A Better Man

by Louise Penny

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Reine-Marie hugged him.

  And he held her.

  Finally letting go, Armand asked, “Is he all right?”

  She nodded. “Hot bath, warm clothing. He’s in the kitchen by the fire. Annie’s on her way down. Homer?”

  Armand shook his head.

  Reine-Marie sighed. “God.” Then she turned and embraced Isabelle.

  When they entered the kitchen, Jean-Guy got to his feet. He was clutching a blue blanket around his shoulders and looked a little, though Armand would never ever say it to his face, like Ruth. From Clara’s portrait.

  Jean-Guy would not appreciate being told he looked like the old poet. Never mind the Virgin Mary.

  When he’d gotten to the rocky shore, gagging and heaving, Jean-Guy had first made sure Armand was safe. Only then did he focus on the person bending over him.

  * * *

  Wiping the Bella Bella from his eyes, Jean-Guy looked at Isabelle Lacoste.

  Through chattering teeth he managed, “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said, putting her warm coat over Jean-Guy’s shoulders. “I just arrived. He got to you first.”

  She pointed to the person collapsed next to him.

  Soaking and shivering, there was Carl Tracey. He’d seen Beauvoir fall and had slithered quickly down the embankment to the river.

  “You?” said Beauvoir.

  “Yeah, well,” mumbled Tracey through blue lips, “sometimes ya gotta do something stupid.”

  Hands trembling, Jean-Guy took off the warm coat and gave it to Carl Tracey.

  * * *

  Safe now, warm and dry in the familiar kitchen, Jean-Guy walked over to Armand and, without a word, embraced him, then took the bandaged hand.

  “Merci.”

  They’d said the word together.

  “Homer?” Jean-Guy asked as they subsided with groans into comfortable chairs by the woodstove.

  “Found at the bend in the river,” said Isabelle.

  Where the Bella Bella left Three Pines.

  “Where Vivienne was found?”

  Armand nodded.

  He’d stood on the banks of the river and waited for the divers to bring Homer ashore.

  The coroner, Dr. Harris, also waiting, noticed Armand’s hand wrapped in a scarf. She’d taken the splinters out and put on disinfectant and a bandage.

  Lysette Cloutier had asked if she could be there when Homer’s body was brought in. They’d agreed, and while Lacoste directed the recovery efforts, Lysette had stood next to Gamache, squinting into water that now gleamed and danced with reflected sunlight.

  Finally, when Homer was back, Gamache turned to her and asked, “Why did you do it?”

  * * *

  “Is she arrested?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “Not yet,” said Isabelle. “She’s outside with Cameron, waiting for the coroner’s car to take the body away. I wanted to speak with you.” She turned to Jean-Guy. “I think you should be the one to lay the charges and take her in, if you’re up to it. Your last arrest. It was manslaughter, of course.”

  “No it wasn’t,” said Armand. “She was lying.”

  “It was premeditated?” asked Jean-Guy. “She planned it?”

  “We’ll let her explain,” said Armand. “She wants to talk. I’ve asked Cameron to bring her here, once she’s seen Homer off.”

  They’d get the truth this time, with or without malice. But first, Armand wanted to tell them what Homer had said to him on the bridge.

  * * *

  After the coroner’s car drove away, Lysette Cloutier and Bob Cameron joined them around the woodstove.

  Reine-Marie, having heard what happened, gave Bob Cameron a bear hug. As he accepted the embrace, he breathed in the subtle scent of rose. And below that, barely there, a hint of sandalwood.

  “Merci,” she’d whispered into his ear. “Merci.”

  Lysette was trembling so badly with cold and shock that Armand did up a hot-water bottle while Reine-Marie wrapped her in a heavy Hudson’s Bay blanket.

  “Better?” she asked, and got a small nod. Warmer, if not better.

  When they’d settled in again, hands around mugs of hot sweet tea, all eyes turned to Lysette Cloutier, who sat staring into the fire.

  “I have a few questions, Agent Cloutier,” Beauvoir said, pulling the blanket tighter as another wave of shivers passed through him. “To get things straight.”

