The Cruelest Month

I didn’t feel the aimed word hit



And go in like a soft bullet.



The smashed flesh closed over the aimed word and Armand Gamache continued to walk and listen and give his full attention to Inspector Beauvoir.



Hazel Smyth had been off to the funeral home in Cowansville. Sophie had volunteered to go but in a voice so sulky Hazel decided she was better on her own. True, a number of her friends had said they’d go, but Hazel didn’t like to bother them.



It was like being kidnapped and taken into a world of hushed words and sympathy for something she couldn’t yet believe had happened. Instead of the Knitters Guide meeting she was looking at caskets. Instead of taking poor Aimée to her chemotherapy session or having tea with Susan and hearing about her screwed-up kids, she was trying to word the obituary announcements.



How to describe herself? Dear friend? Dear companion? Much missed by… Why were there no words that felt? Words that when you touched them you’d feel what was intended? The chasm left by the loss of Madeleine? The lump in the throat that fizzed and ached. The terror of falling asleep knowing that on waking she’d relive the loss, like Prometheus bound and tormented each day. Everything had changed. Even her grammar. Suddenly she lived in the past tense. And the singular.



‘Mom,’ Sophie called from the kitchen. ‘Mom, are you there? I need your help.’



Hazel came back from a great distance and made her way to her daughter, slowly at first then with increased speed as the words penetrated.



I need your help.



In the kitchen she found Sophie leaning against the counter, her foot raised and a pained expression on her face.



‘What is it? What happened?’ Hazel bent to touch the foot but Sophie pulled it away.



‘Don’t. It hurts.’



‘Here, sit down. Let me see it.’



She managed to coax Sophie over to the kitchen table and into a chair. Hazel put a cushion on another chair and tenderly lifted her daughter’s leg so that it was resting on the chair and cushion.



‘I twisted it in a pothole on the driveway. How many times have I told you to get those holes filled?’



‘I know, I’m sorry.’



‘I was getting your mail, and this happens.’



‘Let me just see.’ Hazel bent and with gentle practiced fingers began to explore the ankle.



Ten minutes later she had Sophie propped on the sofa in the living room, the television wand in her hand, a ham and cheese sandwich on a plate and a diet soda on a tray. She’d bound Sophie’s sprained ankle in a tenser bandage and found a pair of old crutches from the last time her daughter had hurt herself.



Strangely enough the light-headedness, the distraction and befuddlement had lifted. Now she concentrated on her daughter, who needed her.



Olivier delivered the sandwich platter to the back room of his bistro. He’d also put a pot of mushroom and coriander soup and an assortment of beers and soft drinks on the sideboard. As the Sûreté team arrived for lunch Olivier took Gamache by the elbow and led him aside.



‘Did you see today’s paper?’ Olivier asked.



‘La Journée?’



Olivier nodded. ‘They mean you, don’t they?’



‘I think they do.’



‘But why?’ Olivier was whispering. ‘I don’t know.’



‘Do they do this sort of thing often?’



‘Not often but it happens.’ He said it so casually Olivier relaxed.



‘If you need anything, let me know.’



Olivier hurried off to his lunch hour rush and Gamache got himself a bowl of soup, a grilled vegetable and goat cheese sandwich on panini and sat down.



His team sat around him, sipping soup, eating sandwiches and darting looks in his direction. Except for Nichol, who kept her head down. Somehow, though they were sitting in a circle, she managed to look as though she was at a separate table in a different room entirely.



Had he made a mistake bringing her here?



He’d worked with her for a couple of years now and nothing seemed to have changed. That was the most worrisome. Agent Nichol seemed to collect resentments, collect and even manufacture. She was a perfect little producer of slights and sores and irritations. Her factory went night and day, churning out anger. She turned good intentions into attacks, gifts into insults, other people’s happiness into a personal attack. Smiles and even laughter seemed to physically hurt her. She held on to every resentment. She let nothing go, except her sanity.



And yet Agent Yvette Nichol had shown an aptitude for finding murderers. She was a sort of idiot savante, who had that one ability, perhaps sensing a like mind.