The two senior S?reté officers glared at each other.
“You know that, Thérèse,” said Gamache urgently. “I had no choice.”
“You had a choice, Armand,” Thérèse hissed. “For one thing, you could have consulted me. Us.”
“You haven’t worked with her, I have,” said Gamache.
“And you have such insight into people? Is that it, Armand? Is that why Jean-Guy’s where he is? Is that why your department deserted you? Is that why we’re hiding here and our only hope is one of your own former agents, and you don’t even know if she’s loyal or not?”
Silence met those words. Silence and a long, long exhale of what looked like steam.
“Excuse me,” he said at last, and walked past Thérèse Brunel to the road.
“Can I help?” Jér?me asked a little awkwardly. He’d heard what Thérèse had said. He suspected this young woman had too.
“Go inside, Jér?me,” said Gamache. “I’ll look after this.”
“She didn’t mean it, you know.”
“She meant it,” said Gamache. “And she was right.”
When the Brunels had gone inside, he turned to the newcomer.
“You heard that?”
“I did. Fucking paranoid.”
“Do not use that language with me, Agent Nichol. You’ll be respectful of me, and the Brunels.”
“So that’s who that is,” she said, peering into the night. “Superintendent Brunel. I couldn’t tell. Heady company. She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t trust you.”
“And you, sir?”
“I asked you down here, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you had no choice.”
It was too dark to see her face, but Gamache was sure there was a sneer there. And he wondered just how big a mistake he might have made.
TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning all four of them worked to install the equipment Agent Yvette Nichol had brought with her from Montréal. They carried it up the hill, from Emilie’s home to the old schoolhouse.
Olivier had given Gamache the key, but had asked no questions. And Gamache had offered no explanations. When he’d unlocked the door a puff of stale air met him, as though the one-room schoolhouse had been holding its breath for years. It was dusty and still smelled of chalk and textbooks. It was bitterly cold inside. A black potbellied woodstove sat in the middle of the floor, and the walls were lined with maps and charts. Math, science, spelling. A large blackboard above the teacher’s desk dominated the front of the room.
Most of the students’ desks had gone, but a couple of tables sat against the wall.
Gamache surveyed it and nodded. It would do.
Gilles showed up and helped them carry the cables and terminals and monitors and keyboards.
“Pretty old stuff,” he commented. “Are you sure it still works?”
“It works,” snapped Nichol, and studied the grizzled man. “I know you. We met when I was here last time. You talk to trees.”
“He talks to trees?” Thérèse muttered to Gamache as she passed, carrying a box of supplies. “Two for two, Chief Inspector. Who’s next? Hannibal Lecter?”
Within the hour all the equipment had been moved from Emilie’s home to the old schoolhouse. Agent Nichol had proved more helpful than anyone, especially Gamache, could have hoped. Which only increased his discomfort. She only questioned his orders once.
“Really?” She’d turned to him when the Chief Inspector had told her what they needed to do. “That’s your plan?”
“Do you have a better one, Agent Nichol?”
“Set it up in Emilie Longpré’s living room. That way it’s convenient.”
“For you, yes,” explained Gamache. “But the less distance the cables have to run, the better. You know that.”
She reluctantly admitted he had a point.
He hadn’t told her the other reason. If they were found out, if their signal was traced, if Francoeur and Tessier and others appeared on the brow of the hill, he wanted the target to be the abandoned schoolhouse. Not a home in the middle of Three Pines. The schoolhouse wasn’t far removed, but perhaps enough.
If they were successful, it would be decided, he suspected, by moments and millimeters.
“You do know this probably won’t work,” said Nichol, as she crawled under the old teacher’s desk.
The school had been decommissioned years earlier. No longer could the children of Three Pines walk to school and go home for lunch. Now they were bused to Saint-Rémi every day. Such was progress.
Once the equipment was in place, Gilles left them. Through the dirty schoolhouse window Gamache watched the red-bearded woodsman carry his snowshoes up the hill out of the village, in search of the hunting blind. It had been a long time since Gilles, or Gamache, had seen it, and Gamache hoped and prayed it was still there.