The Cruelest Month

‘How’d you find out?’



She didn’t normally talk about these things, but then people didn’t normally ask. She hesitated and looked at Gamache for a long moment. Then she spoke.



‘At a friend’s birthday party. I looked at all the wrapped presents and knew exactly what was in them.’



‘Well, as long as you didn’t say anything,’ said Gamache, then looked at her more closely. ‘But you did, didn’t you?’



Beauvoir was a little miffed by this psychic turn by the chief. After all, he was the one who was supposed to have been born with a caul. He’d spent the late afternoon, after Nichol had hightailed it back to the B. & B., surfing the web for information on cauls. Took him a while to figure out how to spell it. Cowels. Kowls. Calls. Then he remembered that Batman supposedly wore one. So he Googled Batman, and everything fell into place. Every day held its surprises.



At first he thought she meant he’d been born with a silly mask and pointy black ears. But then something even more macabre appeared on his screen.



‘Yes,’ Jeanne was saying. ‘I was about halfway through the pile, telling everyone what each parcel held, when the birthday girl burst into tears. I remember to this day looking around the room. All the little girls, my friends, were staring at me. Angry and upset. And behind them their mothers. Afraid.



‘It was never the same after that. I think I’d always seen things but I assumed everyone did. Heard voices, saw spirits. Knew what would happen next. Not for everything. It was selective. But enough.’



Her voice was cheery, but Gamache knew it couldn’t have been easy. He looked over her shoulder to the villagers at their tables, having a relaxing and quiet dinner. But not one had approached Jeanne. The weirdo, the psychic. The witch. They were kind people, he knew. But even kind people can be afraid.



‘It must have been hard,’ said the chief.



‘Others have it harder. Believe me, I know. I’m no one’s victim, Chief Inspector. Besides, I never, ever lose my keys. Can you say that?’



She was looking at Gamache as she said it, but the wide smile on her face faded a little as she turned to look directly at Jean Guy Beauvoir. Her face was so full of understanding, of caring, he almost admitted that he too had never, ever lost his keys.



He’d been born with a caul. He’d called his mother and asked and after a hesitation she’d admitted it.



‘Mais, Maman, why not tell me?’



‘I was too embarrassed. It was a shameful thing at the time, Jean Guy. Even the nuns at the hospital were upset.’



‘But why?’



‘A baby born with a caul is either cursed or blessed. It means you see things, know things.’



‘And did I?’ He felt a fool asking. After all, he should be the one to know.



‘I don’t know. Every time you said something odd we ignored you. After a while you stopped. I’m sorry, Jean Guy. Maybe we were wrong, but I didn’t want you to be cursed.’



Me, or you? he almost asked.



‘But maybe I’d be blessed, Maman.’



‘That’s a curse too, mon beau.’



He’d been delivered of his mother with a veil over his entire head. Something between himself and this world. A membrane that should have stayed with his mother but somehow ended up coming with him. It was rare and upsetting and even today, according to his research, people believed those born with cauls were fated to lead unusual lives. Lives filled with spirits, with the dead and dying. And the ability to divine the future.



Was that why he was in homicide? Was that why he chose to spend all day with the newly dead, and hunt people who created ghosts? For more than ten years he’d mocked and ribbed and criticized the chief for relying so heavily on intuition. And the chief had just smiled and continued while he himself had bowed before the perfection of facts, of things you could touch and see and feel and hear. Now he wasn’t so sure.



‘What brought you here?’ Gamache was asking Jeanne Chauvet.



‘I got a brochure through the mail. It looked wonderful and I needed a rest. I think I told you this before.’



‘Being a psychic’s tiring?’ asked Beauvoir, suddenly interested.



‘Being a receptionist at a car dealership’s tiring. I needed a rest and this just seemed perfect.’



Should she tell them the rest? The writing across the top of the brochure? She’d seen the same one in the vestibule of the B. & B., and there was no writing. Had someone really taken the time to write that strange statement on her brochure just to lure her to Three Pines? Or was she paranoid?