by Louise Penny
It was Vincent Gilbert’s first attempt at the murder of Abigail Robinson. Perhaps not in the eyes of the law, but in a higher court, almost certainly.
Professor Robinson’s eyes widened as she followed the logic, the steps, the evidence, until she reached the only possible conclusion.
“You killed Debbie.”
“No.”
“Yes, you killed her thinking it was me.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I’m not that stupid.”
It was not, they could all see, much of a defense.
Gamache shifted slightly and all eyes went to him.
It was time to ask his question.
* * *
After her interview with Édouard Tardif, Isabelle returned to the basement Incident Room.
It was dinnertime and she was hungry, especially walking by the dining room of the Inn and smelling the rich, earthy scent of Québécoise winter cuisine. The soups and sauces, the stews and pies, both savory and sweet.
But she forced herself onward. Downward.
Once at her desk, she checked messages. She’d been copied on Beauvoir’s request to the coroner in Nanaimo, and now she opened it.
No autopsy had been done on Abigail’s mother or father. The attending physician had put down heart failure. Abigail’s sister, Maria, had choked to death on a piece of peanut butter sandwich, lodged deep in her throat.
It was tragic, but straightforward enough. Still … Lacoste called Nanaimo.
“Heart failure” was what doctors put on reports when they either didn’t know what someone died of, or knew and wanted to protect the feelings of the family.
* * *
“How did you know that Dr. Gilbert once worked with Ewen Cameron?” asked Gamache.
“He did?” Abigail Robinson asked, eyes wide.
Gamache smiled pleasantly. “Come now, Professor. You all but accused him of it last night at the party, and again today.” He paused before dropping his voice deeper into the inky void. “We know.”
He didn’t say what they knew. The truth was, they knew almost nothing.
He could see her quickly examining the various options. Struggling to find a way out that did not involve the truth.
“I’d hoped to torment you a little longer,” she said, giving up and turning to Gilbert. “But I see the time has come for the truth. A fact, if you prefer. I’d asked Debbie to research you so I’d be prepared for our meeting. She came across some documents suggesting that you worked with Ewen Cameron.”
Gamache kept his focus on Professor Robinson, but he also, in his peripheral vision, watched Chancellor Roberge’s reaction.
There was none.
She knew, he thought. She knew he worked with Cameron.
“What were the documents Madame Schneider found?” Beauvoir asked.
“Just vague references.”
“Like the ones you’re making now?” he said. “We went through your files. We also searched what Debbie Schneider brought with her. There were all sorts of papers, but nothing about Dr. Gilbert.”
“Really? That’s surprising. Something must have happened to them.”
“How were you planning to use those documents?” asked Beauvoir.
“Well, once I got over the shock that he was involved in something so hideous, I thought they might help convince him to support my work, if he was reluctant. He’s still a nationally recognized scientist.”
“Internationally,” said Gilbert, instinctively.
“Blackmail?” said Beauvoir, but Abigail ignored that.
Her brows had drawn together in thought. “I wonder if Debbie showed you what we’d found. Is that what happened? Did she meet you outside and show you the proof? Did you kill her and take the papers?”
It was something that had occurred to Gamache. The one reason Gilbert might have killed Debbie. To destroy the damning evidence.
But there were other possibilities.
Beauvoir’s phone had vibrated with a message, which he ignored. Now it rang. Looking down at it, he glanced at Gamache, who nodded.
Beauvoir walked into the next room, taking the call while Gamache turned to Colette Roberge. “Ewen Cameron would have needed a statistician in his work, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s true. Are you accusing me?”
“No. You’d have been far too young. Cameron would have made sure to use the best, even if the best was all the way across the continent. In, let’s say, British Columbia.”
He turned back to Abigail Robinson. They all turned to her.
“Is that what you found?” Gamache continued. “Is that why you were reluctant to come right out with it? Debbie Schneider said you were going through your father’s papers. Is that where you found the proof that Dr. Gilbert was involved in Cameron’s experiments? Because your father was too.”
