Lacoste turned and saw Anton smiling. He’d obviously heard. She suspected everyone in Québec had heard.
She returned to the bistro. Clara and Myrna had joined Reine-Marie and Annie, and after greeting them, Isabelle took a seat.
Her back was to the two men at the table, and to Matheo and Lea, though she could just see their distorted reflections in the leaded-glass window.
“Not sitting with you?” Isabelle asked, tipping her head toward Matheo and Lea.
“Oh, it’s not us they’re avoiding.”
“It’s me,” said Lacoste.
She knew why, of course. The trial. Like her, Matheo and Lea were witnesses for the prosecution. But, unlike her, they were unwilling witnesses.
Lacoste knew the first question the prosecution would ask them, and she suspected they did as well. It was pretty much the first question Chief Superintendent Gamache had asked that November night when they’d made their way through the sleet to the B&B.
*
“What time is it?” asked a groggy Gabri, as the knocking on the door continued. “Did someone forget their key?”
“Everyone’s in,” said Olivier, hauling himself awake. “And what key?”
“It’s one thirty?” Gabri was fully awake now, swinging his legs out of bed and reaching for his dressing gown. “Something’s happened. Something’s wrong. Here, take this.”
He handed Olivier a two-by-four.
“Why?” asked Olivier.
“That’s our burglar alarm.”
“Burglars don’t knock.”
“Wanna risk it?”
They walked softly so as not to disturb their guests, though they were far from sure any of them would be able to sleep. Especially Patrick, who’d looked both exhausted and wide awake even as he was being led to bed by his friends.
Olivier and Gabri turned on the porch light and peered through the window. Then they quickly opened the front door.
*
Patrick heard the knocking.
Little good ever came from being aroused at that hour. Though Patrick had not been asleep.
When they’d gone to bed, Gabri had offered to put him in another room, but Patrick had wanted to go back to the one he’d shared with Katie. That had all of Katie’s clothes, and her jewelry, and her toiletries.
All catalogued and photographed by the homicide team, and returned to exactly where Katie had left them, when she’d left.
Her purse on the chair. Her reading glasses on the book on the bedside table.
He’d lain in bed, listening to the creaking of the old inn. Listening as the others had settled and all human sounds died down. And he could be alone with Katie. He could close his eyes and pretend she was there, beside him, breathing so softly he couldn’t even hear her.
Patrick inhaled the scent of her. And he knew she was there. How could she not be? How could she be gone?
But she wasn’t gone, he told himself quickly, before he fell off the ledge. She was there. Beside him. Breathing so softly he couldn’t hear.
And then, into the night, came the knock on the door. Then the tap on their bedroom door.
“Patrick?”
“Oui?”
“Can you come downstairs, please?” asked Gabri.
*
Patrick, Lea and Matheo entered the living room. And stopped.
Facing them were Chief Superintendent Gamache, Chief Inspector Lacoste and Inspector Beauvoir.
And Jacqueline. The baker.
Gabri stirred the embers in the hearth and threw on a couple of birch logs. The wood caught, and crackled, and temporarily drowned out the sound of the sleet against the windows.
“What’s happening out there?” Olivier whispered when Gabri joined him in the kitchen.
“They’re staring at each other.” Gabri got out the brioche and turned on the oven while Olivier brewed coffee. “What’s Jacqueline doing here?”
“She must know something,” said Olivier. “Maybe she saw something.”
“But why do they want to speak to Patrick and the others?” asked Gabri. “And in the middle of the night. What won’t wait?”
Only one thing wouldn’t wait until morning, and they both knew what it was.
*
“Shall we sit?” Gamache asked, gesturing toward the armchairs and sofa.
Beauvoir remained standing, positioning himself by the fireplace. Not coincidentally, he also blocked any way out to the door. It would be futile for any of them to try to run away, but cornered people did desperate things.
So far only Lea had spoken. She’d whispered, “Finally,” when she’d seen the officers. Though it was Jacqueline she’d been staring at when she’d spoken.
Lacoste began.
“Jacqueline came to us tonight with an extraordinary story.” She glanced at the baker, who was sitting bolt upright and staring defiantly at the others. “Extraordinary to us, at least, but not, I think, to you.”
And yet, Gamache thought, it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Once said, it seemed obvious and he’d wondered how he could not have seen it sooner.
And much like Anton’s confession earlier in the day to Jean-Guy, Gamache knew Jacqueline’s visit to them had been preemptive. Even as she’d told her story, he knew that she wasn’t telling them anything they wouldn’t have discovered within hours anyway. And she knew it too.
“She told you everything?” Matheo asked, his eyes moving from Jacqueline to Lacoste and back again.
“She confessed, yes,” said Lacoste.
“To the murder?” asked Patrick, staring in shock at the baker. “You killed Katie?”
“She told us about the cobrador,” said Lacoste. “And now it’s your turn. Tell us what you know.”
They looked at each other, and then, naturally, it was Lea who spoke.
“Jacqueline came to us with the idea.” Lea turned to her husband, who nodded agreement. “She’d heard about the cobrador while working for that Spanish guy. At first we thought she was kidding. It sounded ridiculous. A guy stares at someone and it magically does the trick?”
“No one took Jacqueline’s suggestion seriously,” said Matheo. “Désolé, but you know that’s true.”
Jacqueline gave one crisp nod.
“But it gave me an idea for a story,” Matheo continued. “So I wrote that piece about the cobrador del frac, the debt collector in the top hat and tails, and thanked Jacqueline for the idea. That’s when she said it wasn’t that cobrador she was thinking of. It was the original.”
“She sent us links from Spain,” said Lea. “That cobrador was very different. Terrifying.”
“And yet,” said Lacoste, “when you spoke to Monsieur Gamache about it that first time, you said the only thing you knew about the original came from that old photograph. You said sightings were rare.”
“Well, they are rare,” said Matheo. “But—”
“But we didn’t want to spoon-feed you,” Lea said, speaking frankly to Gamache. “We knew you’d pursue it and find out what you needed. And you’d be more invested, if you came to it yourself.”
At the fireplace, Jean-Guy bristled. No one liked being manipulated, and Lea Roux had done it perfectly. She was clearly very, very seasoned at controlling, maneuvering. And he wondered how much of it was happening at that moment.