Gamache nodded slowly. That had occurred to him as well.
But then, why put her in the costume?
And again, why kill her at all? It seemed an extreme overreaction to being exposed.
But that could mean that she recognized him.
Gamache returned his gaze to the fog outside. Far from being oppressive, he found it soothing. Enveloping, not smothering.
Was Katie Evans’s murder premeditated? Had she been the target all along? Or was it the impulsive act of a person who’d been found out? Cornered in that church basement?
“So you can’t think of anyone who might wish your friend harm?” asked Lacoste.
“Not that I know of. She was an architect. She built homes.”
“Did any project go badly wrong? An accident maybe? A collapse?”
“No, never.”
“Her marriage to Patrick,” said Gamache. “Was it a happy one?”
“I think so. She wanted children but he didn’t. You might’ve noticed, he’s a bit of a child himself. Not in a playful way, more in a needy way. He needed mothering. Katie gives him that. She gives us all that. She’s very maternal. Would’ve made a wonderful mother. She’s godmother to our eldest. Never forgets a birthday.”
Lea looked down at the tissue, twisted into shreds in her hands.
“I think their relationship was good,” she said. “I couldn’t see it myself. Especially when—” She looked at Lacoste, then over at Gamache.
They remained silent, waiting for her to finish the sentence.
“When she could’ve had Edouard.”
“Your friend from college,” said Gamache. “The one who killed himself.”
“Or just fell,” she said. It was something she had to believe. Struggled to believe. Lea gave a huge sigh. “Love. What can you do?”
Gamache nodded. What could you do?
Beauvoir, Matheo and Dr. Harris returned, having gotten Patrick to bed.
“He’ll be fine,” said Sharon Harris. “Needs sleep is all.”
“I’ll walk you out,” said Gamache, putting on his coat.
Instead of going through the crowded bistro, they took the doors out onto the patio, and around the back of the shops.
In the bakery next door, through the window, they saw Anton and Jacqueline, talking.
“Monsieur Evans’s friend,” said the coroner. “The woman. Is that Lea Roux, the politician?”
“It is.”
“She said she gave him one Ativan. I’ve never seen a collapse like that in an adult from just one.”
“You think she gave him more?”
“Two at least. Of course, she might’ve been embarrassed to admit it, or maybe she gave him the bottle and he helped himself.”
“I doubt that, don’t you? Is it possible it’s not Ativan, but something else?”
She stopped and considered it.
Gamache could feel the mist creep down his collar and up his sleeves.
“It could be. You suspect a pharmaceutical, an opioid? Without a blood test, I can’t tell. Is there a reason you suspect it?”
“Not really. There’s just so much of it about.”
“You have no idea,” said the coroner, who saw victims every day on her stainless steel gurney.
Gamache didn’t say anything, but he actually had a far better idea than Dr. Harris.
He walked her to her car, but before she got in, she turned to him. “Monsieur Evans kept repeating something about a bad conscience. Is that significant, Armand?”
“The costume the victim was in was something to do with a conscience” was all he said, and she could tell it was all she was going to get.
There wasn’t time, or need, to tell Dr. Harris about the cobrador.
What could sound like a confession on Patrick Evans’s part was simply, almost certainly, a warning. There was a bad, a very bad, conscience at work.
“Merci,” he said. “Your report?”
“As soon as I can. I hope to have something to you by morning.”
When he returned to the back room of the bistro, he found Matheo and Lea sitting facing Lacoste and Beauvoir. Not exactly, explicitly, adversarial. But close.
Lines had been drawn.
He joined Lacoste and Beauvoir.
“We’ve been thinking, assuming, the cobrador killed Katie,” said Matheo. “But maybe not.”
“Go on,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.
“The cobrador came here for someone. Someone who’d done something terrible. Isn’t it possible he killed Katie?”
“Why would he?” asked Lacoste. “Wouldn’t he be more likely to kill the guy in the costume?”
“Maybe he did,” said Lea. “And maybe Katie saw it happen.”
“Then where is he?” asked Lacoste. “The fellow in the costume? Why leave Katie’s body behind, but hide his?”
