“Alas,” said Armand.
Ruth nodded. And Rosa nodded.
“We had to move here,” said Ruth. “Away from family and friends, who also blamed me. Blamed her. For saving the wrong one.”
Beside her, Olivier moaned and put his arm around the bony shoulder.
Ruth lowered her head. And tried to bring herself to say the next thing. The last thing.
But she couldn’t speak. Neither could she forget.
“I dropped a friend when he told me he was HIV positive,” said Gabri. “I was young and afraid.”
“I had a drug prescribed for a patient,” said Myrna. “A young mother. Depressed. It had a bad reaction. She called me, and I told her to come in first thing in the morning. But she killed herself that night.”
Clara took her hand.
“I disobeyed you,” said Clara, looking beyond Myrna to Armand. “I went looking for you and Peter, that day in the fishing village. You told me not to, and if I hadn’t…”
Gabri took her hand.
“I’ve lied and cheated old men and women out of their antiques,” said Olivier. “Giving them a fraction of what they were worth. I don’t do it anymore. But I did.”
He sounded amazed, as though describing a man who was unrecognizable.
“We knew about that, mon beau,” said Ruth, patting his hand. “You’re an asshole.”
Olivier grunted in near amusement.
A commotion, at first dull, reached them from the village green. A raising of voices that was growing louder. And then turned into shouting.
The friends stared at each other in surprise. Armand was out of his chair. Throwing open the front door, he saw what it was.
A crowd had gathered on the village green. He could just see the top of the cobrador’s head.
It was surrounded by people.
Armand ran out the door and the others followed, except Ruth, who was struggling to get up.
“Don’t leave me here.”
But they had.
And once again she saw the hand of her mother, plunging into the icy water. Reaching out. Desperate. Straining.
For her cousin.
But Ruth had gripped that hand instead, and risen. Unwanted.
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again / or will it be, as always was, / too late?
“Alas,” she muttered.
“Come on, you old crone.”
Clara had returned, and now she reached out. Ruth looked at the hand for a moment, then gripped it.
And she was hauled out.
They rushed down the path and to the village green.
CHAPTER 9
“You fucker,” a large man was shouting.
He stood in the center of the circle and held up an iron rod, ready to swing.
“Stop,” Gamache shouted, breaking through the crowd and coming to a halt a few feet from the man.
He recognized him as a new member of Billy Williams’s road crew, but didn’t know his name.
The man either didn’t hear or didn’t care, so focused was he on his target. The cobrador. Who just stood there. Didn’t step away. Didn’t cringe. Didn’t brace itself.
“Do it,” someone yelled.
The crowd had turned into a mob.
Armand had run out of the house without sweater or coat, and now he stood, in shirtsleeves, in the cold drizzle. While surrounding him, surrounding the cobrador, were young parents. Grandparents. Neighbors. Men and women he recognized. Not any he’d call hooligans or troublemakers. But who had been infected by fear. Warped by it.
Gamache approached the man from the side. Carefully. Edging his way into the bell jar.
He didn’t want to surprise him, make him react. Lash out at the cobrador, easily within swinging distance.
“Get the fuck outta here,” the man screamed at the cobrador. “Or I’ll beat the crap out of you. I swear to God I will.”
The mob was egging him on, and the man tightened his grip and lifted what Armand could now see was a fireplace poker even higher.
The rod had a nasty hook, used to move logs about in the flames. It would kill someone, easily.
“Don’t, don’t,” Gamache said, moving forward, his voice calm but firm. “Don’t you do it.”
And then he saw movement. Someone else had come out from the crowd.
It was Lea Roux. And within a moment she’d stepped between the cobrador and the man.
The attacker, surprised, hesitated.
Gamache quickly stepped beside Lea, and in front of the cobrador.
The man pointed the rod at them and waved it. “Get out of my way. He doesn’t belong here.”
“And why not?” ask Lea. “He’s doing no harm.”
“Are you kidding,” another man shouted. “Look at him.”
“He’s terrified my kids,” someone else shouted. “That’s harm.”
“And whose fault is that?” asked Lea, turning around to look at them all. “You taught them to be afraid. He’s done nothing. He’s stood here for two days and nothing bad’s happened. Except this.”
“You’re not even from here,” a man shouted. “This isn’t your home. Get out of the way.”
“So you can beat the shit out of him?” Lea looked at the mob. “You want your children playing on bloodstained grass?”
“Better stained with his blood than theirs,” said a woman. But her voice was no longer so loud, so certain.
“Well, they’ll have to play in my blood too,” said Lea.
“And mine,” said Armand.
“And mine.”
Someone else detached from the crowd. It was the dishwasher, Anton. He looked frightened as he took his place beside Armand and glared at the large man with the fire iron.
Clara, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier joined them. Ruth handed Rosa to a bystander and stepped forward.
“Aren’t we on the wrong side?” she whispered to Clara.
“Be quiet and look resolute.”
But the best the old poet could manage was crazed.
Armand stepped forward and held out a hand for the fireplace poker.
The man lifted it again.
Behind him he heard Reine-Marie whisper, “Armand.”
But he just stood there, his hand out. Staring at the man. Whose eyes were locked on the cobrador. Then he slowly lowered the weapon, until Gamache could take it from him.
“If anything happens,” shouted someone in the crowd, “it’s on you.”
But the mob had turned back into a crowd, and while unhappy, unsatisfied, they at least dispersed.
“Not you,” said Gamache, grabbing at the man’s arm as he started to walk away. “What’s your name?”
“Paul Marchand.”
“Well, Monsieur Marchand”—Gamache patted him down for other weapons and noticed a Sûreté vehicle coming down the hill—“you’re in some trouble.”
Armand brought a small pouch out of Marchand’s pocket. It had two pills in it.
Gamache recognized them.
“Where did you get these?” He held up the pouch.
“They’re medicine.”
“They’re fentanyl.”
“Right. For pain.”
The Sûreté agents had parked, and were walking swiftly across the village green.
Toward the cobrador.
“Over here,” called Gamache. “This is the one you were called about.”
“In a moment, sir,” said the agent, ignoring the man in the shirtsleeves, soaked through in the rain.
There seemed an abundance of strange behavior for the Sûreté agents to choose from. Starting with the robed and masked man.
“No, I mean it,” said Gamache, his voice taking on authority.
It was almost completely dark now, and the agents turned to get a better look at the man who’d just spoken. They walked closer and then their expressions moved from scowls to astonishment.