Cruelest Month

by Louise Penny

  Something in this grotesque place had come to life, come down that hallway and into the cobwebbed old bedroom and taken Madeleine’s life.

  Clara would remember it for the rest of her own life. The shrieks. They seemed all around. Then a thud. A candle sputtering out. Chairs falling over as people either leaped to help or leaped to leave. And then the flashlights clicking on and bouncing maniacally over the room, then stopping. Illuminating one thing. That face. Even in the bright and warm sunshine of the day Clara felt the dread tighten, like a cloak she couldn’t quite shrug off.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Clara had heard Hazel call, presumably to Sophie.

  ‘Non,’ Monsieur Béliveau yelled.

  Madeleine’s eyes were wide and staring, as though the balls were straining to escape their sockets. Her mouth was open, lips tight, frozen in a scream. Her hands, when Clara grabbed them to offer comfort she knew was too late, were curled into talons. Clara looked up and saw a movement outside their circle. And heard something too.

  Flapping.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Armand Gamache called as he left the house. Clara started and came back to the day. She recognized the large, elegant figure walking purposefully toward her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, seeing her distress.

  ‘Not really.’ She half smiled. ‘Better for seeing you.’

  But she didn’t look better. In fact, tears started down her face and Gamache suspected they were far from the first. He stood quietly beside her, not trying to stop the tears, but allowing her her sorrow.

  ‘You were here last night.’ It was a statement, not a question. He’d read the report and seen her name. In fact, she was the first on his list to question. He valued her opinion and her eye for detail, for things visible and those not. He knew he should consider her a suspect, along with everyone else at the séance, but the truth was he didn’t. He considered her a precious witness.

  Clara wiped the sleeve of her cloth coat over her face and across her nose. Armand Gamache, seeing the results, brought a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She’d hoped the worst of the tears were over, but they seemed in full flood, like the Bella Bella. A run-off of grief.

  Peter had been wonderful last night. Racing to the hospital, never once saying ‘I told you so’, though she’d said it often enough herself as she’d choked out the story to him.

  Then driving Myrna, Gabri and her home. Offering rooms and comfort to a stricken, dumbfounded Hazel and a strangely relaxed Sophie. Was she numb with grief? Or was that giving Sophie the benefit of the doubt, as they’d always done?

  The offer had been refused. Even now Clara couldn’t begin to imagine how awful it must have been for Hazel to return home, alone. With Sophie, certainly, but in reality alone.

  ‘Was she a friend?’ They turned and walked away from the house, toward the village.

  ‘Yes. She was a friend to everyone.’

  Gamache, she noticed, was silent as he walked beside her, his hands clasped behind his back and his face thoughtful.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, then after a moment’s silence answered her own question. ‘You’re thinking she was murdered, aren’t you?’

  They’d stopped again. Clara couldn’t walk and process this staggering thought at the same time. She could barely stand and carry it. She turned and stared at Gamache. Was she always this slow, she wondered? Of course he’d think that. Why else would the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec be there, unless Madeleine was murdered?

  Gamache gestured to the bench on the village green.

  ‘Why all the picnic tables?’ he asked as they sat down.

  ‘We had an Easter egg hunt and picnic.’ Was it only yesterday?

  Gamache nodded. They’d hidden eggs for Florence and then had to find them all again themselves. Next year she’d be able to do it, he thought.

  ‘Was Madeleine murdered?’ Clara asked.

  ‘We think so,’ he said. After a moment to allow her to absorb the information he asked, ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, wait. Please think about it. I know at first everyone’s surprised by murder. But I want you to really think about the question. If Madeleine Favreau was murdered, would it surprise you?’

  Clara turned to Gamache. His deep brown eyes were thoughtful, his moustache was trim and graying, the hair under his cap groomed and curling slightly. His face was strong with laugh lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. He spoke to her in English, as a courtesy, she knew. His English was perfect and, strangely, he had a British accent. She’d been meaning each time they’d met to ask him about that.

  ‘Why do you speak with an English accent?’

  His eyebrows rose and he turned a mildly surprised face to her.

  ‘Is that the answer to my question?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘No, professor. But it’s something I’ve been meaning to ask and keep forgetting.’

