The Cruellest Month (18 page)

Inspector Beauvoir had called the night before and ordered him to get to Three Pines early to help set up the space. So far all he’d done was stay out of everyone’s way and light the fire. He’d also stopped at the local Tim Horton’s in Cowansville and picked up Double Double coffees and boxes of doughnuts.

‘Good, you’re here.’ Inspector Beauvoir marched in, followed by Agent Nichol. Nichol and Lemieux glared at each other.

Try as he might he couldn’t think what he’d done to create such hostility in her. He’d tried to be her friend. Those had been Superintendent Brébeuf’s orders. To ingratiate himself with everyone. And he had. He was good at it. All his charmed life he’d made friends easily. Except her. And it bugged him. She bugged him, perhaps because she actually showed what she felt and this confused and upset him. She was like a dangerous new species.

He smiled at Nichol now and received a sneer in return.

‘Where’s the Chief Inspector?’ Lemieux asked Beauvoir. Five desks were set in a circle with a conference table in the center. Each desk had its own computer now and the phones were just being hooked up.

‘He’s with Agent Lacoste. They’ll be here soon. Here they are now.’ Beauvoir nodded to the door. Chief Inspector Gamache, in his field coat and tweed cap, was walking across the room, Agent Lacoste behind him.

‘We have a problem,’ said Gamache after nodding to Lemieux and removing his cap. ‘Sit down please.’

The team assembled around the conference table. The technicians, all familiar with Gamache, tried to keep their noise level down.

‘Agent Lacoste?’ Gamache hadn’t bothered to take off his coat, and now Beauvoir was alert to something serious. Isabelle Lacoste, also still in her coat and rubber boots, took off her light gloves and spread her hands on the table in front of her.

‘Someone’s broken into the room at the old Hadley house.’

‘The crime scene?’ asked Beauvoir. This almost never happened. Few people were that stupid. Instinctively he looked toward Nichol but dismissed the idea.

‘I had my kit with me so I took pictures and fingerprints. As soon as the technicians are ready I’ll send these off to the lab, but here, you can see the pictures.’

She handed round her digital camera. It would be far clearer when the images were transferred to their computers, but still it was enough to hush them. Gamache, who’d already seen them, went and had a word with the technicians who changed their priority to the communications.

For a moment even Inspector Beauvoir was speechless.

‘The tape wasn’t just torn, it was shredded.’ He hated the way his body felt. All numb, and his head felt light as though something had detached itself and was floating above him. He wanted it back, and he clenched his fists harder and harder until his short nails were biting into his palms.

It worked.

‘What’s that,’ said Nichol. ‘Looks like someone shit.’

‘Agent Nichol,’ said Gamache. ‘We need constructive, not childish, comments.’

‘Well, it does,’ said Nichol, looking at Lemieux and Lacoste, who weren’t about to help her even if they agreed. And Beauvoir for one did. Sitting on the floor in the center of the chairs was a small dark mound. It looked like a small pile of shit. Was it bear poop? Was that what had shredded the tape? Had a brooding bear found shelter in the old Hadley house?

It made sense.

‘It’s a bird,’ said Lacoste. ‘A baby robin.’

Beauvoir was glad he’d kept his mouth shut. Bear. Baby bird. Whatever.

‘Poor thing,’ said Lemieux and received a withering look from Nichol and a small smile from Gamache.

‘This one’s ready to go, sir.’ A technician signaled from one of the computers. The tech sat down and held out his hand. Lacoste handed him the camera and the fingerprint kit. Within moments the prints had been sent to Montreal and the photos were up on the screen. Soon, one by one, each computer came to life, each with the same disturbing scene, like a ghoulish screen saver. From the hallway a picture of the shredded police tape in the foreground and the tiny bird, dead in the middle of the circle of chairs.

What does that house want? Gamache wondered. Anything that went in alive came out either dead or different.

‘
Alors
,’ said Beauvoir when they were back around the conference table. ‘As you all know, this is now a murder investigation. Let me bring you up to speed.’ He reached forward and took one of the large cups, expertly pinning back the plastic lip to sip from, then opened a box of chocolate glaze doughnuts.

Succinctly Inspector Beauvoir related what they knew of the victim and the murder. As Beauvoir described the séance the noise level in the room dropped until there was silence. Gamache looked up and noticed another ring had formed around them, a ring of technicians who’d gravitated to the account as campers might huddle around a fire listening to a ghost story.

‘Why did they have a séance?’ asked Lemieux.

‘A better question is, whose idea was it,’ said Nichol, dismissing Lemieux.

‘It seems to have been Gabri Dubeau’s idea to do the first one at the bistro,’ said Beauvoir. ‘But we don’t know who thought of the old Hadley house.’

‘Why do you say it’s important to know who first suggested it?’ Gamache asked.

‘Well, isn’t it obvious? If you’re going to scare someone to death you don’t do it in Disneyland. You choose a place that’s already got people scared. The old Hadley house.’

Nichol all but bleated ‘duh’ into the Chief Inspector’s face. There was silence as everyone waited for his reaction. He paused for a moment then nodded.

‘You might be right.’

‘But she wasn’t scared to death,’ said Beauvoir, turning on Nichol. Angry for her insubordination and furious at Gamache for allowing it. What was wrong with him? What game was he playing, allowing her to even be on the team? Why did he cut her so much more slack than he would anyone else? Beyond all the other arguments, it just wasn’t good for discipline. But seeing the look of disgust on their faces he knew no one else in the room was likely to use Agent Yvette Nichol as a role model. ‘If you’d keep your mouth shut and listen you’d know she was poisoned. Right?’

‘Ephedra,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘The doctor first thought she’d died of a heart attack, but since she was so young he decided to do a blood test. Came back with massive levels of ephedra.’

