Cruelest Month

‘Bonjour.’ Gamache shook hands with Peter and bowed slightly to Clara. ‘I see you’ve seen the latest.’ He nodded to the paper in Beauvoir’s hand.

‘Have you?’ Beauvoir asked.

‘No, but Reine-Marie read it to me.’

‘What’re you going to do?’ Beauvoir asked. It was as though the others had disappeared and all that existed for Beauvoir was the Chief Inspector, and the remarkable storm cloud rising behind him.

‘I’ll sit with it for a while.’ Gamache nodded to the others, turned and walked to the Incident Room.

‘Wait.’ Beauvoir ran to catch up. He stepped in front of Gamache just before he reached the door. ‘You can’t just let them say these things. It’s libel at the very least. My God, did Madame Gamache read it all to you? Listen to this.’ Beauvoir snapped the paper open and began reading. ‘At the very least the Sûreté du Québec owes Quebecers an explanation. How can a corrupt officer remain on the force? And in a position of great influence? It was clear during the Arnot investigation that Chief Inspector Gamache was himself involved and had a personal vendetta against his superior. But now he seems to have gone into business for himself. Who is the man he’s slipping the envelope to, what’s in the envelope, and what is the man being hired to do?’

Beauvoir crunched the paper in his hands and looked Gamache straight in the face. ‘This is your son. You’re handing an envelope to Daniel. There’s no reason for any of this shit. Come on. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call the editors. Explain what you’re doing.’

‘Why?’ Gamache’s voice was calm, his gaze clear and without anger. ‘So they can make up more lies? So they can know they’ve hurt me? No, Jean Guy. Just because I can answer an accusation doesn’t mean I must. Trust me.’

‘You’re always saying that as though you need to remind me to trust you.’ Now Beauvoir didn’t care who heard. ‘How many times do I have to prove it before you stop saying “trust me”?’

‘I’m sorry.’ And Gamache looked stricken for the first time. ‘You’re right. I don’t doubt you, Jean Guy. Never have. I trust you.’

‘And I trust you,’ said Beauvoir, his voice calm now, his agitation lifted and caught in the gusts and taken from him. For a moment he imagined the word ‘trust’ replaced by another, but he knew ‘trust’ was enough. He looked at the big man and knew Gamache hadn’t put a foot wrong yet. Certainly Gamache wasn’t the one with shit all over his Italian leather boots.

‘Do what you must,’ he said. ‘I’ll support you.’

‘Thank you, Jean Guy. Right now I must call Daniel. It’s getting late in Paris.’

‘And Chief,’ Lacoste now felt it safe to approach, ‘the coroner wants a word. She said she’d meet you in the bistro at five.’

Gamache looked at his watch. ‘Did you find anything in the room to explain the break-in?’

‘Nothing,’ said Lacoste. ‘Did you find anything?’

What should he say? He’d found sorrow and terror and truth? We’re only as sick as our secrets, he’d told Lemieux. Gamache had emerged from that cursed basement with a secret of his own.

Gilles Sandon hugged a leg to him and began caressing it. Up and down his rough hand went, agonizingly slowly. With each pass his hand crept further up until finally he’d run out of leg.

‘You’re so smooth,’ he said, blowing on the leg and picking minute particles from it. ‘Wait until I oil you. Rich tung oil.’

‘Who’re you talking to?’

Odile slumped against the doorway. The contents of her glass and Gilles’s workroom both swirled. Normally she turned her anger into wine and swallowed it, but lately it hadn’t worked so well.

Gilles looked up, startled, as though caught in a humiliating and private act. The worn piece of fine sandpaper fluttered to the floor. He could smell the wine. Five o’clock. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Most people have a drink or two at five. After all, there was the fine Québécois tradition of the ‘cinq à sept’.

‘I was talking to the leg,’ he said, and for the first time the words sounded ridiculous.

‘Isn’t that sort of a silly thing to do?’

He looked at the leg, destined to be part of a fine table. It had honestly never before occurred to him it was silly. He wasn’t a stupid man and knew most people didn’t talk to trees but he figured that was their problem.

‘I’ve been working on another poem. Wanna hear it?’

Without waiting for an answer Odile rolled off the door jamb and walked slowly and with great care to the front counter of their store. She returned with her notebook.

‘Listen.

‘How prone is piebald man to mourn,

And make ado of nothing much,

To strew his rosy path with thorn,

And rusty nails, yea, plenty such.

‘Wait.’ She fell against the doorway as he turned his back. ‘There’s more. And you can drop that fucking thing.’