  ‘I went to Cambridge. Christ’s College. Studied history.’

  ‘And honed your English.’

  ‘Learned my English.’

  Now it was Clara’s turn to be surprised.

  ‘You didn’t speak English before arriving in Cambridge?’

  ‘Well, I could say two things.’

  ‘And those were…’

  ‘Fire on the Klingons, and My God, Admiral, it’s horrible.’

  Clara snorted.

  ‘I watched American television when I could. Particularly two shows.’

  ‘Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,’ said Clara.

  ‘You’d be surprised how useless those phrases are in Cambridge. Though “My God, Admiral, it’s horrible” could be used in a pinch.’

  Clara laughed and imagined young Gamache in Cambridge. Who goes across the world to a foreign country to go to university without knowing the language?

  ‘Well?’ Gamache’s face had turned serious.

  ‘Madeleine was lovely, in every sense. She was easy to like and I suspect easy to love. I could see loving her, had we had more time. I can’t believe someone killed her.’

  ‘Because of who she was, or because of who someone wasn’t?’

  That was the question, thought Clara. Accepting murder meant accepting there was a murderer. Among them. Close. Someone in that room, almost certainly. One of those smiling, laughing, familiar faces hid thoughts so vile they had to kill.

  ‘How long has Madeleine lived here?’

  ‘Well, she actually lives outside the village, off that way.’ Clara pointed into the rolling hills. ‘With Hazel Smyth.’

  ‘Who was also there last night, with someone named Sophie Smyth.’

  ‘Her daughter. Madeleine came to live with them about five years ago. They’d known each other for years.’

  Just then Lucy gave a yank on her leash and Clara looked over to see Peter walking through their gate and across the dirt road, waving. She looked around for cars then unclipped Lucy. The elderly dog bounded across the green and right into Peter, who doubled over. Gamache winced.

  Straightening up Peter limped over to their bench, two muddy pawprints on his crotch.

  ‘Chief Inspector.’ Peter put out his hand with more dignity than Gamache had thought possible. Gamache rose and shook hands warmly with Peter Morrow. ‘Sad time,’ said Peter.

  ‘It is. I was just saying to Clara we think it’s possible Madame Favreau didn’t die naturally.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You weren’t there, were you?’ Gamache ignored Peter’s question.

  ‘No, we’d had people for dinner last night and I stayed to clean up.’

  ‘Would you have gone if you could?’

  Peter barely hesitated. ‘No. I didn’t approve.’ Even to his own ears he sounded like a Victorian vicar.

  ‘Peter tried to talk me out of going,’ said Clara. All three were standing now and Clara took Peter’s hand. ‘He was right. We shouldn’t have done it. Had
we all stayed away from there,’ Clara cocked her head toward the house on the hill, ‘Madeleine would still be alive.’

  It was probably true, thought Gamache. But for how long? There were some things you couldn’t escape and death was one.

  * * *

  Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir watched as the last of the Crime Scene team packed up then he backed out of the bedroom and closed the door. Ripping a length of tape from a yellow roll he stuck it across the door. He repeated that several times more than he normally would. Something in him felt the need to seal away whatever was in that room. He’d never admit it, of course, but Jean Guy Beauvoir had felt something growing. The longer he stayed the more it grew. Foreboding. No, not foreboding. Something else.

  Emptiness. Jean Guy Beauvoir felt he was being hollowed out. And he suddenly knew that if he stayed there would be just a chasm and an echo where his insides had been.

  He ached to get out. He’d looked over at Agent Lacoste, wondering whether she felt the same. She knew altogether too much about that witchcraft bullshit for his liking. Murmuring a Hail Mary as he sealed the room, he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

  Had he known how the artist Christo had wrapped the Reichstag he might have seen a similarity. Yellow Crime Scene tape smothered the door.

  Taking the stairs two at a time he was out into the sunshine in a flash. The world was so much brighter, the air so much fresher, for having come from that tomb. Even the roar of the Rivière Bella Bella was comforting. Natural.

  ‘Great, you haven’t left yet.’

  Beauvoir turned and saw Agent Robert Lemieux striding toward him, a smile on his young and eager face. Lemieux hadn’t been with them long, but he was already Beauvoir’s favorite. He liked young agents who idolized him.

