the entrance hall into the room beyond. At the door Gamache looked back at Crie, plump and plucked, as though bred for the pot.

This was still a tragic house.

THIRTEEN

‘Yes, we were at the community breakfast this morning,’ said Lyon.

‘All three of you?’

‘Yes.’ Lyon hesitated.

Gamache waited. They were in the dining room now.

‘We arrived in separate cars, CC and I. She was visiting a colleague.’

‘Before breakfast?’

‘It’s a very stressful time for her. A very important time. Big things happening.’

‘What did your wife do?’

‘You don’t know?’ Lyon seemed genuinely surprised.

Gamache raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

Lyon got up and ran out of the room returning a moment later with a book. ‘This is CC.’

Gamache took it and stared at the cover. It was all white with arched black eyebrows, two piercing blue eyes, nostrils, and a red slash of lips hovering in the middle. It was artful and bizarre. The effect was repellent. The photographer, Gamache thought, must have despised her.

The book was called
Be Calm
.

Gamache tried to recall why that sounded familiar. It would come to him, he knew. Below the title was a black symbol.

‘What’s this?’ Gamache asked.

‘Oh, yes. That didn’t turn out so well. It’s supposed to be the logo for CC’s company. An eagle.’

Gamache looked at the black blotch. Now that Lyon had told him he could see the eagle. Hooked beak, head in profile, mouth open in a scream. He hadn’t taken any marketing courses but he supposed most companies chose logos that spoke of strength or creativity or trust, some positive quality. This one evoked rage. It looked like one pissed-off bird.

‘You can keep that. We have more.’

‘Thank you. But I still don’t know what your wife did.’

‘She was Be Calm.’ Richard Lyon didn’t seem to be able to grasp that not everyone rotated in CC de Poitiers’s orbit. ‘The design firm? Li Bien? Soft palettes?’

‘She designed dentures?’ Gamache made a guess.

‘Dentures? No. Houses, rooms, furniture, clothes. Everything. Life. CC created it all.’ He opened his arms wide like an Old Testament prophet. ‘She was brilliant. That book is all about her life and her philosophy.’

‘Which was?’

‘Well, it’s like an egg. Or really more like paint on a wall. Though not on the wall, of course, but Li Bien. Beneath the wall. Painting inside. Kinda.’

Lemieux’s pen hovered over his notebook. Should he write this down?

Dear God, thought Lyon. Shut up. Please, shut up. You’re a fat, ugly, stupid, stupid loser.

‘When did she leave this morning?’ Gamache decided to try another tack.

‘She was gone when I got up. I snore I’m afraid so we have separate bedrooms. But I could smell coffee so she must have just left.’

‘And what time was that?’

‘About seven thirty. When I got to the Legion about an hour later CC was already there.’

‘With the colleague?’

Did he hesitate again?

‘Yes. A man named Saul something. He’s rented a place down here for the Christmas holidays.’

‘And what does he do for your wife?’ Gamache hoped Lemieux had managed to keep a straight face.

‘He’s a photographer. He takes pictures. He took that picture. Good, isn’t it?’ Lyon pointed to the book in Gamache’s hand.

‘Was he taking pictures of the breakfast?’

Lyon nodded, his eyes round and puffy and somehow imploring. But imploring him to do what, Gamache wondered.

To not pursue this line of questioning, he suddenly knew.

‘Was the photographer there during the curling match?’ he pursued.

Lyon nodded unhappily.

‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

‘That’s just rumor. Vile, baseless lies.’

‘It means he might have taken a picture of the person who killed your wife.’

‘Oh,’ was Lyon’s startled reply. But try as he might Gamache couldn’t figure out whether Lyon was surprised-happy or surprised-terrified.

‘Who do you think did it?’ Clara asked, passing a glass of red wine to Peter before sitting back in the easy chair and sipping from her own.

‘Ruth.’

‘Ruth? Really?’ Clara sat up and stared at Peter. He was almost never wrong. It was one of his more annoying features. ‘You think Ruth killed CC?’

‘I think if I keep saying that eventually I’ll be right. Ruth’s the only one here, as far as I know, who could kill without a second thought.’

‘But you don’t really think that of her?’ Clara was surprised, though she didn’t necessarily disagree.

‘I do. It’s in her nature. If she hasn’t murdered someone before now it’s only because she’s lacked the motive and opportunity. The ability is there.’

‘But would she electrocute someone? I always figured if Ruth killed someone it would be with her cane, or a gun, or she’d run them down with her car. She’s not a great one for subtlety.’

Peter went to their bookcases and searched the volumes stacked and piled and crammed in together. He scanned the titles, from biographies to novels to literature and history. Lots of murder mysteries. And poetry. Wonderful poetry that sent Clara humming and moaning in the bath, her favorite place to read poetry since most volumes were slender and easy to hold with slippery hands. Peter was jealous of the words that brought such pleasure to his wife. She made sounds as though the words were caressing her and entering her and touching her in a way he wanted to keep just for himself. He wanted all her moans. But she moaned for Hecht and Atwood and Angelou and even Yeats. She groaned and hummed with pleasure over Auden and Plessner. But she reserved her greatest pleasure for Ruth Zardo.