“Maybe it’s not hidden, really,” said Matheo. “Maybe you just haven’t found it.”
Lacoste raised her brows. She was actually a few steps ahead of them, having ordered the woods around the village searched.
“What can you tell us about Madame Evans?” asked Lacoste.
“Can’t tell you much about her childhood,” said Matheo. “I know she was raised in Montréal. Has a sister. Her parents— Oh,” he sighed, when he realized they would have to be told.
“Do you have their address?” asked Gamache, and took it down from Lea.
“We met, as we told you last night,” Matheo said to Gamache, “at university. We were taking different courses but were in the same dorm. A wild place. My God, I can’t believe we survived.”
Though, thought Gamache, not all of them did.
“Away from home for the first time,” said Matheo. “Young. No rules. No boundaries. All the restraints were off, you know? We went wild. But Katie was calm. She was always up for stuff, but she had self-control. Not a prude, more like common sense. The rest of us had sorta lost our minds.”
“Katie was our safe harbor,” said Lea.
Gamache nodded. What they described were almost exactly the same qualities that had attracted him to Reine-Marie.
A settled warmth, a stability that wasn’t staid. A calm in the maelstrom that was youth. And sometimes middle age.
“Some of the shit we did,” said Matheo, still back in those days. “No one to tell us to stop. It was a bit like Lord of the Flies.”
“But who among you was Ralph and who was Jack?” asked Gamache.
“And who was the unfortunate Piggy?” asked Matheo.
“I don’t understand,” said Lea.
“I’m sorry,” said Gamache. “That was a digression. My apologies.”
But Beauvoir, who also did not understand the references, did understand one thing. Monsieur Gamache never made an unintentional detour.
He added Lord of the Flies to things he needed to look up.
“There were drugs, of course,” asked Gamache.
“Oh, yes, there were drugs. Quite a lot at one stage, but that calmed down after a while. It sorta blew itself out, you know?”
Gamache did know. From his own experiences, but also from his own children. Especially Daniel, his eldest.
University was a time of education, and not all of it in a classroom. It was a time to experiment. To grab life. To consume at random, like the first time at a buffet. And then to stagger to a stop, overstuffed and nauseous. And sometimes unable to pay the bill.
They got the drugs, the booze, the random sex and the consequences out of their system. And began to make more thoughtful choices.
But some never quite managed to push away from the buffet.
What were the chances that four of them would go wild, and all four of them would find their way back to civilization?
Wasn’t there a pretty good chance one of them wouldn’t make it all the way back?
And then he remembered. There was one. A fifth.
“Tell us about Edouard.”
“What?” said Matheo. “Why?”
“It was a tragedy,” said Gamache. “And those reverberate.”
“But it wasn’t Katie’s fault,” said Lea. “She wasn’t even there when he fell. She and Patrick had snuck off into his dorm room. If it was anyone’s fault, it was the dealer who sold Edouard the drugs.”
“And who was he?” asked Lacoste.
“You’re kidding, right?” said Matheo. “That was fifteen years ago. I barely remember the names of my professors. And the guy took off right after Edouard died. As soon as the cops started asking questions.”
“So you don’t know his name?” asked Beauvoir.
“No. Look, Edouard died years ago. It can’t have anything to do with Katie today.”
“You might be surprised,” said Gamache, “how many murders start in the distant past. They have time to fester, to grow. To become malformed and grotesque. Like those men and women abandoned on the island off Spain. But they always come back.”
He commanded the quiet room, the only sound the slight tip-tap of sleet on the panes.
“Where were you last night?” Lacoste asked.
“At the Gamaches’ for dinner,” said Matheo. “And then bed.”
“You didn’t hear Madame Evans leave the B&B or return?”
“Non, I heard nothing,” said Matheo, and Lea nodded.
The Sûreté officers walked Lea and Matheo to the door.
When they’d left, Lacoste and Beauvoir turned to Gamache.
“Do you think the killer is long gone?” Lacoste asked.
“Non. I think whoever killed Katie Evans is still here. And is watching us.”