The Cruelest Month

Her mother had always been an outsider. Tolerated by her father’s extended family of babbling aunts and uncles, but never loved. Or respected. Or accepted. She’d tried, Nichol knew. Taking on the petty prejudices and opinions of the Nickolevs. But they’d only laughed at her, and changed their opinions.



She was pathetic. Always striving to fit in, to get the affection of people who’d never, ever give it, and despised her for trying.



‘You’re just like your mother.’ The heavily accented words lay leaden in Yvette Nichol’s head. It was, perhaps, the only French her aunts and uncles spoke. Memorized as one might memorize a swear word. Fuck. Shit. You’re just like your mother. Hell.



No, it was her father she loved. And he loved her. And protected her from the swarm of accents and smells and insults in her own home.



‘Don’t put any make-up on.’ His voice penetrated the bathroom door. She smiled. He clearly felt she was beautiful enough.



‘You’ll look younger without it. More vulnerable.’



‘Dad, I’m a Sûreté officer. With homicide. I don’t want to look vulnerable.’



He was forever trying to get her to use tricks so people would like her. But she knew tricks were useless. People wouldn’t like her. They never did.



Her boss had called yesterday, interrupting Easter lunch with the relatives. All going on about how it was better in Romania or Yugoslavia or the Czech Republic. Speaking in their own languages then making a to-do when she didn’t understand. But she did understand, enough to know they asked her father every year why she never painted eggs or baked the special bread. Always finding fault. No one had commented on her new haircut or new clothes or asked about her job. She was an agent with the Sûreté du Québec, for God’s sake. The only successful one in the entire pathetic family. And could they ask about that? No. Had she been a goddamned painted egg they’d have shown more interest.



She’d run down the hallway with the phone and ducked into her bedroom, so her boss wouldn’t hear the hilarity at her expense, the cackling that passed as laughter.



‘Do you remember what we talked about a few months ago?’



‘About the Arnot case?’



‘Yes, but you must never mention that name again. Understand?’



‘Yes sir.’ He treated her like a child.



‘A case has come up. It’s not certain it’s murder, but if it is you’ll be on the team. I’ve made sure of it. It’s time. Are you sure you can do it, Agent Nichol? If not, you need to tell me now. There’s too much at stake.’



‘I can do it.’



And she’d believed it when she’d said it. Yesterday. But suddenly it was today. It was murder. It was time.



And she was scared to death. In less than two hours she’d be in Three Pines with the team. But while they tried to find a murderer, she’d try to find a traitor to the Sûreté. No, not find. Bring to justice.



Agent Yvette Nichol liked secrets. She liked gathering other people’s and she liked having her own. She put them all in her own secret garden, built a wall around them, kept them alive, thriving and growing.



She was good at keeping secrets. And she wondered whether maybe her boss had chosen her because of that. But she suspected the reason was more mundane. He’d chosen her because she was already despised.



‘You can do this,’ she said to the strange young woman in the mirror. Fear had suddenly made her ugly. ‘You can do it,’ she said with more conviction. ‘You’re brilliant, courageous, beautiful.’



She raised her lipstick to her lips with an unsteady hand. Lowering it for a moment she looked sternly at the girl in the mirror.



‘Don’t fuck this up.’



Clasping her wrist with her other hand she guided the bright red drug store hue over her lips, as though her head was an Easter egg and she was about to paint it. She’d make her relatives proud, after all.



Agent Isabelle Lacoste stood in the clear morning light on the road outside the old Hadley house staring at the buckled and heaved walk. It looked as though something was trying to tear itself from the earth.



Her courage had finally found its limits. After more than five years with Chief Inspector Gamache on homicide, facing deranged and demented murderers, she had finally been stopped by this house. Still, she forced herself to stand there a moment longer, then turned and walked away, her back to the house, feeling it watching her. She picked up speed until she was sprinting to her car.



She took a deep breath and turned to stare again at the house. She needed to go in. But how? Alone wasn’t any good; she knew she’d never make it past the threshold alone. She needed company. Looking down into the village, to the smoke drifting from chimneys, to the lights in the homes, imagining people just sitting down for their first cup of coffee and warm toast and jam, she wondered whom she’d pick. It was a strangely powerful feeling, and she wondered if this was how judges had felt when Canada still had the death penalty.