‘Remember this?’ He brought over a small book and handed it to Clara. She flipped it open and read, at random,

‘You were a moth

brushing against my cheek

in the dark.

I killed you

not knowing

you were only a moth,

with no sting.’

She flipped to another poem, again at random, and another and another.

‘They’re almost all about death, or loss,’ she said, lowering the book. ‘I hadn’t realized that. Most of Ruth’s poems are about death.’ She closed the book. It was one of Ruth’s older volumes.

‘Not just about death,’ said Peter, throwing a birch log on the fire and watching it spit, before heading to the kitchen to check the casserole warming for dinner. From there he shouted, ‘But also very subtle. There’s a great deal to Ruth we don’t see.’

‘You were only a moth, with no sting.’ Clara repeated the words. Was CC only a moth? No. CC de Poitiers had a sting. To come anywhere near the woman was to feel it. Clara wasn’t sure she agreed with Peter about Ruth. Ruth got all her bitterness out in her poetry. She held nothing in, and Clara knew the kind of anger that led to murder needed to ferment for a long time, often sealed beneath a layer of smiles and sweet reason.

The phone rang and after a few short words Peter hung up.

‘Drink up,’ he called from the doorway. ‘That was Myrna inviting us for a quick one at the bistro.’

‘I have to gulp one drink to get another?’

‘Like old times, isn’t it?’

Armand Gamache stood outside the old Hadley house. The door had closed and he felt he could exhale. He also felt foolish. He’d toured the gloomy old pile with Lyon and nothing he’d seen had made him like the place more, but neither did it hide any ghouls. It was just tired and sad and it longed for laughter. Like its inhabitants.

Before he left he’d gone back into the living room where Crie was still sitting in her sundress and flip-flops. He’d put a blanket round her and sat across from her, watching her impassive young face for a moment then closing his eyes.

He tried to let her know it would be all right. Eventually. Life wouldn’t always be this painful. The world wouldn’t always be this brutal. Give it time, little one. Give it another chance. Come back.

He repeated that a few times, then opening his eyes he saw Lemieux at the door watching.

Now, outside, Gamache shrugged deeper into his coat and walked down the path toward the car. The flurries were just beginning, fluffy and light and lovely. He looked down at the village below, all sparkling in the light from the decorations and the flurries. Then something Gabri’d said floated like a flurry into his head. ‘The monster is dead and the villagers are celebrating.’ An allusion to Frankenstein. But in that story the villagers weren’t just celebrating the death of the monster, they’d killed him themselves.

Was it possible this sleepy, lovely, peaceful place had banded together and killed CC de Poitiers?

Gamache almost dismissed it. It was a crazy idea. But then he remembered. It was a crazy death.

‘Do you have a question for me?’ Gamache asked, not turning back to the young man behind him.

‘No sir.’

‘Lesson number three, son. Never lie to me.’ He turned round now and looked at Agent Lemieux in a way the young man would never forget. There was caring there, but there was also a warning.

‘What were you doing in the living room with the daughter?’

‘Crie is her name. What did it look like?’

‘You were sitting too far away to be talking to her. And, well…’

‘Go on.’

‘Your eyes were closed.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Were you praying?’ Lemieux was embarrassed to ask. Prayer, in his generation, was worse than rape, worse than sodomy, worse than failure. He felt he’d just deeply insulted the chief. Still, the man had asked.

‘Yes, I was praying, though not, I suppose, in a conventional way. I was thinking about Crie and trying to send her the message that the world could be a good place, and to give it another chance.’

This was more information that Agent Robert Lemieux wanted. Way more. He began to wonder how difficult this assignment was going to be. But as he watched the chief walk slowly, thoughtfully, back to the car Lemieux had to admit Gamache’s answer had somehow comforted him. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard. He brought out his notebook and while the two of them sat in the now warm vehicle Gamache smiled to see young Agent Lemieux write down what he’d said.

Shaking snow off their coats Peter and Clara hung them on the rack by the door and looked around. The bistro was full, the conversation robust. Servers wound expertly between the little round wooden tables, balancing trays with drinks and food.

‘Over here.’ Myrna stood by the sofa in front of the fireplace. Ruth was with her and a couple was just getting up to leave.

‘You can take our seats,’ said Hanna Parra, their local elected representative, as she and her husband Roar wrapped scarves round their necks. ‘Snow begun?’

‘A bit,’ said Peter, ‘but the roads should be fine.’

‘We’re just off home. An easy drive.’ Roar shook their hands while Hanna kissed them on both cheeks. Departing was not an insignificant event in Quebec.

But then neither was arriving.

After making the rounds and kissing everyone on both cheeks Clara and Peter subsided into the soft wing chairs. Peter caught Gabri’s eye and soon the big man had arrived with two glasses of red wine and two bowls of cashews.

‘Can you believe what happened?’ Gabri took a sip of Clara’s wine and a handful of nuts.

‘Are they sure it was murder?’ Myrna asked.

Peter and Clara nodded.

‘That great oaf Gamache is in charge again,’ said Ruth, reaching for Peter’s wine, ‘and you know what happened last time.’ She took a swig.

‘Didn’t he solve the case?’ said Myrna, moving her Scotch to the other side of the table.