*
Gamache watched Fran?ois Marois and André Castonguay slowly make their way up the hill.
They didn’t seem in conversation, but they did seem companionable. Comfortable.
Had it always been so? Gamache wondered. Or had it been different decades ago, when both were young turks just starting out. Fighting for territory, fighting for influence, fighting for artists.
Perhaps the two men had always liked and respected each other. But Gamache doubted that. They were both too powerful, too ambitious. Had too much ego. And too much was at stake. They could be civil, could even be gracious. But they almost certainly were not friends.
And yet here they were, like old combatants, climbing the hill together.
As he watched, Gamache became aware of a familiar scent. Turning slightly he saw he was standing beside a gnarled old lilac bush at the corner of Peter and Clara’s home.
It looked delicate, fragile, but Gamache knew lilacs were in fact long lived. They survived storms and droughts, biting winters and late frosts. They flourished and bloomed where other more apparently robust plants died.
The village of Three Pines, he noticed, was dotted with lilac bushes. Not the new hybrids with double blooms and vibrant colors. These were the soft purples and whites of his grandmother’s garden. When had they been young? Had doughboys returning from Vimy and Flanders and Passchendaele marched past these same bushes? Had they breathed in the scent and known, at last, they were home? At peace.
He looked back in time to see the two elderly men turn as one into the entrance to the inn and spa, and disappear inside.
“Chief.” Inspector Beauvoir walked toward him from Peter and Clara’s back garden. “The Crime Scene team’s just finishing up and Lacoste’s back from the bistro. As you thought, Gabri and Olivier weren’t in the place thirty seconds before they announced what had happened.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Lacoste says everyone behaved as you’d expect. Curious, upset, worried for their own safety, but not personally upset. No one seemed to know the dead woman. Lacoste spent some time going from table to table after that, showing the photo of the dead woman and describing her. No one remembers seeing her at the barbeque.”
Gamache was disappointed but not surprised. He had a growing suspicion that this woman was not meant to be seen. Not alive, anyway.
“Lacoste’s setting up the Incident Room in the old railway station.”
“Bon.” Gamache began walking across the village green and Beauvoir fell into step beside him. “I wonder if we should make it a permanent detachment.”
Beauvoir laughed. “Why not just move the whole homicide department down here? By the way, we found Madame Dyson’s car. Looks like she drove herself. It’s just up there.” Beauvoir pointed up rue du Moulin. “Want to see it?”
“Absolument.”
The two men changed direction and walked up the dirt road, in the footsteps of the two older men moments before. Once they’d crested the hill Gamache could see a gray Toyota parked on the side of the road a hundred yards further along.
“Long way from the Morrow house and the party,” said Gamache, feeling the warmth as the afternoon sun shone through the leaves.
“True, I imagine the place was packed with cars. This was probably as close as she could get.”
Gamache nodded slowly. “Which would mean she wasn’t among the first to arrive. Or, maybe she parked this far away on purpose.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to be seen.”
“Then why wear neon red?”
Gamache smiled. It was a good point. “Very annoying, having a smart second in command. I long for the days you used to just tug your forelock and agree with me.”
“And when were those?”
“Right again. This must stop.” He smiled to himself.
They came to a stop beside the car.
“It’s been gone over, searched, swabbed, fingerprinted. But I wanted you to see it before we had it towed away.”
“Merci.”
Beauvoir unlocked it and the Chief Inspector climbed into the driver’s seat, pushing the seat back to make room for his more substantial body.
The passenger’s seat was covered with Cartes Routières du Québec. Maps.
Reaching across he opened the glove compartment. There was the usual assortment of stuff you think you’ll use and forget is there. Napkins, elastics, Band-Aids, a double A battery. And some information on the car, with the insurance and registration slips. Gamache pulled it out and read. The car was five years old, but only bought by Lillian Dyson eight months ago. He closed the glove box and picked up the maps. Putting on his half-moon reading glasses he scanned them. They’d been imperfectly folded back together, in that haphazard way impatient people had with annoying maps.
One was for all of Québec. Not very helpful unless you were planning an invasion and just needed to know, roughly, where Montréal and Quebec City were. The other was for Les Canton de l’est. The Eastern Townships.
Lillian Dyson couldn’t have known it when she bought them, but these maps were also useless. Just to be sure, he opened one and where Three Pines should have been there was the winding Bella Bella River, hills, a forest. And nothing else. As far as the official mapmakers were concerned Three Pines didn’t exist.
It had never been surveyed. Never plotted. No GPS or sat nav system, no matter how sophisticated, would ever find the little village. It only appeared as though by accident over the edge of the hill. Suddenly. It could not be found unless you were lost.
