Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

She watched as he absorbed her words.

Armand Gamache looked across the table and straight into her eyes. His own brown eyes were steady and thoughtful and calm. Through all the chaos, through all the threats and stress, through all the attacks, verbal and physical, they’d endured in trying to find murderers, this was what she always remembered. Chief Inspector Gamache, calm and strong and in charge. He was their leader for a reason. He never flinched. And he didn’t flinch now.

‘Their reasons are their own,’ he finally said. ‘I don’t have to care.’ He looked around at the others. Even Agent Nichol was looking at him, her mouth slightly open.

‘What about others?’ asked Lacoste. ‘The people here? Or other agents in the Sûreté? People will believe it.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it could hurt us.’

‘What would you have me do? Take out an ad saying it’s not true? There are two things I can do. I can get upset and worry about it, or I can let it go. Guess which one I choose?’

He smiled now. The tension left the room for the first time and they were able to get on with their lunch and their reports. By the time Olivier cleared their plates and brought in the cheese course Beauvoir and Gamache had brought them up to speed. Robert Lemieux had reported on his interview with Monsieur Béliveau.

‘What do we know of his wife?’ Beauvoir asked. ‘Ginette was her name?’

‘Nothing yet,’ said Lemieux, ‘except that she died a few years ago. Is it important?’

‘Could be. Gilles Sandon seemed to be hinting it was no coincidence that two women Monsieur Béliveau was involved with should die.’

‘Yeah, a tree probably told him that,’ mumbled Nichol.

‘What was that, Agent?’ Beauvoir turned on her.

‘Nothing,’ she said. Soup had dripped from her hair onto the padded shoulders of her cheap suit and crumbs clung to her chest. ‘It’s just that I don’t think we can take seriously anything Sandon says. He’s obviously nuts. He talks to trees, for God’s sake. The same with that witch woman. She spreads salt, lights candles and talks to the dead. And you’re paying attention to anything she says?’ She directed this at Armand Gamache.

‘Come with me, Agent Nichol.’ Gamache carefully put his napkin on the table and rose. Without another word he opened the French doors to the flagstone patio at the back of the bistro, overlooking the river.

Beauvoir had a brief fantasy of the chief tossing her in, his last sight of Nichol flailing hands disappearing into the white foam, to be dumped into the poor Atlantic Ocean a week from now.

Instead the team watched Nichol gesturing wildly and actually stomping her feet while Gamache listened, face stern and serious. They could hear nothing over the roar of the river. Once he lifted his hand and she quieted down, grew very still. Then he spoke. She nodded, turned and walked away.

Gamache came back into the room, looking worried.

‘Is she gone?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Back to the Incident Room.’

‘And then?’

‘And then she’ll come with me to the old Hadley house. I’d like you to come too,’ Gamache said to Agent Lacoste.

Jean Guy Beauvoir managed to keep silent and even listened to Isabelle Lacoste’s report, though his mind was squirreling. Why was Agent Nichol there? Why? If everything happened for a reason, what was the reason for her? There was one, he knew.

‘Madeleine Favreau was forty-four years old,’ reported Lacoste in her clear, precise voice. ‘Born Madeleine Marie Gagnon in Montreal and raised in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce quartier . On Harvard Street. Middle class, anglo upbringing.’

‘Anglo?’ asked Lemieux. ‘With a name like that?’

‘Well, semi-anglo,’ admitted Lacoste. ‘French father and English mother. Name was French but upbringing was mostly English. Went to public and high school in NDG. The school secretary actually remembered her. Said there are a few pictures of Madeleine in the main corridor. She was Athlete of the Year and president of the student council. One of those kids who simply excelled. She was also a cheerleader.’

Gamache was grateful Nichol wasn’t there. He could just imagine what she’d do with this litany of success.

‘Her grades?’ he asked.

‘The secretary’s checking them for me. Should have the answer by the time we get back to the Incident Room. After high school—’

‘Just a moment,’ Gamache interrupted. ‘What about Hazel Smyth? Did you ask about her? They went to school together.’

‘Actually I did. Hazel Lang. Also forty-four. Lived on Melrose Avenue in NDG.’

Gamache knew the area. Old and settled homes. Trees and modest gardens.

‘The secretary’s looking her up too.’

‘But didn’t remember her immediately?’

‘No, but then she wasn’t likely to after all these years. After high school Madeleine went to university, studied engineering at Queens and got a job at Bell Canada. She left four and a half years ago.’

Beauvoir stared at Gamache. He couldn’t get the confrontation with Nichol out of his head. Had any one of them spoken to him like that in a meeting they’d be out in a flash, and rightly so. And, frankly, none of them would ever consider speaking to Armand Gamache like that. Not out of some instinct for survival, but because they respected him too much.

Why did Nichol treat the boss like that, and why did Gamache allow it?

‘The woman I spoke to worked in another department and was at a lower level,’ Lacoste continued her report, ‘but she said Madame Favreau was a fair boss and very smart. People liked her. I also spoke briefly with her boss. Paul Marchand.’ Lacoste consulted her notes. ‘He’s Vice President of Research and Development. Madeleine Favreau was a department head. Product development. She also worked closely with their marketing department.’

‘So when new products like a phone or something came out,’ said Lemieux, ‘she’d work on it?’

‘Her expertise was information technology. Very hot field, IT. According to her boss she got that dossier not long before leaving.’

Gamache waited. Isabelle Lacoste was as good an agent as he’d ever worked with and should Inspector Beauvoir leave for any reason she’d be his natural choice for second in command. Her reports were thorough, clear and without ambiguity.

‘She was married to François Favreau but it didn’t work. They divorced a few years ago. But her boss doesn’t think that was the reason she left. He asked her why, but she was vague on the reason but definite about her decision and he respected that.’

‘Did he have a theory?’ Gamache asked.

‘He did.’ Lacoste smiled. ‘Six years ago Madeleine Favreau was diagnosed with breast cancer. Monsieur Marchand thinks that, perhaps combined with the divorce, was the reason. He was sorry about it. I could hear it in his voice, he liked her.’

‘Loved her?’ asked Gamache.

‘I don’t know. But there was affection there, I think, that went beyond simple respect. He was sorry she left.’

‘And then she came here,’ said Gamache, leaning back in his chair. Olivier knocked and brought in coffees and a tray of desserts. He took slightly more time than Gamache would have thought necessary then finally left, having to satisfy himself with baguette crumbs but not a single crumb of information.

‘No children?’ asked Lemieux.

Lacoste shook her head and reached for a chocolate mousse, whipped high above the cut-glass dish, and decorated with real cream and a raspberry. She dragged a dark, rich coffee toward her, satisfied with her report, and her lunch.

Beauvoir noticed there was just one mousse left. Lemieux had taken a fruit salad, which Beauvoir was relieved to see but viewed with some suspicion. Who would choose fruit over chocolate mousse? But now he himself was left with a terrible dilemma, a culinary Sophie’s Choice. One mousse. Should he take it for himself or leave it for Gamache?