Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

The silence stretched on. She could see him teetering on the verge of an emotion, trying not to fall in, trying to cling to the rational rock of his brain. But eventually that rock betrayed him, and both fell together.

‘I love her. Loved her.’ He put his head softly in his hands, as though cradling himself, his long, slim fingers poking out of his dark hair.

‘Why did you divorce?’

He rubbed his face and looked at her, suddenly bleary.

‘It was her idea, but I think I pushed her to it. I was too chicken shit to do it myself.’

‘Why did you want to?’

‘I couldn’t take it any more. At first it was wonderful. She was so gorgeous and warm and loving. And successful. Everything she did she was good at. She just glowed. It was like living too close to the sun.’

‘It blinds and burns,’ said Lacoste.

‘Yes.’ Favreau seemed relieved to have words. ‘It hurt being that close to Madeleine.’

‘Do you really wonder who killed her?’

‘I do, but…’

Lacoste waited. Armand Gamache had taught her patience.

‘But I’m not sure I was surprised. She didn’t mean to hurt people, but she did. And when you get hurt enough…’

There was no need to finish the sentence.

Robert Lemieux had stopped at the Tim Horton’s in Cowansville on his way to Three Pines and now a stack of Double Double coffees stood in the middle of the conference table along with cheerful cardboard boxes of doughnuts.

‘My man,’ exclaimed Beauvoir when he saw them, clapping Lemieux on the back. Lemieux had further ingratiated himself by starting the ancient cast-iron woodstove in the middle of the room.

The place smelled of cardboard and coffee, of sweet doughnuts and sweet wood smoke.

Inspector Beauvoir called the morning meeting to order just as Agent Nichol arrived, late and disheveled as always. They gave their reports, and Chief Inspector Gamache ended by telling them about the coroner’s report.

‘So Madeleine Favreau had a bad heart,’ said Agent Lemieux. ‘The murderer had to have known that.’

‘Probably. According to the coroner three things had to come together.’ Beauvoir was standing next to an easel which held sheaves of large white paper. He wielded a magic marker like a baton and wrote as he spoke. ‘One: mega-dose of ephedra. Two: scare at the séance and three: bad heart.’

‘So why wasn’t she killed at the Friday night séance?’ asked Nichol. ‘All three elements were in place, or at least two of the three.’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,’ said Gamache. He’d been listening and sipping his coffee. His fingers were a little sticky from a chocolate glazed doughnut. He wiped them with the tiny paper napkin and leaned forward. ‘Was the Good Friday séance a dress rehearsal? Was it a prelude? Did Madeleine say or do something that led to her murder two days later? Are the two séances connected?’

‘It seems too much of a coincidence that they’re not,’ said Lemieux.

‘Oh please,’ said Nichol. ‘Don’t try to suck up to him,’ and she flicked her hand toward Gamache.

Lemieux was silent. He’d been instructed to suck up. It was what he did best and did it, he thought, with great subtlety, but now this bitch actually called him on it in the middle of the morning meeting. His facade of reason and longsuffering was cracking under the mocking of Nichol. He despised her, and if he didn’t have a larger purpose he’d turn his attention to her.

‘Look,’ continued Nichol, dismissing Lemieux. ‘It’s so obvious. The question isn’t how they’re connected, but how they’re not. What was different about the two séances?’

She sat back, triumphant.

Oddly, no one jumped to congratulate her. The silence stretched on. Then Chief Inspector Gamache slowly got up and walked over to Beauvoir.

‘May I?’ He reached for the marker then turned and began writing on a clean sheet of paper, How are the two séances different?

Nichol smirked and Lemieux nodded, but beneath the table his hands clenched.

Isabelle Lacoste had gone from François Favreau directly to the high school in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It was a large red-brick building with an 1867 date stone. The building looked and felt nothing like her own high school. Hers had been modern, sprawling, French. Yet as soon as she stepped into the old building she was immediately back in the crowded halls of her school. Trying to remember her combination, trying to get her hair to stay down, or up or whatever the trend was. Always trying, like a kayaker shooting the rapids and feeling one stroke behind.

The sounds were familiar, voices bouncing off metal and concrete, shoes screeching on hard floors, but it was the smells that had transported her. Of books and cleaner, of lunches languishing and rotting behind hundreds of lockers. And fear. High school smelled of that more than anything else, even more than sweaty feet, cheap perfume and rotten bananas.

‘I put together a dossier for you,’ said Mrs Plant, the school secretary. ‘I wasn’t here when Madeleine Gagnon went to school. In fact, none of the teachers or staff is still here. That was thirty years ago. But all our archives are on computer now so I printed out her report cards and found some other things you might be interested in. Including these.’

She put her hand on a stack of yearbooks, the secular school’s Bible.

‘That’s very kind, but I think the report cards will be enough.’

‘But I spent half of yesterday in the storeroom finding these.’

‘Thank you. I’m sure they’ll be great.’ Agent Lacoste hoisted them into her arms, balancing the file on top precariously as they left the office.

‘We have some pictures of her on the wall, you know.’ Mrs Plant walked ahead. The halls were beginning to fill and the place echoed with unintelligible shouts as kids hailed and assailed each other.

‘Down here. All sorts of pictures. I have to get back to the office. Will you be all right?’

‘You’ve been very helpful. I’ll be fine.’

For the next few minutes Lacoste moved slowly down the long, concrete corridor, looking at old photographs framed and hung, of victorious school teams and school government. And there was young Madeleine Favreau, née Gagnon. Smiling, healthy, with every expectation of a long and exciting life. Jostled by the kids now crowding into the halls Agent Lacoste wondered what high school must have been like for Madeleine. Did she also smell of fear? She didn’t look it, but then the most fearful people often didn’t.

* * *

Gamache took his seat again and reached for his coffee. They all looked at the new list. Under the heading How are the two séances different? he’d written,

Hazel

Sophie

Dinner party

Old Hadley house

Jeanne Chauvet more serious

He explained that on being interviewed the psychic had said she wasn’t prepared for the first, it had been Gabri’s little surprise, and so she hadn’t taken it seriously. She’d judged they were really just a bored group of villagers looking for titillation. So she’d given them the cheap, Hollywood version. Silly melodrama. But when someone later told her about the old Hadley house and somehow the idea of contacting the dead there had come up, she’d taken it seriously.

‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.

‘You’re not really that thick,’ snapped Nichol. ‘The old Hadley house is supposedly haunted. She contacts ghosts for a living. Hello?’

Beauvoir, ignoring Nichol, got up and wrote,

Candles

Salt

‘Anything else?’ he asked. He liked writing things on the board. Always had. He liked the smell of magic marker. The squeak it made. And the order it created from random ideas.