A Great Reckoning

by Louise Penny

  “Why does everyone think I know everything?”

  “We don’t,” said Gabri.

  “Well, I knew about Roof Trusses. No one else here did.”

  “What do you know about it?” asked Paul Gélinas.

  But Ruth was ignoring him, except to mumble something that sounded like “shithead.” So Myrna jumped into the cavernous silence that had opened up.

  “The reason you can’t find it is that it isn’t called Roof Trusses anymore. The name was changed some time ago.”

  “To what?”

  “Notre-Dame-de-Doleur,” said Gabri.

  “Our Lady of Pain?” asked Gélinas.

  Armand sat back in his chair. “Or it could be Our Lady of Grief.”

  “It’s not there anymore,” said Ruth. “It died.”

  “Can’t think the name helped,” said Gabri.

  “Can you show us on a map?” asked Gamache.

  “Have you not been listening, Miss Marple?” asked Ruth. “It’s not on a map. It’s gone.”

  “Thank you for clarifying that,” said Armand, with exaggerated courtesy. “I did just manage to grasp it. But can you show us where the village once was?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Can we get back to the archives?” asked Reine-Marie. “Any idea where all the material on the Great War might’ve gone?”

  “Do you know,” said Myrna slowly, “I do have an idea. Didn’t the historical society put on a special retrospective at the Legion in Saint-Rémy a few years back?”

  “That’s right,” said Clara. “In 2014, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the start of the war.”

  “So where’s all that material now?” asked Olivier.

  “Damnatio memoriae,” said Reine-Marie.

  Like Three Pines. Like Roof Trusses and Notre-Dame-de-Doleur, the war to end all wars had been banished from memory.

  * * *

  Armand and Reine-Marie walked Ruth home after dinner. Olivier and Gabri offered, but the Gamaches felt the need for fresh air, and distance from Paul Gélinas. They both hoped he’d be asleep by the time they returned.

  The cadet Nathaniel was sitting on the sofa in Ruth’s living room, reading. He sprang up as though kicked in the derriere when he heard them come in.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “No need to call me sir,” said Ruth. “Sit.”

  Nathaniel sat.

  “No, I meant them.” She pointed to Armand and Reine-Marie, who also sat smartly.

  Reine-Marie turned to Nathaniel. “What’re you reading?”

  “A book I found on the table.”

  He showed it to them.

  “We have that same book,” said Armand.

  “Exactly the same book,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s ours.”

  “Oh.”

  “Come here,” commanded Ruth from the kitchen.

  And they did.

  She’d found a worn old map of the area and spread it out on her white plastic table. A notebook with her crablike scribbling was open, as it always was, beside a curdling cup of tea.

  Armand recognized the cup. It was theirs.

  Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.

  “We’re looking up Roof Trusses,” Armand said to Nathaniel, who was studying the map with excruciating earnestness.

  “But we already tried,” said the cadet, looking up. “It’s not there, remember?”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” demanded Ruth.

  “Wh— ah— um.”

  “The future of the Sûreté?” Ruth asked Armand.

  “He didn’t ask you, Ruth,” said Reine-Marie kindly, with patience, “because he thinks you’re a crazy old woman.”

  “I do not,” said Nathaniel, turning very red, then very white.

  Ruth stood there, duck feathers on her pilled sweater, with Rosa muttering obscenities in her flannel nest beside the stove.

  And Ruth laughed. Reaching out her hand to Reine-Marie to steady herself.

  Nathaniel took a small step behind the Commander. Now she looked like a crazy old woman.

  “Well, I suppose you’re right,” Ruth said, finally getting some control over herself. “But I’m happy. Are you?”

  The young man, practically peeking out from behind Gamache, colored.

  “Are you happy, Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie, touching her thin arm.

  “I am.”

  “Oh, I’m so pleased to hear it. I was—”

  “Roof Trusses?” asked Armand. He could see the two women were settling in to discuss the human condition and the nature of happiness. Normally a conversation he’d love to hear, but not that evening.

