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It was by their tall, prickly, sometimes smelly neighbor.
Tattered skirts, few buttons,
a weedy farm in my own name,
and a surefire cure for warts;
Oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there’s talk of demons
these come in handy.
CHAPTER 67
Two months later, on a cool September morning, Armand Gamache sat in the courtroom and watched as the jury, after days of deliberation, returned.
He opened and closed his hands in an effort to release the tension.
“On the charge of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant—”
Armand held his eyes on Aimée Lagacé, while also holding his breath.
“—guilty.”
He exhaled. Though there was one more verdict.
“On the charge of conspiring to murder Jeanette Bouchard—”
Armand shifted his eyes to Madame Bouchard. She’d sat in the courtroom throughout the trial, tiny, almost translucent, disappearing before their eyes. Finally she’d had to be wheeled in. But still she made it. Sitting upright with the nurse on one side of her, Gaston Comeau on the other.
“—we find the defendant, Aimée Lagacé, not guilty.”
There was a rumble in the courtroom, then a louder disturbance.
Janice Bouchard had slumped over. Unconscious.
She died the next day.
Chief Inspector Gamache sat in the hard pew, listening to the familiar funeral rites. Smelling the incense. Standing. Kneeling. Crossing himself.
When the priest asked for silent prayer, Armand tried. But his eyes kept going back to Gaston Comeau.
“Help me, patron.”
“Yes, help him, patron.”
The gunman’s grip tightened around the young agent’s throat.
“For God’s sake, Armand, don’t,” Jean-Guy shouted.
But he had no choice. What was he going to do? Allow this young man to be executed? True, Comeau might die anyway, but Armand knew so would he if he did nothing. If he just let it happen.
As the psychologist had so rightly said, there were ways to die other than physical.
It had been his decision to bring Agent Comeau on this stakeout. It had been his decision to give Agent Comeau a second chance.
