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“I’ll have a Diet Coke. Thanks.” Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave.
Olivier left, offering a glance of support to Jean-Guy. While he could not fathom what was up, he knew a world of trouble when he saw it.
As he made his way back to the bar, he headed off Gabri. His partner had been on his way over to greet Armand and Jean-Guy and commiserate.
“Don’t.”
They waited to talk until their drinks were put in front of them.
A slice of lemon bobbed in Armand’s sparkling water. Though he hadn’t asked for it, it was, Olivier knew, how he liked it. And a twist of lime in Jean-Guy’s drink. As he liked his.
Gabri had insisted on being the one to take them their orders. Large and naturally voluble, he didn’t say a word as he placed a wedge of lemon meringue pie between them.
“Merci,” said Armand, while Jean-Guy stared at it as though at a holy relic.
The toe of St. Jude, of lost causes. The knucklebone of Ste. Marguerite, the patron saint of people rejected by religious orders, which made her Jean-Guy’s favorite saint.
And now the holy tarte of St. Gabri. Though Jean-Guy knew even this offering could not work miracles. Unless Gabri could also bake a time machine, there’d be no answer to his prayers.
When Gabri left, a crushing silence descended.
The red, blue, and green Christmas lights on the huge pines on the village green played on Armand’s face. The cheery lights at stark contrast to the look in his eyes as Armand waited for his second-in-command to say something.
“Would you like my resignation?” asked Jean-Guy, quietly.
“I’d like an explanation first, then I’ll decide.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chief Inspector Gamache remained silent. Waiting for more. But his hands, clasped together on the table, tightened, until the knuckles were white and the intertwined fingers almost purple, suffused with trapped blood.
“I wanted to hear her for myself,” said Jean-Guy. “I wanted to see what it was about. To get a sense of how much support she really has. How convincing she could be. How dangerous she really is.”
Jean-Guy waited for his father-in-law to say something. But in the prolonged silence he realized that would not happen.
His father-in-law was not there.
Jean-Guy was sitting across from his boss. The head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. A man who’d once led the entire provincial police and who’d turned down the offer to head the national Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Instead Armand Gamache had returned to homicide. To hunt killers.
Sitting across from Jean-Guy was the man who’d found him years ago, banished to some remote Sûreté outpost. Stuck in the basement evidence locker because none of the other agents could stand working with him.
Chief Inspector Gamache, there to investigate a murder, had gone down to the locker, taken one look at Agent Beauvoir, and requested he be assigned to the case. The station commander was all too happy to do it, no doubt in hopes Agent Beauvoir would get himself killed. Or disgraced and fired. Either would work for the commander.
As they’d driven through the woods, to the side of the lake where the body had washed up, Chief Inspector Gamache had talked. In a quiet voice he’d instructed the young agent on what to do, and what not to do.
Once parked, Gamache had stopped Beauvoir from getting out of the car. He’d looked him square in the face, holding him there.
“There’s something else you need to know.”
“Yes, I’ve got it. Don’t disturb the evidence. Don’t touch the body. You’ve told me all that, and it’s pretty obvious.”
“There are,” said the Chief, unbothered and undeterred by what he’d just heard, “four sentences that lead to wisdom. Do with them as you will.”
No one had ever spoken to Beauvoir in that way.
Do with them as you will. Who talks like that?
