SEVENTEEN
Agent Yvette Nichol woke up early the next morning, too excited to sleep. Finally, it was here. The day she’d longed for. When Gamache would finally see what she was made of.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Short, reddish hair, brown eyes, skin with purple marks where she’d picked at it. Though she was slim her face always seemed a little pudgy, like a balloon with hair.
She sucked in her cheeks, biting them between her molars. Better, though she couldn’t go through life like that.
She’d gotten her father’s features and her mother’s personality. She’d always been told that, though she’d never much liked her mother and wondered whether her aunts and uncles said it to annoy her. Her mother had died suddenly, one day there and gone the next.
Her mother had always been an outsider. Tolerated by her father’s extended family of babbling aunts and uncles, but never loved. Or respected. Or accepted. She’d tried, Nichol knew. Taking on the petty prejudices and opinions of the Nickolevs. But they’d only laughed at her, and changed their opinions.
She was pathetic. Always striving to fit in, to get the affection of people who’d never, ever give it, and despised her for trying.
‘You’re just like your mother.’ The heavily accented words lay leaden in Yvette Nichol’s head. It was, perhaps, the only French her aunts and uncles spoke. Memorized as one might memorize a swear word. Fuck. Shit. You’re just like your mother. Hell.
No, it was her father she loved. And he loved her. And protected her from the swarm of accents and smells and insults in her own home.
‘Don’t put any make-up on.’ His voice penetrated the bathroom door. She smiled. He clearly felt she was beautiful enough.
‘You’ll look younger without it. More vulnerable.’
‘Dad, I’m a S?reté officer. With homicide. I don’t want to look vulnerable.’
He was forever trying to get her to use tricks so people would like her. But she knew tricks were useless. People wouldn’t like her. They never did.
Her boss had called yesterday, interrupting Easter lunch with the relatives. All going on about how it was better in Romania or Yugoslavia or the Czech Republic. Speaking in their own languages then making a to-do when she didn’t understand. But she did understand, enough to know they asked her father every year why she never painted eggs or baked the special bread. Always finding fault. No one had commented on her new haircut or new clothes or asked about her job. She was an agent with the S?reté du Québec, for God’s sake. The only successful one in the entire pathetic family. And could they ask about that? No. Had she been a goddamned painted egg they’d have shown more interest.
She’d run down the hallway with the phone and ducked into her bedroom, so her boss wouldn’t hear the hilarity at her expense, the cackling that passed as laughter.
‘Do you remember what we talked about a few months ago?’
‘About the Arnot case?’
‘Yes, but you must never mention that name again. Understand?’
‘Yes sir.’ He treated her like a child.
‘A case has come up. It’s not certain it’s murder, but if it is you’ll be on the team. I’ve made sure of it. It’s time. Are you sure you can do it, Agent Nichol? If not, you need to tell me now. There’s too much at stake.’
‘I can do it.’
And she’d believed it when she’d said it. Yesterday. But suddenly it was today. It was murder. It was time.
And she was scared to death. In less than two hours she’d be in Three Pines with the team. But while they tried to find a murderer, she’d try to find a traitor to the S?reté. No, not find. Bring to justice.
Agent Yvette Nichol liked secrets. She liked gathering other people’s and she liked having her own. She put them all in her own secret garden, built a wall around them, kept them alive, thriving and growing.
She was good at keeping secrets. And she wondered whether maybe her boss had chosen her because of that. But she suspected the reason was more mundane. He’d chosen her because she was already despised.
‘You can do this,’ she said to the strange young woman in the mirror. Fear had suddenly made her ugly. ‘You can do it,’ she said with more conviction. ‘You’re brilliant, courageous, beautiful.’
She raised her lipstick to her lips with an unsteady hand. Lowering it for a moment she looked sternly at the girl in the mirror.
‘Don’t fuck this up.’
Clasping her wrist with her other hand she guided the bright red drug store hue over her lips, as though her head was an Easter egg and she was about to paint it. She’d make her relatives proud, after all.
Agent Isabelle Lacoste stood in the clear morning light on the road outside the old Hadley house staring at the buckled and heaved walk. It looked as though something was trying to tear itself from the earth.
Her courage had finally found its limits. After more than five years with Chief Inspector Gamache on homicide, facing deranged and demented murderers, she had finally been stopped by this house. Still, she forced herself to stand there a moment longer, then turned and walked away, her back to the house, feeling it watching her. She picked up speed until she was sprinting to her car.
She took a deep breath and turned to stare again at the house. She needed to go in. But how? Alone wasn’t any good; she knew she’d never make it past the threshold alone. She needed company. Looking down into the village, to the smoke drifting from chimneys, to the lights in the homes, imagining people just sitting down for their first cup of coffee and warm toast and jam, she wondered whom she’d pick. It was a strangely powerful feeling, and she wondered if this was how judges had felt when Canada still had the death penalty.
