The Cruellest Month (11 page)

It stared back, cold, defiant.

‘It’s the river, sir,’ said Beauvoir, smiling sheepishly. ‘The Rivière Bella Bella. Spring run-off. Nothing more.’ He watched as the Chief Inspector stared at the house, then Gamache blinked and turned to Beauvoir, smiling slightly.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t the house growling?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘I believe you,’ Gamache laughed. He placed his large hand on the younger man’s soft leather jacket then started toward the old Hadley house.

As he approached he was surprised to see peeling paint and jagged,
broken windows. The ‘For Sale’ sign had fallen over and tiles were missing from the roof and even some bricks from the chimney. It was almost as though the house was casting parts of itself away.

Stop that, he said to himself.

‘Stop what?’ Beauvoir asked, almost running to catch up to the chief, the boss’s long strides picking up speed as they neared the house.

‘I said that out loud, did I?’ Gamache suddenly stopped. ‘Jean Guy,’ Gamache began, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say. While Beauvoir waited, his handsome face going from respectful attention to quizzical, Gamache thought.

What do I want to tell him? To be careful? To know things weren’t as they appeared? Not the Hadley house, not this case, not even their own homicide team.

He wanted to pull this young man away from the house. Away from the investigation. Away from him. As far from him as possible.

Things were not as they seemed. The known world was shifting, reforming. Everything he’d taken as a given, a fact, as real and unquestioned, had fallen away.

But he was damned if he was going to fall with it. Or let anyone he loved go down.

‘The house is falling apart,’ said Gamache. ‘Be careful.’

Beauvoir nodded. ‘You too.’

Once inside Gamache was surprised by how mundane the place felt. Not evil at all. If anything it felt kind of pathetic.

‘Up here, Chief,’ Agent Isabelle Lacoste called, her brown hair hanging down as she looked over the dark wood banister. ‘She died in this room.’ Lacoste waved behind her and disappeared.

‘
Joyeuses Pâques
,’ she said a moment later when Gamache had climbed the stairs and walked into the room. Agent Lacoste was dressed in comfortable and stylish clothes, like most of the Québécoises. In her late twenties she’d already had two children and hadn’t bothered to work off all the weight. Instead she dressed well and was perfectly happy with the results.

Gamache took in the sight. A luxurious four-poster bed stood against one wall. A fireplace with a heavy Victorian mantel sat across from it. On the wooden floor was a huge Indian rug in rich blues and burgundies. The walls held intricate William Morris wallpaper and the lamps, both floor and table, were festooned with tassels. A colorful scarf was artfully draped over a lamp on a vanity.

It was as though he’d stepped back a hundred years. Except for the circle of chairs in the middle of the room. He counted them. Ten. Three had fallen over.

‘Careful, we haven’t quite finished,’ Lacoste advised as Gamache took a step toward the chairs.

‘What’s that?’ Beauvoir pointed to the rug and what looked like ice pellets.

‘Salt, we think. At first we thought it might be crystal meth or cocaine, but it’s just rock salt.’

‘Why put salt on a carpet?’ Beauvoir asked, not expecting an answer.

‘To cleanse the space, I think,’ was her unexpected reply. Lacoste seemed not to appreciate the oddity of her answer.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Gamache asked.

‘There was a séance, right?’

‘That’s what we’ve heard,’ agreed Gamache.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Salt?’

‘All will be revealed.’ Lacoste smiled. ‘There’re lots of ways of doing a séance but only one involves salt in a circle and four candles.’

She pointed to the candles on the rug inside the ring. Gamache hadn’t noticed them. One had also fallen over and as he leaned closer he thought he could see melted wax on the carpet.

‘They’re at the compass points,’ Lacoste continued. ‘North, south, east and west.’

‘I know what a compass point is,’ said Beauvoir. He didn’t like this at all.

‘You said there’s only one way to do a séance that involves candles and salt,’ said Gamache, his voice calm and his eyes sharp.

‘The Wicca way,’ said Lacoste. ‘Witchcraft.’

   TWELVE   

M
adeleine Favreau had been scared to death. Killed by the old Hadley house, Clara knew with a certainty. And now Clara Morrow stood outside, accusing it. Lucy, on her leash, was swishing back and forth, anxious to leave this place. And so was Clara. But she felt she owed Madeleine this much. To face down the house. To let it know she knew.

Something had awoken last night. Something had found them huddled in their tight little circle, friends doing something foolish and silly and adolescent. Nothing more. No one should have died. And no one would have if they’d held the séance in any other place. No one had died at the bistro.

Something in this grotesque place had come to life, come down that hallway and into the cobwebbed old bedroom and taken Madeleine’s life.

Clara would remember it for the rest of her own life. The shrieks. They seemed all around. Then a thud. A candle sputtering out. Chairs falling over as people either leaped to help or leaped to leave. And then the flashlights clicking on and bouncing maniacally over the room, then stopping. Illuminating one thing. That face. Even in the bright and warm sunshine of the day Clara felt the dread tighten, like a cloak she couldn’t quite shrug off.

‘Don’t look,’ Clara had heard Hazel call, presumably to Sophie.

‘
Non
,’ Monsieur Béliveau yelled.

Madeleine’s eyes were wide and staring, as though the balls were straining to escape their sockets. Her mouth was open, lips tight, frozen in a scream. Her hands, when Clara grabbed them to offer comfort
she knew was too late, were curled into talons. Clara looked up and saw a movement outside their circle. And heard something too.

