“Why did you?”
“I had some of those Chinese lantern flowers. Long stems. I wondered if there might be a vase there, even a chipped one, I could use.” She thought for a moment. “You think that’s where the cobrador went, when he disappeared at night?”
“It’s possible. Probable. The forensics report will tell us more, but it makes sense. It’s a pretty good hiding spot. There’s a bathroom, a kitchen. No windows in that little root cellar.”
“Did you find a weapon?”
He looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?”
Now she looked confused. “Do you know what killed Katie?”
“The bat, of course.”
“Of course?”
In silence he regarded her, then his eyes widened.
“Can you describe again what you saw when you found the body?”
She sat up straighter in the bath, picking up on the shift in tone. She cast her mind back. “When I turned the light on I saw something dark, like a shadow, in the corner. It looked like a pile of black clothes. And then there was the blood.”
He squeezed her hand, and let that sit.
“What else was in the root cellar?” He hated doing this, but had to.
She frowned. “Jars of preserves on the shelves. Some vases, mostly chipped or cracked. Some broken candlestick holders. Things we couldn’t even sell in the rummage sale.”
“Anything else? On the ground?” It was as far as he could go. She had to tell him herself. Or not.
She scanned the room in her mind.
“Non. Why? What should I have seen? Did I miss something?”
“Non, but we almost did. Do you mind?” He got up.
“No, go.”
Armand bent down and he kissed her.
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered.
As he left, he reflected on how many times he’d heard that from others.
It’s not my fault. Though it almost always was.
CHAPTER 20
“What’re you looking up?” asked Gamache, pausing in the doorway to his study.
“Lord of the Rings,” said Beauvoir.
He closed the search, shutting down the page.
“Flies?” asked Gamache.
“Right, right, Lord of the Flies. I just got to the part where Frodo and Ralph find the magic ring in the pig’s head. But I’m not sure why the pope is on the island.”
“Wikipedia,” muttered Gamache, as he walked toward the front door. “I need to take another look at the root cellar.”
“Why?” asked Beauvoir, following.
“Something Reine-Marie just told me.”
“What?”
Jean-Guy listened as Gamache recounted his conversation. “You’re kidding,” he said, though it was clear Gamache was not. “I’ll come with you.”
“Madame Evans’s sister and parents don’t know what happened, and it would be helpful to take a look at the Evanses’ home in Montréal.”
Beauvoir paused, then gave a curt nod. “I’ll go. You need to stay here with Madame Gamache.”
“Merci, Jean-Guy. We’ll probably need a court order for the home. I suspect Monsieur Evans is still asleep.”
“Don’t you mean passed out?” Beauvoir asked as they put on their field coats. “That was more than one tranquilizer. He was right out of it. Gone.”
“Dr. Harris thinks it was at least two. And it might not have been Ativan.”
“An opioid?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did Lea Roux give him more than he could handle on purpose? Or was it a mistake?” asked Beauvoir.
That, Gamache knew, was the real question.
The two men walked down the front path, turning up their collars against the drizzle and sleet.
“Save me some dinner,” said Jean-Guy.
As he drove toward Montréal, Jean-Guy thought about why he’d lied to Gamache just then about what he was looking at on the computer.
He’d been reading about Lord of the Flies, yes. But that had been earlier. The search he’d hidden from Gamache was for the words the chief had written on the napkin that had fluttered to the floor.
Burn our ships.
Beauvoir now knew what that referred to. But not why the words, the phrase, had so struck Chief Superintendent Gamache that he’d had to write them down. And keep them.
It must’ve been just this past lunch hour. Who did the chief have lunch with?
Toussaint. Madeleine Toussaint. The new head of Serious Crimes.
Burn our ships.
*
Armand Gamache walked through the late afternoon darkness. The lights from the cottages were made soft by the mist that still hung over the village. Three Pines felt slightly out of focus. Not quite of this world.
He could hear tapping, as water rolled off leaves and hit branches further down. It sounded like rain, but wasn’t. It was a faux rain. Not quite real. Like so much else in this village. Like so much else in this murder. One foot in the here and now, and the other in some other world. Of a Conscience that walked. And killed.
The air smelled earthy and the cold and damp seeped through his canvas coat.
Lights were on in the church and he could see the stained-glass window, illuminated, and the village boys, the doughboys, captured there. Forever moving forward into some battle long ago won. Or lost. Moving so far forward they could never come back.
As Gamache moved forward.
Once in St. Thomas’s, he took the stairs to the basement.
A conference table had been set up at one end of the room, with desks filling in the middle. Technicians were working to install phone lines and computers and other equipment.
Chief Inspector Lacoste and an agent were at the conference table conducting an interview. Gamache caught her eye and she nodded imperceptibly.
“Who’s there?” asked Ruth, turning stiffly in her seat.
The old poet seemed to miss the obvious but catch the imperceptible.
“Oh, it’s only you.”
The agent taking notes stood, and the S?reté technicians stopped what they were doing to stare, wide-eyed, at the new Chief Superintendent.
“Patron,” a few of the older ones said, nodding to the man.
The younger ones, including the agent who’d escorted Ruth up to the Incident Room, just stared.
The veteran agents knew Gamache from when he’d been head of homicide. From when he’d cleaned out the corruption, at enormous personal cost.
And now he was back, running the whole thing.
There’d been a huge sense of relief when he’d stepped up to take the job.
He could be seen walking down the corridors in S?reté headquarters, often with people around him, briefing him on the fly between meetings.
There was a sense of urgency, of purpose, that had been missing in those corridors for many years.
But sometimes Chief Superintendent Gamache could be seen in the hallways, or an elevator, or the cafeteria, alone. Deep in some dossier. Like a college professor reading an obscure and fascinating text.
It was an oddly comforting sight, for men and women who’d been immersed in brutality. Who’d worn their guns more proudly than their badges.
Here was a man with a book, not a weapon, and no need to prove his bravery. Or descend into savagery.
It became okay to stop the swaggering, to cease the bullying that was excused as an appropriate way to treat the populace.