“Oui,” he said. “It was hard to find, but evidence linking Arnot with the killings was there.”
“He always maintained his innocence, Armand. You don’t think…”
“That he really was innocent?” asked Gamache, shaking his head. “No. Not a chance.”
But, he thought to himself, perhaps Pierre Arnot was not quite as guilty as he’d thought. Or, perhaps, there was someone who carried even more guilt. Someone still free.
“Why did Chief Superintendent Arnot do it?” asked Thérèse. “That never came out in court, or in any of the confidential documents. He seemed to respect, even admire the Cree at the beginning of his career. Then thirty years later he’s involved in killing them. For no reason, apparently.”
“Well, he didn’t do the actual killing, as you know,” said Gamache. “He created a climate where the use of lethal force was encouraged. Rewarded even.”
“He did more than that, as your own investigation proved,” said Thérèse. “There were documents showing he encouraged the killings, even ordered some. That was irrefutable. What was never clear was why a senior and apparently excellent officer would do such a thing.”
“You’re right,” agreed Gamache. “From the evidence, the young men who were killed weren’t even criminals. Just the opposite. Most had no record at all.”
In a place with so much crime, why kill the ones who’d done nothing wrong?
“I need to visit Arnot,” he said.
“In the SHU? You can’t do that. They’ll know we’ve found his name in our searches.” She examined him closely. “That’s an order, Chief Inspector. You’re not to go. Understand?”
“I do. And I won’t.”
Still, she tried to read his familiar face. The worn and torn face. Behind his eyes she could sense activity. Just as her husband and that alarming young agent were busy trying to make connections, she could see Armand doing the same thing. In his mind. Sifting through old files, names, events. Trying to find some connection he’d missed.
A man appeared at the brow of the hill and waved.
It was Gilles and he looked pleased.
*
“Here she is.”
Gilles laid a hand on the rough bark of the tree. They were in the forest above the village. He’d brought snowshoes for all of them, and now Thérèse, Jér?me, Nichol, and Gamache stood beside him, only sinking a few inches into the deep snow.
“Isn’t she magnificent?”
They tilted their heads back, and Jér?me’s tuque fell off as he looked up.
“She?” asked Nichol.
Gilles chose to ignore the sarcasm in her voice. “She,” he confirmed.
“Hate to think how he came to that conclusion,” said Nichol, not quite under her breath. Gamache gave her a stern look.
“She’s at least a hundred feet tall. White pine. Old growth,” Gilles continued. “Hundreds of years old. There’s one in New York State that they figure is almost five hundred years old. The three white pines down in the village may have seen the first loyalists come across during the American Revolution. And this one”—he turned to it, his nose touching the mottled bark, his words soft and warm against the tree—“might have been a seedling when the first Europeans arrived.”
The woodsman looked at them, a bit of bark on the tip of his nose and in his beard. “Do you know what the aboriginals called the white pine?”
“Ethel?” asked Nichol.
“The tree of peace.”
“So what’re we doing here?” asked Nichol.
Gilles pointed and they looked up again. This time Gamache’s hat fell off as he tilted his head. He picked it up and struck it against his leg to knock the soft snow off.
There, nailed twenty feet up in the tree of peace, was the hunting blind. Made for violence. It was rickety and rotten, as though the tree was punishing it.
But it was there.
“What can we do to help?” asked Gamache.
“You can help me haul the satellite dish up there,” said Gilles.
Gamache blanched.
“I think we have the answer to that request,” said Jér?me. “And you’re not going to be doing any of the wiring.”
Gamache shook his head.
“Then I suggest you and Thérèse get out of the way,” said Jér?me.
“Banished to the bistro,” said Gamache, and now Thérèse Brunel did smile.
TWENTY-FIVE
Mugs of steaming apple cider were placed in front of Thérèse Brunel and the Chief Inspector.
Clara and a friend were sitting by the fireplace and motioned them over, but after thanking Clara for dinner the night before, the S?reté officers moved off to the relative privacy of the easy chairs in front of the bay window.
The mullions were frosted slightly but the village was still easily seen, and the two stared out in slightly awkward silence for a minute or two. Thérèse stirred her cider with the cinnamon stick, then took a sip.
It tasted of Christmas, and skating, and long winter afternoons in the country. She and Jér?me never had cider in Montréal, and she wondered why not.