Cruelest Month

‘She was beautiful. I’m not good with words, Inspector. She was like that.’ He pointed the stick into the woods. Beauvoir looked over and saw sunlight glowing on light green buds and falling on the golden autumn leaves. There was no need for words.

‘She was new to this area,’ said Beauvoir.

‘Only came a few years ago. Lived with Hazel Smyth.’

‘Were they lovers, do you think?’

‘Hazel and Madeleine?’ This seemed to be a new, though not revolting, idea for Sandon. He frowned and considered it. ‘Might have been. Madeleine was full of love. People like that sometimes don’t need to distinguish between men and women. I know they loved each other, if that’s what you mean, but I think you mean something else.’

‘I do. And you’re saying it wouldn’t surprise you?’

‘No, but only because I think Madeleine loved a lot of people.’

‘Including Monsieur Béliveau?’

‘I think if she felt anything for that man it was pity. His wife died a few years ago, you know. And now Madeleine dies.’

The rage boiled up and out of the man so quickly Beauvoir wasn’t prepared for it. Sandon looked as if he wanted to hit something, or someone. He glared around savagely, his fists clenched, tears running from his eyes. Beauvoir could see the calculation in his mind. Tree or man, tree or man. Which one would he smash?

Tree, tree, tree, Beauvoir pleaded. But the rage passed and now Sandon was leaning against the huge oak for support. Hugging it, Beauvoir saw, and felt absolutely no inclination to mock.

Turning back to Beauvoir Sandon dragged his checkered sleeve across his face, rubbing away the tears and other stuff.

‘I’m sorry. I thought I’d gotten it all out, but I guess not.’ Now the huge man smiled sheepishly at Beauvoir over the gigantic sleeve he held to his face. Then he lowered it. ‘Came here yesterday. It’s where I feel most at home. I walked over to the creek and just screamed. All day. Poor trees. But they didn’t seem to mind. They scream too, sometimes, when there’s clear cutting going on. They can feel the terror of the other trees, you know. Through their roots. They scream and then they weep. Yesterday I screamed. Today I wept. I thought it was over. I’m sorry.’

‘Did you love Madeleine?’

‘I did. I challenge you to find someone who didn’t.’

‘Someone didn’t. Someone killed her.’

‘Still can’t quite take that in. Are you sure?’ When Beauvoir was silent the big man nodded, but still seemed numb to the idea.

‘There’s a drug called ephedra. Ever heard of it?’

‘Ephedra?’ Gilles Sandon thought about it. ‘Can’t say I have, but I don’t go in much for pharmaceuticals. I have an organic shop in St-Rémy.’

‘La Maison Biologique. I know. I was there earlier talking to Odile. Does she know?’

‘What?’

‘That you loved Madeleine?’

‘Probably, but she’d know it wasn’t the same sort of love. Madeleine was the sort you adore from a distance, but I couldn’t imagine approaching her. I mean, look at me.’

Beauvoir did and knew what Sandon meant. Huge, filthy, at home in the woods. Not many women would fall for this. But Odile had and Beauvoir knew enough about women, and certainly enough about murder, to recognize a motive.

Ruth Zardo walked very slowly down the path from her tiny clapboard home to the opening in the dry stone wall that led onto the Commons. Gamache and Jeanne watched. Across the village green Robert Lemieux, Myrna and Monsieur Béliveau watched. A few people were interrupted mid-errand to stare.

All eyes were on the elderly woman limping and quacking.

Ruth, her head uncovered and her short-cropped white hair ruffling slightly in the breeze, looked behind her at the ground and stopped. Then she did something Gamache had never seen before. She smiled. A simple, easy smile. Then she continued walking.

Out the opening she came, inching along. And behind her came the quacking. Two tiny, fluffy birds.

‘There’s a crone,’ said Jeanne.

‘Ruth Zardo,’ said Gamache, laughing and thinking she wouldn’t get much argument in this village.

Jeanne turned to him, stunned.

‘Ruth Zardo? The poet? She’s Ruth Zardo? Who wrote,

‘I didn’t feel the aimed word hit

and go in like a soft bullet.

I didn’t feel the smashed flesh

closing over it like water

over a thrown stone.

‘That Ruth Zardo?’

Gamache smiled and nodded. Jeanne had quoted from one of his favorite poems by Ruth, ‘Half-Hanged Mary’.

‘Oh, wow.’ Jeanne was almost trembling. ‘I thought she was dead.’

‘Only parts of her,’ said Gamache. ‘She seems to be doing it in stages.’

‘She’s a legend in my circles.’

‘Witches’ circles?’

‘Ruth Zardo. That poem, “Half-Hanged Mary”? It’s about a real woman, Mary Webster. They thought she was a witch so they strung her up from a tree. This was back in the witch-hunt days. Late sixteen hundreds.’

‘Here?’ Gamache asked. He was a student of Quebec history and while he’d come across many odd and brutal events, none would match the witch-hunts.