Louise Penny - A Fatal Grace

The Hockey Night in Canada theme was playing and Beauvoir got up to stretch his legs and walk around the living room of the B. & B. In another chair Chief Inspector Gamache was making a call.

‘Thomas let in another,’ said Beauvoir.

‘I saw. He’s coming too far out of the net,’ said Gamache.

‘That’s his style. He intimidates the other team, forces them to shoot.’

‘And is it working?’

‘Not tonight,’ Beauvoir agreed. He picked up the chief’s empty glass and wandered away. Fucking Thomas. I could do better. And while the commercials were on Jean Guy Beauvoir imagined himself in net for the Canadians. But Beauvoir wasn’t a goalie. He was a forward. He liked the limelight, the puck play, the panting, the skating and the shooting. Hearing an opponent grunt as he was forced into the boards. And maybe giving him an extra elbow.

No, he knew himself enough to know he’d never make a goalie.

That was Gamache. The one they all depended on to make the save.

He took the filled wine glass back and put it on the table by the phone, Gamache smiling his thanks.

‘ Bonjour? ’ Gamache heard the familiar voice and his heart contracted.

‘ Oui, bonjour , is this Madame Gamache, the librarian? I hear you have a book overdue.’

‘I have a husband overdue, and he is a little bookish,’ she said, laughing. ‘Hello, Armand. How are things going?’

‘Eleanor Allaire.’

There was a pause.

‘Thank you, Armand. Eleanor Allaire.’ Reine-Marie said the name as though part of the novena. ‘Beautiful name.’

‘And a beautiful woman, I’ve been told.’

He told her everything then. About Eleanor, about her friends, about India and the daughter. About being the crack in the vessel, and finding herself on the streets. About CC, taken from her home, raised by God knows who, searching for her mother and even going to Three Pines.

‘Why did she think her mother would be there?’ Reine-Marie asked.

‘Because that was the image her mother had painted on the Christmas decoration. The Li Bien ball. The only thing CC had from El. She was either told or must have guessed that the three pine trees on the ball meant the village where her mother was born and raised. This afternoon we spoke to old-timers and they remember the Allaires. Just the one daughter, Eleanor. They left almost fifty years ago.’

‘So CC bought a home in Three Pines to search for her mother? I wonder why she did it now? Why not years ago?’

‘I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,’ said Gamache, sipping his wine. In the background he could hear the Hockey Night in Canada theme. Reine-Marie was watching the game as well this Saturday night. ‘Thomas isn’t having a good night.’

‘He should stay closer to the net,’ she said. ‘The Rangers have his number.’

‘Do you have a theory why CC would suddenly decide to search for her mother now?’

‘You said CC had approached an American company about a catalogue?’

‘What’re you thinking?’

‘I was wondering whether maybe CC waited until she felt she was a success.’

Gamache thought about it, watching the players on the television pass the puck up the ice, lose it, skate furiously backwards as the other team charged. Beauvoir and Lemieux fell back into the sofa, groaning.

‘The American contract.’ He nodded. ‘And the book. We think that’s why El moved from the bus station to Ogilvy’s. CC had posters put up advertising her book. One was at the bus station. El must have seen it and realized CC de Poitiers was her daughter, so she went to Ogilvy’s to find her.’

‘And CC went to Three Pines to find her mother,’ said Reine-Marie. It was heartbreaking to think of the two wounded women searching for each other.

An image sprang to Gamache’s mind of frail little El, old and cold, shuffling the long blocks, giving up her prized place on the subway grate in hopes of finding her daughter.

‘Shoot, shoot,’ the guys in the living room were shouting.

‘He shoots, he scores!’ the announcer yelled to wild applause from the New Forum and near hysteria from Beauvoir, Lemieux, Gabri and Olivier, who were hugging and dancing around the room.

‘Kowalski,’ Beauvoir called to Gamache. ‘Finally. It’s three to one now.’

‘What did CC do in the village?’ Reine-Marie asked. She’d turned the television off in their sitting room to concentrate on the conversation.

‘Well, she thought one of the elderly women was her mother so she seems to have interviewed them all.’

‘And then she found her mother at Ogilvy’s,’ said Reine-Marie.

‘El must have recognized CC. I think she must have approached and CC paid no attention, thinking it was just another bum on the street. But El would have been insistent. Following her, maybe even using her name. But even then CC might have put it down to the vagrant’s knowing her name from the book. Finally I think El became desperate and opened her front to reveal the necklace. That would have stopped CC dead. She’d have remembered the necklace from her childhood. It was made by Émilie Longpré. There was no other like it.’

‘And CC would have known then the woman was her mother,’ said Reine-Marie, softly, imagining the scene and trying to imagine how she’d feel. Yearning to find her mother. Longing not only for her mother but her mother’s approval. Longing to be scooped up in those old arms.

And then to be confronted by El. A stinking, drunken, pathetic bag lady. Her mother.

And what had CC done?

She’d lost her mind. Reine-Marie guessed what had happened. CC had grabbed the necklace and yanked it off her mother’s neck. Then she’d grabbed the long scarf and she’d pulled and pulled, tighter and tighter.

She’d murdered her mother. To hide the truth, as she’d done all her life. Of course that’s how it must have been. What else could have happened? CC might have done it to save the American contract, thinking she’d lose it if they knew the creator of Li Bien and Be Calm had an alcoholic vagrant for a mother. Or she might have done it thinking she’d be ridiculed by the buying public.

But it was more likely she never even thought of those things. She acted instinctively, as had her mother. And CC’s instincts were always to get rid of anything unpleasant. To erase and disappear them. As she had her soft and indolent husband and her immense and silent daughter.

And El was a huge, stinking unpleasantness.

Eleanor Allaire died at the hands of her only child.

And then the child had died. Reine-Marie sighed, saddened by the images.

‘If CC killed her mother,’ she asked, ‘then who killed CC?’

Gamache paused. Then he told her.

Upstairs in the B. & B. Yvette Nichol lay on her bed listening to the Hockey Night in Canada music and the occasional outbursts from the living room. She longed to join them. To discuss Thomas’s new contract and whether the coach should be blamed for the horrible season, and whether Toronto had known Pagé was injured when they’d traded him to the Canadians.

She’d felt something for Beauvoir, that night when she’d nursed him, and the next morning when they’d breakfasted together. Not a crush, really. Just a sort of comfort. A relief, as though a weight she never even knew she was carrying had been lifted.

And then the fire, and her stupidity in going into the building. Another reason to hate stupid Uncle Saul. It was his fault, of course. Everything bad that happened to the family could be traced back to him. He was the rot in the family tree.

She’s not worth it. The words had scalded and burned. She hadn’t known how bad the injury was at first. You never do. You go sort of numb. But with the passage of time it had become clear. She was gravely wounded.