Cruelest Month

Two possible reasons. She was so jealous of their relationship she wanted to come between them, literally. Or, she wanted to be able to give Madeleine the ephedra.

Or both.

She had motive and opportunity.

After lunch Gamache had ordered a patrol car to watch the Smyth house, but he wouldn’t act until he had proof the bottle belonged to Sophie. In the morning they’d make an arrest.

In the meantime there were answers to other questions he needed.

He looked at his watch.

‘The first editions of the paper will be out in an hour,’ said Beauvoir. ‘Monsieur Béliveau will keep one for us.’

‘Merci.’

‘I’m glad you sent Nichol away. Things will be easier.’

When Gamache didn’t answer Beauvoir continued. ‘You’ve never told me what happened when you realized what Arnot was doing. Some came out in court, of course. But I know there’s more.’

Gamache saw the countryside going by. The trees just coming alive. It was like witnessing the moment life began.

‘An emergency meeting of the senior council was called,’ said Gamache, his eyes no longer seeing the miracle of new life but seeing the cold conference room at Sûreté headquarters. The officers arriving. No one except Brébeuf and himself aware of why the meeting was called. Pierre Arnot smiling urbanely and laughing with Superintendent Francoeur as the two took swiveling chairs side by side.

‘I dimmed the lights and projected pictures on the wall. Pictures of boys from the school yearbooks. Then pictures of them dead. One after another. Then I read the witness reports, and the lab reports. Everyone was confused. Trying to figure out what I was getting at. Then one by one they grew quiet. Except Francoeur. And Arnot.’

He could see the blue eyes, cold like marbles. And he could sense the brain, active, rushing from fact to fact, desperate to refute them. At first Arnot had been relaxed, confident in his superiority, sure no one could ever get the better of him. But as the meeting progressed he grew restive, furtive.

Gamache had done his homework. Had worked on the case for almost a year, quietly, in his spare time and on holidays. Until every single escape route Arnot might try was locked and barred and blocked, and locked again.

Gamache knew he had only one shot, and that was this meeting. If Arnot walked free Gamache and many others, Brébeuf included, were doomed.

He’d marshaled his facts but he knew there was one potent weapon Arnot would use. Loyalty. Officers of the force would rather die than be disloyal, to each other and to the Sûreté. Arnot commanded great loyalty.

And Arnot had won.

Faced with the facts he’d admitted the crimes of incitement to murder and actual murder. But he’d prevailed upon the council, in recognition of his position and his years of service, to allow him and the two officers implicated with him to not be arrested. Not yet. They’d put their affairs in order, make things right for their families, say their goodbyes, and then go to Arnot’s hunting camp in the Abitibi region. And kill themselves.

Avoid the shame of a trial. Spare the Sûreté the public humiliation.

Gamache had argued ferociously against such folly. But he’d been defeated by a council afraid of Arnot and afraid of the public.

To Gamache’s astonishment Pierre Arnot had walked free. At least for a while. But a man like that can create a lot of grief in very little time.

‘And that’s when we took the case in Mutton Bay?’ asked Beauvoir.

‘As far from Montreal as we could get, yes,’ admitted Gamache. He’d sent Reine-Marie away and asked his friend Marc Brault with the Montreal police to assign officers to protect his children. Then he himself had taken a ski plane to Quebec City then on to Baie Comeau, then Natashquan, Harrington Harbour and finally the tiny fishing village of Mutton Bay. And there he’d looked for a murderer and found himself. In a dingy diner on the rocky shore of the village. It smelled of fish, both fresh and fried, and a ragged, craggy fisherman, as though made from the rocks themselves, sitting alone in a booth had looked over and given Gamache a smile of such unexpected radiance Gamache had immediately known what he had to do.

‘That’s when you left,’ said Beauvoir. ‘You headed back to Montreal. Next thing I knew Pierre Arnot and the two others were all over the newspapers.’

Ironic really, thought Gamache, and tried not to look at his watch again.

Gamache had driven to the Abitibi and stopped the suicide. All the way back the other two officers, drunk and hysterical with relief, wept. But not Arnot. He sat bolt upright between them and stared into the rearview mirror, at Gamache. Gamache had known as soon as he’d entered the cabin that Arnot had had no intention of committing suicide. The others, yes. But not Arnot. For four hours through a snowstorm, Gamache endured the stare.

The media had hailed him a hero but Armand Gamache knew he was no hero. A hero wouldn’t have hesitated. A hero wouldn’t have run away.