by Louise Penny
Myrna turned to Clara. “If you hold her down, I’ll kill her.”
“But how? We’d never get away with it.” Clara had been giving it some thought. So far she’d done twelve leg lifts of the ten Pina announced, and now Pina was complaining bitterly about snowboarders while her own pneumatic legs went up and down.
“No one would say anything,” said Myrna, lifting her legs a millimeter. “And if they threaten to, we kill them too.”
It was as good a plan as Clara had heard.
“Where are we with the leg lifts?” Pina asked. “Three, four . . .”
“OK, Bugsy, I’m in,” snorted Clara.
“So’m I,” said Dominique Gilbert on Clara’s other side, her voice almost as unrecognizable as her purple face.
“Dear God,” said The Wife, across the room, “do it soon.”
“Do what?” asked Pina, starting to bicycle her legs in mid-air.
“Murder you, of course,” snapped Myrna.
“Oh, that,” laughed Pina, never totally appreciating how close it came every class.
Twenty minutes later the class was over, after a last Tai Chi movement in which Clara meditated on murder. It was a good thing she adored Pina and needed the class.
Toweling off and rolling up her mat, Clara wandered over to the cluster of women who’d formed in the middle of the room. After a minute or so Clara managed to get the conversation around to where she wanted it.
“Did you see Inspector Beauvoir’s back in the village?” she asked, nonchalantly, dabbing at a trickle of sweat down her neck.
“Poor guy,” said Hanna Parra. “Still, he seems better.”
“I think he’s kinda cute,” said The Wife. Her eyes were large, expressive and without guile. An earth mother, married to a carpenter.
“You don’t,” said Myrna with a laugh. “He’s too skinny.”
“I’d fatten him up,” said The Wife.
“There’s something about that Inspector. I want to save him,” said Hanna. “Heal him, make him smile.”
“Mr. Spock,” said Clara, though this conversation wasn’t exactly going as she’d hoped and she hadn’t helped by just taking it off into outer space. “The Vulcan?” she explained when a few of the women looked perplexed. “Oh, for God’s sake, you can’t tell me you don’t know Star Trek? Everyone had a crush on Mr. Spock because he was so cool and distant. They wanted to be the one to break down his reserve, to get into that heart.”
“It’s not his heart we want to get into,” said Hanna and everyone laughed.
They put on their coats and ran across the snowy road to the inn and spa for the regular post-exercise tea and scones.
Clara was still amazed every time she entered the inn and spa, remembering it as the crumbling old Hadley house before Dominique and her husband Marc had bought it. Now their hostess sat relaxed and elegant, smiling and pouring tea.
Had Dominique killed the Hermit? Clara couldn’t see it. No, if Clara was being honest, the most likely suspect months ago, and the most likely one still, was Marc Gilbert. Dominique’s husband.
Clara brought the conversation around to murder once again.
“Hard to believe Olivier’s been gone almost six months,” she said, accepting a fragrant cup of tea from Dominique. Out the window she could see the clear blue day, always the coldest. Snow caught up in a whirlwind swirled by the window, making a slight sprinkling sound, like sand against the glass.
Inside the inn and spa it was peaceful. The room was filled with antiques, not cumbersome Victorian oak, but simple pine and cherry pieces. The walls were painted pastel shades and felt restful, serene. A fire was lit and the place smelled delicately of maple wood smoke, moisturizers and tisanes. Chamomile, lavender, cinnamon.
A young woman arrived with a plate of warm scones, clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam. This was Clara’s favorite part of exercise class.
“How’s Olivier doing?” The Wife asked.
“He’s trying to adjust,” said Myrna. “I saw him a few weeks ago.”
“He still insists he didn’t kill the Hermit,” said Clara, watching everyone closely. She felt a fraud, pretending to be a homicide investigator, play-acting. Still, there were worse stages. Clara smoothed clotted cream on her warm scone, then strawberry jam.
“Well, if he didn’t do it, who did?” Hanna Parra was a stout, attractive pillar. Clara had known her for decades. Could she be party to a murder? Might as well ask.
“Could you kill anyone?”
Hanna looked at her with some surprise, but no anger or suspicion.
“Now there’s an interesting question. I know for sure I could.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Dominique.
“If someone broke into our home and threatened Havoc or Roar? I’d kill them in a second.”
“Kill the women first,” said The Wife.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Dominique. She sat forward and placed her delicate teacup on its saucer.
“It’s a training booklet put out by the Mossad,” said The Wife. Even the therapists who were giving Myrna and Hanna pedicures stopped what they were doing to stare at this lovely young woman who’d said the ugliest thing.
“How would you know that?” asked Myrna.
The Wife smiled fully. “Got you scared, don’t I?”
They all laughed, but the truth was, they were thrown off a little. The Wife let them stew for a moment then laughed.
“I heard it on CBC Radio. A show on terrorism. The theory is that women almost never kill. It takes a great deal to get a woman to murder, but once she decides to, she won’t stop until it’s done.”
There was silence as they thought about that.
“Makes sense to me,” said Myrna, at last. “When a woman commits to something she does it with both her heart and her head. Very powerful.”
