While there’d been a comfortable armchair right by the open hearth, he’d placed himself in the window. Where he could see the thing.
Like Reine-Marie, Armand had noticed that as the day went by, he’d slowly stopped thinking of the figure on the green as “he.” It had become an “it.”
And Gamache, more than any of them, knew how dangerous that was. To dehumanize a person. Because no matter how strange the behavior, it was a person beneath those robes.
It also interested him to see his own reactions. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to go out there and arrest it. Him.
For what?
For disturbing his personal peace.
It wasn’t useful to tell everyone that there was no threat. Because he didn’t know if that was true. What he did know was that there was nothing he could do. The very fact he was head of the Sûreté made it less possible, not more, for him to act.
Reine-Marie had stood at his side at his swearing-in. Gamache in his dress uniform, with the gold epaulets and gold braid and gold belt. And the medals he wore reluctantly. Each reminding him of an event he wished hadn’t happened. But had.
He’d stood resolute, determined.
His son and daughter watching. His grandchildren there too, as he’d raised his hand and sworn to uphold Service, Integrity, Justice.
Their friends and neighbors were in the audience, packed into the grand room at the National Assembly.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his longtime second-in-command and now his son-in-law, held his own son. And watched.
Gamache had asked Beauvoir to join him in the Chief Superintendent’s department. Once again as second-in-command.
“Nepotism?” Beauvoir had asked. “A grand Québec tradition.”
“You know how much I value tradition,” said Gamache. “But you’re forcing me to admit that you’re the very best person for the job, Jean-Guy, and the ethics committee agrees.”
“Awkward for you.”
“Oui. The Sûreté is now a meritocracy. So don’t—”
“Fuck up?”
“I was going to say, don’t forget the croissants, but the other works too.”
And Jean-Guy had said oui. Merci. And watched as Chief Superintendent Gamache shook hands with the Chief Justice of Québec, then turned to face the crowded auditorium.
He stood at the head of a force of thousands charged with protecting a province Armand Gamache loved. A populace he saw not as either victim or threat, but as brothers and sisters. Equals, to be respected and protected. And sometimes arrested.
“Apparently there’s more to the job,” he’d said to Myrna, during one of their quiet conversations, “than cocktail parties and luncheon clubs.”
He had, in fact, spent the past couple of months holding intense meetings with the heads of various departments, getting up to speed on dossiers from organized crime, drug trafficking, homicide, cyber crime, money laundering, arson and a dozen other files.
It was immediately obvious that the degree of crime was far worse than even he had imagined. And getting worse. And what drove the gathering chaos was the drug trade.
The cartels.
From there sprang most of the other ills. The murders, the assaults. Money laundering. Extortion.
The robberies, the sexual assaults. The purposeless violence committed by young men and women in despair. The inner cities were already infected. But it wasn’t confined there. The rot was spreading into the countryside.
Gamache had known there was a growing problem, but he’d had no idea of the scope of it.
Until now.
Chief Superintendent Gamache spent his days immersed in the vile, the profane, the tragic, the terrifying. And then he went home. To Three Pines. To sanctuary. To sit by the fire in the bistro with friends, or in the privacy of his living room with Reine-Marie. Henri and funny little Gracie at their feet.
Safe and sound.
Until the dark thing had appeared. And refused to disappear.
“Did you speak to him again?” the Crown attorney asked.
“And say what?” asked Chief Superintendent Gamache, in the witness box. From there he could see people in the gallery fanning themselves with sheets of paper, desperate to create even the slightest of breezes to cut the stifling heat.
“Well, you might’ve asked what he was doing there.”
“I already had. And in any other circumstance, you’d be asking me why I, a police officer, was harassing a citizen who was just standing in a park, minding his own business.”
“A masked citizen,” said the Crown.
“Again,” said Gamache. “Being masked is not a crime. It’s strange, absolutely. And I’m not going to tell you I was happy about it. I wasn’t. But there was nothing I could do.”
That brought a murmur from those listening. Some in agreement. Some feeling that they’d have acted differently. And certainly the head of the Sûreté should have done something.
Gamache recognized the censure in the mumbling, and understood where it came from. But they were sitting in a courtroom now, with full knowledge of what had happened.
And still he knew there was nothing he could have done to stop it.
It was very hard to stop Death, once that Horseman had left the stables.
“What did you do that night?”
“We had dinner, stayed up and watched television, then Madame Gamache went to bed.”
“And you?”
“I poured a coffee and took it into my study.”
“To work?”
“I didn’t turn on the lights. I sat in the darkness, and watched.”
One dark figure watching another.
As he’d sat there, Armand Gamache had the impression something had changed.
The dark figure had moved, shifted slightly.
And was now watching him.
“How long did you stay there?”
“An hour, maybe more. It was difficult to see. He was a dark figure in the darkness. When I took the dogs out for a last walk, he was gone.”
“So he could have left at any time? Even shortly after you sat down. You didn’t actually see him leave?”
“No.”
“Is it possible you drifted off to sleep?”
“It’s possible, but I’m used to surveillance.”
“Watching others. You and he had that in common,” said Zalmanowitz.
The comment surprised Chief Superintendent Gamache and he raised his brows, but nodded. “I suppose so.”
“And the next morning?”
“He was back.”
CHAPTER 3
Judge Corriveau decided it was a good time to break for lunch.
The Chief Superintendent would be in the witness box for many days. Being examined and cross-examined.
It was now stifling in the courtroom, and as she left she asked the guard to turn the AC on, just for the break.
When she’d sat down that morning, Maureen Corriveau had been grateful that her first murder case as a judge would be fairly straightforward. But now she was beginning to wonder.
Not that she couldn’t follow the law involved. That was easy. Even the appearance of the robed figure in the village, while strange, was easily covered by clear laws.
What was making her perspire even more than just the overbearing heat was the inexplicable antagonism that had so quickly developed between the Crown and his own witness.
And not just any witness. Not just any arresting officer. The head of the whole damned Sûreté.
The Chief Crown wasn’t just getting in the Chief Superintendent’s face, he was getting up the man’s nose. And Monsieur Gamache did not like it.