And the voice, rasping. “Jean-Guy, there’s someone else.”
While a rescue team, with dogs, dug out the body, Jean-Guy had helped free the others.
Myrna had some bruising on her legs, and Billy had a sprained ankle. Benedict had the blow to his head, and possibly other injuries from the original collapse and his night in the cold.
And Armand came away virtually unscathed.
Their heavy boots and heavy coats, thick tuques and mitts had, for the most part, protected them. Along with the doorway. And Benedict.
Armand blinked again, trying to bring Jean-Guy, sitting a couple feet from him in the ambulance, into focus. It felt like someone had smeared pebble-infused Vaseline into his eyes. Everything was opaque. The grit near blinding.
Like the others, he refused the offer of the hospital and, like the others, only wanted to go home.
But while Billy and Myrna had been driven back to Three Pines, Armand stayed. Needing to hear about the other one.
“They’ve just uncovered the body,” said Jean-Guy.
He held out a wallet.
Armand opened it and saw the driver’s license but couldn’t read it. He shut his eyes tight to clear his sight, but still the words, the face, were blurred.
He handed it back to Jean-Guy. “Can you read it for me?”
Myrna slipped deeper into the tub, until the hot water was at her chin and the suds were piled so high she couldn’t see over them.
“Oh God,” she whispered as the chill and terror subsided.
What the warm bath couldn’t do, the scent of lavender, the dark chocolate brownie, and the huge glass of red wine did.
Outside her bathroom door, she heard Bach. Concerto for Two Violins. And below that, unintelligible but recognizable, the murmured voice of Clara and very, very softly another sound.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She closed her eyes.
Billy Williams rarely had baths and had never, ever had a bubble bath.
It wasn’t that he considered them unmanly, he just never considered them.
But Madame Gamache had invited him in, to get clean and warm. And to stay for a meal. He was cold and hungry and about to decline when he smelled the scent of roses and followed her down the hall, limping, to the bedroom and the large bathroom attached. The tub was full, and high with foam from bubbles that smelled like his grandmother’s rose garden.
It was too inviting to decline.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said. “I’m going over to see how Myrna is doing.”
“Say—” began Billy, then stopped. Considering. “Say hi from me.”
“I will. There’re clean clothes on the bed and stew warming in the oven.”
When Madame Gamache had gone, he stepped into the bath, then sat. Sliding deep into the hot water. Feeling his taut muscles loosen as the water, and suds, rose over his aching body.
On a table beside the bath, he found a beer, his favorite kind. And a huge slice of pie. His favorite kind.
Lemon meringue.
Billy closed his eyes and sighed.
Amelia Choquet stood in the shower. Weak still. Bleary.
She’d wanted to take a bath. Long and hot. But Marc’s bathroom was so disgusting, with a ring of dirt around the tub, stains in the toilet. Hair, both long and stringy and short and curly, clogging the drains. She wanted to spend as little time in there as possible.
She closed her eyes and felt the warm water cascade over her throbbing head. With the cracked, cheap soap, she washed her body and her hair. And for a moment felt almost human. She imagined that when she opened her eyes, she’d be in the clean, bright shower rooms of the academy.
Amelia held on to the fantasy as long as she could. Then opened her eyes and started scrubbing. And scrubbing.
It was then she noticed something written on her left forearm. A new tattoo, among all the others.
She took a closer look. No. It wasn’t a tattoo. It was done in Magic Marker.
David.
That’s all it said. Just, David. And a number: 14.
It wasn’t her writing. Someone else had put it there.
She scrubbed harder. Until her arm was almost raw.
But the name wouldn’t go away.
David. 14.
CHAPTER 18
Jean-Guy Beauvoir hung up the phone in the kitchen, then asked his father-in-law if he could use the one in the study.
“Of course.”
Armand watched him go, then turned back to the others in the room.
Reine-Marie. Billy. Annie.
Benedict.
Armand and Jean-Guy had gone straight to the hospital and found him in triage. Bruised. Ravenous. With a bandage on his head, at his hairline.
“He’s one lucky fellow,” said the doctor. “No fractures or internal bleeding, not even a concussion. Your son?” the doctor asked. Jean-Guy. Who gave the young doctor a filthy look.
“No, he’s not my son,” he snapped, and saw Armand smile. “He’s his grandson.”
“That’s not completely true,” said Armand, but he did not completely deny it either.
The doctor looked at the two men, disheveled, dirty. Then at Benedict. Dirty. Disheveled. And didn’t see the need to argue. “Well, he’s all yours.”
They’d taken Benedict home then. To the Gamache home.
Now, all showered and in warm clothes, they’d joined the others in a meal of beef stew and warm apple crisp with thick cream. Comfort foods that rarely failed in their one great task.
It was now midafternoon, and they sat warming themselves by the woodstove in the kitchen.
They’d asked, of course, about the body. The dead man. Wanting to know who he was. But Jean-Guy had explained that he couldn’t tell them until the family had been notified.
That had been the call.
When Jean-Guy returned a few minutes later, he took a chair beside Annie, and after a brief glance at Armand he said, “The dead man is Anthony Baumgartner.”
“What?” said Benedict. “But we just saw him yesterday.”
“Baumgartner?” said Reine-Marie. “A relative of the Baroness?”
“Her son,” said Armand.
“Poor man,” said Annie. “Did he have a family?”
“Oui,” said Jean-Guy. “His ex-wife’s been told, and she’s going to tell their children. They’re in their late teens.”
“What was he doing there?” asked Reine-Marie.
“That’s the question,” said Jean-Guy. Though there were other questions arising from the call he’d just received. And made.
“You’re sure you didn’t see or hear him when you arrived last night?” Jean-Guy asked Benedict, who shook his head. “And you saw no one else?”
Again Benedict shook his head while Armand looked at his son-in-law with interest.
“I saw the car,” said Benedict. “But only when Billy and I got my truck started. It was in the headlights. I knew it’d take a while for the truck to warm up, so I went into the house, to get out of the cold.”
“And I left you there,” said Billy. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Not your fault. I was just stupid. Should never have gone in.”
“The house was unlocked?” asked Armand.
“Yes.”
Armand wiped tears from his cheeks as his irritated eyes again overflowed, and then he tossed the sodden tissue into the woodstove.
The medic had told him not to rub his eyes. That the grit could scratch the corneas and cause permanent damage.
But his eyes were crying out to be rubbed, and it was near impossible not to do just that.
Seeing this, Reine-Marie reached out and held his one hand while he sat on the other.
“Mind if we join you?” came a voice from the living room, and in walked Myrna and Clara. “I’d heard you were sprung from the hospital.” Myrna hugged Benedict. “You okay?”
Billy had jumped up and offered Myrna his seat, blocking Clara from taking it. Reine-Marie’s eyes lit up, and she grinned at Armand.
“Just a bump,” said Benedict.