A Fatal Grace (33 page)

Clara and Peter Morrow turned their television and VCR on and Beauvoir shoved the tape into the slot.

He wasn’t looking forward to this. Two hours of some old English movie where all they probably did was talk, talk, talk. No explosions. No sex. He thought he’d rather have the flu than sit through
The Lion in Winter
. Beside him on the sofa Agent Lemieux was all excited.

Kids.

Émilie Longpré dropped Gamache at the old Hadley house as he requested.

‘Would you like me to wait?’

‘No, madame,
mais vous êtes très gentille
. The walk back will do me good.’

‘It’s a cold night, Chief Inspector, and getting colder.’ She pointed to her dashboard. The time and temperature were displayed. Minus fifteen Celsius already and the sun had just set. It was four thirty.

‘I’ve never liked this house,’ she said, looking at the turrets and blank windows. Ahead the village of Three Pines beckoned, the lights glowing and warm with a promise of company and an aperitif by a glad fire. With a wrench Gamache opened the car door, which screamed in protest, its hinges frozen and crying. He watched as Émilie’s car disappeared over the small hill into the village, then he turned back to the house. A light could be seen in the living room and a hall light went on after he’d rung the bell.

‘Come in, come in.’ Richard Lyon practically yanked him through the door then slammed it shut. ‘Terrible night. Come in, Chief Inspector.’

Oh, for God’s sake, don’t sound so hearty. Can’t you just once sound normal? Try to be like someone you admire. President Roosevelt, maybe. Or Captain Jean Luc Picard.

‘What can I do for you?’ Lyon liked the sound of his voice now. Calm and measured and in control. Just don’t fuck up.

‘I need to ask you some questions, but first, how’s your daughter?’

‘Crie?’

Why was it, Gamache wondered, that every time he asked about Crie, Lyon seemed perplexed, almost surprised to discover he had a daughter, or that anyone cared.

‘She’s doing all right, I suppose. Ate something for lunch. I put the heat up so she’s not so cold.’

‘Is she speaking?’

‘No, but then she never did much.’

Gamache felt like shaking this lethargic man who seemed to live in a world of cotton batting, insulated and muffled. Without being invited Gamache walked into the living room and sat down opposite Crie. The girl’s clothes had changed. Now she wore white shorts that strangled her legs, and a pink halter top. Her hair was in pigtails, and her face blank.

‘Crie, it’s Chief Inspector Gamache. How are you?’

No reply.

‘It’s cold in here. Do you mind if I give you my sweater?’ He removed his cardigan and draped it over her bare shoulders, then turned to Lyon.

‘When I leave I suggest you put a blanket round her and light the fireplace.’

‘But it doesn’t throw much heat,’ said Lyon. Don’t sound petulant. Sound strong, sound like the man of the house. Sound decisive. ‘Besides, there’s no wood.’

‘There’s wood in the basement. I’ll help you bring it up, and you’re probably right about the heat, but the fire is cheerful and bright. Those things are important as well. Now, I have some questions for you.’ Gamache walked out of the living room and into the hall. He didn’t want to spend much time there. He wanted to meet Myrna in her bookstore before it closed.

‘What was your wife’s real name?’

‘De Poitiers.’

‘Her real name.’

Lyon looked completely at sea. ‘Not de Poitiers? What’re you saying?’

‘She made that up. You didn’t know?’

Lyon shook his head.

‘What are your finances, Monsieur Lyon?’

He opened his mouth then clamped it shut before the lie could escape. There was no longer any need to lie, to pretend to be something and someone he wasn’t. CC was the one who insisted and had made him go along. Pretend they were born to be in a house like this, the manor house, the one on the hill. Born to greatness. Born to riches.

‘I signed over my pension to buy this house,’ he admitted. ‘We’re in way over our heads.’

He was surprised how easy that was. CC had told him they could never admit the truth. If people knew what life was really like for them, they’d be ruined. But deceit and secrecy had brought them to ruin anyway. And now Richard Lyon told the truth and nothing bad happened.

‘Not any more. Your wife was insured for hundreds of thousands of dollars.’

Something bad just happened, and now Lyon deeply regretted telling the truth. What would President Roosevelt do? Captain Picard? CC?

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Lie.

‘Your signature’s on the policy. We have the documents.’

Something very bad indeed was happening.

‘You’re an engineer by training, and an inventor. You could easily hook up the booster cables that electrocuted your wife. You’d know that she’d need to be standing in water and have bare hands. You could have slipped her the niacin over breakfast. You knew her well enough to know she’d take the best seat under the heat lamp.’ Now Gamache’s voice, which had been so reasonable it somehow added to the nightmare, grew very quiet. He reached into the satchel and brought out a photograph. ‘What’s troubled me from the very start was how the murderer knew CC would grab the chair in front of her. It’s not the sort of thing people do. Now I know. This is how.’

He showed Richard Lyon the picture. Richard saw his wife in the minute or so before she died. Beside her Kaye was saying something, but CC’s attention was riveted on the chair in front.

Richard Lyon blanched.

‘You, sir, would know too.’

‘I didn’t do it.’ His voice was tiny and reedy. Even the voices in his head had fled, leaving him alone now. All alone.

‘He didn’t do it,’ said Myrna twenty minutes later.

‘How d’you know?’ Gamache asked, settling into the rocking chair. He stretched his long legs out in front of the woodstove, which was radiating heat. Myrna had stirred up a hot rum toddy for him and it sat on a stack of
New York Review of Books
on the blanket box between them. Gamache was thawing out.

‘He sat beside me on the bleachers the whole time.’

‘I remember you told me that, but is it possible he left for a few minutes without you noticing?’

‘As you were walking here from the old Hadley house would you have noticed if your coat had fallen off, just for a few minutes?’ She had a twinkle in her eye as she asked.

