TWENTY-NINE
Armand Gamache actually remembered to take The Lion in Winter back to the Incident Room. He placed it on his desk and went over to Lacoste’s computer where the others were huddled. He noticed Agent Nichol sitting at her own desk and waved her over.
‘Lemieux told me what you wanted,’ said Lacoste, glancing at him quickly. ‘Look at this.’ Her computer screen was split in two, with near identical images on either side. The head of an eagle, stylized and screaming.
‘This one,’ Lacoste pointed to the one on the left, ‘is the emblem of Eleanor of Aquitaine.’
‘And that one?’ Gamache pointed to the other half of the screen.
‘That’s CC’s corporate logo. It’s on the cover of her book, kind of. It’s all smudged, a not very good reproduction, but that’s what it is.’
‘You were right,’ said Beauvoir. ‘CC stopped the video at minute seventeen to get a good look at the front of the boat. She must have recognized it as Eleanor’s emblem, and wanted to copy it.’
‘Everything makes sense,’ murmured Lemieux.
‘How’d you make the connection?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘I had an unfair advantage,’ admitted Gamache. ‘Lyon showed me CC’s book and pointed out the logo. It’s unforgettable.’ So this explained the ridiculous choice of a belligerent eagle as a logo, he thought. It was Eleanor’s emblem.
‘There’s something I need to show you.’ Gamache walked over to his satchel and removed the photographs taken by Saul Petrov. The team pulled their chairs up to the conference table while Gamache spread them out.
‘I figured out why CC grabbed the chair in front of her,’ he said, nodding to the series of pictures. ‘It’s all there.’
They stared and after a minute Gamache took pity on them. They were all tired and hungry and Agent Lacoste had a long drive back to Montreal.
‘See here?’ He pointed to one of the early shots of CC watching the curling. ‘The chair looks fine, right?’
They nodded.
‘Now look here.’ He pointed to one of the last pictures of CC.
‘My God, it’s so obvious. How could I have missed it?’ Beauvoir looked from the pictures to Gamache in astonishment. ‘It’s crooked.’
‘So?’ said Lacoste.
‘Over and over again the people who knew her, or even met her casually, said the same thing. CC obsessively rearranged everything around her. A chair like this,’ Gamache pointed to the tilted chair, one corner sunk into the snow, ‘was guaranteed to get a reaction. The only surprise is that it took her so long.’
‘Except, as you pointed out,’ said Nichol, ‘the chair was just fine to begin with. Someone must have shoved it off kilter.’
Gamache nodded. Was that what was on the roll of film Petrov burned? Did it show a villager casually wandering by and leaning on the chair? Did the villager then go to the generator and wait for CC to get up? And when she did all he had to do was attach the booster cables, and bang. Murder.
It was brilliant and almost elegant.
But who did it? Richard Lyon was the perfect suspect. He knew his wife would reach for the chair that had gone askew.
‘That photographer was hiding something,’ said Beauvoir.
‘I agree,’ said Gamache. ‘He burned a roll of film in his fireplace just before we arrived. I think it was of the murder.’
‘Why would he destroy it, though?’ asked Lemieux. ‘As he said, if he had a picture of the murderer it would prove his own innocence.’
‘What about if he planned to use it for blackmail?’ Nichol asked.
‘But why destroy it? You’d keep that film safe, wouldn’t you?’ said Lacoste and received a disconcertingly friendly smile.
Bitch, thought Nichol. She looked around and noticed Gamache watching her. Does he know? she wondered. He was standing there so smug and comfortable, surrounded by his team. And her on the outside, always on the outside. Well, that would change.
‘Why destroy pictures of CC being murdered?’ Gamache asked himself, sitting down and staring at the photographs. ‘Unless he’s trying to protect the murderer.’
‘Why would he do that? He doesn’t know anyone round here, does he?’ asked Lemieux.
