Cruelest Month

She heard an exhale. The candle flickered violently, from the force of their stress released.

Gamache looked at them. At Clara he seemed to pause and smile, but Clara thought everyone probably had that impression. She wondered how he managed to make time disobey its own rules. Though she also knew Three Pines itself was like that, a village where time seemed flexible.

‘This is a tragedy of secrets,’ said Gamache. ‘It’s a story of hauntings, of ghosts, of wickedness dressed as valor. It’s a story of things hidden and buried. Alive. When something not quite dead is buried it eventually comes back,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘It claws its way out of the dirt, rancid and fetid. And hungry.

‘That’s what happened here. Everyone in this room has a secret. Something to hide. Something that came alive a few days ago. When Agent Lacoste told me about her interview with Madeleine’s husband I started to get some insight into this murder. He described Madeleine as the sun. Life-giving, joyous, bright and cheerful.’

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.