A Better Man

by Louise Penny

  “Do you think he meant it?” Reine-Marie asked.

  “I want to believe he did. Yes.”

  Mostly, though, Armand hoped and prayed that the last thing Vivienne Godin saw wasn’t the monster, coming at her out of the dark again. But her father, reaching out. Trying to save her.

  They’d never know the full truth. But they could hope.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “So I’m confused,” said Gabri.

  “We know you are,” said Ruth, patting his hand. “And so’s Olivier. Gays and confused.”

  “Homer killed his own daughter?” said Gabri, ignoring her.

  “It looks like it,” said Olivier.

  They were sitting in the bistro over after-dinner drinks.

  Gabri was shaking his head. “It’s all so sad.”

  “And confusing?” asked Ruth.

  “Yes. Why would he do it?”

  “Those cops explained it all,” said Ruth. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “By ‘those cops,’ you mean Armand, Jean-Guy, and Isabelle?” asked Olivier.

  “Whoever. But yes, that’s what they said. Homer did it.”

  They, of course, had said slightly more than that.

  The villagers had seen Armand and Jean-Guy, Isabelle and the other officers return to Three Pines that morning.

  Jean-Guy, wet, cold, bruised, had gone straight to the Gamache home.

  While Armand, disheveled, slightly wild-eyed, hand wrapped in a scarf, had walked with Isabelle and the others to the path through the woods. That took them to the bend in the river, where the Bella Bella left Three Pines.

  A few minutes later, an ambulance, Sûreté cars, the coroner returned.

  Homer was discovered exactly where Vivienne had been found. Knocking gently up against a huge tree trunk.

  Only then did Armand and Isabelle return home, watched by Clara, Gabri, Olivier. By Billy Williams and Myrna. By Ruth, with Rosa, who was silent for once. Though she did watch Armand with sad eyes. But then, ducks were often sad.

  By that afternoon the sun was out in full force. Snowdrops and fragrant, delicate lily of the valley were beginning to appear. Crocuses broke through the grass of the village green.

  Life had not just been restored, it had burst forth, as Isabelle and Jean-Guy, Armand and Reine-Marie walked into the bistro.

  They joined Clara and Ruth and Rosa by the fieldstone fireplace. Billy Williams sat at a distance from Myrna but stole glances at her. Catching her eyes once, he smiled. And when Myrna smiled back, he blushed and looked away.

  Olivier brought them cafés au lait and warm almond croissants, then perched on the arm of the large chair, next to Gabri.

  The fire crackled in the background as they heard what had happened.

  Ruth looked down at her thin, veined hand, holding Gabri’s pink, pudgy one.

  You would have a different body by then,

  An old murky one, a stranger’s body you could

  Not even imagine, and you would be lost and alone.

  But not lost, she thought.

  And not alone.

  * * *

  That evening, Clara was in her studio. Ruth’s final comment as she left to head home, ringing in her ears.

  “Maybe there’s a reason they call it a stool,” she’d said, nodding to where Clara sat in front of the easel. “Something to think about.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. But this time it didn’t come from the duck.

  Once she stopped muttering, Clara turned to Myrna, who was sitting on the sofa, her bottom resting on the concrete floor. Her knees up around her ears.

  “Homer kept saying he was going to kill Tracey,” said Clara. “He even tried. Why would he do that if he knew Tracey hadn’t killed his daughter? Was it an act?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Myrna.

  “You think Armand and the others might be wrong, and Tracey really did kill Vivienne?”

  “No. I think Homer was mad with grief, with guilt. I think he couldn’t bear to accept what he’d done. All those years of abuse and then being responsible for Vivienne’s death.”

  “And his granddaughter’s.”

  “Yes. I think his own self-loathing and his anger at Tracey for his abuse of Vivienne got all mixed up. He saw himself in Tracey and decided both must die. It’s pretty obvious by what Armand said that Homer meant to take his own life, along with Tracey’s. Both must go into the river.”