“No, never,” said Abigail. “My father would never have done that. He was a good man. A caring man.”
Beauvoir came back and flashed his phone for Gamache to see the four-word message.
Gamache paused, quickly putting things together. He’d been wrong. Gone down the wrong path. But now, thanks to Lacoste and Beauvoir, he could see where they needed to be.
He turned slowly back to Abigail Robinson, who’d looked from Beauvoir’s phone, though she couldn’t see the message, back up into Gamache’s eyes. And she saw there that he knew the truth.
“Are you going to tell me, or do you want me to say it?”
Her silence stretched on. He gave her thirty seconds, which seemed an eternity. The room felt like a sensory-deprivation chamber. No movement. No sound. No light outside the windows. Not even the ticking of a clock.
Armand Gamache gave Abigail Robinson another thirty seconds.
But the only thing that happened, the only movement, was the thinning of her lips, as she pressed them together.
“Your mother killed herself.”
That had been Lacoste’s message. What the coroner had written in his notes, but did not include on the death certificate.
Mrs. Robinson committed suicide.
Still, Abigail didn’t speak. So Armand did.
“She’d been suffering from insomnia and postpartum depression since your sister Maria’s birth.”
He stepped carefully, feeling his way forward. Backward. Into the past. He had no proof of what he was saying, but finally the pieces fit.
His voice was deep, gentle. “Your father didn’t work with Cameron. That was wrong. He knew of Cameron’s work, though not the exact nature of it. Your father loved your mother and wanted the best treatment.” As he spoke, he kept thoughtful eyes on Abigail. Watching, gauging, her reaction to his words. “He arranged for her to go to Montréal for treatment.” He paused. “With Ewen Cameron.”
Vincent Gilbert’s mouth went slack. Dropped open.
But Gamache kept his attention on Abigail. Her breathing was rapid, like someone hiding in a closet from an intruder.
“She came back worse,” Armand said, quietly. He and Abigail were alone in the room now. In the world. This dreadful world where such things happened. “Broken, beyond repair. A short time later she took her life.”
“No. Cameron took her life. And him.” She narrowed her eyes to stare at Gilbert.
Vincent Gilbert paled, as though her gaze was drawing the blood from him.
“And then, to add insult,” said Gamache, “Dr. Cameron sent a bill. That’s how you knew Gilbert worked with Cameron. Because he signed the demand for payment. And you found it among your father’s papers.”
From his breast pocket he brought out the paper Reine-Marie had given him, unfolded it, and placed it on the table in front of Abigail Robinson.
“This is what you found. A letter like this.”
She bent down and studied it. Looked at the name. Enid Horton.
“Exactly like that.” She looked at Vincent Gilbert. “A form letter?” Gilbert stared at his hands. “You couldn’t even be bothered to write individual letters? By the ti
me Dad got this, my mother was dead. But he paid anyway.”
“And you came here not to get Vincent Gilbert’s endorsement, but for repayment.”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 36
“Well, we now know why Abigail Robinson came to Québec,” said Lacoste, slicing the baguette. “To kill Vincent Gilbert.”
They were back in the Incident Room. Dominique had brought down dinner. A large pot of her winter spécialité, a hearty pot-au-feu.
Jean-Guy ladled it out, while Armand poured beer for himself and Lacoste, and gave Jean-Guy a ginger ale.
Abigail Robinson had come back to the Inn with them, as had Vincent Gilbert. They were now under the same roof, but on different floors, restricted to their rooms.
“She doesn’t admit that,” said Gamache, tearing a thick piece of baguette and dipping it into the stew. “It would be helpful if we had any evidence, like the letter Gilbert wrote and Abigail found among her father’s things.”
“I think Abigail got that much right,” said Isabelle. “Debbie threatened him with it, he panicked and killed her, then burned the letter along with the murder weapon. He admits he destroyed every other document connecting him to Cameron. And he was in the library before the attack. He could’ve taken a piece of firewood without anyone seeing.”