Nichol crossed her arms over her chest and sat silent.

‘I researched ephedra yesterday afternoon,’ said Lemieux, taking out his notebook. ‘It’s not actually a chemical. It’s a plant. An herb called
Ephedra dis-ta-chya
.’ Lemieux sounded it out slowly and carefully, though no one was likely to correct him. ‘It’s grown all over the world.’

‘Is it like marijuana?’ asked Lacoste.

‘No, it’s not a hallucinogen or relaxant. Just the opposite. It used to be used in Chinese medicine shops as tea for relieving,’ he consulted his notes again, ‘colds and asthma, but then I guess someone—’

‘Don’t guess,’ said Gamache, quietly.

‘I’m sorry.’ Lemieux put his head down and flipped rapidly through his notes, back and forth, while the whole team stared. He finally found the scribble. ‘A pharmaceutical company named Saltzer realized it worked as a diet supplement. It increases the metabolism, and that burns fat. The market for that was huge, way bigger than as a decongestant or cold remedy. Everyone wants to lose weight.’

‘But not everyone needs to,’ said Lacoste. ‘That’s the problem. They created a demand where there shouldn’t be one.’

‘Are you familiar with ephedra?’ Gamache asked.

‘Heard of it, but that’s all. But I am familiar with issues of body image. Most girls think they’re fat, don’t they?’ She made the mistake of looking at Nichol who shrugged. After all, Lacoste hadn’t supported her when she’d made the shit comment, so she was on her own.

‘This isn’t about body image,’ said Beauvoir, trying to bring it back on track.

‘Maybe it is,’ said Gamache. ‘Madeleine Favreau was forty-four, early middle age. A search of her room showed she had no problems with her body, no diet books or weight loss articles, not even any diet drinks or products in the fridge.’

Nichol smiled at Lacoste. Gamache hadn’t agreed with her gross generalization.

‘We have no reason to think she was taking ephedra to lose weight,’ he said.

‘Could she have been taking it for a cold?’ Lacoste asked, undeterred by the maniacal Nichol.

‘It’s not sold as a cold remedy any more,’ said Lemieux.

‘And even if it was, there was none in her room or the bathroom. We’ll do another search, but unless she hid it, and she didn’t really have reason to, then someone else slipped it to her.’

‘Which is why you declared this a murder,’ said Beauvoir.

‘Which is why I think this might have something to do with body image.’

They looked at him, perplexed, having lost the thread of what he was saying.

‘Madeleine Favreau wasn’t taking ephedra, but someone was. Someone had bought it, probably for themselves, and then used it on her.’

‘But ephedra is banned in Canada. Health Canada pulled it years ago,’ said Lemieux. ‘It’s also banned in the US and Britain.’

‘Why?’ asked Lacoste.

Agent Lemieux consulted his notes again. He didn’t want to make a mistake here. ‘There were 155 deaths in the US and more than a thousand incidents reported by doctors. Mostly heart and stroke. And not in the elderly. These were for the most part young and vigorous people. An investigation was launched and it was decided that ephedra certainly burned fat, but it also raised the heart rate and blood pressure.’

‘Then a couple athletes died,’ said Beauvoir.

‘A baseball and a football player, that’s right,’ agreed Lemieux. ‘That was when the baby robin really hit the fan.’ Even Gamache smiled. Nichol did not. ‘An investigation was launched and it was discovered that ephedra affects the heart, but mostly in people with a pre-existing condition.’

‘So it’ll raise the heart rate of anyone,’ recapped Beauvoir. This was what he craved. Facts. ‘But can actually kill people with already damaged hearts. Did Madame Favreau have a damaged heart?’

‘No medication in her medicine cabinet,’ said Gamache. ‘We won’t have the coroner’s report until later today.’

‘I wonder how many people have heard of ephedra?’ said Beauvoir. ‘I hadn’t, but then I don’t diet. Presumably most people who diet have heard of it, is that fair to say?’ He turned to Lacoste, who thought
about it. She dieted every now and then. Like most women she owned a fun-house mirror that one day showed her fat, the next slim.

‘I think anyone who diets habitually would know about it,’ she said, slowly, trying to figure it out. ‘Dieters become obsessed with losing weight and any product that promises to do it without effort would be noticed.’

‘So we’re looking for a dieter?’ asked Nichol, confused.

‘But there’s a problem,’ said Lemieux. ‘You can’t buy it here. Or in the States.’

‘That is a problem,’ conceded Gamache.

‘Except,’ came a voice behind them. The technician who’d downloaded the information was sitting at one of their desks, looking out from behind a flat screen. ‘You can order ephedra on-line.’ He pointed to the screen in front of him. Getting up, they moved to his station.

There on the screen was a long list of Googled sites, all offering to ship perfectly safe ephedra to anyone desperate and stupid enough to want it.

‘Still,’ said Armand Gamache, straightening up. ‘The ephedra alone wouldn’t do it. Once the ephedra was in her body the potential was there, but the murderer needed one more thing. An accessory. The old Hadley house.’ To everyone’s amazement he turned to Nichol. ‘You were right. She was scared to death.’

   NINETEEN   

C
lara leaned back and reached for her mug. In front of her were the remains of breakfast. Crumbs. The plate looked so forlorn she popped a couple of slices of bread into the teepee toaster and closed the doors.

She and Myrna had stayed with Agent Lacoste at the old Hadley house while she did whatever she needed to do. Not nearly fast enough in their opinion. Most of the time Clara had stood just inside the room and stared at the little bird, curled on its side, legs up to its chest, not unlike Madeleine, though smaller. And with feathers. Well, maybe not so much like Madeleine. Still, there was a similarity. They were both dead.