  She nodded. No more fight left. Nothing to fight for anymore.

  “If you killed Vivienne, why did you get us involved? Why tell us she was missing in the first place?”

  “I had to. How could I explain to Homer if I didn’t? Besides, this way I could see what was happening.”

  “Not just see but influence?”

  “If necessary, oui.”

  “That Saturday night she was killed, you said you met Vivienne on the bridge. How did you arrange that?”

  “Like I said, I called and we set it up.”

  “But there’re no records of your calling their home in the days before her death.”

  “I called from another line.”

  “Non. Every number is accounted for. Every call. There weren’t many, so it didn’t take long. There were no calls from an unidentified number.” Beauvoir put his tea down and leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “So how did you do it?”

  “I called,” she repeated.

  “Why’re you lying?” asked Beauvoir. “You know you didn’t do it.”

  “What?” said Cameron, looking from Beauvoir to Cloutier. Then back to Beauvoir. “Didn’t do what?”

  “Agent Cloutier didn’t kill Vivienne,” said Chief Inspector Beauvoir.

  “So it was Tracey,” said Cameron. “We were right all along.” He turned to Gamache. “You told Homer that Tracey didn’t do it, but that was a lie. You just wanted him to drop Tracey.”

  “Non,” said Gamache, holding the gaze of the man who’d saved his life. “I wasn’t lying. We were wrong all along. I was wrong. I’d warned you not to assume Tracey was guilty, and then I fell into the same trap. The evidence against Tracey was strong but circumstantial. He was vile, but he was also telling the truth. Those posts between himself and Pauline Vachon were about the clay. That night, after their fight, he left Vivienne bruised but alive. Carl Tracey did not murder his wife. She’d arranged to meet someone else on that bridge.”

  His gaze was so prolonged, so considered, that Cameron shifted in his seat. His large body tensing. His damaged face alert. It felt like that moment just before the quarterback called out the last number. That moment, suspended in time, just before they passed the point of no return.

  Gamache turned back to the others.

  “Before you arrived, I tossed things out to Homer, trying to break his concentration. Anything that came into my head. And what did were the two nagging questions. Why didn’t Vivienne take Fred with her when she left home?”

  Once again, on hearing his name, Fred raised his head. Not looking at the one who’d spoken. He was looking for someone who still hadn’t returned.

  “The other was, why didn’t she leave earlier that day?” said Gamache. “When Tracey was at the art shop.”

  “There’s only one answer,” said Beauvoir. “She didn’t leave in the morning and she didn’t take Fred with her to the bridge that night because she didn’t intend to go. Not yet, anyway. Her plan was always to leave with her lover.”

  He stared at Cameron, who sat up straighter. The scars on his face turning white against his flushed face.

  “But the call to her father,” Cameron said, his voice raised. “She told him she was leaving that night. Coming to him. Not to me. Him.”

  “No,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne never planned to go to her father.”

  “She lied to him?” asked Cameron.

  “No,” said Beauvoir.

  “So what does that mean?” said Cameron. Then his face cleared. His eyes opened wider.<

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  “Her father lied?” He looked from one to the other of the senior officers. “I don’t understand. Why would he lie?”

  “Did you know?” Isabelle Lacoste asked Cloutier.

  Lysette Cloutier was very still for what felt like a long time. Balancing on the knife edge.

  “I suspected. Not right away, but there were things I knew.”

  “Like what?”

  “On her deathbed Kathy didn’t just ask, she begged me to protect Vivienne. Not guide her, not watch over her, but to protect her. This was before Vivienne had even met Carl Tracey. So who was I supposed to protect her from? It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder. I was so upset I didn’t think more about it, about the wording. But later—”

  “Last summer. When Homer said Vivienne told him to break it off with you,” said Gamache.

  “I began to wonder.”

  “What?” asked Cameron, trying to catch up.

  “Why she’d do that. Again, at the time I was so hurt I just accepted it. Accepted that Vivienne was jealous and controlling and demanding of all her father’s attention. But then I got to wondering if it was more than that.”

