Louise Penny - A Fatal Grace

They’d taken risks, of course. Kaye had to detach the cord and throw it clear, a bright orange cord lying where no cord should be. But they’d gambled that everyone would be so focused on CC they could gather it up again. Em did so, and threw it in the back of Billy’s truck. She’d almost gotten caught when Billy ran toward her to start the truck and clear the back for CC. She’d covered up by saying she’d had the same idea and was going to clean a spot in his pickup for CC and the resuscitation team.

The only thing Gamache had been missing was a motive. But Em and Mother had provided that.

Crie.

They had to save El’s granddaughter from the monster who was her mother. They’d heard Crie sing, and they’d heard CC crush and humiliate her. And they’d seen the girl themselves.

Crie was clearly dying, suffocating beneath layers of fat and fear and silence. She’d withdrawn into her own world so far she could barely get out any more. CC was murdering her daughter.

Now he watched as the middle dot, the smallest of them, sank to the ground. The others stumbled and tried to pull her up. To go on a little longer. Gamache felt his knees quaking and he longed to collapse onto the snow, to bury his horror in his hands. To look away as the Three Graces died.

Instead he stood erect, the snow insinuating itself down his collar and up his sleeves, plastering against his face and into his unblinking eyes. He forced himself to watch as first one then the other sank to her knees. He stayed with them, a prayer on his cracked lips, repeated over and over.

But another thought insinuated itself.

Gamache looked down at the letter crushed in his hand, then back at the black sprawls on the snow. He was frozen for a moment, stunned.

‘No,’ he screamed and started forward. ‘No,’ he shouted and spun round, looking at his car behind him half buried already in the snow. As were the women. He ran toward the car, frantic to reach it.

It was too late, he knew, but still he had to try.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Gamache turned the car and gunned it toward Williamsburg, making straight for a cantine on rue Principale.

‘I need help,’ he said at the door of the restaurant. All eyes turned to him, a large stranger covered in snow and making demands. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté. Three women are trapped on Lac Brume. We need snowmobiles to get them.’

After a moment’s pause a man rose from the crowd and said, ‘Em are ducks.’ It was Billy Williams.

‘I’m with you.’ Another man stood up. Soon the place was emptying and within minutes Gamache found himself clinging to Billy as the fleet of snowmobiles screeched along rue Principale and out onto Lac Brume.

The storm was howling and Gamache strained to see, to guide Billy to the fallen women. He prayed they hadn’t been buried by the snow.

‘They’re around here somewhere,’ Gamache cried into the side of Billy’s Canadian’s tuque.

Billy slowed down. Around them other snowmobilers were following their lead, careful not to run the women over. Billy stood and gracefully moved his machine through the deep snow, looking for a lump, a bump, a body.

‘High mechanics boat,’ Billy yelled, pointing to a spot invisible to Gamache. They were in a whiteout now. Williamsburg had gone, the shore had gone, the other snowmobilers had disappeared into the storm. Billy turned his machine and made straight for a spot that looked like any other spot on the lake to Gamache. But as they approached some contours appeared.

The women had fallen, holding each other, and now they were indeed covered in snow. But Billy Williams had found them. He tossed off his gloves and while Gamache staggered through the deep snow to the women Billy put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The sound cut through the howl of the storm. While Gamache fell to his knees and dug to get at Em and Mother and Kaye Billy whistled and by the time Gamache had uncovered the women, hands were reaching for them. The men hurried the three women back to their snowmobiles and within moments all were racing back to shore.

Gamache clung on to Billy. Everything was white. The snow was driving into them, making it near impossible to breathe never mind see. How Billy knew where the shore was was anyone’s guess. Gamache had the impression they were heading further out onto the lake, away from the shore. He opened his mouth to shout at Billy, but closed it again.

He was disoriented, he knew. And he knew that he needed to trust Billy. He hugged the man and waited for the machine to hit the shore and climb the slight rise onto rue Principale. But that didn’t happen. Five minutes went by, then ten, and Gamache knew then that they were in the middle of Lac Brume. Lost. In a storm.

‘Where are we?’ he screamed into the tuque.

‘Chairs might red glass,’ shouted Billy, and kept going flat out.

Three minutes later, though it seemed an eternity, the snowmobile thumped into a small hill and Billy turned left. Suddenly they were in among pine trees. The shore, they’d made the shore, thought Gamache with amazement. He looked behind and saw the line of other skidoos following in their tracks.

Billy gunned his machine along a path and onto a street, not yet cleared of snow, though empty of vehicle traffic. Gamache looked for his car, knowing he had a long drive ahead of him to Cowansville hospital. But Billy had taken them another way.

Damn the man, thought Gamache. He’s gotten us lost on the lake and now God only knows where we are.

‘Loudspeaker,’ shouted Billy, and gestured ahead.

There was a huge blue lighted sign. H. Hospital.

Billy Williams had taken them through the storm, across the lake and straight to the hospital.

‘How did you know?’ Beauvoir asked Gamache as the two men looked down at Kaye Thompson. She was hooked up to machines and IVs and bundled in a silver heating blanket. She looked like a baked potato. Like her father before her, she’d faced certain death and beaten the odds.

Gamache took from his pocket a balled up and sodden piece of paper. Handing it to Beauvoir, Gamache turned back to stare at Kaye and wonder what the last few days must have been like for her. Knowing what they almost certainly would do.

Beauvoir sat down and gently pried apart the paper until it again resembled a letter. It was written in a clear, old-fashioned hand, in beautiful French, by Émilie. It explained it all. How Crie had reminded Émilie of her son, David. So gifted, so joyous when creating music. When they’d heard CC attack Crie after the Christmas Eve service they knew they had no choice. They had to kill CC to save Crie.

‘That explains a lot,’ said Beauvoir, finishing the letter. ‘The complexity of the crime, why Kaye claimed not to have seen anything. It all makes sense. It needed all three of them. The niacin was in Mother’s tea, Émilie controlled when Mother would make all that noise at the curling, drawing everyone’s attention away from CC. Kaye leaned on the chair, making it crooked. They knew CC would have to straighten it.’ Beauvoir pointed to the letter on his lap. ‘Madame Longpré begs you to let them kill themselves, and you were going to.’

He had no gift for subtlety, but he tried to make it sound less harsh than it was.

Gamache moved out of the emergency room and into the busy hallway. Doctors and nurses were rushing up and down, the emergency room clogged with car accident victims, skiers with broken bones, people suffering hypothermia and frostbite from the storm. The two men found a couple of chairs and sat down.

‘You’re right, I was going to let them die.’ He could barely believe he was saying that. ‘I knew yesterday that they were the only ones who could have killed CC. Em’s letter only confirmed what I’d guessed. But as I watched them struggle onto the lake I thought of Inuit elders and how they’d get on an ice flow and drift to their deaths, to save the community in a time of starvation. They’d give up their lives so that others would live. Then there were CC’s boots.’