The Cruellest Month (15 page)

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   

‘
H
i, 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.

Gamache 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.

Though winds blow stout, a hurricale, What’s that,

what’s that to you and me.

It was past five and time to lock up. A good day’s work.

Chief Inspector Gamache called Agent Lemieux, still at the B. & B.

‘She’s not back yet, Chief. But Gabri is.’

‘Pass the phone to him, please.’

After a pause the familiar voice came on. ‘
Salut, patron.
’

‘
Salut, Gabri.
Did Madame Chauvet arrive by car?’

‘No, no she just materialized. Of course she arrived by car. How else does anyone get here?’

‘Is her car still there?’

‘Ah, good question.’ Gamache could hear Gabri carrying the phone out the door and presumably onto the veranda. ‘
Oui, c’est ici.
A little green Echo.’

‘So she couldn’t have gone far,’ said Gamache.

‘Do you want me to open the door to her room? I can pretend I’m cleaning. I have the key with me now,’ Gamache heard tinkling as the key was lifted from its peg, ‘and I’m walking down the corridor.’

‘Could you give it to Agent Lemieux, please? He should be the one to open the door.’

‘Fine.’ Gamache could feel Gabri’s annoyance. A moment later Lemieux spoke.

‘I’ve unlocked the door, Chief.’ There was an agonizing pause while Agent Lemieux stepped into the room and put on the light. ‘Nothing. Room’s empty. So’s the bathroom. Want me to search the drawers?’

‘No, that’s going too far. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t there.’

‘Dead? I wondered too, but she isn’t.’

Gamache asked to speak to Gabri again.

‘
Patron
, we might need rooms for tomorrow night.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until the case is over.’

‘Suppose you don’t solve it? Will you stay forever?’

Gamache remembered the elegant inviting bedrooms with their soft pillows and crisp linens and beds so high they needed little step stools to reach. The bedside tables with books and magazines and water. The lovely bathrooms with old tiling and new plumbing.

‘If you made eggs Florentine every morning, I would,’ Gamache said.

‘You’re an unreasonable man,’ said Gabri, ‘but I like you. And don’t worry about rooms, we have plenty.’

‘Even over the Easter break? You’re not full?’

‘Full? No one knows about us, and I hope to keep it that way,’ snorted Gabri.

Gamache hung up after asking Gabri to call when Jeanne Chauvet returned and telling Lemieux to go home for the night. Looking out the window at the other cars whizzing along the autoroute into Montreal, Gamache wondered.

Where was the psychic?

He always secretly hoped a voice would whisper some answers, though he didn’t know what he’d do if he started hearing voices.