  “There.” Ruth’s gnarly finger landed on the map, squishing a spot about ten kilometers from Three Pines. “That’s where Roof Trusses used to be. But the name was changed to Notre-Dame-de-Doleur a while back.”

  Nathaniel wrote that down, then took a closer look at the map.

  “But there’s nothing there. You’re just pointing to a field.”

  He stared at Ruth. Ruth glared at him.

  “And now, Cadet Smythe, comes another lesson in police work,” said the Commander. “Who to believe. Is Madame Zardo telling you the truth, or messing with you?”

  “Could be a mind-fuck,” agreed Ruth.

  “How can you tell?” Nathaniel asked Gamache.

  “You can’t, with certainty. You can be taught to gather facts, evidence, but the very best investigators learn to trust something we’re told early in our lives is useless. Even dangerous. Instinct. You use your head and your heart and your gut. The whole animal, like a good hunter. What does your instinct tell you about Madame Zardo? Is she telling the truth?”

  Nathaniel turned back to Ruth, who was watching him with some interest.

  “I think she is. At least, I think she believes it. I’ll go tomorrow and find out.”

  Gamache nodded approval at the distinction between truth and fact.

  “May I?” The cadet pointed to the map and Ruth grunted.

  Armand watched the boy carefully fold up the worn paper. His red hair just touching his pale forehead as he bent over. There was the ready blush, the smooth, perfect skin. The bashful personality.

  And Armand reflected on his conversation with Gélinas in the garden.

  Gamache knew Gélinas was wrong. The real criminals, the worst criminals, weren’t found off the beaten path. They were found in our kitchens, at our tables.

  Unspectacular and always human.

  CHAPTER 35

  “I’m telling you, it should be here.”

  Nathaniel Smythe looked around, almost frantic now, barely wincing as sleet slapped his face. The map he’d borrowed from Madame Zardo was just a sodden mess in his hands.

  The other three had turned so that the combination of rain and snow and ice pelted against the backs of their coats and hoods. The relentless noise almost drowned out Nathaniel’s protests, which were rapidly descending into whining.

  “There’s nothing here,” called Jacques. “Gamache fucked with you.”

  His shoulders were hunched and his chin was bent into his chest, so that from behind he could have been a crooked old man. The winter coat he wore came to his hips. More a ski jacket than something appropriate for standing on the side of a muddy half-frozen road, in a sleet storm, staring at flat gray fields and forest.

  Jacques’s slacks were soaked through, he could barely feel his legs, and he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably.

  Nathaniel looked from him to the other two, but they also had their backs turned against the rain and snow and the cadet who’d brought them there with the claim of having found Roof Trusses.

  Nathaniel turned full circle, blinking against the sleet that slid off his face. He squinted at the fields, scanning the horizon. Desolate.

  No sign of the village. No sign of life.

  “Come on,” shouted Jacques, trudging back to the car.

  Hu
ifen and Amelia followed. Nathaniel stood rooted in place, obstinate, until he heard the car start up. Then he ran back to it, more than a little afraid they’d leave him there. He got into the backseat beside Amelia, who had her arms wrapped tightly around her chest and her nose tucked into her sodden jacket.

  Notre-Dame-de-Pissed-Off.

  The heater was on full blast and the tight car smelt of wet wool.

  “This was a waste of time,” said Jacques from the driver’s seat, holding his trembling hands to the heat vent.

  “But she said it would be here,” said Nathaniel.

  “She? I thought it was Gamache.”

  “He suggested we investigate, but the information came from the woman I’m staying with.”

  “I must’ve missed that class at the academy where they told us to believe old drunks,” said Jacques.

  Huifen snorted. In amusement or because she’d caught pneumonia.

  Back in Three Pines, they went to change, but when Nathaniel came down the stairs at Ruth’s place in warm, dry clothes, he found Amelia in the living room with the poet.

