“Merci,” said the woman.
“Un plaisir, madam,” said Anton, glancing at her politely before shifting his eyes out the window.
He had the vague impression he knew this woman. Had seen her before. Not a villager. A visitor. But his attention was now totally focused on the green.
As he watched, the thing moved. Very, very slightly. Perhaps just an inch. A millimeter.
Toward him.
*
“Did it just move?” Reine-Marie asked.
She’d come into the study to find a book, and now stood behind Armand’s chair, looking out the window.
“It was slight,” said Armand. “But I think so. Might’ve been just the breeze ruffling his robes.”
But they both knew the dark thing had indeed moved. Just a little. It was almost imperceptible, except to someone who happened to be looking, and who had been watching it for a while.
The thing had turned, slightly. Toward the bistro.
*
“Did you know then,” the Crown asked, “who it was looking at?”
“Non. It could have been any one of a dozen people. Or more.”
“But most likely someone at a table in the window, non?”
“Objection, leading the witness.”
“Sustained.”
“What happened then?” asked the Crown.
CHAPTER 6
“Who else have you told about your cobrador theory?” Armand asked Matheo.
It was early afternoon and the visitors had invited some of the villagers to the B&B for tea. Gamache had taken the journalist into a corner where they could have a quiet word.
“No one. I wanted to run it by you first.”
“Bon. Please keep it that way.”
“Why?”
“No real reason. I just like to confirm things before rumors get out of control.”
“It is confirmed,” said Matheo, getting slightly annoyed. “I told you.”
“Unfortunately, monsieur, your word alone, like mine alone, still needs to be verified.”
“And how do you do that?”
“One of my agents is looking into what you told us. I scanned the photograph to him. We’ll have the confirmation soon. Then we can talk about it.”
“Fine.”
“Merci.”
“Hurry up,” called Ruth from the sofa. “I’m dry.”
“You haven’t been dry since 1968,” said Gabri, who was pouring her scotch into a fine bone china teacup.
“Nixon’s election,” said Ruth. “Very sobering.”
“Have you noticed that the thing now has birds all over it?” asked Clara.
“Looks like a statue,” said Reine-Marie.
“Hope they shit on it,” said Matheo.
With the birds perching on its head and shoulders, the robed figure should have been comical, and yet the sparrows simply added to the sense of the macabre. He looked like a black marble statue in a cemetery.
“You okay?” Reine-Marie asked.
Like everyone else, Armand was staring at the figure on the green. He’d gone into a sort of trance.
“I just had the oddest feeling,” he whispered. “For a moment I wondered if we had it all wrong, and he wasn’t here to hurt, but to help.”
“You’re not the first to think the cobrador’s heroic,” said Matheo, who was standing beside them and had heard. “A sort of Robin Hood. Righting a wrong. But that”—he inclined his head toward the window—“is something else. You can almost smell the rot.”
“That’s manure,” said Gabri, refreshing Matheo’s wine. “Monsieur Legault is spreading it on his fields.” He took a deep, satisfied breath and exhaled. “Ahhhh. Smells like shit. What did you call it? A cobrador?”
“It’s just a word,” said Matheo. “A nickname.”
He walked away before Gabri could question him further.
“He gave the thing a nickname?” Gabri asked the Gamaches.
Armand shrugged and watched Matheo, now chatting with Clara. And wondered if Matheo had called it a cobrador, in front of Gabri of all people, on purpose. Right after Gamache had asked him to keep it quiet.
Was it an honest mistake? Willful? Strategic?
“Where’s Katie?” asked Myrna.
“She was here a few minutes ago,” said Patrick, looking around.
“She said she was heading to the microbrewery in Sutton to get more beer,” said Lea, raising her glass. “Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin.”
Gamache watched Lea Roux and wondered if one day in the not-too-distant future he’d be working for her. The next Première Ministre du Québec.
Gabri, following Ruth with the scotch bottle like some Victorian retainer, said, “I hate beer. Won’t have it in the house. Brings the whole tone down.”
“And the duck doesn’t?” asked Patrick, eyeing Rosa.
“We make exceptions,” said Gabri. “Both the duck and the fuck are family.”
“Actually, we like having Ruth and Rosa around. They make the rest of us look sane,” Clara explained.
“Well…” said Lea.
“Glass houses,” said Ruth, clutching Rosa to her and glaring at Lea.
She absently laid a veined hand on Rosa’s wings, folded tight to her back. Like a very small archangel. Rosa was nothing if not arch.
Lea took a breath and smiled. “Quite right. My apologies.”
“And you are quite wrong.”
“Sorry?”
“Benjamin Franklin didn’t say that about beer,” said Ruth.
“Who did?” asked Myrna.
“Franklin,” said Ruth.
“But you just said—” Patrick began.
“It’s not about beer,” said Ruth. “He was writing to a friend about wine. The quote got hijacked by people who felt it was better to paint the intellectual and diplomat as a man of the people. A lover of beer, rather than wine. Such is politics, non?” She turned back to Lea. “Illusion.”
“You got that right,” said Lea, and toasted the elderly woman with her beer.
But there was no amusement in her eyes anymore.
Yes, thought Gamache, holding the scotch Gabri had poured him, but not drinking it, there was definitely more here than, well, met the eye.
“Does he look familiar?” asked Reine-Marie.
No one had to ask who she meant.
“Well, he’s been standing there for more than a day now, so yes, he does,” said Clara.
“No, look again.”
In silence they contemplated the robed figure standing alone on the gray November day.
The quiet seemed to extend beyond the room. Beyond the B&B. Into the entire village. It was as though the bell jar was growing. Taking over more and more of Three Pines.
Two days earlier, children had been playing, laughing and shouting on the village green. Now there was nothing. No commotion. No motion. Not even the birds on its shoulders moved. It was as though in touching the thing, they’d turned to stone.
“He looks like Saint Francis of Assisi,” said Clara.
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Reine-Marie. “All those birds.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” said Lea. “That’s no saint.”
“Did you ask the Archangel Michael about our visitor?” Gamache asked.
Reine-Marie turned to him, surprised by the question. And yet curious to hear the answer.
No one believed an archangel actually visited the mad old poet. Not really. They didn’t even believe she believed it. Not really.
But they were curious.
“I did.”
“And?”
Just then a car appeared at the top of the hill into Three Pines.