It also didn’t help that the chief, a good twenty years older than Beauvoir, only needed his for reading, whereas Jean-Guy had been told he needed to wear his all the time.
“Honoré grabbed them last night at bath time,” said Jean-Guy, taking them off and examining them again. “Pulled them right into the water. That kid’s strong.”
“Are you sure it was Honoré who threw them into the water?” asked Armand, taking the glasses from Beauvoir and quickly adjusting them.
He’d had years of experience with twisted and damaged frames.
He handed them back.
“Merci, patron. What are you suggesting?”
“Sabotage, sir,” said Gamache melodramatically. “And then you have the temerity to blame your infant son. You’re a scoundrel.”
“Jeez, Annie said the same thing. Are you colluding?”
“Yes. We speak endlessly about your glasses.”
That was when the very gentle ding was heard from Gamache’s laptop.
The vast majority of his mail went through Madame Clarke to sort and prioritize. There was a shocking amount of it, but Gina Clarke had proven up to the task, and then some. Even organizing the Chief Superintendent, as though he was just one more email to be replied to, forwarded or sometimes deleted.
Jean-Guy often sat in the chief’s outer office just to watch him be bossed around by the young woman with the pierced nose and pink hair. It was as though Tinker Bell had turned.
But this email had been sent to his private work account.
Gamache got up and walked to his desk. “Do you mind waiting for a moment?”
“Not at all, patron.”
Jean-Guy stood by the door and checked his own messages.
Gamache clicked on the email. It was the report from the lab on the drugs found on Paul Marchand the evening before. But the chief was interrupted by a call on his cell phone.
“Oui, allô,” he picked up the phone, while studying the computer screen, his face grim.
“Armand?”
It was Reine-Marie.
Something was wrong.
“So she called you first, before dialing 911?” asked the Crown.
“She did,” said Gamache. Was it getting even hotter in the courtroom? He could feel his shirt, under his jacket, sticking to his skin.
“And what did she tell you?”
Reaching out quickly, instinctively, as though for the woman herself, Armand touched the speaker button, while across the room, Jean-Guy turned toward him.
“Are you all right?” Armand asked.
“I found the cobrador.”
There was a moment’s pause, just a moment, while the world shifted. Her words, and the men, felt suspended in midair.
“Tell me,” he said, getting to his feet and staring at Jean-Guy.
“He’s in the church basement. I went down to the root cellar to get vases for fresh flowers, and he was there.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Non. He’s dead. There was blood, Armand.”
“Where are you?”
“At home. I locked the church door and came here to call.”
“Good. Stay where you are.”
“I haven’t called 911 yet—”
“I’ll do that now.” He looked over at Beauvoir, who was already on his phone.
“Do you have blood on you?”
“I do. My hands. I leaned over and touched his neck. He still has his mask on, but he was cold. I probably shouldn’t have touched him—”
“You had to find out. I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Non, I mean I’m sorry about what I’m about to do. I’m going to have to ask you not to wash.”
There was silence as Reine-Marie took that in. She thought to ask why. She thought to argue. To beg even. For a moment, a brief spike, she was angry at him. For treating her like any other witness.
But that passed. And she knew, she was any other witness. And he was a cop.
“I understand,” she said. And she did. “But hurry.”
He was already out the door, Beauvoir right behind him.
“I’m leaving now. Cancel my appointments,” he said as he hurried through the outer office, past Madame Clarke.
She didn’t question, didn’t hesitate. “Yessir.”
Gamache and Beauvoir walked swiftly down the long corridor to the elevators.
“Jean-Guy has called 911, there should be agents there within minutes. Get Clara or Myrna to come over and be with you. I’ll get there as quick as I can. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”
“No, I need to call Clara and Myrna. Hurry, Armand.”
“I am.” He hung up and said to Beauvoir. “Call Lacoste.”
“Already done. She’s sending a team.”
Beauvoir rushed to keep pace with Gamache.
He’d stood beside the older man through countless investigations. During arrests and interrogations and shootouts. During horrific events, and celebrations.
At funerals, at weddings.
Jean-Guy had seen him joyous, and devastated. Angry and worried.
But he’d never seen Armand Gamache desperate.
Until now.
And there was rage there.
That Reine-Marie should have blood on her hands.
They raced down to Three Pines with the siren on, communicating with the local Sûreté detachment. Instructing them not to enter the church, but to secure it.
“And I want an agent in front of my home,” said Gamache, describing which home it was.
Beauvoir cut the siren as they turned off the secondary road onto the small dirt road. He drove more slowly because of the potholes, and the deer that were prone to jump straight into the path of oncoming cars.
“Faster,” said Gamache.
“But patron—”
“Faster.”
“Madame Gamache is fine,” he said. “She’s safe. No harm will come to her.”
“And would you say that, Jean-Guy, if it was Annie who’d found a body, and had blood on her hands? Blood you told her not to wash off?”
Jean-Guy sped up. Feeling his fillings loosen and his glasses bounce as they jolted along.
“So your own wife found the body?” asked the Crown Prosecutor.
“Oui.”
“And she touched it.”
“Oui.”
“Your wife is obviously different from mine, monsieur. I can’t imagine her touching a dead body, never mind one with blood all over it. It was clear, wasn’t it, that this was murder?”
The already steaming courtroom grew even hotter as Gamache felt a flush rise out of his collar and up his neck, but he kept his voice and his gaze steady.
“It was. And you’re right, Madame Gamache is extraordinary. She had to see if she could help. She left only when it was clear there was nothing she could do. I suspect your wife would be equally courageous and compassionate.”
The Crown continued to stare at Gamache. The judge stared. The courtroom stared. The reporters scribbled.
“You told her not to wash the blood off, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“Why is that?”
“Most people who find a murder victim inadvertently disturb the scene—”
“By doing things like touching the body?”
“Or moving something. Or trying to clean up. People aren’t themselves when faced with a shock like that. Normally by the time we arrive, the damage is done.”
“Like in this case.”
“Non. Madame Gamache touched the body, but she had the presence of mind to do nothing else and to lock up. Then she called me.”
“Without removing the mask to see who it was?”