“I think so. At least, she was trying.”

“Have you?” he asked.

“Have I what?” asked Suzanne, though she must have known what he meant.

“Changed.”

There was a long pause. “I hope so,” said Suzanne.

Gamache lowered his voice so that they had to strain to hear. “But is it real hope? Or just a trick of the light?”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“You lied to us at every turn, then dismissed it as simply habit.” Gamache continued to stare at Suzanne. “That doesn’t sound like real change to me. It sounds like situational ethics. Change, as long as it’s convenient. And a lot about what’s happened in the last few days has been extremely inconvenient. But some was very convenient. For instance, your sponsee coming to Clara’s party.”

“I didn’t know Lillian was even here,” said Suzanne. “I told you that.”

“True. But then you told us a lot of things. For instance, that you didn’t know who the famous line He’s a natural, producing art like it’s a bodily function was about. It was you.”

“You?” said Clara, turning to the lively woman beside her.

“That review was the last shove,” said Gamache. “After that you went into free-fall. And landed in AA, where you may or may not have changed. But you weren’t the only one of your group to lie.”

Gamache shifted his gaze to the man sitting beside Suzanne on the sofa. “You also lied, sir.”

Chief Justice Pineault looked amazed. “I lied? How?”

“It was, to be sure, more a sin of omission, but it was still a lie. You know André Castonguay, don’t you?”

“I can’t say.”

“Well, let me save you the trouble. Monsieur Castonguay had to stop drinking if he had any hope of keeping the Kelley Foods contract. As he himself said, they’re a notoriously sober company. And he was becoming notoriously inebriated. So he tried AA.”

“If you say,” said Thierry.

“When you arrived in Three Pines yesterday you spent an hour in Myrna’s bookstore. It’s a lovely store, but an hour seemed excessive. And then, when we sat outside you insisted on a table by the wall and sat with your back to the village.”

“It was a courtesy, Chief Inspector, to take the worst seat for myself.”

“It was also a convenience. You were hiding from someone. But then, at the end of our talk you got up and happily walked over to the B and B with Suzanne.”

Thierry Pineault and Suzanne exchanged looks.

“You were no longer hiding. I looked around and tried to figure out what had changed. And only one thing had. André Castonguay had left. He was making his drunken way back to the inn and spa.”

Chief Justice Pineault was giving nothing away. He stared, stone-faced, at Gamache.

“I made a small mistake tonight,” admitted Gamache. “When we arrived you and Castonguay were talking in the corner. You appeared to be arguing and I assumed it was about Clara’s art.”

He looked, and they followed his gaze, into the corner where the study of the hands was hanging.

“Désolé,” he said to Clara, who smiled.

“People argue about my art all the time. No harm done.”

But Gamache didn’t believe that. Harm had been done. A great deal of it.

“I was wrong, though,” the Chief continued. “You weren’t arguing about whether Clara’s art was any good, you were arguing about AA.”

“We weren’t arguing,” said Pineault. He took a deep breath. “We were discussing. It’s no use arguing with a drunk. And no use trying to sell someone on AA.”

“Besides,” said Gamache, “he’d already tried it.”

The two men stared at each other and finally Pineault nodded.

“He came in about a year ago, desperate to get sober,” Pineault admitted. “It didn’t work.”

“You knew him there,” said Gamache. “And I suspect you more than knew him.”

Again Pineault nodded. “He was my sponsee. I tried to help, but he couldn’t stop drinking.”

“When did he stop going to AA?” Gamache asked.

Pineault thought. “About three months ago. I tried calling him but he never returned my calls. Eventually I stopped, figuring he’d come back when he’d bottomed.”

“When you saw him here yesterday, drunk, you immediately appreciated the problem,” said Gamache.

“What problem?” asked Suzanne.