THIRTY-SEVEN
Gamache turned the car and gunned it toward Williamsburg, making straight for a cantine on rue Principale.
‘I need help,’ he said at the door of the restaurant. All eyes turned to him, a large stranger covered in snow and making demands. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Gamache of the S?reté. Three women are trapped on Lac Brume. We need snowmobiles to get them.’
After a moment’s pause a man rose from the crowd and said, ‘Em are ducks.’ It was Billy Williams.
‘I’m with you.’ Another man stood up. Soon the place was emptying and within minutes Gamache found himself clinging to Billy as the fleet of snowmobiles screeched along rue Principale and out onto Lac Brume.
The storm was howling and Gamache strained to see, to guide Billy to the fallen women. He prayed they hadn’t been buried by the snow.
‘They’re around here somewhere,’ Gamache cried into the side of Billy’s Canadian’s tuque.
Billy slowed down. Around them other snowmobilers were following their lead, careful not to run the women over. Billy stood and gracefully moved his machine through the deep snow, looking for a lump, a bump, a body.
‘High mechanics boat,’ Billy yelled, pointing to a spot invisible to Gamache. They were in a whiteout now. Williamsburg had gone, the shore had gone, the other snowmobilers had disappeared into the storm. Billy turned his machine and made straight for a spot that looked like any other spot on the lake to Gamache. But as they approached some contours appeared.
The women had fallen, holding each other, and now they were indeed covered in snow. But Billy Williams had found them. He tossed off his gloves and while Gamache staggered through the deep snow to the women Billy put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The sound cut through the howl of the storm. While Gamache fell to his knees and dug to get at Em and Mother and Kaye Billy whistled and by the time Gamache had uncovered the women, hands were reaching for them. The men hurried the three women back to their snowmobiles and within moments all were racing back to shore.
Gamache clung on to Billy. Everything was white. The snow was driving into them, making it near impossible to breathe never mind see. How Billy knew where the shore was was anyone’s guess. Gamache had the impression they were heading further out onto the lake, away from the shore. He opened his mouth to shout at Billy, but closed it again.
He was disoriented, he knew. And he knew that he needed to trust Billy. He hugged the man and waited for the machine to hit the shore and climb the slight rise onto rue Principale. But that didn’t happen. Five minutes went by, then ten, and Gamache knew then that they were in the middle of Lac Brume. Lost. In a storm.
‘Where are we?’ he screamed into the tuque.
‘Chairs might red glass,’ shouted Billy, and kept going flat out.
Three minutes later, though it seemed an eternity, the snowmobile thumped into a small hill and Billy turned left. Suddenly they were in among pine trees. The shore, they’d made the shore, thought Gamache with amazement. He looked behind and saw the line of other skidoos following in their tracks.
Billy gunned his machine along a path and onto a street, not yet cleared of snow, though empty of vehicle traffic. Gamache looked for his car, knowing he had a long drive ahead of him to Cowansville hospital. But Billy had taken them another way.
Damn the man, thought Gamache. He’s gotten us lost on the lake and now God only knows where we are.
‘Loudspeaker,’ shouted Billy, and gestured ahead.
There was a huge blue lighted sign. H. Hospital.
Billy Williams had taken them through the storm, across the lake and straight to the hospital.
‘How did you know?’ Beauvoir asked Gamache as the two men looked down at Kaye Thompson. She was hooked up to machines and IVs and bundled in a silver heating blanket. She looked like a baked potato. Like her father before her, she’d faced certain death and beaten the odds.
Gamache took from his pocket a balled up and sodden piece of paper. Handing it to Beauvoir, Gamache turned back to stare at Kaye and wonder what the last few days must have been like for her. Knowing what they almost certainly would do.
Beauvoir sat down and gently pried apart the paper until it again resembled a letter. It was written in a clear, old-fashioned hand, in beautiful French, by émilie. It explained it all. How Crie had reminded émilie of her son, David. So gifted, so joyous when creating music. When they’d heard CC attack Crie after the Christmas Eve service they knew they had no choice. They had to kill CC to save Crie.
‘That explains a lot,’ said Beauvoir, finishing the letter. ‘The complexity of the crime, why Kaye claimed not to have seen anything. It all makes sense. It needed all three of them. The niacin was in Mother’s tea, émilie controlled when Mother would make all that noise at the curling, drawing everyone’s attention away from CC. Kaye leaned on the chair, making it crooked. They knew CC would have to straighten it.’ Beauvoir pointed to the letter on his lap. ‘Madame Longpré begs you to let them kill themselves, and you were going to.’
He had no gift for subtlety, but he tried to make it sound less harsh than it was.
Gamache moved out of the emergency room and into the busy hallway. Doctors and nurses were rushing up and down, the emergency room clogged with car accident victims, skiers with broken bones, people suffering hypothermia and frostbite from the storm. The two men found a couple of chairs and sat down.
‘You’re right, I was going to let them die.’ He could barely believe he was saying that. ‘I knew yesterday that they were the only ones who could have killed CC. Em’s letter only confirmed what I’d guessed. But as I watched them struggle onto the lake I thought of Inuit elders and how they’d get on an ice flow and drift to their deaths, to save the community in a time of starvation. They’d give up their lives so that others would live. Then there were CC’s boots.’
‘The mukluks. Inuit boots. You’re not saying there’s an Inuk involved somehow?’ Beauvoir wondered who that might be.
‘No.’ Gamache gave him a small smile.
‘Good. So there were only three of them. I was afraid the whole village was involved.’
A young doctor hurried down the corridor toward them, wiping his hands.
‘Chief Inspector Gamache? I’ve just come from Madame Mayer. It looks as though she’ll live. Looks soft, but she’s tough as nails. She has frostbite, of course, and moderate exposure. Interestingly enough, the snow might have saved them. It created a blanket when it fell and that helped insulate them. But the other woman? émilie Longpré?’ Gamache closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. ‘I’m afraid she’s already gone.’
Gamache had known. When he’d lifted her up she’d been impossibly light. He’d felt he had to hold on to her otherwise she’d float out of his arms. As he held her he’d poured all his prayers into her. But the vessel was cracked too deeply.
émilie Longpré was curled in Gus’s arms now, warm and safe and happy, listening to David play Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D Major. Em was home.
‘Madame Mayer’s awake if you’d like to talk to her.’
‘Very much.’ Gamache started down the hall, following the doctor.
‘Just one more thing,’ said the doctor as they approached the door. ‘Madame Mayer keeps repeating something over and over and I wonder if you can help us.’
‘Namaste,’ said Beauvoir. ‘It means, the God in me greets the God in you.’ Gamache turned to him, surprised. ‘I looked it up.’
‘No, I know namaste,’ said the doctor, opening the door.
Gamache turned to Beauvoir. ‘The Inuit boots. émilie Longpré didn’t mention them in her letter. She didn’t know about them until I told her, and even then she didn’t see the significance.’ Gamache disappeared into Beatrice Mayer’s room.
Beauvoir stood on the threshold of the room, alone. What was the chief saying?
And then it hit him. Like the Inuit, the Three Graces had tried to kill themselves to save someone else. To save the real murderer.
They hadn’t killed CC. Someone else had.
From inside the room he heard Beatrice Mayer’s voice.
‘Fuck the Pope!’