A Fatal Grace (25 page)

Dr Sharon Harris had just settled into her easy chair and ordered a Dubonnet when Gamache arrived, full of apologies and smiles. He joined her in a Dubonnet and sat down. They had a window seat, looking through the mullions at the frozen pond and Christmas trees. Over her shoulder he could see the fire crackling and playing in the hearth. Dr Harris was absently toying with a discreet white tag hanging from their table. She glanced at it.

‘Two hundred and seventy dollars.’

‘Not the Dubonnet, I hope.’ Gamache stopped his untouched drink partway to his mouth.

‘No.’ She laughed. ‘The table.’

‘
Santé.
’ He took a sip and smiled. He’d forgotten. Everything in the bistro was an antique, collected by Olivier. And everything was for sale. He could finish his drink and buy the cut crystal glass. It was, actually, a lovely glass. As he held it up and looked through it the crystal picked up and refracted the amber light from the fireplace, splitting it into parts. Like a very warm rainbow. Or the chakras, he thought.

‘Are you still looking to move here?’ he asked, bringing himself back to the table and catching her wistful gaze out the window.

‘If a place comes up I would, though when they do they get bought fast.’

‘The old Hadley home came up about a year ago.’

‘Except that place, though I have to admit I looked at the listing. Cheap. Almost gave it away.’

‘How much were they asking?’

‘I can’t remember exactly but it was less than a hundred thousand.’

‘
C’est incroyable
,’ said Gamache, taking a handful of cashews.

Dr Harris looked around the bistro, filling up with patrons. ‘No one seems too bothered by the murder. Not a popular woman, our victim?’

‘No, it seems not. She was the one who bought the Hadley house.’

‘Ahh,’ said Dr Harris.

‘Ahh?’ questioned Gamache.

‘Anyone who’d buy that house must have been insensitive in the extreme. I didn’t even like looking at its picture on the computer listing.’

‘People have different sensibilities.’ Gamache smiled.

‘True,’ she agreed, ‘but would you buy it?’

‘I don’t even like going in it,’ he whispered to her conspiratorially. ‘Gives me the willies. What’ve you got for me?’

Dr Harris leaned down and drew a dossier from her briefcase. Placing it on the table she took a handful of nuts, leaned back and looked out the window again, sipping her drink between salty mouthfuls.

Gamache put on his half-moon reading glasses and spent the next ten minutes going over the report, finally putting it down and taking a contemplative sip of Dubonnet.

‘Niacin,’ he said.

‘Niacin,’ she agreed.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Besides the niacin she was a healthy, though perhaps underweight, forty-eight-year-old woman. She’d given birth. She was pre-menopausal. All very natural and normal. Her feet were charred from the shock and her hands were blistered, in the same pattern as the tubing of the chair. There was a tiny cut underneath that but it was old and healing. It’s all consistent with electrocution except for one thing. The niacin.’

Gamache leaned forward, taking his glasses from his face and tapping them gently on the manila folder. ‘What is it?’

‘A vitamin. One of the B complex.’ She leaned forward so that they were both talking over the table. ‘It’s prescribed for high cholesterol and some people take it thinking it can increase brain power.’

‘Can it?’

‘No evidence.’

‘Then why do they think that?’

‘Well, what it does produce is a facial flush, and I guess someone thought that meant blood was rushing to the brain and you know what that can only mean.’

‘More brain power.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She shook her head in disdain. ‘Fitting that people with so little brain power would come to that conclusion. A normal dose is five milligrams. It’s enough to slightly raise the heart rate and the blood pressure. As I said, it’s often prescribed by doctors, but it’s also available over the counter. I don’t think you can overdose on it. In fact, it’s even put into some breakfast cereals. Niacin and thiamin.’

‘So if the normal dose is five, what did CC have in her?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Phew. That’s a lot of cereal.’

‘Captain Crunch a suspect?’

Gamache laughed, the wrinkles round his eyes falling into familiar folds.

‘What would twenty milligrams have done to her?’ he asked.

‘Produced quite a flush. A classic hot flash. Sweating, discoloration of her face.’ Dr Harris thought some more. ‘I’m not all that familiar with it so I looked it up in the pharmacopoeia guide. There’s nothing dangerous about niacin. Uncomfortable, yes, but not dangerous. If the person was hoping to kill her, he got it wrong.’

