The Cruelest Month
‘That’s what the doctors at the Cowansville hospital said. Heart attack. But—’
‘Go on.’
‘You’ll have to see for yourself but I hear she looked…’ Brébeuf paused, almost embarrassed to say it, ‘as though she’d seen something.’
‘The paper said she’d been at a séance at the old Hadley house.’
‘A séance,’ Brébeuf harrumphed. ‘Foolishness. I can see kids doing it, but adults? I just don’t understand why anyone would waste their time with that.’
Gamache wondered why the Superintendent had come in on his day off. He couldn’t remember Brébeuf discussing a case before it had even begun.
So why this one?
‘It wasn’t until this morning the doctor thought to have blood work done. This is what came back.’
Brébeuf handed over a sheet of paper. Gamache put on his half-moon glasses. He’d read hundreds of these and knew exactly what to look for. The toxicology report.
After a minute he lowered the paper, looking at Brébeuf over his glasses.
‘Ephedra.’
‘C’est ça.’
‘But does it have to be murder?’ Gamache asked, almost to himself. ‘Don’t people take ephedra on their own?’
‘It’s a banned substance,’ said Brébeuf.
‘True, true,’ said Gamache, distracted. He was scanning the report again. After a moment he spoke. ‘This is interesting. Listen to this.’ He read from the report. ‘The subject is five foot seven and weighs 134.7 pounds. You wouldn’t think she’d need a diet pill.’ He took off his glasses and folded them up.
‘Most people don’t,’ said Brébeuf. ‘All in their minds.’
‘I wonder what she weighed a few months ago,’ said Gamache. ‘Maybe this is how she got down to 135 pounds.’ Gamache tapped his glasses on the report. ‘With the help of ephedra.’
‘Maybe,’ agreed Brébeuf. ‘It’s your job to find out.’
‘Murder or misadventure?’ Gamache went back to the paper in his hand, wondering what else it might yield. But the Chief Inspector knew that paper rarely held the answers to his questions. Was it murder? Who was the killer? Why had the killer hated or feared this woman so much he had to take her life? Why? Why? Always the why before the who.
No, the answers lay in flesh and blood, not in a book and not in a report. And so often not even in things corporeal, but in something that couldn’t be held and contained and touched. The answers to his questions lay in the murky past and in the emotions hidden there.
The paper in his hand would yield the facts but not the truth. For that he had to go to Three Pines. For that he’d have to go, yet again, into the old Hadley house.
‘Who will you take on your team?’ The question brought Gamache back to his friend’s office. Brébeuf had tried to sound casual but the oddity of his query couldn’t be hidden. Never before had he questioned Armand Gamache, his chief of homicide, about procedure and certainly not about anything as mundane as personnel assignments.
‘Why do you ask?’
Brébeuf picked up a pen and tapped it rapidly on a stack of undone paperwork.
‘You know very well why I’m asking. You’re the one who brought her behavior to my attention. Are you going to assign Agent Yvette Nichol to this case?’
There it was. The question that had hounded Gamache on the drive from Mont Royal. Should Nichol be on the team? Was it time? He’d actually sat in his Volvo in the near-empty car park of Sûreté headquarters, trying to decide. But still, he was surprised his friend had asked.
‘What’s your advice?’
‘Have you made up your mind or is there a chance I might influence you?’
Gamache laughed. They knew each other too well.
‘I’ll tell you, Michel, I’ve just about decided. But you know how much I value your opinion.’
‘Voyons, what would you rather have right now? My opinion or a brioche?’
‘A brioche,’ admitted Gamache with a smile. ‘But so would you.’
‘C’est la vérité. Listen.’ Brébeuf got up and came round to the other side of the desk, sitting on it and leaning down to stare at the Chief Inspector. ‘To take her, well, c’est fou. It’s nuts. I know you. You want to save her, to rehabilitate her. To turn her into a good and loyal agent. I’m right, aren’t I?’