Then her gaze fell on one home in particular. And she realized then that there had never been much doubt whom she’d pick.
‘I’ll get it,’ Clara called from her studio. She’d risen early hoping in the fresh morning light she’d see what Peter had seen a few days ago. The flaw in the work. The colors that were off. The wrong shade of blue perhaps? Or green? Should it be viridian green instead of celadon? She’d deliberately stayed away from Marian Blue, but maybe that was the mistake.
She had just a week now to complete the painting before Denis Fortin arrived.
Time was running out. And something was wrong with the work and she didn’t know what. She sat on the stool, sipping her strong morning coffee, eating a Montreal bagel, hoping the spring sun would tell her.
But it was silent.
Dear God, what am I going to do?
Just then someone knocked on the door. She wondered whether that was God, but thought he probably didn’t knock.
‘No, you’re working,’ called Peter from the kitchen, glancing at the clock. Just after seven. ‘I’ll get it.’
He’d felt horrible about what he’d said about Clara’s work. He’d since tried to tell her he’d over-reacted. There was nothing wrong with it. Just the opposite. But she’d thought he’d been condescending then. It would never occur to her that he’d lied the first time. That her painting was brilliant. It was luminous and extraordinary and all the words he dreamed would be applied to his own works.
True, gallery owners and decorators loved his paintings. He took an object from life, a twig say, and got in so close it was unrecognizable, abstract. For some reason the idea of obscuring the truth appealed to him. Critics used words like complex and deep and riveting. And all that had been enough, until he’d seen Clara’s painting. Now he longed for someone, just one person, to look at his works and call them ‘luminous’.
Peter hoped Clara wouldn’t change a thing in this painting. And he hoped she would.
Now he strolled to the door, opening it to reveal Agent Isabelle Lacoste.
‘Bonjour,’ she smiled.
‘Is it God?’ Clara called from her studio.
Peter looked at Lacoste who shook her head apologetically.
‘No, not God, honey. Sorry.’
Clara appeared wiping her hands on a rag and smiled warmly. ‘Hello, Agent Lacoste. Haven’t seen you in a while. Would you like a coffee?’
Isabelle Lacoste really wanted a coffee. Their home smelled of fresh brew and toasted bagel and a warm fire on this chilly spring morning. She wanted to sit and talk to these welcoming people, warming her hands on a mug. And not go back to the house. And she could, she knew. No one on the homicide team knew she was there. Her purpose was deeply personal, a private little ritual.
‘I need your help,’ she said to Clara, who raised her eyebrows in surprise. And lowered them when she heard what Isabelle Lacoste wanted.
Myrna Landers was humming to herself and grinding coffee to press into her Bodum. Bacon was frying and two brown eggs sat on her wooden kitchen counter, ready to be broken into the frying pan. She didn’t often have more than toast and coffee but every now and then she set her face for a full breakfast. She’d heard someone say once that all the English secretly crave is breakfast three times a day. And for herself she knew it to be true. She could live on a diet of bacon, eggs, croissants, sausages, pancakes and maple syrup, porridge and rich, brown sugar. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and strong coffee. Of course, she’d be dead in a month.
Dead.
Myrna’s spatula hovered over the bacon she’d been prodding. It spat at her hand but she didn’t react. She was back in that dreadful room on that dreadful night. Turning Madeleine over.
‘God, that smells good,’ came a familiar voice from the other end of the loft. Myrna brought herself back and turned to see Clara and another woman standing there, taking off their muddy boots. The other woman was looking around in amazement.
‘C’est magnifique,’ said Lacoste, wide-eyed. Now all she wanted was to sit at the long refectory table, eat bacon and eggs and never leave. She took in the whole room. Exposed wood beams, darkened with age, ran above their heads. The four walls were brick, almost a rose color, with bold, striking abstracts on the walls, broken only by bookcases stuffed full and large mullioned windows. Worn armchairs sat on either side of the wood stove in the center of the room, with a large sofa facing it. The floors were wide-plank honey pine. Two doors led, Lacoste suspected, into a bedroom and a bathroom.
She was at home. Lacoste suddenly wanted to take Clara’s hand. Her home was here. In this loft. But it was also with these women.
‘Bonjour.’ The large, black woman in a caftan was walking toward her, arms outstretched and a smile on her lovely face. ‘C’est Agent Lacoste, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Oui.’ Lacoste gave and received kisses on each cheek. Then Myrna turned and exchanged hugs and kisses with Clara.
‘Come for breakfast? There’s plenty. I can put on more. What is it?’
She could see the strain in Clara’s face.
‘Agent Lacoste needs our help.’
‘What can I do?’ Myrna looked at the young woman, simply and elegantly dressed, like most young Québécoises. Myrna felt like a house next to her. A comfortable and happy home.
Lacoste told her, feeling as though her very words were soiling this wonderful place. When she’d finished Myrna stood very still and closed her eyes, and when she opened them she spoke.
‘Of course we’ll help, child.’