The Cruelest Month

‘The most obvious suspect is Sophie. Poor Sophie, as everyone calls her. Always getting hurt, always getting sick. Though things started to get better when Madeleine arrived.’



Sophie stared at him, her brows low and glowering.



‘The house that had been so full of things and yet so empty was suddenly full of life. Can’t you just imagine?’



Suddenly they were transported to a day in their imaginations when the drab home of Hazel and Sophie was visited by sunshine. When the curtains were thrown open. When laughter stirred the decay in the rooms and sent it twirling into the rays of light.



‘But the price you paid was that your shadows were revealed. You fell in love with Madeleine, didn’t you?’



‘Love isn’t a shadow,’ said Sophie defiantly.



‘You’re quite right. Love isn’t. But attachment is. Myrna, you talked about the near enemy.’



‘Attachment masquerading as love,’ nodded Myrna. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of Sophie.’



‘No, you were thinking of someone else. But it applies here.’ He turned back to Sophie. ‘You wanted Madeleine for yourself. You went to her university, Queens, to impress her. To get her to pay more attention to you. It was bad enough to share Madeleine with your mother, but when you returned home recently and found Madeleine in a relationship with Monsieur Béliveau, that was too much.’



‘How could she? I mean look at him. He’s old and ugly and poor. He’s just a grocer for God’s sake. How could she love him? I’d gone all the way to fucking Queens for her and when I come back she’s not even around. She’s at a séance with him.’



She jabbed her crutch at Béliveau, who seemed beyond the insults.



‘When the next séance came you saw your chance. You’ve fought your weight all your life, even taking ephedra a few years ago, until it was found and taken away. But eventually the weight crept back and you ordered more pills from the internet. This photograph shows a plump girl, just two years ago.’ Gamache handed round the picture from the fridge. Each person looked at it. It seemed to have been taken on another planet. One where people laughed, and loved, and celebrated. One where Madeleine was still alive.



‘You found the pill bottle. You knew your mother threw nothing away. Inspector Beauvoir described the cupboard filled with old pills, most long out of date. We know from the lab that you didn’t use your current ephedra pills. Instead, you found the old ones. You knew Madeleine had a heart damaged by her chemotherapy treatments –’



A small murmur went around the circle.



‘– and you knew a high enough dose, combined with the bad heart, could kill her. All you needed was a scare. Something to challenge her heart, to get it pounding and racing. And one was handed to you. A séance in the old Hadley house.’



‘This is stupid,’ said Sophie, though she was looking far from confident.



‘You made sure you sat beside Madeleine at dinner, and you slipped the pills into her food.’



‘I didn’t. Mom, tell him I didn’t.’



‘She didn’t,’ said Hazel, finding the energy to come, feebly, to Sophie’s defense.



‘Of course, everything I’ve said about Sophie applies to Hazel as well.’ Gamache turned to the woman beside Sophie. ‘You loved Madeleine. Have never tried to hide it. A platonic love, almost certainly, but a deep one. You probably loved her since you were children together. And then she comes to live with you, recovers from her chemo, and your lives start again. No more dullness. No more loneliness.’



Hazel nodded.



‘If Sophie could find the ephedra so could you. You were on Madeleine’s other side at dinner. You could have slipped it to her. But one nagging question was why not kill Madeleine at the first séance? Why wait?’



He let the question sink in. There seemed now to be no world beyond their circle of light. The known world had disappeared over the edge of the darkness.



‘The séances were different in three ways.’ Gamache counted them on his fingers. ‘The dinner at Peter and Clara’s, the old Hadley house, and the Smyths’.’



‘But why would Hazel kill Madeleine?’ Clara asked.



‘Jealousy. That picture?’ He gestured to the photo, now in Gabri’s hand. ‘Madeleine was looking with great affection at Hazel and Hazel was looking with even more open affection. But not at Madeleine or Sophie. She was looking off camera. And I remembered something Olivier said. He said how kind Hazel had been to Monsieur Béliveau after his wife died. He was invited to all celebrations, especially the big ones. The hat Hazel wore was white and blue, the cake had blue frosting. It was a man’s birthday. It was yours.’