  “What?” demanded Cameron. “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t you?” asked Gamache. “The money from Homer to his daughter. His decision to break off a relationship not with just anyone, but Vivienne’s godmother. Who is also a Sûreté officer.”

  “The payments into Vivienne’s account started last July,” said Lysette. “Exactly when he ended the relationship. When I saw that, I wanted to believe it was a coincidence. But things started adding up.”

  “What was the money?” asked Cameron. “What’re you saying?”

  “Why did Vivienne marry Carl Tracey?” Beauvoir asked. “Several people asked that question. We asked it. Why would a supposedly smart young woman marry a man so clearly violent, abusive? Madame Fleury gave us the answer.”

  “The devil she knew,” said Gamache. “The damage done. Homer talked about that on the bridge. I didn’t understand at the time, I was so focused on just trying to stop him. But when we were waiting on the shores of the Bella Bella for his body to be brought in, I went back over what he’d said. And then I realized something. He actually confessed.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Cameron. “He beat her, too? When she was growing up?”

  “I think you saw it, without realizing,” said Gamache. “When she opened the door the first time. Last summer. You saw the look in her eyes. You recognized in them what you see in the mirror. It was, I think, one of the things that drew you to her. A mutual hurt that went back to the earliest memories. Of course she’d marry an abusive man. It was all she knew, all she thought she deserved.”

  Gamache looked at Cloutier. “When did you begin to suspect?”

  “I didn’t, not really. Not until I saw those payments.”

  “What were they?” asked Cameron. “Blackmail?”

  “Restitution,” said Lacoste. “Vivienne was already planning her escape last summer. About the time she miscarried. She probably suspected that Tracey had something to do with it. She knew she needed to get out, but she also needed money. So she contacted her father and demanded payment, for all the pain.”

  “And if he didn’t pay,” said Beauvoir, “she’d tell her godmother all about it. I doubt Vivienne even knew that you and her father had grown close.”

  “So Homer broke it off with you and paid,” said Gamache. “Over and over again on the bridge, he told us about the pain he’d caused Vivienne. The hurt. He even said that his wife had begged him to stop it. I thought he meant stop Tracey abusing their daughter. But standing by the river, quietly, going back over it, I remembered that Kathy had never met Tracey. She couldn’t have meant him. So who did she mean? There was only one answer.”

  “She was begging me to protect Vivienne from her father,” said Cloutier. “From Homer. And I didn’t. Worse, I’d fallen in love with him. I didn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it.”

  “None of us did,” said Gamache.

  “But you couldn’t have saved Vivienne if you had.” Cloutier’s voice rose. “I could’ve. You didn’t promise to protect her. I did. But instead I actually blamed Vivienne for being cruel to her father. For cutting him out of her life.”

  “So that’s why Tracey killed Vivienne,” said Cameron. “He knew about that money.”

  “But how would he?” asked Beauvoir. “Would she really have told him? I think if she was going to confide in anyone about the money, it would be someone she trusted. A lover, for example. Don’t you?”

  His voice had grown quiet. Almost a whisper. As he locked eyes with Cameron across the fire.

  Cameron flushed red, almost purple. And closed his hands into fists.

  “There was something else Homer said on the bridge,” said Gamache. “Before you all arrived. Or, actually, something he didn’t say.”

  He looked at the circle of faces, all of them focused on him. Even Cameron broke contact with Beauvoir and shifted his gaze.

  “When he was preparing to take Tracey with him, he said it was punishment for all the years Tracey had hurt Vivienne.”

  “Yes,” said Cameron. “Exactly.”

  “You’re not listening,” said Beauvoir.

  “Wait,” said Lysette Cloutier, who understood what Gamache was saying. “Wait. That can’t be true.”

  “Yes it is,” said Lacoste.

  “What?” said Cameron, looking from one to the other.

  “Homer Godin was punishing Tracey for abusing his daughter,” Beauvoir explained. “But not for killing her.”

  He let that sink in.

