A Fatal Grace (43 page)

He took the filled wine glass back and put it on the table by the phone, Gamache smiling his thanks.

‘
Bonjour?
’ Gamache heard the familiar voice and his heart contracted.

‘
Oui, bonjour
, is this Madame Gamache, the librarian? I hear you have a book overdue.’

‘I have a husband overdue, and he is a little bookish,’ she said, laughing. ‘Hello, Armand. How are things going?’

‘Eleanor Allaire.’

There was a pause.

‘Thank you, Armand. Eleanor Allaire.’ Reine-Marie said the name as though part of the novena. ‘Beautiful name.’

‘And a beautiful woman, I’ve been told.’

He told her everything then. About Eleanor, about her friends, about India and the daughter. About being the crack in the vessel, and finding herself on the streets. About CC, taken from her home, raised by God knows who, searching for her mother and even going to Three Pines.

‘Why did she think her mother would be there?’ Reine-Marie asked.

‘Because that was the image her mother had painted on the Christmas decoration. The Li Bien ball. The only thing CC had from El. She was either told or must have guessed that the three pine trees on the ball meant the village where her mother was born and raised. This afternoon we spoke to old-timers and they remember the Allaires. Just the one daughter, Eleanor. They left almost fifty years ago.’

‘So CC bought a home in Three Pines to search for her mother? I wonder why she did it now? Why not years ago?’

‘I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,’ said Gamache, sipping his wine. In the background he could hear the
Hockey Night in Canada
theme. Reine-Marie was watching the game as well this Saturday night. ‘Thomas isn’t having a good night.’

‘He should stay closer to the net,’ she said. ‘The Rangers have his number.’

‘Do you have a theory why CC would suddenly decide to search for her mother now?’

‘You said CC had approached an American company about a catalogue?’

‘What’re you thinking?’

‘I was wondering whether maybe CC waited until she felt she was a success.’

Gamache thought about it, watching the players on the television pass the puck up the ice, lose it, skate furiously backwards as the other team charged. Beauvoir and Lemieux fell back into the sofa, groaning.

‘The American contract.’ He nodded. ‘And the book. We think that’s why El moved from the bus station to Ogilvy’s. CC had posters put up advertising her book. One was at the bus station. El must have seen it and realized CC de Poitiers was her daughter, so she went to Ogilvy’s to find her.’

‘And CC went to Three Pines to find her mother,’ said Reine-Marie. It was heartbreaking to think of the two wounded women searching for each other.

An image sprang to Gamache’s mind of frail little El, old and cold, shuffling the long blocks, giving up her prized place on the subway grate in hopes of finding her daughter.

‘Shoot, shoot,’ the guys in the living room were shouting.

‘He shoots, he scores!’ the announcer yelled to wild applause from the New Forum and near hysteria from Beauvoir, Lemieux, Gabri and Olivier, who were hugging and dancing around the room.

‘Kowalski,’ Beauvoir called to Gamache. ‘Finally. It’s three to one now.’

‘What did CC do in the village?’ Reine-Marie asked. She’d turned the television off in their sitting room to concentrate on the conversation.

‘Well, she thought one of the elderly women was her mother so she seems to have interviewed them all.’

‘And then she found her mother at Ogilvy’s,’ said Reine-Marie.

‘El must have recognized CC. I think she must have approached and CC paid no attention, thinking it was just another bum on the street. But El would have been insistent. Following her, maybe even using her name. But even then CC might have put it down to the vagrant’s knowing her name from the book. Finally I think El became desperate and opened her front to reveal the necklace. That would have stopped CC dead. She’d have remembered the necklace from her childhood. It was made by Émilie Longpré. There was no other like it.’

‘And CC would have known then the woman was her mother,’ said Reine-Marie, softly, imagining the scene and trying to imagine how she’d feel. Yearning to find her mother. Longing not only for her mother but her mother’s approval. Longing to be scooped up in those old arms.

And then to be confronted by El. A stinking, drunken, pathetic bag lady. Her mother.

And what had CC done?

She’d lost her mind. Reine-Marie guessed what had happened. CC had grabbed the necklace and yanked it off her mother’s neck. Then she’d grabbed the long scarf and she’d pulled and pulled, tighter and tighter.

She’d murdered her mother. To hide the truth, as she’d done all her life. Of course that’s how it must have been. What else could have happened? CC might have done it to save the American contract, thinking she’d lose it if they knew the creator of Li Bien and Be Calm had an alcoholic vagrant for a mother. Or she might have done it thinking she’d be ridiculed by the buying public.

But it was more likely she never even thought of those things. She acted instinctively, as had her mother. And CC’s instincts were always to get rid of anything unpleasant. To erase and disappear them. As she had her soft and indolent husband and her immense and silent daughter.

And El was a huge, stinking unpleasantness.

Eleanor Allaire died at the hands of her only child.

And then the child had died. Reine-Marie sighed, saddened by the images.

‘If CC killed her mother,’ she asked, ‘then who killed CC?’

Gamache paused. Then he told her.

Upstairs in the B. & B. Yvette Nichol lay on her bed listening to the
Hockey Night in Canada
music and the occasional outbursts from the living room. She longed to join them. To discuss Thomas’s new contract and whether the coach should be blamed for the horrible season, and whether Toronto had known Pagé was injured when they’d traded him to the Canadians.

