‘May I ask you a few questions?’
‘Depends.’ She tried to make the word seductive. She was, Beauvoir decided, the artless sort who tried to make every word seductive, and failed.
‘Did you know Madeleine had had breast cancer?’ He placed the tray on the dresser, shoving a make-up bag to the edge.
‘Yeah, but, I mean, she’d gotten over it, right? She was fine.’
‘Really? I thought it took five years before people were given the all clear, and it hasn’t been that long, has it?’
‘Almost. She seemed fine. Told us she was.’
‘And that was enough for you.’ Were all twenty-one-year-olds this self-absorbed? This callous? She really didn’t seem to care that a woman who’d shared her home and her life had had cancer and had just been brutally murdered, right in front of her.
‘What was it like living here after Madeleine arrived?’
‘I dunno. I went away to university, didn’t I? At first Madeleine made a big deal when I came back, but after a while she and Mom didn’t care.’
‘I can’t imagine that’s true.’
‘Well it is. I wasn’t even going to go to Queens. I’d been accepted at McGill. Mom wanted me to go there. But Madeleine had been to Queens and she’d talked so much about it. The beautiful campus, the old buildings, the lake. She made it sound so romantic. Anyway, I applied without telling anyone and got accepted. So I decided to go to Queens.’
‘Because of Madeleine?’
Sophie looked at him, her eyes hard, her lips white. It was as though her face was changing to stone. And he knew then. While her mother was desperately fighting to keep grief at a distance, Sophie had another battle. To keep grief in.
‘Did you love her?’
‘She didn’t care for me, not at all. She just pretended. I did everything for her, everything. Even changed my fucking school. Went all the way to Kingston. Do you even know where that is? It’s eight fucking hours’ drive away.’
Beauvoir knew Kingston wasn’t eight hours away. Maybe five or six.
‘Takes a day to get home.’ Sophie seemed to be losing control, the rock turning to lava. ‘At McGill I could’ve come home every weekend. I finally understood. God, I was so stupid.’ Sophie turned now and slapped the side of her head so hard it hurt even Beauvoir. ‘She didn’t care for me. She only wanted me out of the way. Far away. It wasn’t me she loved. I finally got that.’ Now Sophie balled up her fists and pounded them into her thigh. Beauvoir stepped forward and held her hands. He wondered how many bruises she carried, out of sight.
Armand Gamache stood at the bedroom door and looked in. Beside him the two agents stood, uneasily.
Mid-afternoon sunlight seeped in through the windows of the old Hadley house and seemed to stall part way. Instead of making the place bright and even cheerful, the shafts of light were thick with dust. Months, years, of neglect and decay swirled in the light, twisting as though alive. As the three officers had progressed further into the house the decay and dust grew thicker, kicked up by their steps, until the light itself dimmed.
‘I’d like you to look around and tell me if anything’s changed.’
The three officers stood at the door, the yellow police tape torn and hanging from the door frame. Gamache reached out and picked up a strand. It had been ripped and stretched. Not cut cleanly. Someone had clawed at it.
Beside him he could hear Agent Isabelle Lacoste breathing heavily, as though trying to catch her breath. On his other side Agent Robert Lemieux shifted from foot to foot.
Framed by the door was the murder scene. The heavy Victorian furniture, the fireplace with its dark mantelpiece, the four-poster bed that looked recently slept in though Gamache knew no resident had been in it in years. All those things were oppressive, but natural. Then his eyes shifted to the unnatural.
The circle of chairs. The salt. The four candles. And the addition. The tiny bird, fallen on its side, its small wings spread slightly as though struck down in flight. Its legs up around its reddish chest, its tiny eyes wide and staring. Had it stood on the chimney with its brothers and sisters, staring at the whole wide world in front of them, prepared to fly? Had the others, teetering on the edge, finally taken off? But what had happened to this little one? Instead of flying, had it fallen? Does one always fail, always fall?
It was a baby robin. A symbol of spring, of rebirth. Dead.
Had it too been scared to death? Gamache suspected it had. Did everything that entered this room die?
Armand Gamache stepped in.
Yvette Nichol began wandering around the kitchen. She couldn’t stand the talking any more. On and on the woman went. At first Hazel had sat with her at the Formica table but eventually she got up to check the cookies and put the cool ones into a cookie tin.
‘For Madame Bremmer.’ As though Nichol cared. While Hazel talked and worked Nichol wandered the room, looking at the cookbooks, the collection of blue and white dishes. She moved to the photo-laden fridge, covered with pictures, mainly of two women. Hazel and another. Madeleine, Nichol decided, though the smiling, attractive woman and the shrieking thing in the morgue looked not at all alike. Picture after picture. In front of the Christmas tree, at a lake, cross-country skiing, gardening in the summer, hiking. In each one Madeleine Favreau was smiling.
Yvette Nichol knew something then, something she knew no one else would see. Madeleine Favreau was a fake, a fiction, an act. Because Nichol knew no one could possibly be that happy.
She stared at one showing a birthday celebration. Hazel Smyth was fixated on something outside the frame and wearing a funny baby blue hat with sparklers; Madeleine Favreau was in profile, listening, her head resting on one hand. She was looking at Hazel with unmasked adoration. A fat young woman sat beside Madeleine, stuffing cake into her face.
Nichol’s cell phone vibrated and thrusting the photograph into her pocket she walked into the stuffed living room, kicking a sofa leg as she went.
‘Merde. Oui, allô?’
‘Did you just swear at me?’
‘No.’ She reacted rapidly, habitually, to the rebuke.
‘Can you talk?’
‘A little. We’re at a suspect’s house.’
‘How’s the investigation going?’
‘Slowly. You know Gamache. He plods along.’
‘But you’re back with him now. That’s good. Don’t lose track of him. There’s too much at stake.’
Nichol hated these calls, hated herself for answering the phone. Hated even more the excitement she felt when the phone rang. And then the inevitable letdown. Treated like a child yet again. There was no way she could admit she was really with Beauvoir. She was supposed to be with the Chief Inspector then at the last minute the two had gone into the tiny office off the Incident Room and when they’d come out Beauvoir had stridden to the door calling for her to join him.
And so she found herself alone in the oppressive living room. It felt like the homes of so many aunts and uncles, stuffed with belongings. From the Old Country, they’d said, but who could smuggle a matching living room/dining room set out of Romania or Poland or Czechoslovakia? Where would you hide the plush pink carpets and heavy curtains and garish pictures as you stole across the border? But somehow their infinitesimal homes were crammed full of things that had become family heirlooms. Chairs and tables and sofas were scattered about like litter, dropped on the floor as another person might drop a Kleenex. Each time Nichol visited her aunts and uncles more heirlooms had appeared until there seemed little room for people. And perhaps that was the point.
She had the same impression here. Things. Too many things. But one thing caught her eye. A yearbook, sitting on the sofa. Open.
A shriek tore through the stillness of the room. Lacoste froze. Beside her Chief Inspector Gamache turned to face whatever caused it.