  “To be cleansed?” asked Clara.

  “To be punished.”

  “You think his grief was real? It sure seemed real. Fooled everyone, including Armand.”

  “I don’t think anyone was fooled. I think Vivienne’s death destroyed Homer. I doubt it was on purpose. I want to believe he went to the bridge to try to make amends.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Clara. “He beat her. His own daughter. A child. God knows what else he did to her. And now what? You’re saying he really did love her?”

  “I’m saying people change.” She held up her hands to ward off Clara’s protests. “I know, it’s easy to say. And it doesn’t undo the damage. But we’ve seen changes of heart. Changes of perception. It happens. Racists, homophobes, misogynists, they can change. And some do.”

  “Truth and reconciliation,” said Clara.

  “Yes. The truth must come first. And then, maybe, reconciliation. Maybe.”

  “You think Vivienne and her father might’ve reconciled?”

  “Maybe. I think getting the courage to confront him was the first step. If not to forgiveness, at least to healing. And I think Homer’s willingness to meet her, and to take the money, shows that maybe he wanted that, too. Maybe.”

  “He killed her,” Clara reminded Myrna. “Then he was willing to see Carl Tracey tried and convicted for something he himself did. Hardly the acts of a contrite man.”

  “True.” Myrna pushed herself out of the sofa. “I guess I just want to believe.”

  Just as she’d wanted to believe, desperately, that Clara’s miniatures were brilliant.

  But that had proved a delusion. Dominica Oddly had made that clear. And had, with a few well-turned phrases on her site, destroyed Clara’s credibility as an artist.

  Her gallery had dropped her. Collectors were returning paintings. Social media was on a feeding frenzy.

  Myrna looked at the tiny paintings, nailed to the wall where Clara had put them. Where she could always see them. A reminder. A warning.

  Oddly had been right about them. But she’d also been wrong. She might have a duty to tell the truth, but there was no need to be so cruel.

  “Are you going to do a portrait of her?” asked Myrna.

  “Her who? Vivienne? I never met her.”

  “No, you know who I mean.”

  Myrna waited for the answer. That would reveal so much about her friend’s state of mind.

  But Clara didn’t answer. Or maybe she did, thought Myrna, as she watched her friend stare into the vast, white, empty expanse of canvas in front of her. And put down her brush.

  * * *

  Jean-Guy Beauvoir pulled the car in to the now-familiar yard, and he and Armand got out.

  The donkeys noticed first. Coming over to the fence to greet them.

  “What do you want?” demanded Carl Tracey, once again standing at the barn door with a pitchfork. “Come to arrest me? I keep telling you, I didn’t kill Vivienne.”

  Jean-Guy looked at the man and felt a wave of revulsion. He might not have killed his wife, but he beat her. Isolated her. Tormented her.

  But Carl Tracey had also done something else.

  “Non,” said Beauvoir. “I’ve come to thank you. For saving my life.”

  He didn’t offer his hand. Couldn’t take it that far. But he did look Carl Tracey, his unexpected savior, in the eyes. And saw there surprise. And even, maybe, a softening? A hint of what this man could have been, might still become. Might actually be, deep inside.

  Carl Tracey’s actions on the bridge had been instin

ctive. Maybe, below all the rot, there existed some timid decency.

  “Yeah, well, a blow to the head’ll do that.”

  Was there, as he said it, the smallest possible smile?

  “And I came to apologize,” said Gamache. “For having you arrested, charged. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Tracey, scanning the woods, the road, behind the Sûreté officers. “This’s a trap, right?”

  Did Carl Tracey go through life looking for, seeing, manufacturing traps set by others, for him? How, Gamache wondered, must that affect how he sees the world?

  It didn’t forgive the abuse, the violence. It wasn’t Gamache’s to forgive. But it might help explain it.

  “No, no trap. An apology.”

