“We thought that, at first. But it wasn’t a Star Wars costume.”
“Then who did you think it was supposed to be?”
“Reine-Marie”—Gamache turned to the jury to clarify—“my wife—” They nodded. “—wondered if it was the father from the film Amadeus. But he wore a specific hat. This person just had the hood. Myrna thought he might be dressed as a Jesuit priest, but there wasn’t a cross.”
And then there was his manner. While around him people partied, this figure stood absolutely still.
Soon people stopped speaking to him. Asking about his costume. Trying to work out who it was. Before long, people stopped approaching him. And a space opened up around the dark figure. It was as though he occupied his own world. His own universe. Where there was no Halloween party. No revelers. No laughter. No friendship.
“What did you think?”
“I thought it was Death,” said Armand Gamache.
There was silence now, in the courtroom.
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Death comes to visit and the head of the Sûreté, the former Chief Inspector of homicide, does nothing?”
“It was a person in a costume,” said Gamache with patience.
“That’s what you told yourself that night, perhaps,” said the Crown. “When did you realize it really was Death? Let me guess. When you were standing over the body?”
CHAPTER 2
No. The figure at the Halloween party was disconcerting, but Gamache had really begun to think something was very wrong the next morning, as he’d looked out their bedroom window into the damp November day.
“What’re you looking at, Armand?” asked Reine-Marie, coming out of the shower and walking over to him.
Her brow dropped as she looked out the window. “What’s he doing there?” she asked, her voice low.
Where everyone else had gone home, gone to sleep, the figure in the dark cloak had not. He’d stayed behind. Stayed there. And was still there. Standing on the village green in his wool robes. And hood. Staring.
Gamache couldn’t see from that angle, but he suspected the mask was also in place.
“I don’t know,” said Armand.
It was Saturday morning, and he put on his casual clothes. Cords and shirt and a heavy fall sweater. It was the beginning of November and the weather wasn’t letting them forget it.
The day had dawned gray, as November often did, after the bright sunshine and bright autumn leaves of October.
November was the transition month. A sort of purgatory. It was the cold damp breath between dying and death. Between fall and the dead of winter.
It was no one’s favorite month.
Gamache put on his rubber boots and went outside, leaving their German shepherd Henri and the little creature Gracie to stare after him in bewilderment. Unused to being left behind.
It was colder than he’d expected. Colder even than the night before.
His hands were icy before he’d even reached the green, and he regretted leaving his gloves and cap behind.
Gamache placed himself right in front of the dark figure.
The mask was in place. Nothing visible except the eyes. And even those were obscured by a sort of gauze.
“Who are you?” he asked.
His voice was calm, almost friendly. As though this were a cordial conversation. A perfectly reasonable situation.
No need to antagonize. Time enough for that later, if need be.
But the figure remained silent. Not exactly at attention, it wasn’t that wooden. There was about it a sense of confidence, of authority even. It was as if it not only belonged on that spot, but owned it.
Though Gamache suspected that impression came more from the robes and the silence than the man.
It always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert. But he didn’t have the luxury of silence himself.
“Why are you here?” Gamache asked. First in French, then in English.
Then waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty-five seconds.
In the bistro, Myrna and Gabri watched through the leaded-glass window.
Two men, staring at each other.
“Good,” said Gabri. “Armand’ll get rid of him.”
“Who is he?” Myrna asked. “He was at your party last night.”
“I know, but I have no idea who he is. Neither does Olivier.”
“Finished with that?” asked Anton, the dishwasher and morning busboy.
He reached for Myrna’s plate, now just crumbs. But his hand stopped. And, like the other two, he stared.
Myrna looked up at him. He was fairly new to the place but had fit in quickly. Olivier had hired him to do the dishes and bus, but Anton had made it clear he hoped to be head chef.
“There is only one chef,” Anton had confided in Myrna one day while buying vintage cookbooks at her shop. “But Olivier likes to make it sound like there’s a fleet of them.”
Myrna laughed. Sounded like Olivier. Always trying to impress, even people who knew him too well for that.
“Do you have a specialty?” she asked as she rang up the total on her old cash register.
“I like Canadian cuisine.”
She’d paused to look at him. In his mid-thirties, she thought. Surely too old, and too ambitious, to be a busboy. He sounded well educated, and was well turned out. Lean and athletic. With dark brown hair trimmed on the sides and longer on top so that it flopped over his forehead in a way that made him look more boyish than he actually was.
He was certainly handsome. And an aspiring chef.
Had she been twenty years younger …
A gal can dream. And she did.
“Canadian cuisine. What’s that?”
“Exactly,” Anton had said, smiling. “No one really knows. I think it’s anything that’s native to the land. And rivers. And there’s so much out there. I like to forage.”
He’d said it with a deliberate leer, as a voyeur might have said, “I like to watch.”
Myrna had laughed, blushed slightly, and charged him a dollar for both cookbooks.
Now Anton, stooping over their table at the bistro, stared out the window.
“What is that?” he asked in a whisper.
“Weren’t you at the party last night?” Gabri asked.
“Yes, but I was in the kitchen all night. I didn’t come out.”
Myrna looked from the thing on the village green to this young man. A party just through the swinging doors, and he’d been stuck doing dishes. It sounded like something out of a Victorian melodrama.
He seemed to know what she was thinking and turned to smile at her.
“I could’ve come out, but I’m not big on parties. Being in the kitchen suits me.”
Myrna nodded. She understood. We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent. Hers was her bookstore. Olivier’s was the bistro. Clara’s was her studio.
Sarah’s, the bakery. And Anton’s was the kitchen.
But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.
“What’s he saying?” Anton asked, taking a seat and gesturing toward Gamache and the robed figure.
“Is there something I can help you with?” Armand asked. “Someone you’d like to speak to?”
There was no answer. No movement. Though he could see steam coming from where the mouth would be.
Evidence of life.
It was steady. Like the long, easy plume of a train moving forward.
“My name is Gamache. Armand Gamache.” He let that rest there for a moment. “I’m the head of the Sûreté du Québec.”
Was there a slight shift in the eyes? Had the man glanced at him, then away?