“So they were going to kill each other?” asked Jean-Guy. “Like gladiators in the ring?”
“Not quite,” said Armand. “But close. I think Abigail’s plan was more subtle, more layered. I think she was going to blackmail Gilbert into publicly supporting her campaign—”
“Then she’d release the evidence anyway, that Gilbert had collaborated with Ewen Cameron,” said Jean-Guy. “Why kill the man outright when you can torture him first? Give him some of his own back. Let him watch everything he’d spent a lifetime building up come crumbling down.”
“He was far beyond his depth, in his sea of glory,” said Gamache.
“A quote?” asked Beauvoir. The rich stew and sleepiness had lowered his resistance, and the question popped out before he could stop it.
His eyes widened in fear, some mock, some real, that the Chief would now regale them with the full poem.
He did not. Gamache only smiled and said, “Why is it when I say something profound you assume I’m quoting someone else?”
“Were you?” Beauvoir asked, and could have kicked himself. Stop it. Stop giving him an opening.
Gamache gave a small grunt of laughter. “How well you know me. Yes. Wolsey’s farewell, from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. I’ve thought of it a few times when I’ve considered Dr. Gilbert in this whole thing. His ego propped open the door to his enemies.”
“I’ve been thinking of eunuchs,” said Isabelle.
“Eunuchs? As in—” Jean-Guy made a gesture over his lap.
“Exactly. Some men in China intentionally castrated themselves in order to rise to a position of power.”
Jean-Guy’s eyes widened. He’d heard of the practice, but had assumed it was a punishment, not a choice. Who would…?
Armand, though, was nodding. “Yes. That might be closer to the truth. What people do for power. How they’re willing to mutilate themselves, physically, intellectually, morally, for power and position.”
“You think that’s what Gilbert did?” asked Jean-Guy, fighting to get the quite vivid image out of his head.
“I think some people would do just about anything, say just about anything, stay quiet about anything, to attain, then hold on to power,” said Armand. “We’ve seen a lot of that in the last few years. Why not Vincent Gilbert? A boy from a poor family, gifted with remarkable intellect, but crippled by a lack of resources and conscience. His brains got him into medical school in McGill, and his faulty moral compass allowed him to stay there.”
“All he had to do was turn a blind eye to torture,” said Isabelle.
“And when, years later, having achieved international recognition as a doctor and humanitarian he was threatened with exposure, his core instincts come out.”
“So you do think Vincent Gilbert killed Debbie Schneider,” said Jean-Guy. “To get those papers off her. To stop the blackmail.”
“I think we finally have a motive for her death. He’d clearly gone to huge lengths to erase any evidence of his work with Cameron, destroying all the paperwork in the files in the Osler Library.”
“But he couldn’t get those demands for payment back,” said Lacoste. “They were in private hands.”
“He must’ve assumed, as time went by and the victims died, that he was safe. That those papers were lost or destroyed,” said Gamache.
“Or that no one would notice, or recognize, the signature of a minor research assistant,” said Lacoste. “But Abigail Robinson did. And she came here to make him pay.”
Jean-Guy was nodding, thinking. Imagining it.
Debbie Schneider had had Dr. Vincent Gilbert’s balls in her pocket. And he meant to get them back.
“Though Chancellor Roberge could’ve done it too,” said Jean-Guy. “Maybe even more likely. She and Debbie went for a walk. Alone. In the dark. Debbie could have shown her the letter and, thinking she was a friend and ally, told her what they had planned. Roberge realized how damning the letter was and lashed out. Then burned the paper in the bonfire.”
“But why would she do that?” asked Isabelle. “Kill someone to get a letter back that had nothing to do with her? She wasn’t named in it.”
Gamache realized that Isabelle hadn’t been at the meeting at the Chancellor’s home. Hadn’t seen that small gesture, Gilbert’s hand on Roberge’s. But Jean-Guy had.
