Cruelest Month

They called Clara to collect Hazel, to keep her company for the day. Clara showed up and led Hazel back to the Morrows’ house where she listened to her then asked if Hazel would like to lie down. Hazel had never felt so tired and gratefully she put her head on the sofa. Clara raised her legs, got a blanket, tucked her in and watched until she was certain the suddenly old woman, younger actually than herself, was asleep.

Then Clara walked slowly back to her studio and started painting again. More slowly now, the lines firm and deliberate. An image was appearing, but more than the features, something else was coming to life on the canvas.

‘Sophie Smyth is well liked at Queens. Even volunteers at the help center. She works part time at the bookstore on campus and seems like a regular student.’

Yvette Nichol had returned. She sat at the conference table sipping the Double Double coffee she’d bought for herself.

‘Grades?’ asked Beauvoir.

‘Decent, not phenomenal. I was too late to speak to the office but I talked to her roommates and some classmates and they said Sophie’s a solid student.’

‘Illnesses?’ asked Gamache. He noticed Agent Lemieux was uncharacteristically silent, his arms crossed tightly, almost violently, across his chest.

‘None,’ said Nichol. ‘Not a sore throat, not a bruise, not a limp. Never visited the infirmary or the Kingston Hospital. As far as her friends know she never even took a day off school, unless she was skipping class for fun.’

‘Perfectly healthy,’ said Gamache, almost to himself.

‘So that Landers woman was right,’ said Nichol. ‘Sophie put on an act when she was home, trying to get Mom’s attention away from Madeleine.’

‘You dropped the pill bottle off?’ asked Beauvoir.

‘Of course,’ said Nichol, eating her cream-filled doughnut, oblivious of the hungry stares around her.

‘Could you call and see if they have the results yet?’ Gamache asked Beauvoir.

While he did Gamache handed out assignments then walked to his desk. All eyes were on him, he knew. Watching, he supposed, in case he exploded or dissolved. Instead he looked at them. Lacoste, Lemieux, Nichol. So young. So eager. So human. And he smiled.

Lemieux smiled back. Eventually Lacoste did too, though not very happily. Nichol looked as though she’d been insulted.

Gamache found what he was looking for. Whoever had gone into the B. & B. and taken the yearbooks hadn’t taken them all. The most important one was still on his desk. The one Nichol found at Hazel’s home. Madeleine’s graduation yearbook. He sat and read it, going immediately to the back of the book and the grad photos. But it wasn’t Hazel or even Madeleine he wanted to see. It was another girl. A cheerleader.

‘I have the results,’ said Beauvoir, throwing himself into a seat at the conference table and slapping his notebook down. ‘The ephedra from Sophie’s pills is probably not the stuff that killed Madeleine.’

Gamache leaned forward and put the yearbook down. ‘No?’

‘The lab isn’t totally sure yet, they want to run a full spectrum analysis, but it seems Sophie’s contained another material, what the lab called a binding agent. Since ephedra’s really a plant, a kind of herb, the companies need to distill it then put it in pill form. Different companies use different binding agents. This one was different from the chemicals found in Madeleine.’

Gamache was bright-eyed now. ‘What a fool I’ve been. Did she say anything about the chemicals used to kill Madeleine?’

He waited, almost holding his breath.

‘She said the ephedra was from a generation back. More natural but less stable.’

Gamache nodded. ‘More natural. They would be.’

He called Lemieux over, asked a few questions, then turned to Beauvoir.

‘Come with me.’

Odile Montmagny was just opening when Beauvoir and Gamache arrived.

‘Come to hear more poetry?’

Beauvoir couldn’t tell whether she was serious. He ignored the question.

‘Have you ever heard of ephedra?’

‘No, never.’

‘I asked you about it after Madeleine died. You know it was used to kill her,’ he said.

‘Well, yes, I heard about it from you, but never before.’ They were in the musky store now. It smelled of too many teas and spices. And herbs.

Gamache walked over to the bins with labels like Devil’s Claw, St John’s Wort, Ginkgo biloba. He took a plastic bag, but instead of using the scoop provided he reached into his pocket for tweezers then carefully dropped some in the bag. He then labeled it.

‘I’d like to buy this, s’il vous plaît.’

Odile looked as though she could have used a Ruth-sized drink.

‘It’s so small you can just take it.’

‘No, madame. I need to pay.’ Gamache handed the small sample to her to weigh.

The label said Ma Huang.

‘The Chinese herb Lemieux told us about that first morning,’ said Beauvoir when they were back in the car. ‘It’s ephedra.’