  Still, Beauvoir was surprised.

  ‘Did the Chief Inspector call you in?’ Beauvoir knew Gamache’s plan was to keep the investigation simple until they knew for sure it was murder.

  ‘No. Heard about it from one of my cop friends down here. I’m visiting my parents over in Ste-Catherine-de-Hovey. Thought I’d drop in.’

  Beauvoir looked at his watch. One o’clock. Now that he was out of the damned house he wondered if the emptiness he’d felt was just hunger pangs. Yes, that must be it.

  ‘Come with me. The chief’s in the bistro, probably having the last croissant.’ Even though he was kidding Beauvoir could feel his anxiety rising. Suppose it was true? He hurried to the car and the two men drove the hundred yards or so into Three Pines.

  * * *

  Armand Gamache sat in front of the open fireplace sipping a Cinzano and listening. Even in late April a warm fire was welcome. Olivier had greeted him with a hug and a licorice pipe.

  ‘Merci, patron,’ said Gamache, returning the hug and accepting the pipe.

  ‘It’s just too shocking to absorb,’ said Olivier, beautifully dressed in corduroys and oversized cashmere sweater. Not a fine blond hair out of place, not a crease or smudge to mar the look. By contrast his partner had forgotten to put his dentures in and was unshaven. A thick black stubble had rubbed Gamache’s cheek when he and Gabri embraced.

  Peter, Clara and Gamache followed Gabri to the sun-faded sofa by the fire while Olivier got their drinks, and now Myrna joined them just as they settled in.

  ‘I’m glad to see you.’ She took a seat in a nearby wing chair.

  Gamache looked at the large black woman with affection. She ran his favorite bookstore.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, her intelligent eyes kind and trying to soften the bluntness of the question.

  He felt a certain empathy for the telegraph man on his wobbly bicycle during the war. The bearer of catastrophic news. Viewed always with suspicion.

  ‘He thinks she was murdered, of course,’ said Gabri, though without his dentures it sounded as though Gamache was ‘tinking’.

  ‘Murdered?’ said Myrna, with a snort. ‘It was horrible, violent even, but not murder.’

  ‘How was it violent?’

  ‘I think we all felt assaulted,’ said Clara and they nodded.

  Beauvoir and Lemieux thrust open the bistro door just then, talking. Gamache caught their attention and raised his hand. They fell silent and walked over to the gathering by the fireplace.

  The sun was streaming through the leaded glass windows and in the background other patrons could be heard murmuring. Everyone was subdued.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ said Gamache quietly.

  ‘The psychic had spread the salt and lit the candles,’ said Myrna, her eyes open and seeing the scene. ‘We were in a circle.’

  ‘Holding hands,’ Gabri remembered. His breathing had become fast and shallow and he looked as though he might pass out from the memory alone. Gamache thought he could almost hear the large man’s heartbeat.

  ‘I’ve never been so terrified,’ said Clara. ‘Not even driving through a snowstorm on the highway.’

  Everyone nodded. They’d all felt the stunning certainty that this was how their lives would end. In a fiery crash, spinning out of control, invisible in the swirling, chaotic snow.

  ‘But that was the whole point, wasn’t it?’ asked Peter, perching on the arm of Clara’s wing chair. ‘To scare yourselves?’

  Was that why they’d done it? wondered Clara.

  ‘We were there to cleanse the place of evil spirits,’ said Myrna, but in the clear light of day it sounded ridiculous.

  ‘And maybe to scare ourselves just a little,’ admitted Gabri. ‘Well, it’s true,’ he added, seeing their faces. And Clara had to admit, it was true. Could they have been so foolish? Were their lives so sedate, so boring, they had to seek and manufacture danger? No, not manufacture. It was always there. They’d courted it. And it had responded.

  ‘Jeanne, the psychic,’ Myrna explained to Gamache, ‘said she could hear something coming. We were quiet for a moment and, well, I think I heard something too.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Gabri. ‘By the bed. Someone was turning over on the bed.’