She’d felt something for Beauvoir, that night when she’d nursed him, and the next morning when they’d breakfasted together. Not a crush, really. Just a sort of comfort. A relief, as though a weight she never even knew she was carrying had been lifted.

And then the fire, and her stupidity in going into the building. Another reason to hate stupid Uncle Saul. It was his fault, of course. Everything bad that happened to the family could be traced back to him. He was the rot in the family tree.

She’s not worth it. The words had scalded and burned. She hadn’t known how bad the injury was at first. You never do. You go sort of numb. But with the passage of time it had become clear. She was gravely wounded.

Gamache had spoken to her, and that had been interesting. Had actually helped. If only to make it clear what she had to do. She picked up her cell phone and dialed. A man’s voice answered, the hockey game playing in the background.

‘I have a question for you,’ Gamache said, his change of tone alerting Reine-Marie. ‘Did I do the right thing with Arnot?’

Reine-Marie’s heart broke, hearing Armand ask that. Only she knew the price he’d paid. He’d put on a brave and firm public face. Not Jean Guy, not Michel Brébeuf, not even their best friends had known the agony he’d gone through. But she knew.

‘Why are you asking now?’

‘It’s this case. It’s become about more than murder. Somehow it’s about belief.’

‘Every murder you’ve been on is about belief. What the murderer believes, what you believe.’

It was true. We are what we believe. And the only case where he’d seriously been in danger of betraying what he believed had been Arnot.

‘Maybe I should have let them die.’

There it was. Had he been driven by his ego in the Arnot case? His pride? His certainty that he was right and everyone else was wrong?

Gamache remembered the hushed and hurried meeting at Sûreté headquarters. The decision to let the men commit suicide, for the good of the force. He remembered raising his objections and being voted down. And then he’d left. He still felt a pang of shame as he remembered what happened next. He’d taken a case in Mutton Bay, as far from headquarters as he could get. Where he could clear his head. But he’d known all along what he had to do.

And the fisherman had put it beyond doubt.

Gamache had jumped on a plane and headed back to Montreal. It was the weekend Arnot had chosen to go to the Abitibi. Gamache had made the long drive up. And as he got closer the weather had closed in. The first storm of the winter had descended, rapidly and brutally. And Gamache had become lost and stuck.

But he’d prayed and pushed and finally the tires had gripped and the car had headed back the way it had come. Back to the main road. The right road. He’d found the cabin and arrived just in time.

As Gamache entered Arnot had hesitated then jumped for his gun. And in that instant, as Arnot lunged, Gamache had known the truth of it. Arnot would see the others dead then he’d disappear.

Gamache had leaped across the room and grabbed the gun first. And suddenly it was over. The three men were taken back to Montreal to face trial. A trial that no one wanted, except Armand Gamache.

The trial had been a very public affair, rending the Sûreté and the entire community. And many blamed Gamache. He’d done the unthinkable. He’d taken the matter public.

Gamache had known this would happen, and that was why he’d hesitated. To lose the respect of your peers is a terrible thing. To become a pariah was hard.

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do.

‘And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,’ said Gamache in a whisper.

‘Never to hope again.’ Reine-Marie finished the quote. ‘Are you that great, Armand, that your fall is legend?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘I’m just feeling sorry for myself. I miss you.’

‘And I miss you, dear heart. And yes, Armand, you did the right thing. But I understand your doubts. They’re what make you a great man, not your certainties.’

‘Fucking Thomas. Did you see that?’ Beauvoir was standing in front of the television, his hands on either side of his head, looking round. ‘Trade him!’ he shouted at the screen.

‘Now, who’d you rather be tonight?’ Reine-Marie asked. ‘Armand Gamache or Carl Thomas?’

Gamache laughed. It wasn’t often he let his doubts wash over him, but they had that night.

‘The Arnot case isn’t over, is it?’ said Reine-Marie.

Agent Nichol came down the staircase and caught his eye, smiling. She nodded then joined the group, who were too preoccupied to notice.

‘
Non, ce n’est pas fini.
’

THIRTY-SIX

One by one the lights went out in the homes of Three Pines and eventually the huge Christmas tree went out as well, and then the village was in darkness. Gamache got out of his chair. He’d turned the lights out in the living room after everyone had gone to bed, and had sat there quietly, enjoying the peace, enjoying watching the village put its head to the pillow. He quietly put on his coat and boots and went outside, his feet munching the snow. Émilie Longpré had said Environment Canada had issued a storm warning for the next day, but it was hard to believe. He walked to the middle of the road.

All was silent. All was bright. He tilted his head to stare at the stars. The entire sky was brilliant with them. He thought perhaps this was his favorite part of the day. Standing under a winter’s sky, the stars looking as though God had stopped a storm and the millions of flakes were suspended in the air. Bright and cheerful.

He didn’t feel like walking, had no need to pace. He had his answers. He’d just come out to be with himself in the middle of Three Pines, in the middle of the night. So at peace.

They woke up next morning to a storm. From his bed Gamache could see it. Or, more precisely, he could see nothing. Snow had plastered itself against his window and even created a small drift on the wood floor where flakes had rushed through the open window and landed in the room. The room was freezing and dark. And silent. Totally silent. He noticed his alarm clock was off. He tried a light.