“That was the point of the interview,” said The Wife. “Women rarely join terrorist cells, but Mossad agents are told if they raid a cell and there’s a female terrorist, kill her first because she’ll never surrender. She’ll be the most vicious one there. Merciless.”
“I really hate that thought,” said Dominique.
“So do I,” admitted The Wife. “But I think it might be true. Almost nothing could get me to hurt anyone, physically or emotionally, but I can see if I had to, I could. And it’d be awful.”
The last sentence was said with sadness, and Clara knew it to be the truth.
Had one of these women killed the Hermit after all? But why? What could have driven them to it? And what did she really know about them?
“Did you know Charlie’s speaking now?” said The Wife, changing the subject. “Thanks to Dr. Gilbert. He comes by once a week and works with him.”
“How kind.” A man’s voice spoke from the doorway. They looked over.
Marc Gilbert stood there, tall, lanky, his blond hair was cut to his scalp and his blue eyes were intense.
“Charlie can now say ‘boo’ and ‘shoo,’ ” said The Wife with enthusiasm.
“Congratulations,” Marc smiled. There was sarcasm there, and amusement.
Clara felt her back go up. How easy it was to dislike this smiling man.
She’d tried to like him, for Dominique’s sake, but it was a losing battle.
“I remember, my first word was ‘poo,’ ” she said to The Wife, who was looking at Marc, perplexed.
“Poo?” asked Myrna, jumping into the awkward silence. “Should I ask?”
Clara laughed. “I was trying to say ‘puppy.’ Came out as ‘poo.’ Then it became my nickname, everyone called me that for years. My father still does, sometimes. Did your father have a nickname for you, growing up?” Clara asked Marc, trying to break some of the tension.
“He was never around. Then he took off and that was that. So, no.”
The tension in the room rose.
“And now, it seems he’s found another family.” Marc stared at The Wife.
So that was it, thoug
The Wife stared at Marc and Clara could see a flush spreading up her neck. Marc smiled, turned on his heels, and left.
“I’m sorry—” Dominique started to say to The Wife.
“It’s all right, he has a point actually. Old worships your father-in-law. I think he sees him as a sort of surrogate grandfather for Charles.”
“His own father doesn’t visit?”
“No. He died when Old was a teenager.”
“Must have been a fairly young man when he died,” said Myrna. “An accident?”
“He walked out onto the river one spring. The ice wasn’t as solid as he thought.”
She left it at that and it was far enough. Everyone in the room knew what must have happened. The cracking underfoot, the web of lines, the man looking down. Stopping. Standing still.
How far away the shore must seem when you’re on thin ice.
“Did they ever find him?” Myrna asked.
The Wife shook her head. “I think that’s the worst. Old’s mother’s still waiting for him.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Clara.
“Does Old?” Myrna asked.
“Think he’s still alive? No, thank God, but he doesn’t think it was an accident.”
Neither did Clara. It sounded deliberate to her. Everyone knew that walking on ice in spring was courting death.
And sure enough, the ice had broken under the father, as he knew it would, but his son had also lost his footing that day. And Vincent Gilbert had righted him. The Asshole Saint had stepped in and was helping Charlie, and helping Old. But at what cost?
Was that what she’d heard a few minutes ago in Marc Gilbert’s voice? Not sarcasm, but a small crack?
“What about you Clara?” Dominique asked, pouring more tea. “Are your parents still alive?”
“My father is. My mother died a few years ago.”
“Do you miss her?”
There was a question, thought Clara. Do I miss her?
“At times. She had Alzheimer’s at the end.” Seeing their faces she hurried to reassure them. “No, no. Strangely enough the last few years were some of our best.”
“When she was demented?” asked Dominique. “I begin to see why they called you Poo.”
Clara laughed. “It was actually a bit of a miracle. She forgot everything, her address, her sisters. She forgot Dad, she even forgot us. But she also forgot to be angry. It was wonderful,” Clara smiled. “Such a relief. She couldn’t remember her long list of grievances. She actually became a delightful person.”
She’d forgotten to love, but she also forgot to hate. It was a trade-off Clara was happy to accept.
The women in the room chatted about love, about childhood, about losing parents, about Mr. Spock, about good books they’d read.
They mothered each other. And by lunch they were ready to meet the winter’s day. As Clara walked home, scone crumbs in her hair, the taste of chamomile on her lips, she thought of Old’s father, frozen in time. And the look on Marc Gilbert’s face as the crack had appeared.
Armand Gamache sat in the Paillard bakery on rue St-Jean and stared at Augustin Renaud’s diary. Henri was curled up under the table while outside people were trudging head down through the snow and the cold.
How could Chiniquy, the fallen priest, and Augustin Renaud, the amateur archeologist be connected? Gamache stared at Renaud’s excited markings, the exclamation marks, the swirls around the names of the four men. Chin, JD, Patrick, O’Mara. Swirls of ink so forceful the pen had almost ripped the paper. And below the entry were the catalog numbers.
9-8499
9-8572
Almost certainly the numbers related to books sold by the Literary and Historical Society and, equally certainly, they were from the lot donated by Chiniquy’s housekeeper and left in their boxes in the basement for more than a century.
