He’d stared at her, his deep brown eyes thoughtful. There was no madness there. No fevered ego. But there was power there. And certainty.
The next day, he’d accepted the job. And now, months later, he was back investigating a crime. A murder. Right on his own doorstep.
Myrna sat side by side with Clara on the sofa, as though waiting for a bus, and considered.
Yes, there was reason for Armand’s anger. She was angry too. She was also afraid, and she wondered if Armand was too.
Myrna glanced down at the floor, where Leo was curled on the mangy piece of rug, with his chew toy. A more adorable image would be hard to find.
Then she looked at Clara’s painting of Leo. Of Gracie. Of the savagery they might be capable of. Might be hiding. And she knew that it wasn’t just a portrait of the puppies.
“Bonjour?”
The unfamiliar voice drifted into the studio. The two women struggled out of the low sofa, and walking into the kitchen, they saw a young man in a S?reté uniform standing there.
“There’s no doorbell,” he said, slightly defensively. “I did knock.”
“That’s okay, everyone just comes in,” said Clara. “You’re here about Katie. What can we do to help?”
“Jesus, is Gamache hiring fetuses now?”
The young agent turned to the tall, thin, old piece of work framed in the doorway. Holding a duck.
“Chief Inspector Lacoste told me to find a Ruth Zardo,” he said, looking down at the wet piece of paper in his hand. “She wasn’t at her home or in the bistro. Someone said she might be here. I was told to look for a crazy old woman.”
He examined all three. From the great distance of twenty-five, they all looked old. And more than a little crazy. But what could you expect? he thought. Poor things. Stuck in this backwoods village. He should count their fingers and see if there were any banjos lying around.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” said the duck, while the three old women stood together and stared, as though he was the strange one.
*
Jean-Guy called Myrna’s bookshop and left a message, asking if she had a copy of Lord of the Flies.
Then he turned back to the synopsis online.
He read about schoolboys stranded on a deserted island. He read about happy, healthy, decent kids away from rules and authority, slowly turning into savages.
And he thought about his son, Honoré, and what he might do in a situation like that.
But mostly Jean-Guy remembered what Matheo Bissonette had said. That their first year at the Université de Montréal had been like Lord of the Flies.
With the cruel hunter, Jack. The rational, disciplined Ralph. The “littluns,” the youngest. Conjuring their fears. Creating beasts where none existed.
And Piggy, whose only value to the group was that his glasses made fire.
Beauvoir adjusted his own glasses and read on. Tensing, tightening up, the further he got.
He read about the boys’ growing certainty that there was a beast on the island. One they needed to hunt down and kill.
Taking off his glasses, Jean-Guy rubbed his eyes.
Matheo Bissonette had likened university to Lord of the Flies, but he’d made it sound like fun, a wild romp.
Had those four friends, five counting the unfortunate Edouard, turned into savages? Then, in the confines of the university, turned on each other?
And what about Three Pines? It was a sort of island.
And now one among them was dead. And one of them had done it.
And the Conscience was nowhere to be found.
Beauvoir took a deep breath, chuckling at his overactive imagination.
But he decided to put reading about Lord of the Flies on hold and, pulling up another search, he typed in the words he’d seen that afternoon on the napkin that had fallen from Gamache’s pocket.
Burn our ships.
*
“May I join you?” Armand asked, gesturing to the closed toilet seat as though it were an easy chair.
“Please,” said Reine-Marie, and accepted the glass of red wine he passed her, a stalactite of bubbles from the bath she was soaking in hanging from her arm. “Nothing for you?”
“I’m afraid I’m still working,” he said, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable.
“Any closer to finding out what happened?”
“Isabelle’s doing interviews. She’ll join us later for dinner. I’ve asked her and Jean-Guy to stay overnight.”
“I should get things ready.” Reine-Marie put the glass down and made to get out of the tub, but Armand waved her to stop.
“Olivier will bring something over for dinner, and I’ve checked. The beds are already made and towels out.”
“Auberge Gamache is open for business?” she asked, gliding back down, deeper into the suds.
The hint of roses from the bubble bath mixed with the steam, and Armand had the strange impression that the fog from outside had permeated their home. And as he did when he walked through the mist, he had an intense feeling of comfort.
“You okay?” he asked.
“This helps,” she said. It was clear she meant the company more than the bubbles. Or even the wine.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“It was awful, Armand. There was blood everywhere.”
She was trying not to cry, but tears streamed down her face, and he knelt beside the tub and held her hands. As she described, again, what she’d seen.
She needed to talk about it. And he needed to listen. To comfort.
“Who killed her, Armand? Was it the cobrador?”
She knew he wouldn’t have the answer, but she hoped, in the extreme privacy of their own bathroom, he might have an idea he could share with her.
“I think he’s at the center of it, yes. Whether he himself did it, I’m not sure.”
She looked into his eyes. “There was nothing you could do.”
“And that’s exactly what I did do. Nothing. But I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here for you.”
He caressed her skin with his thumb.
“You did do something,” she said, ignoring what he’d just said. “You warned him. You can’t arrest someone for standing on a village green. Thank God.”
“Thank God,” murmured Armand.
He knew she was right. But he could also feel his own conscience stirring. Accusing him of following the law, in lockstep. And marching right past common sense.
Katie Evans was dead. The cobrador was missing. And Reine-Marie was soaking in the bath, the blood long gone but the stain remaining.
“The law is sometimes an ass,” he said, squeezing her warm hand.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. There are some laws that should never be upheld, enforced.”
“But you can’t be the one who decides,” she said, sitting up straighter and looking at him. “You’re the head of the S?reté. You have to follow the law, even if it’s uncomfortable.” She held his eyes and spoke slowly, clearly. “You can’t kick someone off the public park in front of your home, Armand, just because you don’t like it.”
She made it sound so clear, so reasonable.
“What I don’t understand is how the killer knew the root cellar was there,” said Reine-Marie. “Hardly anyone ever goes in it.”