THREE
Clara sat in her kitchen drained and stunned with the overwhelming need to call Jane and tell her what had happened. What had happened was inconceivable. A world suddenly, violently, without Jane. Without that touch, that comfort, that kindness. Clara felt that someone had scooped not just her heart but her brain right out of her body. How is it possible, Clara wondered, looking down at her hands folded neatly in her lap, that my heart can still beat? I must call Jane.
After leaving the church they had, with Gamache’s permission, gone to get Jane’s golden retriever Lucy, who was now curled at Clara’s feet as though hugging her own inconceivable loss.
Peter was willing the water to boil so he could make tea and then all this would go away. Maybe, said his brain and his upbringing, if you make enough tea and small talk, time reverses and all bad things are undone. But he’d lived too long with Clara to be able to hide in denial. Jane was dead. Killed. And he needed to comfort Clara and somehow make it all right. And he didn’t know how. Rummaging through the cupboard like a wartime surgeon frantically searching for the right bandage, Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated for a second over chamomile. But no. Stay focused, he admonished himself. He knew it was there, that opiate of the Anglos. And his hand clutched the box just as the kettle whistled. Violent death demanded Earl Grey. Glancing out the window as he splashed boiling water into the pot and felt the painful pricks of scalding water bouncing on to his hand, he saw Chief Inspector Gamache sitting alone on the bench on the village green. The inspector appeared to be feeding the birds, but that couldn’t be right. His attention returned to the important task of making tea.
Armand Gamache sat on the bench, watching the birds but mostly watching the village. Before his eyes the village of Three Pines seemed to slow right down. The insistence of life, the bustle and energy became muffled. The voices dropped, gaits slowed. Gamache sat back and did what he did best. He watched. He took in the people, their faces, their actions, and where possible he took in what they said, though people stayed far enough away from his wooden bench on the grass that he couldn’t hear much. He noticed who touched and who didn’t. Who hugged and who shook hands. He noticed who had red eyes and who gave the appearance of business as usual.
Three huge pine trees faced him at the far end of the green. Between him and them was a pond, a bunch of sweater-clad children circling it, hunting for frogs, he supposed. The village green sat, not surprisingly, in the center of the village, a road called The Commons circling it with homes, except behind him, which seemed to be the commercial district. It was a very short commercial. It consisted, as far as Gamache could see, of a depanneur whose Pepsi sign read ‘Beliveau’. Beside that was a boulangerie, the Bistro and a bookstore. Four roads led off The Commons, like the spokes of a wheel, or the directions of a compass.
As he sat quietly and let the village happen around him he was impressed by how beautiful it was, these old homes facing the green, with their mature perennial gardens and trees. By how natural everything looked, undesigned. And the pall of grief that settled on this little community was worn with dignity and sadness and a certain familiarity. This village was old, and you don’t get to be old without knowing grief. And loss.
‘They say it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.’ Gamache looked up and saw Ben holding an ancient and, by the aroma, perhaps decomposing dog on a leash.
‘Is that right?’ Gamache indicated the seat next to him and Ben sat down, Daisy collapsing gratefully at his feet.
‘Starting in the morning. And getting colder.’
The two men sat silently for a moment or two.
‘That’s Jane’s home.’ Ben pointed to a small stone cottage off to the left. ‘And that place beside it belongs to Peter and Clara.’ Gamache shifted his gaze. Their home was slightly larger than Jane’s and while hers was made of fieldstone, theirs was red brick, in the style known as Loyalist. A simple wooden veranda ran along the front of the home and held two wicker rocking chairs. A front door was flanked by windows and upstairs he could see two more windows, with shutters painted a warm and deep blue. The pretty front garden was planted with roses and perennials and fruit trees. Probably crab apple, thought Gamache. A stand of trees, mostly maple, separated Jane Neal and the Morrows. Though more than the trees separated them now.
‘My place is over there.’ Ben nodded at a charming old white clapboard home, with a veranda below and three dormers above. ‘But I guess that place up there is also mine.’ Ben waved vaguely into the sky. Gamache thought it possible Ben was speaking metaphorically, or even meteorologically. Then his eyes dropped from the puffy clouds and landed on the roof of a home on the side of the hill leading out of Three Pines.