  While Jean-Guy backed the car up, Armand watched through the windshield as Tracey fed the donkeys carrots and scratched their long noses.

  * * *

  Superintendent Lacoste crossed her legs and smoothed her slacks. And looked across the coffee table at Chief Superintendent Toussaint.

  It had been a week since the events in Three Pines, and her leave was coming to an end.

  She was meeting with Toussaint to tell the head of the Sûreté which job she’d accept.

  “I saw your tweets, Isabelle,” said Madeleine Toussaint as they settled into the comfortable armchairs in the sitting area of the office. “Defending Chief Inspector Gamache. You didn’t hide your identity.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you used your rank. You were posting not as a private citizen but as a senior officer in the Sûreté. Making it look like the official Sûreté position.”

  “As it should have been. I waited, you know, for someone more senior to defend him.” She glared at Toussaint. “And when that didn’t happen…”

  “There’re issues you’re not aware of.”

  “What issues exactly make it okay to attack our own?”

  “I didn’t attack him.”

  “Oh, no? You think I don’t know where that video came from?” Lacoste demanded.

  “What video?”

  But Lacoste had seen the surprise in Toussaint’s eyes. The tensing of her body. A spasm of alarm. Of fear even.

  “When the shit was flying, he made sure it didn’t stick to you,” said Lacoste, leaning forward. “You do know that Monsieur Gamache was the one who recommended you for this job.”

  “He’s not the only reason I got it.”

  “True. You got it because the Premier asked you not to defend Monsieur Gamache in the hearings and you agreed.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Toussaint’s jaw clamped shut, and her eyes hardened. The problem with going up against Isabelle Lacoste was that she was a hero. Unassailable.

  And a die-hard defender of Gamache.

  “Be careful, Isabelle. It’s never a good idea to catch a falling knife.”

  Toussaint knew that while Superintendent Lacoste might be beyond reach, Gamache was not.

  When the smoke had cleared on that final, fateful raid and Isabelle Lacoste lay in her own blood, Chief Superintendent Gamache had to answer for his decisions.

  Madeleine Toussaint had known, even as she stood in those woods surveying the wreckage, that he could never really explain his actions to anyone who wasn’t there. Even as they made sweeping arrests, in the most successful raid in decades, the vultures were circling.

  Politicians desperate to rid themselves of this inconvenient person. A vicious and ravenous social media, desperate for fodder.

  On his last day in command, before being suspended, he’d recommended Toussaint for his job. A black woman, a Haitian. They’d stood in this office. He shook her hand and told her she’d be great. But he had one request.

  “Don’t defend me, Madeleine. You won’t win, and they’ll come after you.”

  “But—”

  “Promise me.”

  When the board of review took their shot, no one in power had stepped in front of Armand Gamache to stop it.

  Chief Superintendent Gamache had gone down.

  And Superintendent Toussaint had risen up.

  But what no one expected, was that Gamache would actually return. Would accept such a demotion.

  With the departure that evening of Jean-Guy Beauvoir to Paris, Gamache once again took over the homicide department. Respected by colleagues and subordinates, he was viewed with suspicion and worse by those who feared the power he wielded. No matter his official rank.

  And Madeleine Toussaint had grown used to her own power. Used to the office. The deferential looks. The salutes. The respect of her community.

  She wasn’t about to give it up. But to hold on to it, she had to diminish Gamache. And that meant one thing. A purge of his most powerful supporters.

  “I’ve been looking at your health records, Isabelle.” She nodded at the dossier on the table between them. “The Sûreté demands a certain level of fitness, especially in its leaders. We have to act as role models.”

  “Yes,” said Lacoste. “I know. I also know there are different sorts of fitness.”

  The words hit home, but Toussaint tried not to show it. “I’m sorry to say we’ll have to pension you off. While you’ll keep most of your salary and your benefits, I’ll have to ask for your ID and your weapon back. Your security code will no longer be valid.”

