‘Don’t worry about the snow, Chief Inspector,’ Em said, after Gamache looked behind him at their snowy boot prints on the stone floor of her mudroom. ‘Henri and I track it through the house all the time.’ She nodded to a German shepherd puppy about six months old who looked as though he was going to explode with excitement. Instead his tail wagged furiously and his bottom, while still technically on the floor, moved with such ferocity Gamache thought he might be able to create fire with it.
Introductions were made, boots removed, and apologies offered for interrupting their lunch. The kitchen smelled of homemade French Canadian pea soup and fresh-baked bread.
‘Namaste,’ said Mother, putting her hands together and bowing slightly to the men.
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Kaye. ‘Not that again.’
‘Namaste?’ Gamache asked. Beauvoir hadn’t asked because she was old, she was anglaise and she was wearing a purple caftan. People like that said ridiculous things all the time.
The chief bowed back, solemnly. Beauvoir pretended he hadn’t seen.
‘It’s an ancient and venerable greeting,’ said Beatrice Mayer, smoothing her wild red hair and shooting a concerned look at Kaye, who simply ignored her.
‘May I?’ The chief pointed to Henri.
‘At your peril, monsieur. He might lick you to death,’ warned Em.
‘Drown in drool is more like it,’ said Kaye, turning to walk back into the body of the house.
Gamache knelt down and rubbed Henri’s ears, which stood up from his head like two sails. The dog immediately lay on his back and presented his tummy to be rubbed, which Gamache did.
Em led the way through the kitchen and into the living room. The house was inviting and comfortable and had the feel of Grandma’s cottage, as though nothing bad could happen here. Even Beauvoir felt relaxed and at home. Gamache suspected everyone felt at home in this place. And with this woman.
Now émilie Longpré excused herself and returned a moment later with two bowls of soup.
‘You look hungry,’ she said simply and disappeared again into the kitchen. Before the men could protest they found themselves sitting before the hearth, two steaming bowls of soup and a basket of corn bread in front of them on tray tables. Gamache knew he was being a bit disingenuous. He certainly could have spoken up sooner to stop the three elderly women from waiting on them, but émilie Longpré was right. They were hungry.
Now the S?reté homicide investigators ate and listened while the elderly trio answered their questions.
‘Can you tell us what happened yesterday?’ Beauvoir asked Kaye. ‘I understand there was a curling match.’
‘Mother had just cleared the house,’ began Kaye and Beauvoir immediately regretted his decision to start with her. Nothing in that sentence made sense.
Mother had just cleared the house. Rien, no sense at all. Another wacky Anglo. This one, though, was not a complete surprise. He could see her rolling out of the nuthouse for miles. Now she sat in front of him, nearly submerged under layers of thick sweaters and blankets. She looked like a laundry hamper. With a head. A very small, very worn head. All ten hairs on her tiny wizened scalp were standing straight up from the winter static in the house.
She looked like a Muppet with strings.
‘Désolé, mais qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?’ he tried again, in French.
‘Mother. Had. Just. Cleared. The. House.’ The old woman spoke very distinctly in a voice surprisingly strong.
Gamache, taking everything in, noticed émilie and Beatrice exchanging smiles. Not maliciously but as a kind of familiar joke as though they’d lived with this all their lives.
‘Are we talking about the same thing, madame? Curling?’
‘Oh, I see.’ Kaye laughed. It was a nice laugh, Beauvoir realized. It changed her face from suspicious and pinched to very pleasant. ‘Yes, believe it or not I’m talking about the match. Mother is her.’ She pointed a gnarled finger at her friend in the caftan. For some reason it didn’t surprise him. He’d taken an immediate dislike to ‘Mother,’ and this was one more reason. Mother. Who insisted on being called Mother? Unless she was a Mother Superior, and, looking at her, Beauvoir doubted it.
She was trouble, he knew. He could sense it, though he’d never use those words and certainly never in front of Gamache.
‘What does that mean, madame?’ Beauvoir turned back to Kaye, and took a bite of corn bread, trying not to let the butter dribble down his chin.
‘“Clearing the house” is a curling term,’ said Kaye. ‘Em can explain better. She was the skip. That’s the captain of the team.’
Beauvoir turned to Madame Longpré. Her blue eyes were thoughtful and lively and perhaps a little tired. Her hair was dyed to a subtle light brown and styled beautifully to her face. She looked contained and kind and she reminded him of Reine-Marie Gamache. He looked briefly at the chief who was listening with his usual calm concentration. When he looked at Madame Longpré did the chief see his wife in thirty years?
‘Have you ever curled, Inspector?’ Em asked Beauvoir.
Beauvoir was surprised, even offended, by the question. Curl? He played center on the S?reté hockey team. At thirty-six he creamed men ten years his junior. Curl? He felt embarrassed even thinking the word.
‘I can see you probably don’t,’ Em continued. ‘Shame really. It’s a marvelous sport.’
‘Sport, madame?’
‘Mais oui. Very difficult. It requires balance and a keen hand-eye co-ordination. You might want to try.’
‘Would you show us?’ It was the first time Gamache had spoken since they’d sat down. Now he looked at Em warmly and she smiled back, inclining her head.
‘How is tomorrow morning?’
‘Perfect,’ said Gamache.
‘Can you describe what was happening up to and including when you realized something was wrong?’ Beauvoir turned back to émilie. Might as well try the sane one.
‘We’d been curling for almost an hour. It was a funspiel, so it was shorter than regular games, and being outside we didn’t want everyone to get too cold.’
‘Didn’t work. It was freezing. Coldest I remember,’ said Kaye.
‘We were losing, as usual,’ Em continued. ‘At some point I realized the other team had put a whole lot of rocks in the house.’
Seeing Beauvoir’s expression she explained. ‘The house is the bull’s-eye, those red rings painted on the ice. That’s where you want your rocks to end up. The other team had done a good job and the house was full of their stones. So I asked Mother to do what’s called “clearing the house”.’
‘I wind up and toss my stone down the ice.’ Mother stood up and moved her right arm out in front of her, then swung it behind her, then in one fast movement brought it down and out in front again, pantomiming a pendulum swinging. ‘The stone shoots down the ice and hits as many of the rocks out of the house as possible.’
‘It sounds like doing the break in pool,’ said Beauvoir and realized by their faces that made about as much sense to them as ‘clearing the house’ had to him.
‘It’s a lot of fun,’ said Mother.
‘In fact,’ added Em, ‘it’s so much fun it’s become a tradition at the Boxing Day funspiel. I’m convinced most people go just to see Mother clear the house.’
‘It’s very dramatic, rocks banging everywhere,’ said Mother.
‘Noisy,’ said Kaye.
‘It normally signals the end of the match. After that we give up,’ said Em. ‘Then we all go back to the Legion for a hot buttered rum.’
‘Except yesterday,’ said Beauvoir. ‘What happened yesterday?’