Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

Clara stood up and stretched her forty-eight-year-old body, then glanced around. It looked like a field of derrières. Every villager was bending over, placing eggs. Clara wished she had her sketch pad.

There was certainly nothing cool about Three Pines, nothing funky or edgy or any of the other things that had mattered to Clara when she’d graduated from art college twenty-five years ago. Nothing here was designed. Instead, the village seemed to follow the lead of the three pines on the green and simply to have grown from the earth over time.

Clara took a deep breath of the fragrant spring air and looked over at the home she shared with Peter. It was brick with a wooden porch and a fieldstone wall fronting the Commons. A path wound from their gate through some apple trees about to bloom to their front door. From there Clara’s eyes wandered around the houses surrounding the Commons. Like their inhabitants, the homes of Three Pines were sturdy and shaped by their environment. They’d withstood storms and wars, loss and sorrow. And emerging from that was a community of great kindness and compassion.

Clara loved it. The houses, the shops, the village green, the perennial gardens and even the washboard roads. She loved the fact that Montreal was less than a two-hour drive away, and the American border was just down the road. But more than all of that, she loved the people who now spent this and every Good Friday hiding wooden eggs for children.

It was a late Easter, near the end of April. They weren’t always so lucky with the elements. At least once the village had awoken on Easter Sunday to find a fresh dumping of heavy spring snow, burying the tender buds and painted eggs. It had often been bitterly cold and the villagers had had to duck into Olivier’s Bistro every now and then for a hot cider or hot chocolate, wrapping trembling and frozen fingers around the warm and welcoming mugs.

But not today. There was a certain glory about this April day. It was a perfect Good Friday, sunny and warm. The snow had gone, even in the shadows, where it tended to linger. The grass was growing and the trees had a halo of the gentlest green. It was as though the aura of Three Pines had suddenly made itself visible. It was all golden light with shimmering green edges.

Tulip bulbs were beginning to crack through the earth and soon the village green would be awash with spring flowers, deep blue hyacinths and bluebells and gay bobbing daffodils, snowdrops and fragrant lily of the valley, filling the village with fragrance and delight.

This Good Friday Three Pines smelled of fresh earth and promise. And maybe a worm or two.

‘I don’t care what you say, I won’t go.’

Clara heard the urgent and vicious whisper. She was crouching again, by the tall grass of the pond. She couldn’t see who it was but she realized they must be just on the other side of the grass. It was a woman’s voice speaking French but in a tone so strained and upset she couldn’t identify her.

‘It’s just a séance,’ a man’s voice said.

‘It’ll be fun.’ ‘It’s sacrilege, for Christ’s sake. A séance on Good Friday?’

There was a pause. Clara was feeling uncomfortable. Not about eavesdropping, but her legs were beginning to cramp.

‘Come on, Odile. You’re not even religious. What can happen?’

Odile? thought Clara. The only Odile she knew was Odile Montmagny. And she was –

The woman hissed again:

‘ Each winter’s frostbite and the bug

That greets the spring will leave its mark,

As well as sorrow on the mug

Of infant, youth and patriarch. ’

Stunned silence fell.

– a really bad poet, Clara completed her thought.

Odile had spoken solemnly, as though the words conveyed something other than the talent of the poet.

‘I’ll look after you,’ said the man. Clara now knew who he was too. Odile’s boyfriend, Gilles Sandon.

‘Why do you really want to go, Gilles?’

‘Just for fun.’

‘Is it because she’ll be there?’

There was silence, except for Clara’s screaming legs.

‘He’ll be there too, you know,’ Odile pressed.

‘Who?’

‘You know who. Monsieur Béliveau,’ said Odile. ‘I have a bad feeling about this, Gilles.’

There was another pause, then Sandon spoke, his voice deep and flat as though making a huge effort to smother any emotion.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t kill him.’

Clara had forgotten all about her legs. Kill Monsieur Béliveau? Who’d even consider such a thing? The old grocer had never even short-changed anyone. What could Gilles Sandon possibly have against him?

She heard the two walk away and straightening up with some agony Clara stared after them, Odile pear-shaped and waddling slightly, Gilles a huge teddy bear of a man, his signature red beard visible even from behind.

Clara glanced at her sweaty hands clutching the wooden Easter eggs. The cheery colors had bled into her palms.

Suddenly the séance, which had seemed an amusing idea a few days ago when Gabri had put the notice up in the bistro announcing the arrival of the famous psychic, Madame Isadore Blavatsky, now felt different. Instead of happy anticipation Clara was filled with dread.

THREE

Madame Isadore Blavatsky wasn’t herself that night. In fact, she wasn’t Madame Isadore Blavatsky at all.

‘Please, call me Jeanne.’ The mousy woman stood in the middle of the back room at the bistro, holding out her hand. ‘Jeanne Chauvet.’

‘ Bonjour, Madame Chauvet. ’ Clara smiled and shook the limp hand. ‘ Excusez-moi. ’

‘Jeanne,’ the woman reminded her in a voice barely audible.

Clara stepped over to Gabri who was offering a platter of smoked salmon to his guests. The room was beginning to fill up, slightly. ‘Salmon?’ He thrust the plate at Clara.

‘Who is she?’ Clara asked.

‘Madame Blavatsky, the famous Hungarian psychic. Can’t you just feel her energy?’

Madeleine and Monsieur Béliveau waved. Clara waved back then glanced over at Jeanne who looked as though she’d faint if someone said boo. ‘I certainly feel something, young man, and it’s annoyed.’

Gabri Dubeau vacillated between delight at being called ‘young man’ and defensiveness.

‘That isn’t Madame Blavatsky. She doesn’t even pretend to be. Her name’s Jeanne someone-or-other,’ said Clara, absent-mindedly taking a piece of salmon and folding it onto a pumpernickel. ‘You promised us Madame Blavatsky.’

‘You don’t even know who Madame Blavatsky is.’

‘Well, I know who she isn’t.’ Clara nodded and smiled at the small, middle-aged woman standing slightly bewildered in the middle of the room.

‘And would you’ve come if you’d known she was the psychic?’ Gabri gestured with the plate toward Jeanne. A caper rolled off the end, to be lost on the rich oriental carpet.

Why do we never learn? Clara sighed to herself. Every time Gabri has a guest he organizes some outlandish event, like the time the poker champ came to stay and took all our money, or that singer who made even Ruth sound like Maria Callas. Still, horrible as these socials Gabri threw together turned out for the villagers, they must have been worse for the unsuspecting guests, roped into entertaining Three Pines when all they wanted was a quiet stay in the country.

She watched as Jeanne Chauvet gazed around the room, rubbed her hands on her polyester pants and smiled at the portrait above the roaring fireplace. Before Clara’s very eyes she seemed to disappear. It was actually quite a trick, though not one that spoke highly of her psychic abilities. Clara felt badly for her. Really, what was Gabri thinking?