  ‘No, it was from the corridor,’ said Clara, tearing her eyes from the fire and looking at their faces. It was reminiscent of the night before, all their faces lit by the fire, all eyes lunar and their bodies taut, as though prepared to bolt. She was back in that dreadful room. Smelling spring flowers, like a funeral home, and hearing those steps shuffling up behind her. ‘Steps. There were steps. Remember Jeanne said they were coming. The dead were coming.’

  Beauvoir felt his heart contract and his hands grow numb. He wondered whether Lemieux would mind if he held his hand, but decided he’d rather die.

  ‘They’re coming, she said,’ agreed Myrna. ‘Then she said something else.’

  ‘From the roof and somewhere else,’ said Gabri, trying to recall the words.

  ‘From the attic,’ Myrna corrected.

  ‘And the basement,’ said Clara, looking straight at Armand Gamache. He felt the blood drain from his face. The basement of the old Hadley house still haunted him.

  ‘And that was when it happened,’ said Gabri.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Clara. ‘She said one more thing.’

  ‘They’re all around us,’ said Myrna quietly. ‘Be here. Now!’

  She clapped her hands and Beauvoir almost died.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘And then she died,’ said Gabri. Olivier came up behind and placed his hands on Gabri’s shoulders. Gabri screamed.

  ‘Tabernacle. Are you trying to kill me?’

  The spell was broken. The room brightened again and Gamache noticed that a huge tray of sandwiches had appeared on the coffee table.

  ‘What happened then?’ Gamache asked, taking an open-faced melted goat cheese and arugula sandwich on a warm baguette.

  ‘Monsieur Béliveau carried her downstairs while Gilles ran for his car,’ said Myrna, helping herself to a grilled chicken and mango sandwich on a croissant.

  ‘Gilles?’ asked Gamache.

  ‘Sandon. Works in the woods. He and his par
tner Odile were there too.’

  Gamache remembered them from the list of witnesses in his pocket.

  ‘Gilles drove. Hazel and Sophie went with them,’ said Clara. ‘The rest of us took Hazel’s car.’

  ‘God, Hazel,’ said Myrna. ‘Has anyone spoken to her today?’

  ‘I called,’ said Clara, looking at the platter, but not really hungry. ‘Spoke to Sophie. Hazel was too upset to speak.’

  ‘Hazel and Madeleine were close?’ Gamache asked.

  ‘Best friends,’ said Olivier. ‘Since high school. They lived together.’

  ‘Not as lovers,’ said Gabri. ‘Well, not as far as I know.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, of course they’re not lovers,’ said Myrna. ‘Men. They think if two grown women live together and show affection they’re lesbians.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Gabri, ‘everyone makes that assumption about us.’ He patted Olivier’s knee. ‘But we forgive you.’

  ‘Was Madeleine Favreau ever heavy?’

  Gamache’s question was so unexpected he was met with blank stares, as though he’d spoken Russian.

  ‘Fat, you mean?’ Gabri asked. ‘I don’t think so.’

  The others shook their heads.

  ‘But she hadn’t lived here all that long, you know,’ said Peter. ‘What would you say? Five years?’

  ‘About that,’ Clara agreed. ‘But she fit in immediately. Joined the Anglican Church Women with Hazel—’

  Gabri groaned. ‘Merde. She was supposed to take over this summer. Now what am I supposed to do?’

  He was screwed, though not, he had to admit, quite as much as Madeleine herself.

  ‘Pauvre Gabri,’ said Olivier. ‘A personal tragedy.’

  ‘Well, you try running the ACW. Talk about murder,’ he said to Gamache. ‘Maybe Hazel’ll do it? You think?’

  ‘No I don’t “tink”,’ said Olivier. ‘And you’d better not ask her now.’

  ‘Is it possible someone else was in that house?’ Gamache asked. ‘Most of you heard sounds.’

  Clara, Myrna and Gabri were quiet then, remembering the ungodly noises.

  ‘What do you believe, Clara?’ Gamache asked.

  What do I believe? she asked herself. That the devil killed Madeleine? That evil lives in that house, possibly even put there by us? Perhaps the psychic was right and every unkind, every malevolent thought they’d ever had had been expelled from their idyllic village and eaten by that monstrosity. And it was ravenous. Maybe bitter thoughts were addictive. Once tasted you wanted more.