How did it feel?

He’d been in shacks in the middle of nowhere, carpets worn, upholstery torn, wallpaper peeling off. But stepping in he’d also noticed the smell of fresh coffee and bread. Walls were taken up with immense smiling graduation photos and on rusty pocked TV trays stood modest chipped vases with cheery daffodils or pussy willows or some tiny wild flower picked by worn hands for eyes that would adore it.

And he’d been in mansions that felt like mausoleums.

He was anxious to see how Madeleine Favreau’s home felt. From the outside it felt sad, but he knew most places felt just a little sad in spring, when the bright and playful snow had gone and the flowers and trees hadn’t yet bloomed.

The first thing that struck him on entering the house was that it was almost impossible to move. Even in the narrow mudroom they’d somehow managed to stuff an armoire, a bookcase and a long wooden bench under which piles of muddy boots and shoes had been thrown.

‘My name is Armand Gamache.’ He bowed slightly to the middle-aged woman who opened the door.

She was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater. Comfortable, conventional. She smiled a little as he brought out his warrant card.

‘It’s all right, Chief Inspector. I know who you are.’ She stepped aside and let them in. Gamache’s first impression was of a decent person trying to find her way in an indecent situation. She spoke French to them, though with a heavy English accent. She was courteous and contained. The only sign of something amiss were dark circles under her eyes, as though grief had physically struck her.

But Armand Gamache knew something else. Grief sometimes took time to tell. The first days for relatives or close friends of murder victims were blessedly numb. They almost always held together, going through the motions of a normal life, so that a casual observer would never know disaster had just rammed into them. Most people fell to pieces gradually, like the old Hadley house.

As he watched Gamache could almost see the inevitable horsemen on the hill, above Hazel, snorting and pounding the ground, straining to be released. They brought the end of everything Hazel knew, all that was familiar and predictable. This contained woman was courageously holding off the marauding army of grief, but soon it would break free and sweep down and over her, and nothing familiar would be left standing.

‘Clara Morrow called to see how I was doing and offer some food. She told me you might be coming.’

‘I could have brought the food. I’m sorry.’ He was trying to get his coat off without whacking Beauvoir, who was crammed against the now closed door. A few books fell from the case and Gamache rapped his knuckles on the armoire, but eventually the coat came off.

‘No need to be,’ said Hazel, taking the coat and trying to open the armoire. ‘Told her we have plenty. In fact I can’t talk long. Poor old Madame Turcotte’s had a stroke and I need to take her dinner.’

They followed Hazel deeper into her home.

The dining room was barely passable and when they finally broke through to the living room Gamache felt like an African explorer, having arrived in the Dark Continent. He hoped they could make camp here for a while. If they could clear enough space.

The small room held two sofas, including the largest one he’d ever seen, as well as an assortment of chairs and tables. The tiny brick house was stuffed, crammed, bloated and dark.

‘It’s a little cozy in here,’ she said as the three of them sat, Gamache and Beauvoir on the massive sofa and Hazel in the worn wing chair opposite. A bag of mending sat at her feet. Her chair, Gamache knew. But it wasn’t the best chair in the room. That one was empty and sat nearest the fireplace. A book was splayed open on the table under the lamp.

A book in French by a Québécois writer Gamache admired.

Madeleine Favreau’s seat. The best in the room. Now how was that decided? Did she just take it? Did Hazel offer? Was Madeleine Favreau a bully? Was Hazel a professional victim?

Or perhaps they were just good friends who decided things naturally and amicably and took turns taking ‘the best’.

‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said Hazel, sitting down as though her legs had given way. Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

‘Had you known Madame Favreau long?’

‘All my life, it seems. We met in high school. Had the same home room the first year and became friends. I was kind of shy but for some reason she took to me. Made my life easier.’