  When they both looked at him with sharp, assessing eyes, he felt he’d descended into a Grimms’ tale. Those stories rarely ended well for fey boys with bright red hair and a smile he hoped was ingratiating but knew just made him look like dinner.

  “I lost your map.”

  “That’s okay,” said Ruth, getting to her feet. “I don’t need a map anymore.”

  “There was nothing there,” said Nathaniel.

  He realized he’d failed the Commander’s test. Or, at least, his instinct had. This woman wasn’t reliable. She was exactly as she appeared, after all. A crazy old drunk.

  “Well, nothing you could see, anyway,” said Ruth.

  “What else is there?” he asked.

  “Come on,” said Amelia, getting to her feet.

  He followed her out, but instead of taking refuge with the others in the bistro, Amelia got in the car.

  A few minutes later, they were back at exactly the same place they’d been an hour before.

  Nothing had changed, except it seemed even more desolate.

  “I asked Madame Zardo to repeat what she told you, and she said the village was here,” said Amelia.

  “That’s what I told you,” he said.

  “I also called the toponymie man. He gave me the map coordinates. Here.”

  The sleet hit the windshield and slid slowly down the glass, to pile up as slush on the wipers at the bottom. “He looked it up and confirmed that the name Roof Trusses had been officially changed in the 1920s. To Notre-Dame-de-Doleur.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Roof Trusses was obviously a mistake,” she said. “He told us that. It should never have been the name to begin with.”

  “I know, but why Notre-Dame-de-Doleur?”

  “I asked, but he didn’t know. Probably the name of the church.”

  “I’ve heard of Notre-Dame-de-Grace,” said Nathaniel. “And Notre-Dame-de-Paris, and Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci. And—”

  “Okay, I get it. Notre-Dame-de-Doleur is unusual—”

  “Unique.”

  “Maybe. But there’s nothing wrong with unique, is there?”

  They looked at each other. The girl who was trying so hard to be different, and the boy who was trying so hard to be the same.

  “I guess not,” he conceded, without conviction.

  “Monsieur Toponymie was surprised by the name,” Amelia admitted. “But there’re other weird ones around. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, for instance.”

  “There’s really a town called that?”

  “Oui. Complete with an exclamation mark after each ‘Ha.’”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “No, but you sound like you are. Ha ha.”

  He caught the faintest upturn at the corners of her mouth. It looked like victory.

  “Makes the people in Notre-Dame-de-Doleur seem pretty lucky, doesn’t it?” she said. “It could’ve been worse.”

  “It was worse. Roof Trusses.”

  But he was impressed that she’d pursued it. Not giving up, where the others had. Where he had.

  But did it matter? Even if this was where the village once stood, it wasn’t there anymore.

  They sat side by side and looked through the slowly fogging windows.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  “You’re missing the point. It might be gone, but it was here once. And I bet some people stayed behind. They always do. Let’s go.”

  She got out of the car before he could point out that no one had stayed behind. At least, no one living.

  And then he understood what Amelia meant. And what Madame Zardo had meant.

  They were six feet under. The remaining villagers were remains.

  Notre-Dame-de-Doleur, née Roof Trusses, had become a ghost town.

  It took them almost an hour, and they were soaked through and chilled to the bone, but finally they found the cemetery. It had been overcome by the forest, especially lush in that area. The gravestones had sunk and toppled over, but most could still be read. Whoever had made them had etched the names deep into the local granite.

  Amelia and Nathaniel barely noticed that the sleet had turned to full-on snow until after they’d examined every gravestone they could find.

  Then they turned to each other, the huge spring flakes falling between them.

  There was near silence, except for the familiar tapping as the snow landed. On them. On the trees. On the ground.

  And they noticed another sound now. A plopping. Plunking. Plinking.

  A timpani.

  The forest was playing music for them.

  An hour later, they walked into the bistro and handed two metal buckets to Olivier.