Had Lillian Dyson been lost? Had she stumbled onto Three Pines and the party by mistake?
But no. That seemed too big a coincidence. She was dressed for a party. Dressed to impress. To be seen. To be noticed.
Then why hadn’t she been?
“Why was Lillian here?” he asked, almost to himself.
“Did she even know it was Clara’s home, do you think?” Beauvoir asked.
“I’ve wondered that,” admitted Gamache, taking off his reading glasses and getting out of the car.
“Either way,” said Beauvoir, “she came.”
“But how.”
“By car,” said Beauvoir.
“Yes, I’ve managed to get that far,” said Gamache with a smile. “But once in the car how’d she get here?”
“The maps?” asked Beauvoir, with infinite patience. But when he saw Gamache shaking his head he reconsidered. “Not the maps?”
Gamache was silent, letting his second in command find the answer himself.
“She wouldn’t have found Three Pines on those maps,” said Beauvoir, slowly. “It isn’t on them.” He paused, thinking. “So how’d she find her way here?”
Gamache turned and started making his way back toward Three Pines, his pace measured.
Something else occurred to Beauvoir as he joined the Chief. “How’d any of them get here? All those people from Montréal?”
“Clara and Peter sent directions with the invitation.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” said Beauvoir. “She had directions.”
“But she wasn’t invited. And even if she somehow got her hands on an invitation, and the directions, where are they? Not in her handbag, not on her body. Not in the car.”
Beauvoir looked away, thinking. “So, no maps and no directions. How’d she find the place?”
Gamache stopped opposite the inn and spa.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Then Gamache turned to look at the inn. It had once been a monstrosity. A rotting, rotten old place. A Victorian trophy home built more than a century ago of hubris and other men’s sweat.
Meant to dominate the village below. But while Three Pines survived the recessions, the depressions, the wars, this turreted eyesore fell into disrepair, attracting only sorrow.
Instead of a trophy, when villagers looked up what they saw was a shadow, a sigh on the hill.
But no longer. Now it was an elegant and gleaming country inn.
But sometimes, at certain angles, in a certain light Gamache could still see the sorrow in the place. And just at dusk, in the breeze, he thought he could hear the sigh.
In Gamache’s breast pocket was the list of guests Clara and Peter had invited from Montréal. Was the murderer’s name among them?
Or was the murderer not a guest at all, but someone already here?
“Hello, there.”
Beside him Beauvoir gave a start. He tried not to show it, but this old home, despite the facelift, still gave Beauvoir a chill.
Dominique Gilbert appeared around the side of the inn. She was wearing jodhpurs and a black velvet riding hat. In her hand she carried a leather crop. She was about to either go for a ride, or direct a Mack Sennett short.
She smiled when she recognized them, and put out her hand.
“Chief Inspector.” She shook his hand then turned to Beauvoir and shook his. Then her smile faded.
“So it’s true about the body in Clara’s garden?”
She removed her hat to show brown hair flattened to her skull by perspiration. Dominique Gilbert was in her late forties, tall and slender. A refugee, along with her husband, Marc, from the city. They’d made their bundle and escaped.
Her fellow executives at the bank had predicted they wouldn’t last a winter. But they were now into their second year and showed no sign of regretting their decision to buy the old wreck and turn it into an inviting inn and spa.
“It’s true, I’m afraid,” said Gamache.
“May I use your phone?” Inspector Beauvoir asked. Despite knowing perfectly well it wouldn’t work, he’d been trying to call the forensics team on his cell phone.
“Merde,” he’d muttered, “it’s like going back to the dark ages here.”
“Help yourself.” Dominique pointed into the house. “You don’t even have to wind it up anymore.”
But her humor was lost on the Inspector, who strode in, still punching re-dial on his cell.
“I hear some of the guests at the party stayed with you last night?” said Gamache, standing on the verandah.
“A few. Some booked, some were last minute.”
“A bit too much to drink?”
“Sloshed.”
“Are they still here?”
“They’ve been dragging themselves out of bed for the past couple of hours. Your agent asked them not to leave Three Pines, but most could barely leave their beds. They’re not in any danger of fleeing. Crawling, perhaps, but not fleeing.”
“Where is my agent?” Gamache looked around. When he’d learned some of the guests had stayed over, he’d directed Agent Lacoste to send out two junior agents. One to guard the B and B, the other to come here.
“He’s around back with the horses.”
“Is that right?” said Gamache. “Guarding them?”
“As you know, Chief Inspector, our horses aren’t exactly flight risks either.”
He did know. One of the first things Dominique had done when moving here was to buy horses. The fulfillment of a childhood dream.
