Reine-Marie stopped, her arms out for an embrace. And then she slowly lowered them.
Clara, standing a few steps behind Reine-Marie, thought she had never seen such sorrow in a man’s eyes.
Jean-Guy brushed by him, moving through the gulf between husband and wife, and quickly, efficiently took samples and photographs.
No one spoke until he had finished, and stepped away.
Then Armand stepped forward, embracing Reine-Marie, holding her tight. “Are you all right?”
“I will be,” she said.
“The police arrived about half an hour ago,” said Clara. “Until then, Myrna stood on the porch, making sure no one approached the church.”
“Good,” said Jean-Guy. “Did anyone?”
“No,” said Myrna.
Armand took Reine-Marie to the powder room, and together they washed the worst of the blood off her hands, his large fingers softly rubbing the now dried blood from her skin.
When they’d finished, he took her upstairs to their bedroom.
As she stripped down, he turned the shower on, making sure it wasn’t too hot.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You’re leaving? I’m sorry, of course you are. You have to.”
He held her, then stepping back he took her hands and looked down at them. There was still some blood stuck to her wedding ring. It was difficult not to see the symbolism.
This was what he’d brought into their marriage. Blood ran through their lives together. Like a river that sometimes broke its banks. Marring them. Staining them.
What would their lives have been like had he followed up his pre-law degree and not gone into the S?reté? Had he stayed at Cambridge? Perhaps become a professor.
He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be standing there trying to scrape one last bit of dried blood from his wife’s hand.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly.
“Someone else did this, Armand. You’re here to help.”
He kissed her and nodded toward the shower. “Go.”
She nodded toward the door. “Go. Oh, you’ll need this.”
She took the key to the church out of her sweater pocket. It too had blood on it.
Armand grabbed a tissue and took the key.
Downstairs, Beauvoir was talking to Clara and Myrna.
“Who else knows?”
“Reine-Marie told us, of course. About the cobrador,” said Clara. “But no one else. Obviously everyone knows something’s happened, especially when the agents arrived. But not what, and the agents wouldn’t tell them anything.”
“Because they don’t know,” said Beauvoir. It was vital, he knew, to guard information. Sometimes from your own people.
“Everyone’s gathered at the bistro,” said Myrna. “Waiting for news. Waiting for you. Some came here, but the agent stopped them.”
“Who?”
“Gabri, of course,” said Clara. “Honestly? Almost everyone came over.”
Joining them, Gamache asked if they’d stay with Reine-Marie until he returned.
“Of course,” said Clara.
Then he and Beauvoir walked swiftly down the path from the front porch to the dirt road, pausing briefly to speak to the agent.
“Stay here, please.”
“Oui, patron.” He was one of the agents who’d been called to Three Pines the evening before.
“What did you do with Monsieur Marchand, the man from last night?”
“As you asked. We kept him overnight. By morning he’d cooled down. Then drove him home.”
“What time?”
“Ten. He refused to tell us where he got the stuff in the packet. What was it?”
Gamache remembered the email, the lab report he’d been reading when Reine-Marie called. “Fentanyl.”
“Ffff—” But the agent stopped himself.
Chief Superintendent Gamache nodded agreement, then continued down his walkway, noticing Gabri approaching from the bistro, taking long strides toward them. Not exactly running. Gabri did not run. He lumbered at speed.
Still holding a dish towel, he intercepted Gamache and Beauvoir.
“What’s happened? The cops won’t tell us anything.” He looked accusingly at the agent, who pretended not to hear.
“And neither can I,” said Gamache.
“It’s something to do with Reine-Marie,” said Gabri. “Is she all right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, thank God for that. But someone isn’t…” He gestured toward the church, and the other agent.
Gamache shook his head and noticed more people heading their way, led by Lea Roux with Matheo close behind.
“You go. I’ll take care of this,” said Gabri. He turned to head them off, allowing Armand and Jean-Guy to escape.
The agent guarding the church was waiting for them. Behind her rose the small white clapboard chapel. Pretty. Innocuous. Like thousands of others in villages throughout Québec.
Only this one held not a relic, a saint’s knuckle or molar, but an entire body.
A dead creature from another time.
CHAPTER 14
Isabelle Lacoste, the head of homicide for the S?reté, arrived just as Gamache and Beauvoir reached the church. Her car, followed by the Scene of Crime van, pulled in behind the vehicle driven by the local agents.
Investigators unloaded equipment while Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste quickly consulted.
“Can you swab and fingerprint this?” Gamache handed an agent the key in the tissue.
“Tell me what you know,” said Lacoste, turning to Gamache.
Beauvoir suppressed a smile and wondered if either of them realized it was exactly what Gamache used to say when he was head of homicide.
“We haven’t been in yet,” said the Chief Superintendent. “Madame Gamache found the body in the basement, then locked the church. It appears to be the cobrador.”
“The what?” asked Lacoste.
Gamache, so familiar now with the thing, had forgotten that Isabelle Lacoste knew nothing about it.
“You’ll see,” he said.
“Done.” The forensics agent handed the large latchkey back to Gamache, who gave it to Lacoste.
At the top of the stairs, Gamache stepped aside while she unlocked the door and went in, followed by her Scene of Crime and forensics teams. As they streamed past him, Gamache turned and looked at the village and the villagers.
They were standing outside the bistro in a line, a semicircle. It looked, from where he stood, like a frown.
Sleet, part snow and part icy rain, was beginning to fall. And still they stood there, staring. A cluster of dark figures in the distance. Unmoving. Staring at him.
And then he went inside the church. A place that had offered peace and calm and sanctuary, even to an old woman praying for the Son of the Morning.
He went down the stairs, into near darkness.
*
The basement was really just one large room, with worn, scuffed linoleum floors, acoustic tile ceiling stained by water damage here and there, and fake wood siding on the walls. Chairs were stacked against the walls, and long tables, their legs folded up, leaned against one another.
Isabelle Lacoste looked around, her sharp eyes taking in the fact there was no other entrance, and while there were windows, they were covered in layers of grime. It would be easier for light, or an intruder, to enter through the walls.
But, windows aside, it was clean. Uncluttered. Didn’t even smell of mildew.