The Cruelest Month

The sounds were familiar, voices bouncing off metal and concrete, shoes screeching on hard floors, but it was the smells that had transported her. Of books and cleaner, of lunches languishing and rotting behind hundreds of lockers. And fear. High school smelled of that more than anything else, even more than sweaty feet, cheap perfume and rotten bananas.



‘I put together a dossier for you,’ said Mrs Plant, the school secretary. ‘I wasn’t here when Madeleine Gagnon went to school. In fact, none of the teachers or staff is still here. That was thirty years ago. But all our archives are on computer now so I printed out her report cards and found some other things you might be interested in. Including these.’



She put her hand on a stack of yearbooks, the secular school’s Bible.



‘That’s very kind, but I think the report cards will be enough.’



‘But I spent half of yesterday in the storeroom finding these.’



‘Thank you. I’m sure they’ll be great.’ Agent Lacoste hoisted them into her arms, balancing the file on top precariously as they left the office.



‘We have some pictures of her on the wall, you know.’ Mrs Plant walked ahead. The halls were beginning to fill and the place echoed with unintelligible shouts as kids hailed and assailed each other.



‘Down here. All sorts of pictures. I have to get back to the office. Will you be all right?’



‘You’ve been very helpful. I’ll be fine.’



For the next few minutes Lacoste moved slowly down the long, concrete corridor, looking at old photographs framed and hung, of victorious school teams and school government. And there was young Madeleine Favreau, née Gagnon. Smiling, healthy, with every expectation of a long and exciting life. Jostled by the kids now crowding into the halls Agent Lacoste wondered what high school must have been like for Madeleine. Did she also smell of fear? She didn’t look it, but then the most fearful people often didn’t.



* * *



Gamache took his seat again and reached for his coffee. They all looked at the new list. Under the heading How are the two séances different? he’d written,



Hazel



Sophie



Dinner party



Old Hadley house



Jeanne Chauvet more serious



He explained that on being interviewed the psychic had said she wasn’t prepared for the first, it had been Gabri’s little surprise, and so she hadn’t taken it seriously. She’d judged they were really just a bored group of villagers looking for titillation. So she’d given them the cheap, Hollywood version. Silly melodrama. But when someone later told her about the old Hadley house and somehow the idea of contacting the dead there had come up, she’d taken it seriously.



‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.



‘You’re not really that thick,’ snapped Nichol. ‘The old Hadley house is supposedly haunted. She contacts ghosts for a living. Hello?’



Beauvoir, ignoring Nichol, got up and wrote,



Candles



Salt



‘Anything else?’ he asked. He liked writing things on the board. Always had. He liked the smell of magic marker. The squeak it made. And the order it created from random ideas.



‘Her incantations,’ said Gamache. ‘They’re important.’



‘Right,’ said Nichol, rolling her eyes.



‘For setting atmosphere,’ said Gamache. ‘That was a major difference. From what I understand the Good Friday séance was frightening, but the Sunday night one was terrifying. Maybe the murderer tried to kill Madeleine Friday night but it just wasn’t scary enough.’



‘So who suggested the old Hadley house?’ asked Lemieux and shot Nichol a look, daring her to mock him again. She just sneered and shook her head. He could feel the rage rising from his chest, boiling there and bubbling to his throat. It was bad enough to be mocked, to be insulted, to be accused of sucking up. But to be dismissed as pathetic was the worst.



‘I don’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ve asked and no one can remember.’



‘But if you think the move to the old Hadley house was key then that lets out Hazel and Sophie,’ said Beauvoir.



‘Why?’ asked Lemieux.



‘They weren’t there to suggest it.’



There was a pause.



‘But Sophie’s the only person who’s different from the first to the second séance,’ said Nichol. ‘I don’t think the first had anything to do with murder. I think it only occurred to someone later. And that’s because that someone wasn’t at the first séance.’



‘But Sophie isn’t the only new person,’ said Lemieux. ‘Her mother was only at the second séance as well.’