  He looked into them warily, then smiled. “Sap buckets. Where’d you get these?” He placed them on the floor and admired them. “You don’t see originals like this much anymore. And they’re full.”

  “We emptied most of the other buckets into these two,” Nathaniel explained.

  “Seemed a shame to waste the sap,” said Amelia. “They were in the woods by Roof Trusses.”

  “You found it?”

  They nodded.

  Behind Olivier, over by the fire, Ruth lifted her hand, and when the cadets waved at her, she extended her finger in greeting.

  “Does she know what that means?” Nathaniel whispered to Olivier.

  He laughed. “She sure does. Do you?”

  “Well, it means—”

  “It means she likes you,” said Olivier.

  Jacques and Huifen were also there. They sat at what they now considered their table in the bistro, with hot chocolates and the map, and nodded to the younger cadets.

  But Amelia and Nathaniel walked right by them with just a friendly “Bonjour.” And joined Ruth.

  “I’d ask you to sit,” said Ruth, “but I don’t want you to.”

  Nathaniel lifted his hand and slowly unfolded his finger. He’d never given anyone the finger. Had wanted to, many, many times. But never had. And the first time he flipped someone off, it was an old woman.

  It didn’t seem a good reason to be proud of himself, and yet he was. Between the waves of terror.

  Rosa, nesting in Ruth’s lap, muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  And Ruth laughed.

  “Oh, what the hell. Sit down, but don’t order anything.”

  They took off their wet jackets and hung them on nails by the fire, then moved their chairs a bit closer to the warmth. Ruth leaned toward the cadets and examined them. Soaked through, chilled to the marrow. But happy.

  “You found Roof Trusses,” she said, and they nodded. “But did you find the grave?”

  * * *

  Clara and Myrna followed Reine-Marie into the historical society in Saint-Rémy. The secretary there confirmed that there’d been a very successful retrospective on the region’s involvement in the Great War.
>
  “Then perhaps you can tell me where all the material is?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “We gave it to you, didn’t we?” said the elderly Québécoise volunteer.

  “You gave me a lot of boxes,” Reine-Marie confirmed. “And I’ve been through most of them, but I can’t find a single item relating to the First World War.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The woman clearly suspected Reine-Marie had either lost or stolen the items. Reine-Marie was feeling slightly defensive when she realized she’d almost certainly given that very same look to researchers who claimed not to have something she believed was in the material they’d been given.

  She looked at the courteous, suspicious face. And smiled.

  “I know it sounds unbelievable, but I really did look and it really isn’t there.”

  “Hmmm.” The woman sat back in her plastic chair. “Now where could it be?”

  While she pondered, and Reine-Marie waited, Clara and Myrna passed the time by wandering the permanent exhibit in the large room that opened up behind the volunteer desk. It was filled with clothing, and photographs, and maps.

  “Look, this one’s signed,” said Clara. “Turcotte.”

  “And dated. 1919.”

  It clearly showed Saint-Rémy, a bustling lumber town, and Williamsburg, and it even had Roof Trusses. Not yet rebaptized Notre-Dame-de-Doleur.

  But it did not have Three Pines.

  “Why?” asked Clara.

  But Myrna had no answers. Instead she’d wandered over to a mannequin wearing a lace wedding dress. The mannequin’s waist was about the size of Myrna’s forearm.

  “People were smaller then,” she explained to Clara. “Lack of nutrition.”

  “Lack of croissants.”

  “How did they survive?” asked Myrna, shaking her head.

  “The pioneer spirit,” said Clara.

  “Got it,” Reine-Marie called from the front desk. “We’re off.”

  “Where to?” asked Clara and Myrna, hurrying to catch up.

  “The Legion. The show was there, and the secretary thinks the things might’ve been boxed up and put in the basement, and they forgot about them.”

  “Ironic,” said Myrna.

  * * *

  Commander Gamache spent most of the day in his office at the academy. The door closed, if not actually locked.