The Cruelest Month

What could cause that?



Gamache stared back. Then he took a deep breath.



‘When will Dr Harris be in?’ he asked. The technician consulted the work schedule.



‘Ten,’ he said, gruffly, trying to make up for his little shriek earlier.



‘Merci,’ Gamache said and walked out, the other two in his wake along with the stench of formaldehyde.



Myrna, Lacoste and Clara made straight for the stairs. Clara’s short legs strained to keep up with Myrna who was hauling herself up two at a time. Clara tried to stay hidden behind Myrna hoping the fiends would find her friend first. Unless they were coming up behind. Clara looked behind and rammed into Myrna, who’d stopped dead in the corridor.



‘Had my father seen that,’ she said to Clara, ‘he’d insist we get married.’



‘Nice that there are still some old-fashioned men.’



Myrna had stopped because Agent Lacoste, in the lead, had stopped. Suddenly. Halfway down the corridor.



Clara looked around her protective Myrna and saw Lacoste standing very alert.



Oh, God, she thought. What now?



Slowly Lacoste edged forward. Myrna and Clara edged with her. Then Clara could see it. Yellow strips of tape, scattered on the floor. Yellow strips of tape dangling from the frame of the door.



The police tape had been violated, not simply removed, or even cut. It had been shredded. Something had wanted very badly to get in.



Or to get out.



Through the open doorway Clara could see the dim room. Lying in the center of their chairs, on the salt circle, was a tiny bird, a robin.



Dead.



EIGHTEEN



Agent Robert Lemieux shoved more wood into the massive black stove in the center of the old railway station. Around him technicians set up desks and chalk boards, computer terminals and printers. The space was almost unrecognizable as an old station abandoned by the Canadian National Railways. It was even hard to recognize as the current home of the Three Pines Volunteer Fire Department, except for the huge red fire truck. Technicians were carefully removing posters on fire safety and a few celebrating the Governor General’s Award for Literature. There, glowering from one of them was their own fire chief, Ruth Zardo, on the occasion of receiving the GG. She looked as though someone had thrown excrement on her.



Inspector Beauvoir had called the night before and ordered him to get to Three Pines early to help set up the space. So far all he’d done was stay out of everyone’s way and light the fire. He’d also stopped at the local Tim Horton’s in Cowansville and picked up Double Double coffees and boxes of doughnuts.



‘Good, you’re here.’ Inspector Beauvoir marched in, followed by Agent Nichol. Nichol and Lemieux glared at each other.



Try as he might he couldn’t think what he’d done to create such hostility in her. He’d tried to be her friend. Those had been Superintendent Brébeuf’s orders. To ingratiate himself with everyone. And he had. He was good at it. All his charmed life he’d made friends easily. Except her. And it bugged him. She bugged him, perhaps because she actually showed what she felt and this confused and upset him. She was like a dangerous new species.



He smiled at Nichol now and received a sneer in return.



‘Where’s the Chief Inspector?’ Lemieux asked Beauvoir. Five desks were set in a circle with a conference table in the center. Each desk had its own computer now and the phones were just being hooked up.



‘He’s with Agent Lacoste. They’ll be here soon. Here they are now.’ Beauvoir nodded to the door. Chief Inspector Gamache, in his field coat and tweed cap, was walking across the room, Agent Lacoste behind him.



‘We have a problem,’ said Gamache after nodding to Lemieux and removing his cap. ‘Sit down please.’



The team assembled around the conference table. The technicians, all familiar with Gamache, tried to keep their noise level down.



‘Agent Lacoste?’ Gamache hadn’t bothered to take off his coat, and now Beauvoir was alert to something serious. Isabelle Lacoste, also still in her coat and rubber boots, took off her light gloves and spread her hands on the table in front of her.



‘Someone’s broken into the room at the old Hadley house.’



‘The crime scene?’ asked Beauvoir. This almost never happened. Few people were that stupid. Instinctively he looked toward Nichol but dismissed the idea.



‘I had my kit with me so I took pictures and fingerprints. As soon as the technicians are ready I’ll send these off to the lab, but here, you can see the pictures.’



She handed round her digital camera. It would be far clearer when the images were transferred to their computers, but still it was enough to hush them. Gamache, who’d already seen them, went and had a word with the technicians who changed their priority to the communications.