Cruelest Month

He was gone and she was alone. With Lemieux. She liked Robert Lemieux. He was young and enthusiastic. There was never any struggle for power with him. Unlike Nichol, he was a pleasure to work with. Nichol was a complete disaster. Smug, sullen, self-absorbed. What disturbed Lacoste was why Chief Inspector Gamache kept her around. He’d fired her once, but when Nichol had been reassigned to homicide he’d simply given in. Without a fight.

And here she was again. Gamache could have assigned Nichol to cases in far-flung regions. He could have given her administrative jobs at Sûreté headquarters. But instead he assigned her to the most difficult field cases. With him.

Everything happens for a reason, Gamache said. Everything. And Lacoste knew there was a reason for this. She just wished she knew what it was.

‘How’re you doing?’ Lemieux asked.

‘Almost finished. You?’

‘A couple more things I need to do. Why don’t you head back?’

‘No, I’ll wait.’ Lacoste didn’t want to abandon Lemieux in this terrible place.

Lemieux’s phone had been vibrating for five minutes now. All he wanted to do was answer it. Why wouldn’t she leave? ‘Why?’

‘Can’t you feel it?’

He knew he should at least pretend to be uncomfortable but the truth was the old Hadley house did nothing to him. But he could see the others, even Gamache, perhaps especially Gamache, react to it.

‘It’s like there’s something here with us,’ said Lacoste. ‘As though something’s watching us.’

They stood still, Lacoste hyper-vigilant, paying attention to every creak, every cranny, Lemieux riveted on the phone vibrating in his pocket.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘You’ll scare yourself to death.’

‘The murderer chose well. This place would scare the devil himself.’

‘Look, you have a ton of work back at the Incident Room. I’m fine. Really.’

‘Really?’ she asked, desperate to believe it.

Leave, he wanted to scream.

‘Really. I’m too stupid to be afraid.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think the devil takes stupid people.’

‘I think he only takes stupid people,’ said Lacoste, and wished they weren’t standing in the old Hadley house talking about the devil. ‘Okay, I’ll see you later. You have your cell in case—’

‘In case?’ he smiled, teasing, and trying to get her to the door. ‘I do.’ Isabelle Lacoste stepped into the dark hallway with its worn carpet and smell of mold and decay. As soon as his back was turned she ran down the hallway, down the stairs almost tripping over her feet, and out the door, as though spewed from some gloomy womb into the world.

‘You knew Madeleine Favreau had breast cancer?’ Inspector Beauvoir asked.

‘Of course I knew,’ Hazel said, surprised.

‘But you didn’t tell us.’

‘I suppose I forgot. I never thought of her as a woman who’d had breast cancer and she didn’t either. Hardly ever spoke of it any more. Just got on with her life.’

‘It must have been a shock when she first discovered it. She’d have been in her early forties.’

‘True. Women are getting it younger and younger it seems. But I didn’t know her when she was first diagnosed. She looked me up when she was already in treatment. I think that happens a lot. Old friends become more important. We hadn’t kept in touch after high school but she suddenly called and came down. It was as though no time had passed. She was weak from the chemo but as lovely as ever. She looked like her eighteen-year-old self, only bald and that only made her more beautiful. It was strange. I sometimes wonder whether chemotherapy doesn’t take people almost to another world. So many seem so peaceful. Their faces become smooth, their eyes shine. Madeleine almost glowed.’

‘Sure she wasn’t having radiation?’ Nichol asked.

‘Agent Nichol,’ Beauvoir barked. He could feel the stone he’d found by the Bella Bella and put in his pocket yearning to fly. To smash bone, to grind into that head until it hit her tiny, atrophied brain. And replace it. And who would know the difference? ‘That was uncalled for.’

‘It was only a joke.’

‘It was cruel, Agent Nichol, and you know the difference. Apologize.’

Nichol turned to Hazel, her eyes hard. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right.’

Nichol knew she’d gone too far. But she’d been told to. To aggravate, to upset, to unsettle the team, that was her job.

For the sake of the Sûreté she was willing to do this. For her boss, whom she adored and loathed, she’d do this. Looking at Inspector Beauvoir’s handsome face, engorged and enraged, she knew she’d succeeded.

‘Madeleine went back to Montreal and finished her chemo,’ continued Hazel after an awkward silence. ‘But she came out every weekend after that. She wasn’t happy in her marriage. There weren’t any children, you know.’

‘Why was she unhappy?’