There was a kitchen at one end, with avocado appliances. And a door, open, off to the side of that.
She turned as she heard the familiar tread on the stairs, and saw Gamache walk into the room.
He gestured toward the open door.
“A root cellar,” he said, as they walked across the basement. “Madame Gamache came down looking for a vase. That’s when she found him.”
“What time?”
“About one forty-five. She locked the church and called me as soon as she got home, and Inspector Beauvoir called you.”
They both, instinctively, looked at their watches. It was three fifteen. An hour and a half.
Armand was familiar with the church basement. It was where funeral receptions were held. Where wedding feasts were often prepared. Where bridge clubs and exercise classes and bake sales took place.
It was a cheerful room that time, and taste, had left behind.
He had never been into the root cellar and didn’t even know it was there.
Chief Superintendent Gamache stood at the threshold, but didn’t go in. There was barely room for the investigators.
A light, fluorescent, artificial, had been left on by Reine-Marie. It was the only light in the small room. There were no windows here. The floor was dirt.
The space was lined with rough wooden shelves with a few vases, and rusty old tin cans, and milky preserves in mason jars.
He took all that in, but what he focused on, what everyone focused on, was the black lump in the corner. It looked as though something had erupted from the earth, been forced out of the ground.
A big black boulder.
Isabelle Lacoste turned to him, puzzled. “The cobrador?”
“Oui.”
Beauvoir was standing at the doorway with Gamache, throbbing. Wanting to go in, to join in. But when Gamache stepped back, so did he.
The coroner arrived, and after greeting Gamache, she looked at Beauvoir.
“Nice glasses.”
Then Dr. Sharon Harris walked past them and entered the root cellar.
“What did she mean by that?” asked Jean-Guy, adjusting his glasses.
“She likes them,” said Gamache automatically. “We all like them.”
Beauvoir stepped away. Unable to just stand idle and watch, he began pacing the periphery of the large room, like a predator in a cage. Smelling blood.
Once the videos and photos and samples were taken, Dr. Harris knelt beside the body.
“He’s wearing a mask,” she said, looking up into the faces.
Lacoste knelt down to get a better look, the videoing agent right beside her.
*
“I warn you,” said the Crown. “This next part is pretty bad. You might want to look away.”
Everyone in the courtroom leaned forward.
The video, not particularly steady but clear, showed Isabelle Lacoste, her second-in-command, and Dr. Harris bending over the dark mound.
Chief Superintendent Gamache stepped forward and knelt beside Lacoste. The shadow of another figure, Inspector Beauvoir, could be seen.
And then the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the black mass.
It was difficult to distinguish a shape, until the camera moved in even closer, on the mask.
It was cracked.
Some of the spectators in the courtroom lowered their eyes.
“I’m going to remove the mask,” Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste narrated.
More people dropped their gazes to their hands.
There was some difficulty getting it off, and the spectators saw glimpses of flesh.
More people lowered their eyes. Some closed them altogether.
Finally, by the time the mask was removed, no one in the courtroom was watching. Except the court officers.
Judge Corriveau forced herself to look, glancing over quickly to the jury and feeling sorry for the poor buggers. Who’d started the trial excited at being involved in a murder case. And would end it traumatized. Or, worse, numb to such horror.
The Crown, who’d seen this video often, stood at his desk, his lips pressed together and his hands made into fists at his sides.
Chief Superintendent Gamache narrowed his eyes. It was slightly easier to watch on video than in person, but not much.
Beauvoir, sitting in the courtroom, had his own mask on. Of professional detachment.
One of the defense lawyers shot a quick glance at the defendant, then looked away, hoping no one in the jury had seen the revulsion in his face as he’d stared at the person he was meant to defend.
The person he privately suspected had done this.
The camera zoomed in even more, in a merciless close-up.
At that stage, even Gamache looked away, then forced himself back, to stare at the giant face on the large screen.
*
Isabelle Lacoste handed the mask to her head of forensics, and turned to Gamache.
“You’re surprised.”
He nodded.
There was a lot of damage, but the face was recognizable.
Not a man, but a woman.
“You know her?” asked Lacoste.
“Oui. That’s Katie Evans. She’s staying at the B&B.”
Lacoste got up, and so did Gamache.
Isabelle Lacoste cast an experienced eye over the root cellar, then motioned toward the door.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said to the coroner and her second-in-command. At the door she paused. “I take it the cause of death is obvious.”
They all looked at the bloody bat, propped casually against one of the shelves, next to a stained mason jar of peaches.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything else,” said Dr. Harris. “But what’s with…”
She gestured at the costume.
“I think I’m about to find out,” said Lacoste, and followed Gamache and Beauvoir into the larger room.
*
On the huge screen in the courtroom, the camera followed the senior officers as they left the root cellar. Just before the camera swung back to the body, it captured Chief Superintendent Gamache as he turned and looked into the room.
An expression of extreme bewilderment on his face.
CHAPTER 15
They set up one of the long tables in the center of the church basement, positioned so they could still see inside the root cellar.
“Who is Katie Evans?” Lacoste asked.
“She’s a visitor,” said Gamache. “From Montréal. An architect. Staying at the B&B with her husband and two friends.”
Lacoste took no notes. They’d get official statements later. Now she just listened. Very closely.
“And the mask and cloak she’s wearing? You called it a—”
“Cobrador,” said Gamache.
He and Beauvoir looked at each other. How to explain this?
“It’s Spanish. A debt collector of sorts,” said Gamache.
“We just found the body,” said Lacoste. “How do you know this?”
“Because the cobrador has been here for a while,” he said.
“A while? How long?”
“A few days.”
“You’re going to have to explain this to me,” said Lacoste. “This Katie Evans was a debt collector? And she wore a costume?”
Again, Gamache and Beauvoir looked at each other. This was going to be more difficult than they thought. Mostly because they themselves had no idea what was going on.
“No,” said Gamache. “She wasn’t a debt collector. She was an architect.”
“Then why is she in the costume?”
The men shook their heads.