‘No, I think he got it just right. He did kill her, and niacin was an accomplice. CC de Poitiers was electrocuted, right?’

Dr Harris nodded.

‘And you more than anyone knows how hard that is.’

Again she nodded.

‘Especially in the middle of winter. She had to not just touch a power source, but she had to be standing in a puddle with metal boots and…’

He left it dangling. Dr Harris thought about it for a moment. Tried to see the scene in her mind. The woman standing in a puddle at the chair, reaching out – ‘Bare hands. She had to have bare hands. That’s how he did it. And I thought you’d asked for the extensive blood work in case of poisoning.’

‘The gloves. I kept asking myself, why did she take off her gloves? Why would anyone?’

‘Because she was hot,’ said Dr Harris. She loved her job but she envied Gamache and Beauvoir the ability to put all the pieces together.

‘Someone at the community breakfast slipped her enough niacin to produce a flush. How long would it take?’ Gamache asked.

‘About twenty minutes.’

‘Enough time for her to be at the curling when it came on. At some point she began to get flushed and removed her gloves and probably her hat. We’ll see in the pictures tomorrow.’

‘What pictures?’

‘There was a photographer there. CC hired him to take publicity shots of her mingling with the common folk. His film gets to the lab tomorrow.’

‘Now why would she do that?’

‘She was a designer, a kind of minor Martha Stewart. Just came out with a book and was considering a magazine. The pictures would have been for that.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘Most people hadn’t. But she seemed to have this image of herself as a successful and dynamic motivator. Like Martha, her business went beyond what colors the walls should be – white, by the way – into a personal philosophy of life.’

‘Sounds odious.’

‘I can’t get a grasp of it,’ admitted Gamache, leaning back comfortably. ‘I don’t know whether she was completely delusional or whether there was something almost noble about her. She had a dream and she pursued it, and damn the doubters.’

‘You agree with her philosophy?’

‘No. I spoke to someone today who described it as a kind of Frankenstein. I think that was quite accurate. Actually, that reference keeps popping up in this case. Someone else talked about the villagers celebrating the death of the monster, like in Frankenstein.’

‘The monster wasn’t Frankenstein,’ Dr Harris reminded him. ‘Dr Frankenstein created the monster.’

Gamache felt his chest tighten as she spoke. There was something there. Something he’d been approaching and missing throughout this case.

‘So what now,
patron
?’ she asked.

‘You’ve taken us a huge step forward with the niacin. Thank you. Now we just follow the headlights.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I always think a case is like driving from here to the Gaspé. A great long distance and I can’t see the end. But I don’t have to. All I have to do is keep throwing light in front of me, and follow the headlights. Eventually I’ll get there.’

‘Like Diogenes with his lamp?’

‘In reverse. He was looking for one honest man. I’m looking for a murderer.’

‘Be careful. The murderer can see the man with the lamp coming.’

‘One more question, doctor. How would someone give her niacin?’

‘It’s water soluble, but quite bitter. Coffee would probably mask it. Orange juice I guess.’

‘Tea?’

‘Less likely. It’s not strong enough.’

She gathered her things and taking her key from her pocket she pointed it out the window and pressed a small button. Outside a car came to life, headlights on and presumably the heater struggling to warm the inside. Of all the inventions in the last twenty years Gamache knew the two best were car seat warmers and automatic ignition. Too bad for Richard Lyon he’d invented magnetized soldiers instead.

Gamache walked her to the door, but just as she was about to leave something else occurred to him. ‘What do you know about Eleanor de Poitiers?’

Dr Harris paused for a moment.

‘Nothing. Who is she?’

‘How about King Henry the Second?’

‘King Henry the Second? You’re not seriously asking me about some long dead British royal? My favorite was Ethelred the Unready. Will he do?’

‘What a repertoire you have. Ethelred and Captain Crunch.’

‘A catholic education. Sorry I couldn’t help.’

‘Niacin.’ He pointed to the dossier still on their table. ‘You saved the day.’

She felt absurdly pleased.

‘Actually,’ he said as he helped her into her coat, ‘there is one more thing. Eleanor of Aquitaine.’