But instead of Black Beauty, Flicka, Pegasus, Dominique had found four broken-down old plugs. Ruined animals, bound for the slaughterhouse.
Indeed, one looked more like a moose than a horse.
But such was the nature of dreams. They were not always recognizable, at first.
“They’ll be right up to take the car away,” said Beauvoir, returning. Gamache noticed Beauvoir still held his cell phone in his hand. A pacifier.
“A few of the hardier guests wanted to go riding,” Dominique explained. “I was just about to take them. Your agent said it would be OK. At first he was unsure but once he saw the horses he relented. I guess he realized they wouldn’t exactly make for the border. I hope I haven’t gotten him into trouble.”
“Not at all,” said Gamache but Beauvoir looked as though that wouldn’t have been his answer.
As they walked across the grass toward the barn they could see people and animals inside. All in shadow, silhouettes cut and pasted there.
And among them the outline of a young S?reté agent in uniform. Slender. Awkward, even at a distance.
Chief Inspector Gamache felt his heart suddenly pound and the blood rush to his core. In an instant he felt light-headed and he wondered if he might pass out. His hands went cold. He wondered if Jean Guy Beauvoir had noticed this sudden reaction, this unexpected spasm. As another young agent came to mind. Came to life. For an instant.
And then died again.
The shock was so great it threw Gamache off for a moment. He almost swayed on his feet but when it cleared he found his body still moving forward. His face still relaxed. Nothing to betray what had just happened. This grand mal of emotion.
Except a very, very slight tremor in his right hand, which he now closed into a fist.
The young agent’s silhouette broke away from the rest and came into the sunshine. And became whole. Handsome face eager, and worried, he hurried over to them.
“Sir,” he said, and saluted the Chief Inspector, who waved him to drop the salute. “I came to just see,” the agent blurted out. “To make sure it would be OK if they rode the horses. I didn’t mean to leave the place unguarded.”
The young agent had never met Chief Inspector Gamache before. He’d obviously seen him at a distance. As had most of the province. On news programs, in interviews, in photographs in the newspaper. In the televised funeral cortege for the agents who had died. Under Gamache’s command, just six months earlier.
The agent had even attended one of the Chief’s lectures at the academy.
But now, as he looked at the Chief Inspector, all those other images disappeared. To be replaced by a leaked video of that police action, where so many had died. No one should have ever seen those images, but millions had, as it went viral on the Internet. It was difficult to see the Chief Inspector now, with his jagged scar, and not also see that video.
But here was the man in person. The famed head of the famed homicide department. He was so close that the young agent could even smell the Chief Inspector’s scent. A very slight hint of sandalwood and something else. Rose water. The agent looked into Gamache’s deep brown eyes and realized they were unlike any he’d seen. He’d been stared at by many senior officers. In fact, everyone was senior to him. But he’d never had quite this experience before.
The Chief Inspector’s gaze was intelligent, thoughtful, searching.
But where others were cynical and censorious at their center, Chief Inspector Gamache’s eyes were something else.
They were kind.
Now, finally the agent was face-to-face with this famous man and where had the Chief found him? In a barn. Smelling of horse shit and feeding carrots to what looked like a moose. Saddling horses for murder suspects.
He waited for the wrath. For the curt correction.
But instead, Chief Inspector Gamache did the unthinkable.
He put out his hand.
The young agent stared at it for a moment. And noticed the very, very slight tremble. Then he took it and felt it strong and firm.
“Chief Inspector Gamache,” the large man said.
“Oui, patron. Agent Yves Rousseau of the Cowansville detachment.”
“All quiet here?”
“Yessir. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have allowed them to go riding.”
Gamache smiled. “You have no right to stop them. Besides, I don’t think they’ll get far.”
The three S?reté officers looked over at the two women and Dominique, each leading a clopping horse from the barn.
Gamache turned his gaze back to the agent in front of him. Young, eager.
“Did you get their names and addresses?”
“Yessir. And cross checked with their ID. I got everyone’s information.”
He unclicked his pocket, to get at his notebook.
“Perhaps you can take it to the Incident Room,” said Gamache, “and give it to Agent Lacoste.”
“Right,” said Rousseau, writing that down.
Jean Guy Beauvoir inwardly groaned. Here we go again, he thought. He’s going to invite this kid to join the investigation. Does he never learn?
Armand Gamache smiled and nodded to Agent Rousseau, then turned and walked back toward the inn, leaving two surprised men behind him. Rousseau that he’d been spoken to so civilly and Beauvoir that Gamache hadn’t done what he’d done on almost every investigation in the past. Invited one of the young, local agents to join them.
Beauvoir knew he should be happy. Relieved.
Then why did he feel so sad?