The Cruelest Month

‘Do you mind if we walk this way?’ She pointed in the opposite direction, away from the village. He looked and saw an attractive dirt road winding into the woods. The mature trees arched overhead, almost touching. In the summer it would be gently shaded but now, in early spring, the branches held only buds, like tiny green flares, and the sun shot through easily. They walked in silence into a world of sweet aromas and birdsong. Beauvoir remembered Gilles Sandon’s claim. That trees spoke. And maybe, sometimes, they sang.



Finally Lacoste was certain no one, especially Nichol, could overhear.



‘Tell me about the Arnot case.’



Gamache looked into the darkness and silence. He’d been in the basement once before. He’d opened this same door in the middle of a fierce storm, in the dark, desperate to find a kidnapped woman. And he’d stepped into a void. It was like every nightmare coming true. He’d crossed a threshold into nothingness. No light, no stairs.



And he’d fallen. As had the others with him. Into a wounded and bloody heap on the floor below.



The old Hadley house protected itself. It seemed to tolerate, with ill grace, minor intrusions. But it grew more and more malevolent the deeper you went. Instinctively his hand went into his pants pocket, then came out again, empty.



But he remembered the Bible in his jacket and felt a little better. Though he didn’t himself go to church, he knew the power of belief. And symbols. But then he thought about the other book he’d found and brought with him from the murder scene and whatever comfort he’d felt evaporated, seemed to be pulled from him and disappear into the void in front of him.



He shone the flashlight down the stairs. At least this time there were stairs. Putting his large foot tentatively on the first rung he felt it take his weight. Then he took a deep breath, and started down.



‘I’m sorry?’ said Beauvoir.



‘I need to know about the Arnot case,’ said Lacoste.



‘Why?’ He stopped in the middle of the country road and turned to look at her. She faced him squarely.



‘I’m no fool. Something’s going on and I want to know.’



‘You must have followed it on TV or in the papers,’ said Beauvoir.



‘I did. And in police college it was all anyone was talking about.’



Beauvoir’s mind went back to that dark time, when the Sûreté was rent. When the loyal and cohesive organization started making war on itself. It put its wagons in a circle and shot inwards. It was horrible. Every officer knew the strength of the Sûreté lay in loyalty. Their very lives depended on it. But the Arnot case changed everything.



On one side stood Superintendent Arnot and his two co-defendants, charged with murder. And on the other, Chief Inspector Gamache. To say the Sûreté was split in half would be wrong. Every officer Beauvoir knew was appalled by Arnot, absolutely sickened. But many were also appalled by what Gamache did.



‘So you know it all,’ said Beauvoir.



‘I don’t know it all, and you know that. What’s wrong? Why are you freezing me out of this? I know there’s something going on. The Arnot case isn’t dead, is it?’



Beauvoir turned and walked slowly down the road, further into the woods.



‘What?’ Lacoste called after him. But Beauvoir was silent. He brought his hands behind his back and held them, walking slowly and thinking it through.



Should he tell Lacoste everything? How would Gamache feel about that? Did it matter? The chief wasn’t always right.



Beauvoir stopped and looked behind him to Isabelle Lacoste standing firmly in the middle of the road. He gestured her to him and as she approached he said, ‘Tell me what you know.’



The simple phrase surprised him. It was what Gamache always said to him.



‘I know Pierre Arnot was a superintendent in the Sûreté.’



‘He was the senior superintendent. He’d come up through narcotics and into serious crime.’



‘Something happened to him,’ said Lacoste. ‘He became hardened, cynical. Happens a lot, I know. But with Arnot there was something else.’



‘You want the inside story?’



Lacoste nodded.



‘Arnot was charismatic. People liked him, loved him even. I met the man a few times and felt the same way. He was tall, rugged. Looked like he could take down a bear with his hands. And smart. Whip smart.’



‘What every man wants to see in the mirror.’



‘Exactly. And he made the agents under him feel powerful and special. Very potent.’



‘Were you drawn to him?’