This whole thing had given him an interesting perspective on being a suspect. Trying to explain something that, in the cold light of day, seemed inexplicable.
Though his thinking had been clear at the time.
“I think, at this stage, anything is possible,” he said to Jean-Guy.
Through the door the voices continued. They could hear soft laughter as one or the other said something amusing.
There was silence in the small room. A silence like Jean-Guy had rarely experienced, though it reminded him a little of their time in the remote monastery. Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Where the quiet had been so profound he’d found it disquieting.
He wanted to break this silence but knew instinctively that it was not his to break.
And so he waited.
Gamache sat in the familiar chair, and yet everything, for a moment, felt unfamiliar. And he realized he had, in fact, harbored a hope that he’d be exonerated.
That Jean-Guy would call yesterday after his meeting with the investigators to tell him it was over. And then he’d get a call from the Premier Ministre, telling him he’d been cleared and would be reinstated.
The call hadn’t come. But then the phones had been down, allowing this phantom hope to remain alive.
Gamache smiled to himself and understood Madame Baumgartner a little better. We all had our delusions.
He could see now how wrong he’d been.
Someone had to be blamed. If the drugs hit the streets, as they surely would any day now, they’d throw the book at him. And why not? The blame was, after all, his. Alone.
That much was a comfort. When the ship did sink, he’d take no one else down with him. It would be a result of his own decisions. And friendly fire.
He saw his mother kneeling beside him, adjusting his mitts and cap. Tying his huge scarf at his neck and patting it as he headed out into the bitter-cold Montréal morning, to school. She looked at him and said, “Remember, Armand. If you’re ever in trouble, you find a police officer.”
She’d held his eyes, as serious as he’d ever seen her, and didn’t smile again until he’d solemnly agreed.
Cross my heart and hope to die.
And now, fifty years later, he sat in his own home and smelled a slight scent of peanut-butter cookies.
Then he heard, through the door, the soft laughter of his wife and daughter. He thought of his grandson, asleep. He thought of his son, Daniel, and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters in Paris.
He looked into the eyes of his son-in-law. His second-in-command. His friend.
Safe. And he had no regrets.
Then Armand glanced at his desk and the book sitting there. The one that had, literally, been thrown at him earlier in the day.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
“Your old room,” said the landlady.
Her pudgy hand with its nicotine-yellowed fingers was splayed on the door as it swung open, releasing a stale odor.
Despite the bitter-cold night, the place was stifling, the old iron radiators unregulated. Pumping out heat that only hurried the decay. It smelled like something decomposing.
In the time since Amelia had lived in the rooming house in East End Montréal, very little had changed.
There was still the reek of urine. Still the moans, groans, of men. As their lives slipped away. Through their fingers and down the drain.
The landlady had grown fatter, softer. A single tooth hung by a thread of gum, waving as she chortled. Her breath like a slaughterhouse.
The door closed, and Amelia could hear her shuffling back down the hallway.
Amelia breathed through her mouth, and clicked the stud against her teeth, and tossed the book-laden knapsack onto the single bed. Regretting throwing that book at Gamache. Not the act of violence. That had felt good. But she regretted not having Marcus Aurelius to keep her company.
When she opened the door to leave, Amelia almost tripped over the mop and pail. The landlady must’ve left it there. Her job, in exchange for a room, was to clean. A place that had not, it appeared, been cleaned since she’d last lived there.
“Fuck it,” she said, kicking the bucket over and watching the suds rush down the hallway.
That would wait. She had far more pressing things to do than hang around this shithole.
“Walk with me,” said Gamache, and to Jean-Guy’s surprise, and disappointment, he saw that Armand did not mean walk into the kitchen for more chocolate cake.
Instead Armand went to the front door and took his parka off the hook.
“Going somewhere?” asked Reine-Marie, turning in her seat to watch them.
“Just a stroll.”
“To the bistro?” asked Annie, getting up to join them.
“No. Around the village green.”
She plunked back down onto the sofa. “Bye.”
Henri and Gracie raced to the front door, expecting yet another walk, but Armand explained it was too cold for them.
“But not for us?” asked Jean-Guy. Yet followed him anyway.
Once outside, they walked down the snow tunnel to the road. There was no need of a flashlight. It was a clear night, and quiet. Just the squeal and crunch and munch of their heavy winter boots on the snow.
The Chief often said that everything could be solved by walking. For himself, Beauvoir was pretty sure everything could be solved in the kitchen with a piece of cake.
“Ready yet?”
“Huh?”
“You do know we’re going to go round and around until you tell me the other thing on your mind.”
“You—”
“Ahhh,” warned Armand.
“Ahhh nothing,” said Beauvoir. “I can’t feel my feet, my fingers are numb. My nose is frozen shut, and my eyes are watering from the pain in my sinuses.”
“Then you’re probably ready to talk.”
“This is torture,” said Jean-Guy.
“I’m not very good at it, then,” said Armand, his voice friendly. “Since I’m out here too.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Gamache’s pace was measured. His mittened hands clasped each other behind his back as he walked. As though it weren’t minus a thousand. As though the cold weren’t scraping his face as it was Jean-Guy’s.
“There’s something else, isn’t there? There was another meeting.”
“Just with our bank. We’re thinking of buying a home.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“Well, that’s exciting.”
Squeak.
“I didn’t want to tell you until all the finances were in place,” said Jean-Guy. Willing himself to stop talking. To stop lying.
“I see.”
Armand had stopped and tilted his head back. “Look at that, Jean-Guy.”
And he did.
What he saw were northern lights. The aurora borealis. Otherworldly green light, flowing across the night sky.
Then Jean-Guy lowered his gaze and saw that Armand was looking at him. The older man’s face clear in the remarkable dancing light.
In those gentle eyes, he saw himself reflected.
And he knew that what his father-in-law saw, when he looked at him, was a man in a lifeboat. Getting further and further away.
CHAPTER 15
“Can someone go and wake up Benedict?” asked Jean-Guy as he pushed the bacon around the cast-iron skillet with a fork.
The kitchen smelled of maple-smoked bacon and fresh-perked coffee. The eggs were ready to go on.
It was eight fifteen in the morning, and the sun was up. But Benedict was not.
“I’ll go,” said Armand.
He’d just emerged from his study, having made a private call. He looked slightly distracted, his attention elsewhere, as he walked up the stairs.
They heard a knocking on the bedroom door and Armand calling, “Benedict. Breakfast’s ready.”
Then more knocking. “Up and at ’em.”