Until Augustin Renaud had bought them from the secondhand bookseller, Alain Doucet. In two lots. First in the summer, then the last lot just a few weeks ago.
What was in those books?
What did Chiniquy have that excited Augustin Renaud?
Gamache took a sip of hot chocolate.
It had to have something to do with Champlain, and yet the priest had shown absolutely no interest in the founder of Québec.
Chin, Patrick, O’Mara, JD. 18-something.
If Chiniquy was ninety when he died in 1899, that meant he was born in 1809. Could the number be 1809? Or 1899? Maybe. But where did that leave him?
Nowhere.
His eyes narrowed.
He looked at 1809 closely then snapping his notebook shut he drained his drink, put money on the table then he and Henri hurried into the cold. Taking long strides he saw the Basilica getting larger and larger as he approached.
At the corner he paused, in his own world, where snow and biting cold couldn’t touch him. A world where Champlain was recently dead and buried, then reburied.
A world of clues over the centuries, as buried as the body.
He turned and walked briskly up des Jardins, stopping in front of the beautiful old door, with the wrought-iron numerals.
1809.
He rapped and waited. Now he felt the cold and beside him Henri leaned against his legs for warmth and comfort. Gamache was about to turn away when the door opened a crack, then all the way.
“Entrez,” said Sean Patrick, stepping back quickly, out of the way of the biting wind as it invaded his home.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Monsieur Patrick,” said the Chief Inspector as they stood in the dark, cramped entrance. “But I have a couple of questions. May I?” He motioned toward the interior of the home.
“Fine,” said Patrick, walking reluctantly ahead. “Where to?”
“The living room, please.”
They found themselves in the familiar room, surrounded by censorious Patricks past.
“These are your great-grandparents, correct?” Gamache looked at a couple posing in front of this home. It was a wonderful picture, two stern sepia people in what looked like their Sunday best.
“It is. Taken the year they bought this place.”
“In the late 1800s you told us last time we talked.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you mind?” Gamache reached to take the photo off the wall.
“Please yourself.” It was clear Patrick was curious.
Turning the picture over Gamache found it was sealed at the back with brown paper. There was a photographer’s shop sticker, but no date. And no names.
Gamache put his reading glasses on and peered closely at the photo. And there, poking out from under the frame in the lower right-hand corner was what he was looking for.
A date.
1870.
Replacing the photo, he moved down the wall and stopped in front of another picture of great-grandfather Patrick. In this one he was with a group of other laborers, standing in front of a big hole. The building behind was barely visible.
Great-grandfather Patrick was smiling and so was another man, standing next to him. But everyone else in the photo looked grim. And why not? Their lives, like their fathers’ before them, would have been miserable.
Irish immigrants, they’d come to Canada for a better life only to die of plague in the crowded ships. Those that survived spent their lives in menial labor. Living in squalor in the Basse-Ville, the Lower Town, in the shadow of the cliffs, below the mighty Château Frontenac.
It was a life of near despair. So why were these two men smiling? Gamache turned the photo around. It too was sealed.
“I’d like to take this backing off. Do you mind?”
“Why?”
“I think it might help us with the case.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you, but I promise not to harm the photo.”
“Is this going to get me into trouble?”
Patrick searched Gamache’s face and rested on his thoughtful eyes.
“Not at all. Indeed, I’d consider it a favor.”
After the briefest pause, Patrick nodded.
“Bon, merci. Can you turn on all the lights and get me your sharpest knife?”
Patrick did all that and the two men and a dog leaned over the table, the knife in Gamache’s hand. It shook slightly and Gamache gripped it tighter. Patrick glanced at the Chief Inspector, but said nothing. Gamache lowered the knife and carefully pried the brittle old paper away from the frame. Little by little it came up.
Resisting the temptation to rip it off in one go, they carefully teased it up until it was off and the back of the photograph was exposed to sunlight for the first time since it was sealed more than a century earlier. And there, in precise, careful writing, were the names of the men, including the two who were smiling.
Sean Patrick and Francis O’Mara.
1869.
Gamache stared.
The note in Augustin Renaud’s diary didn’t say 1809. It said 1869.
Chiniquy met with this Patrick and this O’Mara and James Douglas in 1869.
Why?
Gamache looked over at the wall of ancestors standing outside this home. A great distance from the Basse-Ville, a universe away from there. Much further than the distance between Ireland and Canada, this was the unbridgeable gap between Us and Them.
A rough Irish laborer in a fine Upper Town home, in 1870. It should not have been. And yet, it was.
Gamache looked back down at the smiling men in the photograph, standing in front of a building. O’Mara and Patrick. What were they so happy about?
Gamache could guess.
NINETEEN
“Dr. Croix?”
Gamache saw the man’s back stiffen. It was an eloquent little movement, involuntary and habitual. Here was a man engrossed in what he was doing, not pleased with the interruption. That, Gamache knew, was understandable. Who didn’t feel that way occasionally?
What was even more telling, though, was the long pause. Gamache could almost see the armor going on, the plates snapping down the archeologist’s back, the spikes and prickles and chains clicking into place. And then, after the armor, the weapon.
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