“This’s my fault,” said Lea. “If I hadn’t protected him last night, he might’ve been scared away. Or beaten. But at least Katie would be alive.” Then she turned to Gamache. “It’s your fault too. You could’ve done something. But all you did was talk to him. You kept saying he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Well, now he has. If you’d stepped in, she’d still be alive.”
Gamache said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. He’d already explained many times to the villagers that there was nothing he could do. Though given what had happened, he knew he’d go back over it and over it. Wondering if that was really true.
He also knew that her rage was really directed at whoever had picked up that bat and killed her friend. He just happened to be a more convenient target.
So he let her have at it. Without backing away. Without defending himself. And when she’d finished, he was silent.
Lea Roux was in tears now, having opened the gates to her anger, her sorrow.
“Oh, shit,” she gasped, trying to regain control of herself, as though crying for a dead friend was shameful. “What have we done?”
“You did nothing wrong,” said Lacoste. “And neither did Chief Superintendent Gamache. Whoever did this is to blame.”
Lea took the tissue Lacoste offered and thanked her, wiping her face and blowing her nose. But still crying. Softer now. More sorrow. Less rage.
“You can’t really think the cobrador thing came here for Katie,” said Lea.
“Do you have another theory?” Lacoste asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe the cobrador did do it, but not on purpose. Maybe Katie followed him and found out who he was, and he killed her.”
Gamache nodded slowly. That had occurred to him as well.
But then, why put her in the costume?
And again, why kill her at all? It seemed an extreme overreaction to being exposed.
But that could mean that she recognized him.
Gamache returned his gaze to the fog outside. Far from being oppressive, he found it soothing. Enveloping, not smothering.
Was Katie Evans’s murder premeditated? Had she been the target all along? Or was it the impulsive act of a person who’d been found out? Cornered in that church basement?
“So you can’t think of anyone who might wish your friend harm?” asked Lacoste.
“Not that I know of. She was an architect. She built homes.”
“Did any project go badly wrong? An accident maybe? A collapse?”
“No, never.”
“Her marriage to Patrick,” said Gamache. “Was it a happy one?”
“I think so. She wanted children but he didn’t. You might’ve noticed, he’s a bit of a child himself. Not in a playful way, more in a needy way. He needed mothering. Katie gives him that. She gives us all that. She’s very maternal. Would’ve made a wonderful mother. She’s godmother to our eldest. Never forgets a birthday.”
Lea looked down at the tissue, twisted into shreds in her hands.
“I think their relationship was good,” she said. “I couldn’t see it myself. Especially when—” She looked at Lacoste, then over at Gamache.
They remained silent, waiting for her to finish the sentence.
“When she could’ve had Edouard.”
“Your friend from college,” said Gamache. “The one who killed himself.”
“Or just fell,” she said. It was something she had to believe. Struggled to believe. Lea gave a huge sigh. “Love. What can you do?”
Gamache nodded. What could you do?
Beauvoir, Matheo and Dr. Harris returned, having gotten Patrick to bed.
“He’ll be fine,” said Sharon Harris. “Needs sleep is all.”
“I’ll walk you out,” said Gamache, putting on his coat.
Instead of going through the crowded bistro, they took the doors out onto the patio, and around the back of the shops.
In the bakery next door, through the window, they saw Anton and Jacqueline, talking.
“Monsieur Evans’s friend,” said the coroner. “The woman. Is that Lea Roux, the politician?”
“It is.”
“She said she gave him one Ativan. I’ve never seen a collapse like that in an adult from just one.”
“You think she gave him more?”
“Two at least. Of course, she might’ve been embarrassed to admit it, or maybe she gave him the bottle and he helped himself.”
“I doubt that, don’t you? Is it possible it’s not Ativan, but something else?”
She stopped and considered it.
Gamache could feel the mist creep down his collar and up his sleeves.
“It could be. You suspect a pharmaceutical, an opioid? Without a blood test, I can’t tell. Is there a reason you suspect it?”
“Not really. There’s just so much of it about.”
“You have no idea,” said the coroner, who saw victims every day on her stainless steel gurney.
Gamache didn’t say anything, but he actually had a far better idea than Dr. Harris.
He walked her to her car, but before she got in, she turned to him. “Monsieur Evans kept repeating something about a bad conscience. Is that significant, Armand?”
“The costume the victim was in was something to do with a conscience” was all he said, and she could tell it was all she was going to get.
There wasn’t time, or need, to tell Dr. Harris about the cobrador.
What could sound like a confession on Patrick Evans’s part was simply, almost certainly, a warning. There was a bad, a very bad, conscience at work.
“Merci,” he said. “Your report?”
“As soon as I can. I hope to have something to you by morning.”
When he returned to the back room of the bistro, he found Matheo and Lea sitting facing Lacoste and Beauvoir. Not exactly, explicitly, adversarial. But close.
Lines had been drawn.
He joined Lacoste and Beauvoir.
“We’ve been thinking, assuming, the cobrador killed Katie,” said Matheo. “But maybe not.”
“Go on,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.
“The cobrador came here for someone. Someone who’d done something terrible. Isn’t it possible he killed Katie?”
“Why would he?” asked Lacoste. “Wouldn’t he be more likely to kill the guy in the costume?”
“Maybe he did,” said Lea. “And maybe Katie saw it happen.”
“Then where is he?” asked Lacoste. “The fellow in the costume? Why leave Katie’s body behind, but hide his?”
“Maybe it’s not hidden, really,” said Matheo. “Maybe you just haven’t found it.”
Lacoste raised her brows. She was actually a few steps ahead of them, having ordered the woods around the village searched.
“What can you tell us about Madame Evans?” asked Lacoste.
“Can’t tell you much about her childhood,” said Matheo. “I know she was raised in Montréal. Has a sister. Her parents— Oh,” he sighed, when he realized they would have to be told.
“Do you have their address?” asked Gamache, and took it down from Lea.
“We met, as we told you last night,” Matheo said to Gamache, “at university. We were taking different courses but were in the same dorm. A wild place. My God, I can’t believe we survived.”
Though, thought Gamache, not all of them did.
“Away from home for the first time,” said Matheo. “Young. No rules. No boundaries. All the restraints were off, you know? We went wild. But Katie was calm. She was always up for stuff, but she had self-control. Not a prude, more like common sense. The rest of us had sorta lost our minds.”
“Katie was our safe harbor,” said Lea.