“Then why’re you here?” asked Ruth, struggling to her feet. This time no one helped her. She walked to the door, followed by Armand.
“Some things disappear for a reason, Armand,” she said, then turned back to the cadets at the table. So young. Trying to be unmoved by this creepy old woman. But their wide eyes betrayed them.
“You asked what the map was waiting for. Maybe it was waiting for you,” said Ruth. “You found the village, maybe that’s enough. Maybe you should stop now. Sneak home and pray you’ll never know/the hell where youth and laughter go.”
“Now there’s a woman who knows an exit line,” said Huifen as Ruth left. Even Amelia laughed. Though she expected to see her breath in the suddenly chill air.
Through the kitchen window, they saw Commander Gamache supporting Ruth, keeping her upright on the icy road. He cradled the duck close to his body to keep it warm.
“Alzheimer’s?” asked Huifen.
Reine-Marie shook her head. “Poetry.”
*
“Bonne nuit,” said Armand when Ruth had opened her unlocked door and he’d handed Rosa back to her.
“Yeah, right,” said Ruth, moving to close the door in his face.
“Wait,” said Armand, putting out a gloved hand to stop the door. “Why did you just quote Siegfried Sassoon?”
“Why do I say anything? It’s anyone’s guess really.”
And then she did close the door and he walked back home, pausing to marvel at the stars. Many of which no longer existed. Just their light.
His gaze dropped to the village. That did, and did not, exist.
The map had been walled up. To become part of the building. To act as insulation, protection. Helping to keep the cold winds at bay.
But it had been removed, and the cold winds were howling, were baying, again.
He pulled his coat tighter around him, and as he passed the kitchen windows of his home, he stopped and looked in. Reine-Marie had her chin on her hand and was listening to the cadets. She was so beautiful. And they were so young.
*
The Gamaches invited the cadets to stay the night, and while Reine-Marie got them fresh pajamas and toothbrushes, Armand called the academy to let them know not to worry about the students.
He spent a few hours in his study, going over coursework and making notes on upcoming meetings with professors and community leaders, while Reine-Marie sorted more archival material in the living room.
The cadets, after sitting quietly in the living room for a nanosecond, decided to head over to the bistro.
Just after midnight, Armand heard the front door open. Reine-Marie had gone to bed and he was waiting up.
The cadets paused at the doorway into the study where he sat, legs crossed, reading glasses on and a dossier open.
“Good night, sir,” said Nathaniel.
“Thanks for the dinner,” said Huifen, “and for letting us stay.”
“Did you have fun at the bistro?” he asked.
“The owner showed us where the map was hidden,” said Jacques. “But he couldn’t tell us any more.”
Amelia just kept walking, stomping up the stairs to bed. The others followed, and after finishing his reading, Gamache got up, locked the front door and checked the back door and windows. Though he knew if there was any danger, it probably wasn’t lurking in the snow-covered garden. Like the Great Wall of China, most threats were already inside.
Armand was awoken in the small hours by the creak of old wood.
He sat up, alert. Listening.
Then he put on a dressing gown and crept to the top of the stairs, and crouched down.
From there he could see a figure enter the living room from the kitchen.
Was it the person in the second car? The one who’d followed them there, then disappeared? Only to reappear at two in the morning?
The shape moved about the living room. The embers in the fireplace were almost out. There was just enough light to see the shadowy figure, but not enough to see who it was.
Until they turned the light on, and Gamache almost fell onto his bottom. Standing in the living room, eating a chicken leg, was something that looked like a science experiment gone bad. Or mad.
The head of a pierced and tattooed Goth was grafted onto a pink and frilly body. Amelia was wearing one of Reine-Marie’s flannel nightgowns, and rifling their home.
Gamache made another mental note, to contact Professor McKinnon and ask her to go over how to do a clandestine search.
Number one: get a search warrant.
Number two: do not turn on a lamp.
He shook his head before remembering the numbskull things he and Michel Brébeuf had done. Though they had never included rummaging through the Commander’s home.
*
Amelia studied the books on the shelves and picked up photographs of the Commander’s family. Her fingers, greasy from the chicken leg, left smudges on the photos. Finally she came to a wedding picture. A woman who was obviously the Gamaches’ daughter, now grown and gowned, and beside her was her new husband.
Amelia clicked her stud against her teeth.
*
Armand knew exactly what she was looking at, though he couldn’t see the expression on her face. He’d wondered, when the cadets had arrived, whether he should hide the pictures, but decided against it. They were private, but not secret.
And he was curious to see if any of them noticed.
The living room went dark, and Armand prepared to withdraw as soon as he heard her foot on the bottom stair. But that creak didn’t come. Instead he saw another light go on. In his study.
This was going too far, and he walked downstairs and found her sitting in his chair. Staring at another photo.
“Put that down,” he said, and saw her jerk in surprise.
He stood framed in the doorway, in a dressing gown and slippers.
She put the black-and-white picture down.
“Exactly as you found it,” he said.
She adjusted it, noting the smiling man in the old-fashioned hat and winter coat, and the woman in a neat cloth coat and gloves and hat. She held a child in her arms, bundled up so well against the Québec winter it looked like she was holding a hamper of clothes. Only a tiny hand was visible, gripping her finger.
For a moment, Amelia assumed it was Monsieur and Madame Gamache, but then she realized it was far too old.
“Your parents?” she asked.
“You’ve taken advantage of our kindness,” he said.
“I was just looking for a book to read.”
“You could have asked.”
“At two in the morning? I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“This room is private. The things in it are personal, as you know very well.”
“Personal,” she asked, getting up. “Or secret?”
“Please leave.”
*
Upstairs in her room, under the duvet, Amelia pulled out the book she’d found in the shelves downstairs.
I’m FINE, by one of her favorite poets, Ruth Zardo.
She read the subtitle and laughed.
Fucked-up. Insecure. Neurotic. Egotistical.
Burrowing deeper into the bed, she ate the last of the cookies she’d taken from the kitchen and flipped through the poems. Some she already knew. Some she didn’t.
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 splayed the book against her knees and wondered what the academy had been like before Gamache. When Professor Leduc was in charge.
Jacques said it was way better, and that Gamache was undermining it, making it and the S?reté weak. She knew he was just parroting what the Duke was saying, but she wondered if there was truth in it. And while Huifen didn’t agree, neither did she disagree with what Jacques said.
There had been no commendations in Gamache’s study. No photographs of him in uniform. Leduc said Gamache was a disgrace, that he had been forced to “retire.” And there were rumbles around the academy about some corruption case.
She found it hard to reconcile these rumors with the man himself, but Amelia knew that people were not always what they appeared.