*
They found the apartment block in the Notre-Dame-de-Grace quartier of Montréal. Squat and gray, it might have been designed by Soviet architects in the 1960s.
The grass had been peed white by dogs, and lumps of poop sat on it. The flower beds were overgrown with strangled bushes and weeds. The concrete walk to the front door was cracked and heaved.
Inside, it smelled of urine and resonated with the distant echoes of doors slamming and people shouting at each other.
Monsieur and Madame Dyson lived on the top floor. The handrail on the concrete stairs was sticky and Beauvoir quickly took his hand off of it.
Up they walked. Three flights. Not pausing for breath but not racing either. They took measured steps. Once at the top they found the door to the Dyson apartment.
Chief Inspector Gamache raised his hand, and paused.
To give the Dysons one more second of peace before shattering their lives? Or to give himself one more moment before facing them?
Rap. Rap.
It opened a crack, a security chain across a fearful face.
“Oui?”
“Madame Dyson? My name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the S?reté du Québec.” He already had his ID out and now showed it to her. Her eyes dropped to it, then back up to the Chief’s face. “This is my colleague Inspector Beauvoir. May we speak with you?”
The thin face was obviously relieved. How many times had she opened the door a crack, to see kids taunting her? To see the landlord demanding rent? To see unkindness take human form?
But not this time. These men were with the S?reté. They wouldn’t hurt her. She was of a generation who still believed that. It was written all over her worn face.
The door closed, the chain was lifted and the door swung open.
She was tiny. And in an armchair sat a man who looked like a puppet. Small, stiff, sunken. He struggled to get up, but Gamache walked swiftly over to him.
“No, please, Monsieur Dyson. Je vous en prie. Stay seated.”
They shook hands and he reintroduced himself, speaking slowly, clearly, more loudly than normal.
“Tea?” Madame Dyson asked.
Oh, no no no, thought Beauvoir. The place smelled of liniment and slightly of urine.
“Yes, please. How kind of you. May I help?” Gamache went with her into the kitchen, leaving Beauvoir alone with the puppet. He tried to make small-talk but ran out after commenting on the weather.
“Nice place,” he finally said and was treated to Monsieur Dyson looking at him as though he was an idiot.
Beauvoir scanned the walls. There was a crucifix above the dining table, and a smiling Jesus surrounded by light. But the rest of the walls were taken up with photographs of one person. Their daughter Lillian. Her life radiated out from the smiling Jesus. Her baby pictures closest to Him, then she got older and older as the pictures wrapped around the walls. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. The parents too aged, from a young, beaming couple holding their first born, their only born, in front of a neat, compact home. To first Christmas, to gooey birthdays.
Beauvoir scanned the walls for a photo of Lillian and Clara then realized if there had been one it would have been taken down long ago.
There were pictures of a gap-toothed little girl with gleaming orange hair holding a huge stuffed dog, and a little later standing beside a bike with a big bow. Toys, gifts, presents. Everything a little girl could want.
And love. No, not just love. Adoration. This child, this woman, was adored.
Beauvoir felt something stir inside. Something that seemed to have crawled into him while he’d lain in his own blood on the floor of that factory.
Sorrow.
Since that moment death had never been the same, and neither, it must be said, had life.
He didn’t like it.
He tried to remember Lillian Dyson forty years after this picture was taken. Too much makeup, hair dyed a straw blond. Bright red look-at-me dress. Almost a mockery. A parody of a person.
But try as Beauvoir might it was too late. He saw Lillian Dyson now as a young girl. Adored. Confident. Heading into the world. A world her parents knew needed to be kept out, with chains.
But still, they’d opened the door a crack, and a crack was enough. If there was something malevolent, malicious, murderous on the other side, a crack was all it needed.
“Bon,” came the Chief’s voice behind him and Beauvoir turned to see Gamache carrying a tin tray with a teapot, some milk, sugar and fine china cups. “Where would you like me to put this?”
He sounded warm, friendly. But not jovial. The Chief wouldn’t want to trick them. Would not want to give the impression they were there with riotous good news.
“Just here, please.” Madame Dyson hurried to clear the TV guide and remote off a faux-wood table by the sofa, but Beauvoir got there first, scooping them up and handing them to her.
She met his eyes and smiled. Not a wide smile, but a softer, sadder version of her daughter’s. Beauvoir knew now where Lillian had gotten her smile.
And he suspected these two elderly people knew why they were there. Probably not the exact news. Not that their only daughter was dead. Murdered. But the look Madame Dyson had just given him told Jean Guy Beauvoir that she knew something was up. Amiss.
And she was being kind anyway. Or was she just trying to keep whatever news they had at bay? Keep them silent for one more precious minute.
“A bit of milk and sugar?” she asked the puppet.
Monsieur Dyson sat forward.
“This is a special occasion,” he pretended to confide in their visitors. “Normally she doesn’t offer milk.”
It broke Beauvoir’s heart to think these two pensioners probably couldn’t afford much milk. That what little they had was being offered now, to their guests.
“Gives me gas,” explained the old man.
“Now, Papa,” said Madame Dyson, handing the cup and saucer to the Chief to hand to her husband. She too pretended to confide in their company. “It is true. I figure you have about twenty minutes from the first sip.”
Once they all had their cups and were seated Chief Inspector Gamache took a sip and placed the delicate bone china cup on its saucer and leaned toward the elderly couple. Madame Dyson reached out and took her husband’s hand.
Would she still call him “Papa” after today, Beauvoir wondered. Or was that the very last time? Would it be too painful? That must have been what Lillian called him.
Would he still be a father, even if there were no more children?
“I have some very bad news,” said the Chief. “It’s about your daughter, Lillian.”
He looked them in the eyes as he spoke, and saw their lives change. It would forever be dated from this moment. Before the news and after the news. Two completely different lives.
“I’m afraid she’s dead.”
He spoke in short, declarative sentences. His voice calm, deep. Absolute. He needed to tell them quickly, not drag it out. And clearly. There could be no doubt.
“I don’t understand,” said Madame Dyson, but her eyes said she understood fully. She was terrified. The monster every mother feared had squirmed in through that crack. It had taken her child, and was now sitting in her living room.
Madame Dyson turned to her husband, who was struggling to sit further forward. Perhaps to stand up. To confront this news, these words. To beat them back, out of his living room, out of his home, away from his door. To beat those words until they were lies.
But he couldn’t.
“There’s more,” said the Chief Inspector, still holding their eyes. “Lillian was murdered.”
“Oh, God, no,” said Lillian’s mother, her hand flying to her mouth. Then it slipped to her chest. Her breast. And rested there, limp.
Both of them stared at Gamache, and he looked at them.
“I’m very sorry to have to bring you this news,” he said, knowing how weak it sounded but also knowing to not say it would be even worse.
Madame and Monsieur Dyson were gone now. They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs.
And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.
“How?” Madame Dyson whispered. Beside her her husband was enraged, so angry he couldn’t speak. But his face was contorted and his eyes blazed. At Gamache.
“Her neck was broken,” said the Chief. “It was very fast. She didn’t even see it coming.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why would anyone kill Lillian?”
“We don’t know. But we’ll find out who did this.”
Armand Gamache cupped his large hands toward her. An offering.
Jean Guy Beauvoir noticed the tremble in the Chief’s right hand. Very slight.