  If she’d expected an argument, Toussaint was disappointed. Isabelle Lacoste just nodded and put her hand in her pocket to bring out her Sûreté ID.

  But instead what she brought out was her cell phone. Propping it against some books on the table, she hit play.

  Chief Superintendent Toussaint watched with thin lips and narrow eyes.

  She watched Jean-Guy Beauvoir dive across the screen. Reaching for the falling man.

  She watched as he grabbed a handful of the man’s coat and hung on, even as he himself was dragged over the edge.

  Her eyes widened as she watched Gamache leap forward. No time to think. He reacted instinctively.

  She no longer saw him. He’d disappeared over the edge of the bridge. But she did see his hand. White-knuckled. Gripped onto the foot of the post.

  As she watched, the hand began to slip.

  Her mouth opened a little as the finger slid off. Isabelle Lacoste leaped forward to grab the hand. But someone was there before her. The former tackle, Cameron, was on his belly, reaching over the side.

  There were shouts for help. Cries for help. A splash.

  All this the Chief Superintendent knew. She’d read the report. But knowing and seeing were two different things.

  Lacoste picked up her phone and turned it off.

  Then she took an envelope out of her pocket and, placing it on the table, slid it toward the Chief Superintendent.

  Isabelle Lacoste knew that the doctored video purporting to show Gamache killing unarmed kids had come from Toussaint.

  It was done to discredit her predecessor, not expecting the real video to be found and released by some crazy old woman in a village that didn’t even, officially, exist.

  And now it was gaining ground. Overtaking the fake.

  Gamache’s own reputation was not only being restored, it was growing.

  And this video, if released, would put the final lie to Toussaint’s doctored effort to show Gamache as a psychotic coward.

  “What do you want?” Toussaint asked.

  “That”—Lacoste gestured toward the envelope—“is the job I want. The job I will have.”

  Toussaint nodded. Knowing, of course, what it said.

  While Gamache could not be made Chief Superintendent, Isabelle Lacoste could.

  Toussaint picked up the envelope, tore it open, and read. Then she looked across the table at Isabelle Lacoste. Perplexed at first, then realization growing.

  “You must be kidding.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “We need to go,” said Annie. “They’ve almost finished boarding.”

  Armand’s Sûreté credentials had gotten him and Reine-Marie past security. They stood with Annie and Jean-Guy by the gate at Trudeau International Airport.

  Honoré was in Reine-Marie’s arms while Armand and Jean-Guy struggled with the travel stroller.

  “Here,” said Reine-Marie. She handed the child to Annie, walked over to them, pressed a button, lifted some nylon, and up it folded.

  The two men nodded to each other, Laurel and Hardy style.

  Hm, hm, hm.

  “Can I leave him here and bring you to Paris, Maman?”

  “Oh, don’t ask me twice,” said Reine-Marie, taking Honoré back.

  Dropping her face to his hair, she took a deep breath, then handed him to his grandfather.

  The Air Canada representative approached. “I’m sorry, but we’re closing the gate.”

  “Merci,” said Annie, and looked at her father.

  “See you soon, buddy,” Armand whispered to the tired child, almost asleep in his arms. “You’ll love Paris. What an adventure you’ll have. And you’ll see your cousins Florence and Zora.”

  He held Honoré in the pocket of his shoulder, resting his cheek on the little head, for a moment. Then he kissed his forehead and whispered, “I love you.”

  The boy put his small hand on his grandfather’s large one. Holding it there.

  “Dad?” said Annie, putting out her arms.

  Armand handed Honoré back to his mother.

  “Before I go, I want to give you this,” said Jean-Guy, holding out an envelope.

  “Money?” asked Armand, as he took it.

  Jean-Guy laughed. “Non. A name. The person I’m recommending as your second-in-command.”

  “Hope they’re better than your last one,” said Armand.

  “Hard to be worse,” agreed Jean-Guy. “It is, of course, your decision.”

  “Does this person know?”

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