“Because Colette Roberge loves Vincent Gilbert,” said Jean-Guy.
“Really?” Isabelle considered that, then said, “But do you really think the Chancellor would kill to protect his reputation? His life, maybe, but his reputation?”
“Have you met the man?” asked Jean-Guy. “His reputation is his life. All he has left.”
“I think it’s fairly clear that Abigail, probably with the help of Debbie Schneider, planned to, at the very least, blackmail Gilbert,” said Armand. “To avenge her mother.”
“And maybe her father,” said Isabelle.
“Why do you say that?” Armand laid down his spoon and fork.
“When his wife died, Paul Robinson lost a life partner, a companion, and a helpmate. His death certificate also says heart failure, just like hers. Vague. I doubt it tells the full story, the real one. There was no autopsy.”
“You think he killed himself too?” asked Jean-Guy.
It wasn’t all that hard to imagine.
Suppose, he thought, Annie died? Suppose she’d been tormented into it? And he was the one who’d put her into the monster’s hands? And then Idola dies, and once again it’s his fault. He’d given her the peanut butter sandwich that lodged in her throat.
Jean-Guy suspected his broken heart would give out too. Crushed by grief and guilt.
“He waited until his other daughter was grown,” he said.
“Oui,” said Isabelle. “Out of the house. She’d just gone away to Oxford.”
“And was in the care of his friend Colette Roberge,” said Armand. It fit. If he could follow the sequence of events, Abigail Robinson certainly could.
“The specter of Ewen Cameron hangs over this case,” said Gamache. “As do the ghosts of all his victims. Including both of Abigail Robinson’s parents.”
A few years ago, when Agent Beauvoir had first arrived in homicide and the Chief Inspector said things like that, he’d roll his eyes and smirk.
Gamache had ignored him and waited. And waited. Until one day Jean-Guy Beauvoir understood that when people died, they didn’t go away. They were very much alive in the minds, in the hearts, in the vivid memories of those left behind.
And they were not always easy to live with. Some ghosts had demands.
“How old was Abigail when her sister died?” Armand asked.
“Fifteen,” said Isabelle.
>
“And her father was alone with Maria when she died?”
“As far as we know. Because of the manner of her death, the coroner did a full autopsy.”
“May I?” Gamache held out his hand, and Lacoste gave him the autopsy report. “Both, if you don’t mind,” he said. “And Paul Robinson’s death certificate.”
Putting on his glasses, he started to read. Nodding every now and then.
He was not, they saw, skimming. He was reading every word.
“Can you send me the electronic versions?” he asked.
When she did, he attached the reports to an email to Sharon Harris. Their coroner and colleague.
Taking off his glasses, he heaved a sigh. “Are you staying over, Isabelle?”
“Yes. I’ve got my room at Olivier and Gabri’s B&B.”
“Good.” He looked at his watch. It was past eleven. “Time for bed I think. We won’t get an answer until the morning.”
Beauvoir drove his car back down the hill, but Armand felt the need for fresh air, as did Isabelle. Instead of going straight down into the village, Armand asked her, “Do you mind?”
She shook her head and followed him, knowing where they were headed. They stopped at the bench and swept off the fluffy snow that had accumulated during the day. As she did, Isabelle reached out and caressed the back of the seat. It was too dark to see the words etched into it, but she could feel them.
Armand and Reine-Marie had put the bench there so that friends and strangers could rest from the journey. Could sit and contemplate the vista, then drop their eyes to the homes below. The wood smoke rising from their chimneys and the buttery light spilling from their mullioned windows. They could watch the huge pine trees sway, wave, on the village green.
The three pines in a cluster that gave the village its name was an old United Empire Loyalist code to tell war-weary refugees that they were safe. At last.
But while Armand and Reine-Marie had put the bench there, the words etched into it remained a mystery. They’d just appeared. First one phrase, then, below it, another. No one admitted to doing it, but Armand had a feeling that it had been Billy Williams, who, while often enigmatic, still managed to make himself understood.
