The Cruelest Month

‘Why was that?’



‘Having a friend, Chief Inspector. All you need is one. Makes all the difference.’



‘You must have had friends before, madame.’



‘True, but not like Madeleine. When she was your friend something magical happened. The world became a brighter place. Does that make sense?’



‘It does,’ Gamache nodded. ‘A veil is lifted.’



She smiled at him gratefully. He did understand. But now, slowly, she could feel the veil lowering again. Madeleine was barely dead and already the dusk was approaching and with it that emptiness. It was spreading across her horizon.



One was dead and one was left behind. One. Again.



‘But you haven’t always lived together?’



‘Good Lord, no.’ Hazel actually laughed, surprising herself. Perhaps the dusk was just a threat. ‘We went our separate ways after high school but met up again a few years ago. She’s lived here almost five years now.’



‘Was Madame Favreau ever overweight?’



He was getting used to seeing the baffled looks when he asked this question.



‘Madeleine? Not that I know of. She’d put on a few pounds over the years since high school, but that was twenty-five years ago. It’s natural. But she was never fat.’



‘Though you hadn’t seen her for a few years.’



‘True,’ Hazel admitted. ‘Why did Madame Favreau move in?’



‘Her marriage had failed. We were each living on our own so we decided to share. She was in Montreal at the time.’



‘Was it hard making space?’



‘Now I think you’re being diplomatic, Chief Inspector,’ and Hazel smiled. He realized he liked her. ‘Had she brought a toothpick we’d have been in trouble. Happily she didn’t. Madeleine brought herself, and that was enough.’



There it was. Simple, unforced, private. Love.



Across from him Hazel closed her eyes and smiled again, then her brows drew together.



The room suddenly ached. Gamache wanted to take her composed hands in his. Any other senior officer in the Sûreté would think this not only weakness, but folly. But Gamache knew it was the only way he could find a murderer. He listened to people, took notes, gathered evidence, like all his colleagues. But he did one more thing.



He gathered feelings. He collected emotions. Because murder was deeply human. It wasn’t about what people did. No, it was about how they felt, because that’s where it all started. Some feeling that had once been human and natural had twisted. Become grotesque. Had turned sour and corrosive until its very container had been eaten away. Until the human barely existed.



It took years for an emotion to reach that stage. Years of careful nurturing, protecting, justifying, tending and finally burying it. Alive.



Then one day it clawed its way out, something terrible.



Something that had only one goal. To take a life.



Armand Gamache found murderers by following the trail of rancid emotions.



Beside him Beauvoir squirmed. Not, Gamache thought, because he was impatient. Not yet anyway. But because the sofa seemed to have found a life of its own and was sending out tiny spikes.



Hazel opened her eyes and looked at him, smiling a little in thanks, he thought, for not interfering.



Upstairs they heard a thump.



‘My daughter, Sophie. She’s visiting from university.’



‘She was at the séance last night, I believe,’ said Gamache.



‘It was stupid, stupid.’ Hazel hit the arm of her chair with her fist. ‘I knew better.’



‘Then why did you go?’



‘I didn’t go to the first one, and tried to stop Madeleine—’



‘The first one?’ Beauvoir sat up and actually forgot that a million little pins were sticking into his bottom.



‘Yes, didn’t you know?’



Gamache was always amazed and a little disconcerted that people seemed to think they knew everything immediately.



‘Tell us, please.’



‘There was another séance on Friday night. Good Friday. At the bistro.’



‘And Madame Favreau was at that?’



‘Along with a bunch of other people. Nothing much happened though so they decided to try another. This time at that place.’



Gamache wondered whether Hazel Smyth deliberately didn’t name the old Hadley house, like actors who call Macbeth ‘the Scottish Play’.



‘Do they do many séances in Three Pines?’ Gamache asked.



‘Never before as far as I know.’



‘So why two in one weekend?’