‘Oh, that’s easy.
The Lion in Winter
.’

‘Honey, could you get the door? I’m in my studio,’ Clara called. There was no answer. ‘Never mind,’ she called after the second knock. ‘I’ll get it. Don’t bother yourself. No really. I don’t mind.’ She yelled the last at the closed door to his studio. She was pretty certain he was in there playing free cell.

It was unusual to hear a knock. Most of the people they knew walked right in. Most helped themselves to whatever was in the fridge. Peter and Clara sometimes came home to find Ruth asleep on their sofa, a glass of Scotch and the
Times Literary Review
on the hassock in front of her. Once they found Gabri in the bath. Apparently the hot water in the B. & B. had run out, and so had Gabri.

Clara yanked open the door, prepared for the blast of cold air and not totally surprised to see Chief Inspector Gamache, though a tiny part of her still hoped it might be the chief curator of the MOMA, come to see her works.

‘Come on in.’ She stepped aside and quickly closed the door after him.

‘I won’t keep you long.’ He gave a tiny bow and she bowed back, thinking maybe she should have given a subtle curtsy. ‘Do you have a video player?’

Now there was a question she wasn’t expecting.

He unzipped his parka and brought out a video, kept warm against his body.

‘
The Lion in Winter
?’ She looked at the box.

‘
Précisément.
I’d very much like to watch it, as soon as possible.’ He was perfectly contained and relaxed, but Clara knew him well enough to know this wasn’t a casual request or a nice way to spend a quiet winter evening in the country.

‘We do. Ruth and Myrna are coming over for dinner, though.’

‘I don’t want to be in the way.’

‘Never.’ She took his arm and led him into the warm and inviting kitchen. ‘Always room for more, but I want to make sure you don’t mind the company. Peter’s made a family specialty from the leftover turkey and vegetable. It looks horrible but tastes like heaven.’

Before long Peter had emerged from his studio and the others had arrived, Myrna enveloping everyone in her generous arms and Ruth making for the bar.

‘Thank God,’ was Ruth’s reaction when told Gamache wanted to watch a video. ‘I thought I’d have to make conversation yet another night.’

Clara prepared a basket with dinners for Richard and Crie and Myrna volunteered to deliver it.

‘May I drive you up?’ Gamache offered.

‘It’s a short walk. Besides, if I walk that’ll give me permission to have seconds.’ Myrna smiled as she wrapped a huge colorful scarf round her neck until she looked like an African tribesman in a cold spell.

‘Could you check on Crie when you’re there?’ Gamache lowered his voice. ‘I’m worried about her.’

‘What’re you thinking?’ Myrna asked, her normally jovial face searching and serious. ‘It’s natural for a child who just saw her mother murdered to be abnormal for a while.’

‘True, but this seems like more. Could you just see?’

She agreed and was off.

Agent Yvette Nichol edged up to the car in front of her in the fast lane of the autoroute, heading from Montreal back to the Townships. Her bumper was just inches from the car in front. Any minute now the driver would notice.

That was the moment. That exquisite moment. Would he hit the brake? Even a slight tap would send their cars careering together at 140 kilometers an hour and they would be a fireball within seconds. Nichol gripped her steering wheel tighter, her eyes keen with concentration and rage. How dare he slow her up? How dare he use her lane? How dare he not pull over? Slow, stupid man. She’d show him, as she showed anyone who stood in her way. Rage made her invincible. But there was something else too.

Glee.

She was going to scare the shit out of the driver.

‘I read your book,’ said Gamache to Ruth as the two of them sat in front of the cheery fire while Peter puttered in the kitchen and Clara browsed her bookshelves for something to read.

Ruth looked as though she’d rather be sitting in scalding oil than next to a compliment. She decided to ignore him and took a long gulp of her Scotch.

‘But my wife has a question.’

‘You have a wife? Someone agreed to marry you?’

‘She did and she was only a little drunk. She wants to know what FINE means in your title.’

‘I’m not surprised your wife has no idea what fine means. Probably doesn’t know what happy or sane means either.’

‘She’s a librarian and she was saying in her experience when people use capital letters it’s because the letters stand for something. Your title is
I’m FINE
with the FINE in capitals.’