‘That place is haunted.’ She didn’t have to look, they both knew what she meant. ‘By what, I don’t know. Madeleine Favreau knows, but she had to die to find out. Me? I don’t want to know that badly.’
The two sat quietly on the bench in the very center of the peaceful village. Around them, as they talked about ghosts and demons and death, people walked their dogs and chatted and gardened. Gamache waited for Dr Harris to continue, and watched as Ruth tried to coax the tiny balls of fluff into the pond.
‘I did a bit of research this afternoon on ephedra. It’s from the’ – she pulled a notepad from her pocket – ‘gymnosperm shrub.’
‘It’s an herb, isn’t it?’ said Gamache.
‘You knew?’
‘Agent Lemieux told me.’
‘It grows all over the place. It’s an old-fashioned cold remedy and antihistamine. The Chinese knew about it centuries ago. Called it Ma Huang. Then the pharmaceuticals got hold of it and started making Ephedrine.’
‘You say it grows all over the place—’
‘You’re wondering whether it grows here? It does. There’s one over there.’ She pointed to a huge tree on a front lawn. Gamache got up and walked over to it, bending down to pick up a leathery, brown leaf, fallen in the autumn.
‘It’s a ginkgo tree,’ said Dr Harris, joining him and picking up a leaf of her own. It was an unusual shape, more of a fan than a classic leaf, with thick veins, like sinews. ‘It’s part of the gymnosperm family.’
‘Could someone extract ephedra from this?’ Gamache showed her his leaf.
‘I don’t know whether it comes from the leaf or the bark or something else. What I do know is that being from the same family doesn’t necessarily mean it has ephedra in it. But as I said before, the combination of ephedra and a scare wasn’t enough.’
They turned and walked back to the bench, Gamache rubbing the leaf between his fingers, feeling its skeleton in his hand.
‘Something else had to happen?’ he asked.
‘Something else had to exist,’ Dr Harris nodded.
‘What?’ Gamache asked, hoping she wasn’t going to say a ghost.
‘Madeleine Favreau had to have had a heart condition.’
‘Did she?’
‘She did,’ said Dr Harris. ‘According to my autopsy, she had fairly severe heart damage, almost certainly from her breast cancer.’
‘Breast cancer damages the heart?’
‘Not the cancer, but the treatment. The chemo. Breast cancer in younger women can be extremely aggressive so doctors give high doses of chemo to fight it. The women are normally consulted before it’s done, but the equation is simple. Feel wretched for months, lose your hair, risk a heart problem or almost certainly die of breast cancer.’
‘Jesus wept,’ whispered Gamache.
‘I think so.’
‘You’re looking very serious.’ Ruth Zardo had walked up to their bench. ‘Fucking up the Favreau case?’
‘Probably.’ Gamache rose and bowed to the old poet. ‘Do you know Dr Harris?’
‘Never met.’ They shook hands. This was about the tenth time Sharon Harris had been introduced to Ruth.
‘We’ve been admiring your family.’ Gamache nodded toward the pond.
‘Do they have names?’ Dr Harris asked.
‘The big one’s Rosa and the little one’s Lilium. They were found among the flowers by the pond.’
‘Beautiful,’ said Dr Harris, watching Rosa plop into the pond. Lilium took a step and stumbled. Ruth, her back to the birds, somehow sensed something was wrong and limped rapidly to the pond, lifting the little one out, soaking but alive.
‘That was close,’ said Ruth, dabbing gently at the duckling’s face with her sleeve. Sharon Harris wondered if she should say something. Surely Ruth had noticed how frail Lilium was?
‘Storm’s almost here.’ Dr Harris looked to the sky. ‘I really don’t want to be on the road in that. But I have one more piece of information you need.’
‘What is it?’ Gamache accompanied her to her car as Ruth walked home, Rosa quacking behind and Lilium in the palm of her hand.
‘I don’t think this contributed to her death, not directly anyway, but it is puzzling. Madeleine Favreau’s breast cancer had returned. And badly. There were lesions on her liver. Not large, but I’d say she wouldn’t have seen Christmas.’
Gamache paused to digest this information.
‘Would she have known?’
‘I don’t know. It’s possible she didn’t, but honestly? The women I know who’ve had breast cancer get so in tune with their bodies, it’s almost psychic. It’s a powerful connection. Descartes was wrong, you know. There is no division between mind and body. These women know. Not the initial diagnosis, but if it comes back? They know.’
Sharon Harris got in her car and drove off just as the first huge drops of rain fell and the winds picked up and the sky over the tiny village grew purple and impenetrable. Armand Gamache made it to the bistro before the heavens opened. Settling into a wing chair he ordered a Scotch and a licorice pipe and gazing out the window as the storm closed in around Three Pines he wondered who would want to kill a dying woman.