‘Look into Saul Petrov’s background,’ Gamache said to Nichol. ‘Find out everything you can about him.’ He rubbed a weary hand over his eyes.
Walking to his desk he picked up the video and took it to the evidence room. The small box of items from CC’s garbage was on the floor. He took out the inventory sheet before placing The Lion in Winter back into its spot, then replaced the sheet, gazing at the familiar list. Cereal boxes, bits and pieces of food now tossed but inventoried, the video, a broken bracelet, a boot box and Christmas wrapping. It was a mundane list, except for the video. And the bracelet.
Gamache put on gloves and started rummaging through the box, like a mini-dumpster dive. After a minute the cardboard box was empty, save for a dirty little thing curled in the corner, like an unwanted puppy at the shelter. It was brown and filthy and broken. But what it wasn’t was a bracelet. Gamache put on his half-moon glasses and picked up the object, dangling it at arm’s length. He breathed in sharply then brought it closer to his face, peering at the small object hanging from the worn leather strap.
It wasn’t a bracelet, it was a necklace. With a pendant. A small, tarnished, dirty head. The face of a shrieking eagle.
Gamache knew CC, fastidious, obsessive CC, had never worn this filthy thing. But he knew who had.
Slowly Armand Gamache rose, the images and thoughts tumbling one on top of another. He walked the necklace back to his desk then brought out two documents: the drawing by the police artist and an autopsy photograph of Elle.
When he’d first seen the autopsy photographs of Elle he’d seen a smudging on her chest. It was circular and regular and a different color from the rest of the filth on her body. It was a kind of tarnish that came off impure metal when it reacted to sweat. As soon as he’d seen the autopsy photo he’d known Elle had worn a necklace. A cheap necklace but it must have been precious to her.
But there was other evidence she’d worn a necklace. There was a small dark bruise at the base of her neck, probably made when the leather strap was broken. And the cuts in her hand. He’d sent Agent Lemieux over to the Old Brewery Mission to ask whether anyone remembered Elle wearing a necklace. They did, though none had gotten close enough to be able to say what it was. He’d searched for it in the box of evidence but had found nothing. He’d known then that if he found the necklace he’d find her killer.
Well, he’d found the necklace. In Three Pines, one hundred kilometers away from the frozen Montreal street where Elle was found, and the necklace was taken. How had it ended up here?
Armand Gamache closed his eyes and the events played there, in the movie house of his mind. He could see Elle’s murderer struggling with her. The murderer had grabbed the necklace and broken the cord. Then Elle had grabbed it back, pressing it so violently into her palm as she was strangled that it cut into her hand, like a cookie cutter. Gamache had asked the S?reté artist to connect the bloody dots and try to recreate what the necklace had looked like.
Now he looked at the drawing. The artist had made a stylized circle, with a bite taken out, and a kind of neck. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now it did. The bite was the eagle’s mouth, open and screaming. The rest was its head and neck.
So Elle had died grasping her necklace. Why had Elle valued it so much she’d died holding it? And why had the murderer taken the time to pry it from her hand?
And then what? Gamache leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. Any sounds in the room, in the village, in Quebec, receded. He was in his own world now, with the murderer. Just the two of them. What had he done, and why?
He’d taken the pendant from Elle’s dead hand and brought it back home. And he’d put it in the garbage. CC’s garbage. Gamache could feel himself getting close. It was still murky, far from clear, but the headlights were shining bright now, cutting through the night. Before he got to who, Gamache needed to know why. Why hadn’t the murderer just fled? Why take the time to pry this necklace from Elle’s hand?
Because it was a screaming eagle. It was a tarnished, filthy, cheap version of what he’d seen on the screen earlier that evening. The emblem of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the logo for CC de Poitiers and the necklace of the beggar were the same.
The murderer had taken it because it proved something more terrible than who killed Elle. It proved that Elle and CC were connected. They shared more than a symbol.
Elle was CC’s mother.