‘Been in my family for generations. My mother lived there.’
Gamache didn’t quite know what to say. He’d seen homes like that before. Many times. They were what he’d heard referred to during his time at Christ’s College, Cambridge as Victorian piles. Quite descriptive, he’d always thought. And Quebec, notably Montreal, boasted its share of piles, built by the Scottish robber barons, of railway, booze and banking money. They were held together with hubris, a short-term binder at best since many of them had long ago been torn down or donated to McGill University, which needed another Victorian monstrosity like it needed the Ebola virus. Ben was looking at the home with great affection.
‘Will you move to the big house?’
‘Oh yes. But it needs some work. Parts of it are straight out of a horror movie. Gruesome.’
Ben remembered telling Clara about the time he and Peter had played war in the basement as kids and had come across the snake’s nest. He’d never seen a person turn green, but Clara had.
‘Is the village named after those trees?’ Gamache looked at the cluster on the green.
‘You don’t know the story? Those pines aren’t the originals, of course. They’re only sixty years old. My mother helped plant them when she was a kid. But there have been pines here since the village was founded, more than two hundred years ago. And always in a group of three. Three Pines.’
‘But why?’ Gamache leaned forward, curious.
‘It’s a code. For the United Empire Loyalists. They settled all the land around here, except for the Abenaki, of course.’ In a sentence, Gamache noticed, Ben had dismissed a thousand years of native habitation. ‘But we’re only a couple of kilometers from the border with the States. When the people loyal to the crown during and after the War of Independence were fleeing, they had no way of knowing when they were safe. So a code was designed. Three pines in a cluster meant the loyalists would be welcome.’
‘Mon Dieu, c’est incroyable. So elegant. So simple,’ said Gamache, genuinely impressed. ‘But why haven’t I heard of this? I’m a student of Quebec history myself, and yet this is completely unknown to me.’
‘Perhaps the English want to keep it a secret, in case we need it again.’ Ben at least had the grace to blush as he said this. Gamache turned in his seat and looked at the tall man, slumping as was his nature, his long sensitive fingers loosely holding the leash of a dog who couldn’t possibly leave him.
‘Are you serious?’
‘The last sovereignty referendum was perilously close, as you know. And the campaign was ugly at times. It’s not always comfortable being a minority in your own country,’ said Ben.
‘I appreciate that, but even if Quebec separates from Canada, surely you wouldn’t feel threatened? You know your rights would be protected.’
‘Do I? Do I have the right to put up a sign in my own language? Or work only in English? No. The language police would get me. The Office de la Langue Fran?aise. I’m discriminated against. Even the Supreme Court agrees. I want to speak English, Chief Inspector.’
‘You are speaking English. And so am I. And so are all my officers. Like it or not, Mr Hadley, the English are respected in Quebec.’
‘Not always, and not by everyone.’
‘True. Not everyone respects police officers either. That’s just life ’.
‘You’re not respected because of your actions, what Quebec police have done in the past. We’re not respected just by virtue of being English. It’s not the same thing. Do you have any idea how much our lives have changed in the last twenty years ? My mother barely spoke French, but I’m bilingual. We’re trying, Inspector, but still the English are the laughing stock. Blamed for everything. The tête carrée. No,’ Ben Hadley nodded toward the three sturdy pine trees swaying slightly in the wind. ‘I’ll put my faith in individuals, not the collective.’
It was, reflected Gamache, one of the fundamental differences between anglophone and francophone Quebecers; the English believed in individual rights and the French felt they had to protect collective rights. Protect their language and culture.
It was a familiar and sometimes bitter debate, but one that rarely infected personal relationships. Gamache remembered reading in the Montreal Gazette a few years ago an article by a columnist who observed that Quebec worked in reality, just not on paper.
‘Things change, you know, Monsieur Hadley,’ Gamache said gently, hoping to lift the tension that had settled on their little park bench. The French-English debate in Quebec was a polarising force. Best, in Gamache’s opinion, leave it to politicans and journalists, who had nothing better to do.