  “He never once said that, not on the bridge anyway,” said Gamache. “Before, yes. I think he’d convinced himself Vivienne’s death was Tracey’s fault. If Tracey hadn’t been abusing her, she’d never have needed to get away. Never have needed to demand the money. Never have needed to meet her father on the bridge.”

  “And Homer would not have killed her,” said Beauvoir.

  The words sat there. No one protesting. No one denying them.

  It was, finally, the truth.

  Lysette Cloutier hung her head, dropping it toward her heart. While Bob Cameron, wide-eyed, absorbed what had been said.

  “I should’ve seen it sooner,” said Beauvoir quietly. “Only two numbers were called from the house that day. One a wrong number. The other was to her father. Vivienne was on that bridge to meet someone, and it could only be the one person she’d spoken to that day. Her father.”

  Finally it was that simple. That obvious.

  “But what about Fred?” asked Reine-Marie. And once again the dog raised his head. Then lowered it to his paws. “Why did she leave him behind?”

  “Her plan was never to go away that night,” said Armand. “She wanted to get the money from her father, then return home and talk to you.” He turned to Cameron. “That’s why she didn’t leave when Tracey was at the art store, and that’s why she didn’t take Fred to the bridge. You didn’t break off the affair last fall, did you?”

  “No. I broke it off just after Christmas. I couldn’t do that to my family.”

  Gamache nodded. “I think she genuinely believed the child was yours.”

  “She wanted to tell you,” said Beauvoir, “and see if maybe—”

  “I’d go with her,” he said.

  He didn’t tell them what his answer would have been, nor did they ask.

  “She called over and over, trying to get through to you,” said Beauvoir. “She finally gave up and went to the bridge to meet her father.”

  “But if she’d refused to see him since she left home, why agree to meet him that night?” asked Cameron.

  “Yes,” said Cloutier. “The money could’ve been wired into her account, like all the rest. No need to see him at all.”

  “The baby,” said Beauvoir. “That changed everything. The idea of being a parent changes you.”

  Cameron nodded. Remembering his own mounting terror as his first child grew in his wife’s womb. That maybe he’d be his father. Maybe he’d be impatient. Cruel. Violent.

  Maybe he’d lash out. With fists. With a belt. With a baseball bat.

  “She needed to face her abuser,” said Cameron. “Look him in the eye. Confront him.”

  As he’d confronted his own father. Before his son was born.

  Only then did he know, in his heart, that he would love his children, protect his children. He would never hit them. And he had not.

  “Yes,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne met her father on the bridge for one reason. To look him in the eye and tell him what he’d done to her. She had to do it for her own sake, but also for her daughter’s.”

  “It wasn’t about the money,” said Lacoste. “That was the excuse to get him there.”

  There was silence as some looked down at the floor, some stared into the fire, and others looked out the window, at the bright, cheerful day. At the three huge trees, swaying, playing in the breeze.

  “Do you think her plan was to kill him?” asked Cameron.

  “No,” said Gamache. “If it was, she’d have taken Tracey’s rifle. She had no weapon. I think it was as Chief Inspector Beauvoir says. She wanted her freedom. Not another burden. Killing her father would’ve bound him to her for the rest of her life.”

  But oh, thought Armand, the courage it must have taken to face him. And in doing that, turn her back on all the justified rage. All that had maddened and tormented her her entire life.

  To rid herself of all the subtle demonisms of life and thought, Vivienne had to stand on that bridge and face them. Face him.

  Her courage was almost unimaginable.

  And once free …

  “Something went wrong,” Beauvoir said quietly. “Maybe she tripped. Maybe he pushed her away. If he did, I don’t think he meant to kill her.”

  But maybe that was wishful thinking.

  “I realize now that he almost told me what happened,” said Armand. “That afternoon, when the case was thrown out. We stood out there”—he nodded toward the path along the Bella Bella—“and I told him how sorry I was. He talked about forgiveness and asked if some things were too horrible to forgive. I thought he was talking about Tracey’s acquittal. He asked if a sincere apology really helped.” Armand looked into the fire, remembering Homer’s worn face. The exhaustion in those eyes. “I think he told her, on the bridge that night, how sorry he was. And asked forgiveness.”

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