‘Maybe.’ He knew what she was getting at, and didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear that his perfect suspect, his only perfect suspect, couldn’t have done it because Myrna here would have noticed the sudden absence of Lyon’s body heat, if not his personality.

‘Look, I don’t have any love for the man,’ she said. ‘Someone over a period of years has screwed Crie up to the point where she’s almost comatose. At first I thought she might be autistic, but after spending a few minutes with her I don’t think so. I think she’s run away, inside her head. And I think Richard Lyon’s to blame.’

‘Tell me.’ Gamache picked up his warm mug. He could smell the rum and the spices.

‘Well, let me be careful here. In my opinion Crie’s been emotionally and verbally abused all her life. I think CC was the abuser, but there are generally three parties to child abuse. The abused, the abuser and the bystander. One parent does it but the other knows it’s happening and does nothing.’

‘If CC emotionally abused her daughter, would she also have abused her husband?’ Gamache remembered Lyon, frightened and lost.

‘Almost without a doubt. Still, he’s Crie’s father and he needed to save her.’

‘And didn’t.’

Myrna nodded. ‘Can you imagine what it was like living in that house?’ Myrna’s back was to the window and she couldn’t see the old Hadley house, but she could feel it.

‘Should we call Family Services? Would Crie be better somewhere else?’

‘No, the worst is over, I think. What she needs is a loving parent and intense therapy. Has anyone spoken to her school?’

‘They say she’s bright, in fact her grades are very high, but she doesn’t fit in.’

‘And probably never will now. Too much damage done. We become our beliefs, and Crie believes something horrible about herself. Has heard it all her life, and now it haunts her, in her own mother’s voice. It’s the voice most of us hear in the quiet moments, whispering kindnesses or accusations. Our mother.’

‘Or our father,’ said Gamache, ‘though in this case he said nothing. She said too much and he said not enough. Poor Crie. No wonder it led to murder.’

‘We live in a world of guided missiles and misguided men,’ said Myrna. ‘Dr Martin Luther King, Junior.’

Gamache nodded, then remembered something else.

‘Your beliefs become your thoughts

Your thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi,’ he said. ‘There’s more, but I can’t remember it all.’

‘I didn’t know the Mahatma was so chatty, but I agree with him. Very powerful. It starts with our beliefs, and our beliefs come from our parents, and if we have a sick parent we have sick beliefs and it infects everything we think and do.’

Gamache wondered who CC’s mother was and what beliefs she’d filled her daughter with. He sipped his toddy, his chilled body finally warming up, and looked around.

The store felt like an old library in a country house. The walls were lined with warm wooden shelves, and they in turn were lined with books. Hooked rugs were scattered here and there and a Vermont Castings woodstove sat in the middle of the store with a sofa facing it and a rocking chair on either side. Gamache, who loved bookstores, thought this was just the most attractive one he’d ever met.

He’d arrived a few minutes before five, passing Ruth. The elderly poet again stopped halfway across the village green and plunked down on the icy bench. He looked out Myrna’s window now and saw her there still, rigidly and frigidly outlined in the cheerful lights of the Christmas tree.

‘Well, all children are sad,’ quoted Gamache, ‘but some get over it.’

Myrna followed his gaze.

‘Beer walk,’ she said.

‘Beer walk,’ repeated Robert Lemieux. He was in the Morrow home, having wandered away from the television set. Clara and Inspector Beauvoir were still there, eyes like satellite dishes, staring at the screen. The only sign of life Lemieux had seen in Beauvoir since
The Lion in Winter
had begun was the occasional gasp. Lemieux had tried to get into it, but found himself drifting off to sleep. He had visions of his head slipping onto Beauvoir’s shoulder, mouth open, drooling. Best to get up and walk around.

Now he stared out the window and Peter Morrow joined him.

‘What’s she doing?’ Lemieux pointed to the old woman sitting on the bench while the rest of the village huddled indoors or scurried through the night that felt as though the air itself would freeze solid.

‘Oh, that’s her beer walk.’

Lemieux shook his head. Pathetic old drunk.

When Myrna finished explaining Gamache walked to his coat, feeling inside each pocket until he came to what he was looking for. The copy of Ruth’s book found on Elle’s body.

He returned to his seat and opened it, reading at random.

‘She’s a remarkable poet,’ said Myrna. ‘Too bad she’s such a mess as a person. May I?’ She reached out for the book and opened it at the beginning. ‘Did Clara lend you this?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, it’s inscribed to her.’ Myrna showed him. ‘You stink, love Ruth.’

‘Clara’s “You stink”?’

‘Well, she did that day. Isn’t that funny? She said she lost it. I guess she found it again, though you say you didn’t get it from her?’

‘No, it’s part of an investigation.’

‘A homicide investigation?’

‘You said she lost it after the signing? Where?’ Gamache was leaning forward now, his bright eyes focused on Myrna.

‘At Ogilvy’s. She’d bought the book at Ruth’s launch, had it signed and then we had to leave.’ Myrna could feel his energy and felt herself getting excited, though she didn’t know why.

‘Did you come straight back?’

‘I got the car and picked her up outside. We didn’t stop anywhere.’

‘Did she go anywhere else before you picked her up?’

Myrna thought about it and shook her head. Gamache stood up. He had to get over to the Morrow place.

‘Well, there was one thing she told me the next day. She bought some food for this old beggar outside. She—’ Myrna stopped herself.

‘Go on.’ Gamache turned at the door.

‘Nothing.’

Gamache just stared.

‘I can’t tell you. It’s for Clara to say.’

‘The beggar’s dead. Murdered.’ He held up Ruth’s book and said softly, ‘You need to tell me.’

TWENTY-EIGHT