Reine-Marie turned to Nathaniel. “What’re you reading?”
“A book I found on the table.”
He showed it to them.
“We have that same book,” said Armand.
“Exactly the same book,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s ours.”
“Oh.”
“Come here,” commanded Ruth from the kitchen.
And they did.
She’d found a worn old map of the area and spread it out on her white plastic table. A notebook with her crablike scribbling was open, as it always was, beside a curdling cup of tea.
Armand recognized the cup. It was theirs.
Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.
“We’re looking up Roof Trusses,” Armand said to Nathaniel, who was studying the map with excruciating earnestness.
“But we already tried,” said the cadet, looking up. “It’s not there, remember?”
“Why didn’t you ask me?” demanded Ruth.
“Wh— ah— um.”
“The future of the S?reté?” Ruth asked Armand.
“He didn’t ask you, Ruth,” said Reine-Marie kindly, with patience, “because he thinks you’re a crazy old woman.”
“I do not,” said Nathaniel, turning very red, then very white.
Ruth stood there, duck feathers on her pilled sweater, with Rosa muttering obscenities in her flannel nest beside the stove.
And Ruth laughed. Reaching out her hand to Reine-Marie to steady herself.
Nathaniel took a small step behind the Commander. Now she looked like a crazy old woman.
“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Ruth said, finally getting some control over herself. “But I’m happy. Are you?”
The young man, practically peeking out from behind Gamache, colored.
“Are you happy, Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie, touching her thin arm.
“I am.”
“Oh, I’m so pleased to hear it. I was—”
“Roof Trusses?” asked Armand. He could see the two women were settling in to discuss the human condition and the nature of happiness. Normally a conversation he’d love to hear, but not that evening.
“There.” Ruth’s gnarly finger landed on the map, squishing a spot about ten kilometers from Three Pines. “That’s where Roof Trusses used to be. But the name was changed to Notre-Dame-de-Doleur a while back.”
Nathaniel wrote that down, then took a closer look at the map.
“But there’s nothing there. You’re just pointing to a field.”
He stared at Ruth. Ruth glared at him.
“And now, Cadet Smythe, comes another lesson in police work,” said the Commander. “Who to believe. Is Madame Zardo telling you the truth, or messing with you?”
“Could be a mind-fuck,” agreed Ruth.
“How can you tell?” Nathaniel asked Gamache.
“You can’t, with certainty. You can be taught to gather facts, evidence, but the very best investigators learn to trust something we’re told early in our lives is useless. Even dangerous. Instinct. You use your head and your heart and your gut. The whole animal, like a good hunter. What does your instinct tell you about Madame Zardo? Is she telling the truth?”
Nathaniel turned back to Ruth, who was watching him with some interest.
“I think she is. At least, I think she believes it. I’ll go tomorrow and find out.”
Gamache nodded approval at the distinction between truth and fact.
“May I?” The cadet pointed to the map and Ruth grunted.
Armand watched the boy carefully fold up the worn paper. His red hair just touching his pale forehead as he bent over. There was the ready blush, the smooth, perfect skin. The bashful personality.
And Armand reflected on his conversation with Gélinas in the garden.
Gamache knew Gélinas was wrong. The real criminals, the worst criminals, weren’t found off the beaten path. They were found in our kitchens, at our tables.
Unspectacular and always human.
CHAPTER 35
“I’m telling you, it should be here.”
Nathaniel Smythe looked around, almost frantic now, barely wincing as sleet slapped his face. The map he’d borrowed from Madame Zardo was just a sodden mess in his hands.
The other three had turned so that the combination of rain and snow and ice pelted against the backs of their coats and hoods. The relentless noise almost drowned out Nathaniel’s protests, which were rapidly descending into whining.
“There’s nothing here,” called Jacques. “Gamache fucked with you.”
His shoulders were hunched and his chin was bent into his chest, so that from behind he could have been a crooked old man. The winter coat he wore came to his hips. More a ski jacket than something appropriate for standing on the side of a muddy half-frozen road, in a sleet storm, staring at flat gray fields and forest.
Jacques’s slacks were soaked through, he could barely feel his legs, and he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably.
Nathaniel looked from him to the other two, but they also had their backs turned against the rain and snow and the cadet who’d brought them there with the claim of having found Roof Trusses.
Nathaniel turned full circle, blinking against the sleet that slid off his face. He squinted at the fields, scanning the horizon. Desolate.
No sign of the village. No sign of life.
“Come on,” shouted Jacques, trudging back to the car.
Huifen and Amelia followed. Nathaniel stood rooted in place, obstinate, until he heard the car start up. Then he ran back to it, more than a little afraid they’d leave him there. He got into the backseat beside Amelia, who had her arms wrapped tightly around her chest and her nose tucked into her sodden jacket.
Notre-Dame-de-Pissed-Off.
The heater was on full blast and the tight car smelt of wet wool.
“This was a waste of time,” said Jacques from the driver’s seat, holding his trembling hands to the heat vent.
“But she said it would be here,” said Nathaniel.
“She? I thought it was Gamache.”
“He suggested we investigate, but the information came from the woman I’m staying with.”
“I must’ve missed that class at the academy where they told us to believe old drunks,” said Jacques.
Huifen snorted. In amusement or because she’d caught pneumonia.
Back in Three Pines, they went to change, but when Nathaniel came down the stairs at Ruth’s place in warm, dry clothes, he found Amelia in the living room with the poet.
When they both looked at him with sharp, assessing eyes, he felt he’d descended into a Grimms’ tale. Those stories rarely ended well for fey boys with bright red hair and a smile he hoped was ingratiating but knew just made him look like dinner.
“I lost your map.”
“That’s okay,” said Ruth, getting to her feet. “I don’t need a map anymore.”
“There was nothing there,” said Nathaniel.
He realized he’d failed the Commander’s test. Or, at least, his instinct had. This woman wasn’t reliable. She was exactly as she appeared, after all. A crazy old drunk.
“Well, nothing you could see, anyway,” said Ruth.
“What else is there?” he asked.
“Come on,” said Amelia, getting to her feet.
He followed her out, but instead of taking refuge with the others in the bistro, Amelia got in the car.
A few minutes later, they were back at exactly the same place they’d been an hour before.
Nothing had changed, except it seemed even more desolate.
“I asked Madame Zardo to repeat what she told you, and she said the village was here,” said Amelia.
“That’s what I told you,” he said.
“I also called the toponymie man. He gave me the map coordinates. Here.”
The sleet hit the windshield and slid slowly down the glass, to pile up as slush on the wipers at the bottom. “He looked it up and confirmed that the name Roof Trusses had been officially changed in the 1920s. To Notre-Dame-de-Doleur.”
“Why?”
“Well, Roof Trusses was obviously a mistake,” she said. “He told us that. It should never have been the name to begin with.”
“I know, but why Notre-Dame-de-Doleur?”
“I asked, but he didn’t know. Probably the name of the church.”
“I’ve heard of Notre-Dame-de-Grace,” said Nathaniel. “And Notre-Dame-de-Paris, and Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci. And—”
“Okay, I get it. Notre-Dame-de-Doleur is unusual—”