“But he’s better.”
“Monsieur Gamache is twenty years older than you. He’s been at it a lot longer, at a much higher level. But you’re up there now. He trusts you. And, more than that, he cares very deeply about you. For you. If you don’t know that by now, you never will.”
She flagged down the server again.
“I think we need some tea, don’t you?”
She smiled at Beauvoir, who couldn’t help but smile back.
Tea.
The Anglos in Three Pines were always pressing tea on each other in times of stress. Even Ruth. Though her “tea,” while looking like it, was actually scotch.
He’d thought it vile at first. The tea. But then, somewhere along the line, he found he looked for it. Hoped they’d offer it. And drank it with pleasure, though he didn’t show it.
He found now that just the aroma of Red Rose calmed him. He didn’t even have to drink it.
The waitress returned, and the scent of the tea enveloped him. Strong. Fragrant. Calming. And yet Jean-Guy could still feel the throbbing radiating from the base of his skull, until it covered his head like a membrane that kept tightening.
He had to think. To be clear. To try to see what was really happening and not what others wanted him to see.
But all that kept coming to mind was Matthew 10:36.
His first day on the job, Chief Inspector Gamache had called him into his office.
The two men were alone, for the first time. And Agent Beauvoir took in two things immediately.
The sense of calm that came from the man behind the desk. It was unusual. Most senior officers Beauvoir knew gave off a “fuck you” energy. Something Agent Beauvoir had learned to copy.
The other thing he noticed was the look in the Chief Inspector’s eyes.
Smart, bright. Thoughtful. None of that was particularly unusual in a senior Sûreté officer. But it was something else, in those eyes, that had taken Agent Beauvoir by surprise.
Kindness. Clear enough for a rattled young man to see.
“Have a seat,” the Chief had said. And had proceeded to outline, quickly, clearly, what would be expected of Jean-Guy Beauvoir. It amounted to a code of conduct. It started with the four statements that lead to wisdom: I don’t know. I need help. I was wrong. I’m sorry. And ended with him saying, simply, “Matthew 10:36.”
“You can take all of what I’ve said to heart,” the Chief had said, leading the young agent to the door. “Or none. It’s your choice. As are the consequences, of course.”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir was used to being told what to do. Ordered around. By his father. His teachers. His superiors.
The concept of choice was new. And more than a little baffling. As was the Chief’s habit of tossing what appeared to be random quotes into conversations.
It wasn’t until a few years later, and many experiences with the Chief in horrific investigations, that Agent Beauvoir had looked it up.
Matthew 10:36.
Jean-Guy had expected some inspirational biblical saying. From St. Francis, perhaps. Or something from one of those long letters to those poor, and almost certainly illiterate, Corinthians.
Instead what he read struck dread into his heart.
And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
Far from inspirational, it was a harsh warning in a gentle voice. A whisper out of the darkness.
Be careful.
“I’m tired, Isabelle. Tired of all this.” He waved his hand, to indicate not the dingy diner but a world that couldn’t be seen. The world of suspicions. Of constant questioning. Of ground shifting.
He just wanted to rest. No, he wanted more than that. He wanted to curl up on his own sofa, in front of the fireplace. With Annie and Honoré in his arms.
And he wanted it all to go away.
He drove her home. At the door she hugged him and whispered, “Be careful.”
It was so close to what he’d been privately thinking a few minutes earlier that he felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck.
“I’ve got Cournoyer’s number now,” he said. “Not to worry.”
“Not of Cournoyer.”
“Gamache,” said Beauvoir.
“No. You.”
As he drove back through Montréal, to pick up Gamache, he could smell a familiar, very, very faint scent. Of rose water and sandalwood.
And he could see, again, those kind eyes. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Trying to communicate something to a hardheaded young agent who was radiating “fuck you.”
He watched as pedestrians leaped away from the wall of slush splashed up by cars. As elderly men and women clung to each other to keep from falling. As people, neutered by the bitter cold, scuttled from shops.
And Jean-Guy imagined walking along the Seine with his family. Taking them to the galleries and cathedrals and parks of Paris. Weekend trips to Provence. To the Riviera. Where sun gleamed off the Mediterranean and not off snow.
CHAPTER 22
“Ruth, what’re you doing?” asked Myrna.
Clara and Gabri stopped tapping on their computers and looked up from their screens.
All four had driven in to Cowansville and now sat in the computer room of the local library, each at a laptop around the large conference table.
They’d come in not for the computers but for the high-speed connection.
Ruth had joined them when she found out where they were going.
Now the elderly poet sat at her laptop, fingers moving swiftly and noisily over the keys as she pounded rather than tapped. A look of satisfaction on her face that would have frightened Genghis Khan.
“Nothing,” said Ruth.
Far from being computer-illiterate, Ruth in her early eighties had embraced the Internet.
“As a way,” Gabri had guessed, “of spreading her empire.”
If there really was a darknet, Ruth Zardo would find it. Conquer it. Become its empress.
“Queen of the Trolls,” Gabri had said, and Ruth had not contradicted him.
Though they knew for whom she trolled. Not schoolchildren. Not people who were scorned for being different.
She trolled people who trolled them.
She attacked the attackers.
“Madame Zardo,” the librarian had said, practically bowing when Ruth limped in. Elderly, unsteady. Stooped.
But when she sat at the table, behind “her” laptop, she was nimble. Strong. Unyielding. Relentless. No bully could hide. Ruth’s hat was so black it was white.
The library was in the process of renaming this room: A F.I.N.E. Place.
“What’s she doing?” Clara whispered to Gabri.
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Anything?” Myrna asked, and Clara turned her laptop around.
Both Gabri and Myrna took a look.
Clara was in the Austrian registry of births, deaths, and marriages. With a worldwide interest in ancestry, these records were being made available online.
She was following the Baumgartner family, root and branch. Back in time.
To where it grafted onto the Kinderoths.
And then she followed them. To see where, and if, they became the Rothschilds.
“It’s interesting, but I’m getting a bit lost. Who’s related to whom, and then names change not just with marriage but to avoid discrimination. Obviously Jewish names become Christian. In fact, not only do the names change, but lots of them actually converted. But you see here?”
She pointed to one old document. A name changed from Rosenstein to Rose. But a Star of David remained above Rose. And followed it, through the generations.
And then it stopped. And there was just blank space. Except for the notation “10.11.38.”
“What does that mean?” asked Gabri.
Myrna sat silent. Staring. She knew but couldn’t say it. She was looking at the names. The ages.
Helga, Hans, Ingrid, Horst Rose. All born in the 1920s. With stars beside their names.
And then the simple notation. 10.11.38.
And then nothing.