Louise Penny - Cruelest Month

Around the circle the glowing faces nodded.

‘But the sun also scalds. It burns and blinds.’ He looked at each of them again. ‘And it creates strong shadows. Who can live close to the sun? I thought of Icarus, the beautiful boy who with his father made wings to fly. His father gave him one warning, though. Do not fly too close to the sun. But, of course, he did. Anyone with children will understand how that can happen.’

His eyes flickered to Hazel. Her face was blank. Empty. Where once there’d been anxiety, pain, anger, now there was nothing. The horsemen had ridden through, leaving nothing standing. But Gamache thought maybe they hadn’t brought grief. The horsemen Hazel had been desperate to keep at bay carried something far more terrifying. Their burden was loneliness.

‘The most obvious suspect is Sophie. Poor Sophie, as everyone calls her. Always getting hurt, always getting sick. Though things started to get better when Madeleine arrived.’

Sophie stared at him, her brows low and glowering.

‘The house that had been so full of things and yet so empty was suddenly full of life. Can’t you just imagine?’

Suddenly they were transported to a day in their imaginations when the drab home of Hazel and Sophie was visited by sunshine. When the curtains were thrown open. When laughter stirred the decay in the rooms and sent it twirling into the rays of light.

‘But the price you paid was that your shadows were revealed. You fell in love with Madeleine, didn’t you?’

‘Love isn’t a shadow,’ said Sophie defiantly.

‘You’re quite right. Love isn’t. But attachment is. Myrna, you talked about the near enemy.’

‘Attachment masquerading as love,’ nodded Myrna. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of Sophie.’

‘No, you were thinking of someone else. But it applies here.’ He turned back to Sophie. ‘You wanted Madeleine for yourself. You went to her university, Queens, to impress her. To get her to pay more attention to you. It was bad enough to share Madeleine with your mother, but when you returned home recently and found Madeleine in a relationship with Monsieur Béliveau, that was too much.’

‘How could she? I mean look at him. He’s old and ugly and poor. He’s just a grocer for God’s sake. How could she love him? I’d gone all the way to fucking Queens for her and when I come back she’s not even around. She’s at a séance with him.’

She jabbed her crutch at Béliveau, who seemed beyond the insults.

‘When the next séance came you saw your chance. You’ve fought your weight all your life, even taking ephedra a few years ago, until it was found and taken away. But eventually the weight crept back and you ordered more pills from the internet. This photograph shows a plump girl, just two years ago.’ Gamache handed round the picture from the fridge. Each person looked at it. It seemed to have been taken on another planet. One where people laughed, and loved, and celebrated. One where Madeleine was still alive.

‘You found the pill bottle. You knew your mother threw nothing away. Inspector Beauvoir described the cupboard filled with old pills, most long out of date. We know from the lab that you didn’t use your current ephedra pills. Instead, you found the old ones. You knew Madeleine had a heart damaged by her chemotherapy treatments –’

A small murmur went around the circle.

‘– and you knew a high enough dose, combined with the bad heart, could kill her. All you needed was a scare. Something to challenge her heart, to get it pounding and racing. And one was handed to you. A séance in the old Hadley house.’

‘This is stupid,’ said Sophie, though she was looking far from confident.

‘You made sure you sat beside Madeleine at dinner, and you slipped the pills into her food.’

‘I didn’t. Mom, tell him I didn’t.’

‘She didn’t,’ said Hazel, finding the energy to come, feebly, to Sophie’s defense.

‘Of course, everything I’ve said about Sophie applies to Hazel as well.’ Gamache turned to the woman beside Sophie. ‘You loved Madeleine. Have never tried to hide it. A platonic love, almost certainly, but a deep one. You probably loved her since you were children together. And then she comes to live with you, recovers from her chemo, and your lives start again. No more dullness. No more loneliness.’

Hazel nodded.

‘If Sophie could find the ephedra so could you. You were on Madeleine’s other side at dinner. You could have slipped it to her. But one nagging question was why not kill Madeleine at the first séance? Why wait?’

He let the question sink in. There seemed now to be no world beyond their circle of light. The known world had disappeared over the edge of the darkness.

‘The séances were different in three ways.’ Gamache counted them on his fingers. ‘The dinner at Peter and Clara’s, the old Hadley house, and the Smyths’.’

‘But why would Hazel kill Madeleine?’ Clara asked.

‘Jealousy. That picture?’ He gestured to the photo, now in Gabri’s hand. ‘Madeleine was looking with great affection at Hazel and Hazel was looking with even more open affection. But not at Madeleine or Sophie. She was looking off camera. And I remembered something Olivier said. He said how kind Hazel had been to Monsieur Béliveau after his wife died. He was invited to all celebrations, especially the big ones. The hat Hazel wore was white and blue, the cake had blue frosting. It was a man’s birthday. It was yours.’

He turned to Béliveau, who looked perplexed. Gabri handed him the photograph and the grocer studied it for a few moments. In the silence they heard more creaks. Something seemed to be coming up the stairs. Clara knew it was all in her mind. Knew what she’d felt before had only been the baby bird, not the monster of her imagination. That bird was dead now. So nothing could be coming up the stairs. Nothing could be on the landing. Nothing could be creaking along the corridor.

‘Hazel’s always been very kind,’ Monsieur Béliveau finally said, looking over at Hazel who’d all but disappeared.

‘You fell in love with him,’ said Gamache. ‘Didn’t you?’

Hazel shook her head slightly.

‘Mom? Did you?’

‘I thought he was nice. I once thought maybe…’

Hazel’s voice petered out.

‘Until Madeleine showed up,’ said Gamache. ‘She didn’t mean to, almost certainly had no idea how you felt about him, but she stole Monsieur Béliveau from you.’

‘He wasn’t mine to steal.’

‘We say that,’ said Gamache, ‘but saying and feeling are very different. You were two lonely people, you and Monsieur Béliveau. In many ways a much more natural match. But Madeleine was this magnificent, lovely, laughing magnet and Monsieur Béliveau was mesmerized. I don’t want to give the impression Madeleine was malicious or mean. She was just being herself. And it was hard not to fall in love with her. Am I right, Monsieur Sandon?’

‘ Moi? ’

At the sound of his own name Sandon’s head jerked up.

‘You loved her too. Deeply. As deeply and totally as unrequited love can be. In many ways it’s the deepest because it’s never tested. She remained the ideal for you. The perfect woman. But then the perfect woman faltered. She fell in love with someone else. And worse. The one man you despise. Monsieur Béliveau. The bringer of death. The man who allowed a venerable old oak to die in agony.’

‘I could never kill Madeleine. I can’t even cut down a tree. Can’t step on a flower, can’t crush an earwig. I can’t take a life.’

‘But you can, Monsieur Sandon.’ Armand Gamache grew very silent and leaned forward again, staring at the huge lumberjack. ‘You said so yourself. Better to put something out of its misery than allow it to die a long and painful death. You were talking about the oak. But you were prepared to kill it. Put it out of its misery. If you knew Madeleine was dying, perhaps you’d do the same for her.’