Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

The first thing that struck him on entering the house was that it was almost impossible to move. Even in the narrow mudroom they’d somehow managed to stuff an armoire, a bookcase and a long wooden bench under which piles of muddy boots and shoes had been thrown.

‘My name is Armand Gamache.’ He bowed slightly to the middle-aged woman who opened the door.

She was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater. Comfortable, conventional. She smiled a little as he brought out his warrant card.

‘It’s all right, Chief Inspector. I know who you are.’ She stepped aside and let them in. Gamache’s first impression was of a decent person trying to find her way in an indecent situation. She spoke French to them, though with a heavy English accent. She was courteous and contained. The only sign of something amiss were dark circles under her eyes, as though grief had physically struck her.

But Armand Gamache knew something else. Grief sometimes took time to tell. The first days for relatives or close friends of murder victims were blessedly numb. They almost always held together, going through the motions of a normal life, so that a casual observer would never know disaster had just rammed into them. Most people fell to pieces gradually, like the old Hadley house.

As he watched Gamache could almost see the inevitable horsemen on the hill, above Hazel, snorting and pounding the ground, straining to be released. They brought the end of everything Hazel knew, all that was familiar and predictable. This contained woman was courageously holding off the marauding army of grief, but soon it would break free and sweep down and over her, and nothing familiar would be left standing.

‘Clara Morrow called to see how I was doing and offer some food. She told me you might be coming.’

‘I could have brought the food. I’m sorry.’ He was trying to get his coat off without whacking Beauvoir, who was crammed against the now closed door. A few books fell from the case and Gamache rapped his knuckles on the armoire, but eventually the coat came off.

‘No need to be,’ said Hazel, taking the coat and trying to open the armoire. ‘Told her we have plenty. In fact I can’t talk long. Poor old Madame Turcotte’s had a stroke and I need to take her dinner.’

They followed Hazel deeper into her home.

The dining room was barely passable and when they finally broke through to the living room Gamache felt like an African explorer, having arrived in the Dark Continent. He hoped they could make camp here for a while. If they could clear enough space.

The small room held two sofas, including the largest one he’d ever seen, as well as an assortment of chairs and tables. The tiny brick house was stuffed, crammed, bloated and dark.

‘It’s a little cozy in here,’ she said as the three of them sat, Gamache and Beauvoir on the massive sofa and Hazel in the worn wing chair opposite. A bag of mending sat at her feet. Her chair, Gamache knew. But it wasn’t the best chair in the room. That one was empty and sat nearest the fireplace. A book was splayed open on the table under the lamp.

A book in French by a Québécois writer Gamache admired.

Madeleine Favreau’s seat. The best in the room. Now how was that decided? Did she just take it? Did Hazel offer? Was Madeleine Favreau a bully? Was Hazel a professional victim?

Or perhaps they were just good friends who decided things naturally and amicably and took turns taking ‘the best’.

‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said Hazel, sitting down as though her legs had given way. Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

‘Had you known Madame Favreau long?’

‘All my life, it seems. We met in high school. Had the same home room the first year and became friends. I was kind of shy but for some reason she took to me. Made my life easier.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Having a friend, Chief Inspector. All you need is one. Makes all the difference.’

‘You must have had friends before, madame.’

‘True, but not like Madeleine. When she was your friend something magical happened. The world became a brighter place. Does that make sense?’

‘It does,’ Gamache nodded. ‘A veil is lifted.’

She smiled at him gratefully. He did understand. But now, slowly, she could feel the veil lowering again. Madeleine was barely dead and already the dusk was approaching and with it that emptiness. It was spreading across her horizon.

One was dead and one was left behind. One. Again.

‘But you haven’t always lived together?’

‘Good Lord, no.’ Hazel actually laughed, surprising herself. Perhaps the dusk was just a threat. ‘We went our separate ways after high school but met up again a few years ago. She’s lived here almost five years now.’

‘Was Madame Favreau ever overweight?’

He was getting used to seeing the baffled looks when he asked this question.

‘Madeleine? Not that I know of. She’d put on a few pounds over the years since high school, but that was twenty-five years ago. It’s natural. But she was never fat.’

‘Though you hadn’t seen her for a few years.’

‘True,’ Hazel admitted. ‘Why did Madame Favreau move in?’

‘Her marriage had failed. We were each living on our own so we decided to share. She was in Montreal at the time.’

‘Was it hard making space?’

‘Now I think you’re being diplomatic, Chief Inspector,’ and Hazel smiled. He realized he liked her. ‘Had she brought a toothpick we’d have been in trouble. Happily she didn’t. Madeleine brought herself, and that was enough.’

There it was. Simple, unforced, private. Love.

Across from him Hazel closed her eyes and smiled again, then her brows drew together.

The room suddenly ached. Gamache wanted to take her composed hands in his. Any other senior officer in the Sûreté would think this not only weakness, but folly. But Gamache knew it was the only way he could find a murderer. He listened to people, took notes, gathered evidence, like all his colleagues. But he did one more thing.

He gathered feelings. He collected emotions. Because murder was deeply human. It wasn’t about what people did. No, it was about how they felt, because that’s where it all started. Some feeling that had once been human and natural had twisted. Become grotesque. Had turned sour and corrosive until its very container had been eaten away. Until the human barely existed.

It took years for an emotion to reach that stage. Years of careful nurturing, protecting, justifying, tending and finally burying it. Alive.

Then one day it clawed its way out, something terrible.

Something that had only one goal. To take a life.

Armand Gamache found murderers by following the trail of rancid emotions.

Beside him Beauvoir squirmed. Not, Gamache thought, because he was impatient. Not yet anyway. But because the sofa seemed to have found a life of its own and was sending out tiny spikes.

Hazel opened her eyes and looked at him, smiling a little in thanks, he thought, for not interfering.

Upstairs they heard a thump.

‘My daughter, Sophie. She’s visiting from university.’

‘She was at the séance last night, I believe,’ said Gamache.

‘It was stupid, stupid.’ Hazel hit the arm of her chair with her fist. ‘I knew better.’

‘Then why did you go?’

‘I didn’t go to the first one, and tried to stop Madeleine—’

‘The first one?’ Beauvoir sat up and actually forgot that a million little pins were sticking into his bottom.

‘Yes, didn’t you know?’

Gamache was always amazed and a little disconcerted that people seemed to think they knew everything immediately.