Flapping.

‘
Bonjour
,’ Armand Gamache called as he left the house. Clara started and came back to the day. She recognized the large, elegant figure walking purposefully toward her.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, seeing her distress.

‘Not really.’ She half smiled. ‘Better for seeing you.’

But she didn’t look better. In fact, tears started down her face and Gamache suspected they were far from the first. He stood quietly beside her, not trying to stop the tears, but allowing her her sorrow.

‘You were here last night.’ It was a statement, not a question. He’d read the report and seen her name. In fact, she was the first on his list to question. He valued her opinion and her eye for detail, for things visible and those not. He knew he should consider her a suspect, along with everyone else at the séance, but the truth was he didn’t. He considered her a precious witness.

Clara wiped the sleeve of her cloth coat over her face and across her nose. Armand Gamache, seeing the results, brought a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She’d hoped the worst of the tears were over, but they seemed in full flood, like the Bella Bella. A run-off of grief.

Peter had been wonderful last night. Racing to the hospital, never once saying ‘I told you so’, though she’d said it often enough herself as she’d choked out the story to him.

Then driving Myrna, Gabri and her home. Offering rooms and comfort to a stricken, dumbfounded Hazel and a strangely relaxed Sophie. Was she numb with grief? Or was that giving Sophie the benefit of the doubt, as they’d always done?

The offer had been refused. Even now Clara couldn’t begin to imagine how awful it must have been for Hazel to return home, alone. With Sophie, certainly, but in reality alone.

‘Was she a friend?’ They turned and walked away from the house, toward the village.

‘Yes. She was a friend to everyone.’

Gamache, she noticed, was silent as he walked beside her, his hands clasped behind his back and his face thoughtful.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, then after a moment’s silence answered her own question. ‘You’re thinking she was murdered, aren’t you?’

They’d stopped again. Clara couldn’t walk and process this staggering
thought at the same time. She could barely stand and carry it. She turned and stared at Gamache. Was she always this slow, she wondered? Of course he’d think that. Why else would the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec be there, unless Madeleine was murdered?

Gamache gestured to the bench on the village green.

‘Why all the picnic tables?’ he asked as they sat down.

‘We had an Easter egg hunt and picnic.’ Was it only yesterday?

Gamache nodded. They’d hidden eggs for Florence and then had to find them all again themselves. Next year she’d be able to do it, he thought.

‘Was Madeleine murdered?’ Clara asked.

‘We think so,’ he said. After a moment to allow her to absorb the information he asked, ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, wait. Please think about it. I know at first everyone’s surprised by murder. But I want you to really think about the question. If Madeleine Favreau was murdered, would it surprise you?’

Clara turned to Gamache. His deep brown eyes were thoughtful, his moustache was trim and graying, the hair under his cap groomed and curling slightly. His face was strong with laugh lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. He spoke to her in English, as a courtesy, she knew. His English was perfect and, strangely, he had a British accent. She’d been meaning each time they’d met to ask him about that.

‘Why do you speak with an English accent?’

His eyebrows rose and he turned a mildly surprised face to her.

‘Is that the answer to my question?’ he asked with a smile.

‘No, professor. But it’s something I’ve been meaning to ask and keep forgetting.’

‘I went to Cambridge. Christ’s College. Studied history.’

‘And honed your English.’

‘Learned my English.’

Now it was Clara’s turn to be surprised.

‘You didn’t speak English before arriving in Cambridge?’

‘Well, I could say two things.’

‘And those were…’

‘Fire on the Klingons, and My God, Admiral, it’s horrible.’

Clara snorted.

‘I watched American television when I could. Particularly two shows.’

‘
Star Trek
and
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
,’ said Clara.

‘You’d be surprised how useless those phrases are in Cambridge. Though “My God, Admiral, it’s horrible” could be used in a pinch.’

Clara laughed and imagined young Gamache in Cambridge. Who
goes across the world to a foreign country to go to university without knowing the language?

‘Well?’ Gamache’s face had turned serious.

‘Madeleine was lovely, in every sense. She was easy to like and I suspect easy to love. I could see loving her, had we had more time. I can’t believe someone killed her.’

‘Because of who she was, or because of who someone wasn’t?’

That was the question, thought Clara. Accepting murder meant accepting there was a murderer. Among them. Close. Someone in that room, almost certainly. One of those smiling, laughing, familiar faces hid thoughts so vile they had to kill.

‘How long has Madeleine lived here?’

‘Well, she actually lives outside the village, off that way.’ Clara pointed into the rolling hills. ‘With Hazel Smyth.’

‘Who was also there last night, with someone named Sophie Smyth.’

‘Her daughter. Madeleine came to live with them about five years ago. They’d known each other for years.’

Just then Lucy gave a yank on her leash and Clara looked over to see Peter walking through their gate and across the dirt road, waving. She looked around for cars then unclipped Lucy. The elderly dog bounded across the green and right into Peter, who doubled over. Gamache winced.

Straightening up Peter limped over to their bench, two muddy pawprints on his crotch.

‘Chief Inspector.’ Peter put out his hand with more dignity than Gamache had thought possible. Gamache rose and shook hands warmly with Peter Morrow. ‘Sad time,’ said Peter.