Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

‘Her incantations,’ said Gamache. ‘They’re important.’

‘Right,’ said Nichol, rolling her eyes.

‘For setting atmosphere,’ said Gamache. ‘That was a major difference. From what I understand the Good Friday séance was frightening, but the Sunday night one was terrifying. Maybe the murderer tried to kill Madeleine Friday night but it just wasn’t scary enough.’

‘So who suggested the old Hadley house?’ asked Lemieux and shot Nichol a look, daring her to mock him again. She just sneered and shook her head. He could feel the rage rising from his chest, boiling there and bubbling to his throat. It was bad enough to be mocked, to be insulted, to be accused of sucking up. But to be dismissed as pathetic was the worst.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ve asked and no one can remember.’

‘But if you think the move to the old Hadley house was key then that lets out Hazel and Sophie,’ said Beauvoir.

‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.

‘They weren’t there to suggest it.’

There was a pause.

‘But Sophie’s the only person who’s different from the first to the second séance,’ said Nichol. ‘I don’t think the first had anything to do with murder. I think it only occurred to someone later. And that’s because that someone wasn’t at the first séance.’

‘But Sophie isn’t the only new person,’ said Lemieux. ‘Her mother was only at the second séance as well.’

‘But she could have been at the first. She was invited. If she’d wanted to kill Madeleine then she would have been there.’

‘And maybe that was why she went to the second,’ said Gamache. ‘The first didn’t work, so she had to make sure the second did.’

‘And bring along her own daughter? Come on.’ Nichol opened her notebook and brought out the photo she’d taken off the fridge door at the Smyth place.

‘Look at this.’ She flicked it onto the table. Beauvoir handed it down the table to Gamache who stared at it. The photo showed three women. Madeleine in the middle in profile looking with great and open affection at Hazel, who was wearing a silly hat and smiling. Happy and delighted, a look of great affection on her face too. She was also in profile, looking off camera. At the other end of the picture sat a plump young woman, a piece of cake about to go into her mouth. In the foreground sat a birthday cake.

‘Where’d you get this?’

‘The Smyth place, from the fridge.’

‘Why’d you take it? What interests you about it?’ Gamache was leaning forward, watching Nichol intently.

‘It’s the face. It says it all.’

Nichol waited to see whether the others would get it. Would they see that Madeleine Favreau, so pretty and smiling and attentive, was a fake? No one was really that happy. She had to be pretending.

‘You’re right,’ said Gamache, turning to Beauvoir. ‘Do you see? Her?’ Gamache put his large finger close to the photo.

Beauvoir leaned in and studied the picture then his eyes opened wide.

‘That’s Sophie. That girl taking a bite of cake. It’s Sophie.’

‘Heavier,’ Gamache nodded.

He turned the photograph over. Across the back was written the date the picture was taken. Two years ago.

In only two years Sophie Smyth had dropped twenty, thirty pounds?

Gamache’s phone rang just as the meeting was breaking up.

‘Chief, it’s me,’ said Agent Lacoste. ‘I finally have the report on the fingerprints. We know who broke into the room at the old Hadley house.’

Hazel Smyth seemed to have trouble functioning now. Like a toy whose connections were faulty, she lurched from full speed to stop, then top speed again.

‘We have some questions, Madame Smyth,’ said Beauvoir. ‘And we’ll need to do a thorough search. A few officers from the Cowansville detachment will be here soon. We have a warrant.’

He reached into his pocket but she whizzed off, saying, ‘No need, Inspector. Sophie! Sooophieee.’

‘What is it?’ came the petulant reply.

‘Visitors. It’s the police again.’ She seemed to sing-song it.

Sophie appeared, clunking down the stairs with her crutches, her leg wrapped tightly now in a tenser bandage. The injury seemed to be getting worse, judging by her winces. Beauvoir wondered whether maybe she wasn’t injured after all.

He took out the picture and showed it to both women.

‘That’s from the fridge,’ said Hazel, looking toward the appliance. Her energy had ebbed again and now she seemed barely able to speak. Her head was bowed as though too heavy and when she breathed it lifted slightly then drooped again.

‘When was it taken?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘Oh, ages ago,’ said Sophie, reaching for it. He moved it away from her. ‘Five or six years at least.’

‘Couldn’t have been, dear,’ said Hazel as though each word cost her an effort. ‘Madeleine’s hair is long. All grown back. It was just a couple of years ago.’

‘Is this you?’ He pointed to the pudgy girl.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Sophie.

‘Let me see,’ said Hazel.

‘No, Ma, no need. My ankle hurts really badly. I think I knocked it on the stairs coming down.’

‘Poor one.’ Hazel’s energy bopped back up. She rushed to a cupboard in the kitchen. Beauvoir could see a variety of medicine bottles. He followed her there and watched as she shoved past the first rank of pills, digging deeper. Then he stopped her hand.

‘May I?’

‘But Sophie needs an aspirin.’

He took a bottle off the shelf. Low dose aspirin. He glanced at Hazel who was looking at him anxiously. She knows, he thought. She knows her daughter fakes her injuries and she bought the low dose on purpose. He handed a tablet to Hazel then put on his gloves, thin like membranes. Something told him there was more than aspirin in this jumble of pills. He’d decided if he was born with a caul he needed to start trusting his instincts.

Ten minutes later he was surrounded by pill bottles. Pills for headaches, pills for backaches, pills for menstrual cramps, pills for yeast infections. Vitamins. And even a bottle of jelly beans.

‘Pills for visiting kids,’ Hazel explained.

Just about the only pill ever manufactured not in the cupboard was ephedra.

The team from the local office of the Sûreté had shown up and were well into the search of the Smyth place. Unfortunately it would probably take ten times their number to do the dump justice. It was worse than Beauvoir had thought, and he was an expert at thinking the worst.

Two hours had gone by and the only significant thing to happen was they seemed to have lost two of their men. They were discovered wandering in the basement. Beauvoir took a break and sat on a sofa in the dining room, jammed against a breakfront which was jammed against another sofa. As soon as he landed on it the sofa threw him back. It expulsed him. He tried again, landing with less force. Now he felt the hard coils and had the impression they were recoiling, to toss him out again. He’d become a circus act.

An agent called him upstairs and when he arrived he saw the officer holding a medicine bottle.

‘Where’d you find it?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘In the make-up case.’

The agent pointed to Sophie’s room. Behind him he heard Sophie clunking quickly up the stairs, then the clunking stopped and he heard nimble feet taking the stairs two at a time.

‘What is it?’ came Hazel’s voice from the other direction.

Beauvoir showed the bottle to the two women.

‘Ephedra,’ Hazel read on the label. ‘Sophie, you promised.’

‘Shut up, Mom. That’s not mine.’

‘It was found in your case,’ said Beauvoir.

‘I don’t know where it came from. It’s not mine.’