It was drizzling slightly, and all the joyous spring flowers were lying down, like young soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. For twenty minutes he walked, his hands clasping each other behind his back. Round and round the quiet little village he went and watched as it came alive, as lights appeared at the windows, dogs were put out, fires were lit in grates. It was peaceful and calm.
‘Hello there,’ called Clara Morrow. She stood in her garden, a mug in her hand and a raincoat over her nightgown. ‘Just surveying the damage. Are you free for dinner tonight? We thought we might invite a few people over.’
‘Sounds wonderful, thank you. Would you join me?’ Gamache indicated his circular walk round the Commons.
‘Sure.’
‘How’s your art? I hear Denis Fortin’s coming to visit soon.’ Seeing her face he knew he’d stepped in something sticky and stinky. ‘Or shouldn’t I have said anything?’
‘No, no. It’s just that I’m struggling a little. Things that were so clear a few days ago are suddenly muddy and confused. You know?’
‘I know,’ he said ruefully.
She looked at him. She often felt foolish, ill constructed, next to others. Beside Gamache she only ever felt whole.
‘What did you think of Madeleine Favreau?’
Clara paused to collect her thoughts. ‘I liked her. A lot. Didn’t really know her all that well. She’d just joined the ACW. Lucky Hazel.’
‘How so?’
‘Hazel was supposed to take over from Gabri this September as president, but then Madeleine said she’d do it.’
‘Didn’t that upset Hazel?’
‘You’ve clearly never been an Anglican Church Woman.’
‘I’m not Anglican.’
‘It’s great fun. We hold church socials and teas and twice a year we have a sale of goods. But it’s hell to organize.’
‘So that’s hell,’ smiled Gamache. ‘Only mortal sinners run ACWs?’
‘Absolutely. Our punishment is to spend eternity begging for volunteers.’
‘So Hazel was happy to get out of it?’
‘Thrilled, I should think. Probably why she brought Madeleine into it in the first place. They were a good team, though quite different.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, Madeleine always made you feel good about yourself. She laughed a lot and listened well. She was a lot of fun. But if you were sick or in need, it was Hazel who’d show up.’
‘Was Madeleine superficial, do you think?’
Clara hesitated. ‘I think Madeleine was used to getting what she wanted. Not because she was greedy but just because it always happened.’
‘Did you know she had cancer?’
‘I did. Breast cancer.’
‘Do you know whether she was healthy?’
‘Madeleine?’ Clara laughed. ‘Healthier than you or me. She was in great shape.’
‘Had she changed at all in the last few weeks or months?’
‘Changed? I don’t think so. Seemed the same to me.’
Gamache nodded then continued. ‘We think the substance that killed her was slipped into her food at dinner. Did you see or hear anything at all strange?’
‘In that group? Anything normal would set off alarms. But you’re saying that someone at our dinner killed her? Gave her the ephedra?’
Gamache nodded.
Clara thought about it, replaying the dinner in her mind. The food arriving, being warmed up, prepared, set out. People sitting down. Passing round the various dishes.
No, it all seemed natural and normal. It was a terrible thought that one of them around that table had poisoned Madeleine, but not, it must be said, a surprise. If it was murder, one of them did it.
‘We all ate out of the same dishes, helping ourselves. Could the poison have been meant for someone else?’
‘No,’ said Gamache. ‘We’ve had the leftovers tested and there’s no ephedra in any of the dishes. Besides, you all helped yourselves, right? To have any control over who got the ephedra the murderer had to have slipped it to Madeleine directly. Shoved it into the food on her plate.’
Clara nodded. She could see the hand, see the action, but not the person. She thought of the people at her dinner. Monsieur Béliveau? Hazel and Sophie? Odile and Gilles? True, Odile murdered verse, but surely nothing else.
Ruth?
Peter always said Ruth was the only person he knew capable of murder. Had she done it? But she hadn’t even been at the séance. But, maybe she didn’t have to be.
‘Did the séance have anything to do with it?’ she asked.
‘We think it was one ingredient. As was the ephedra.’
Clara sipped her now cool coffee as they walked. ‘What I don’t understand is why the murderer decided to kill Madeleine that night.’
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Gamache.
‘Why give her ephedra in the middle of a dinner party? If the murderer needed a séance why not do it Friday night?’
It was a question that hounded Gamache. Why wait until Sunday? Why not kill her Friday night?
‘Maybe he tried,’ he said. ‘Did anything odd happen that Friday night?’
‘More odd than contacting dead people? Not that I remember.’
‘Who did Madeleine have dinner with?’
‘Hazel, I guess. No, wait, Madeleine didn’t go home for dinner. She stayed here.’
‘Had dinner at the bistro?’
‘No, with Monsieur Béliveau.’ She looked over at his home, a large rambling clapboard house facing the green. ‘I like him. Most people do.’
‘Most, but not all?’
‘Don’t you let anything pass?’ she laughed.
‘When I miss things or let them pass they gather in a heap then rise up and take a life. So, I try not to.’ He smiled.
‘I guess not. The only person I’ve ever seen actually cut Monsieur Béliveau was Gilles Sandon. But then Gilles’s quite a character. Do you know him?’
‘He works in the woods, doesn’t he?’
‘Makes amazing furniture, but I think there’s a reason he works with trees and not people.’
‘How does Monsieur Béliveau feel about him?’
‘Oh, I don’t think he even notices the slights. He’s such a gentle man and kind. He only went to the séance to keep Mad company, you know. I could tell he didn’t like it at all. Probably because of his dead wife.’
‘Afraid she’d come back?’
‘Maybe,’ Clara laughed. ‘They were very close.’
‘Do you think he expected her to show up?’
‘Ginette, his dead wife? None of us expected anything. Not that first night at the bistro, anyway. It was a lark. But still, I think it upset him. He didn’t sleep well that night, he said.’
‘The next séance was different,’ said Gamache.
‘We were crazy to go there.’ She had her back to the old Hadley house, but she could feel it staring at her.
Gamache turned, feeling a chill born from the inside and growing to meet the cold damp air on his skin. It was the menace on the hill, poised, waiting for the right moment to swoop down on them. But no, Gamache thought. The old Hadley house wouldn’t swoop. It would creep. Slowly. Almost unnoticed until you woke up one morning swallowed by its despair and sorrow.
‘As we were walking up the hill that night,’ said Clara, ‘something kind of strange happened. We started off all bunched up, talking, but as we got closer we stopped talking and drifted apart. I think that house creates isolation. I was almost the last. Madeleine was walking behind me.’
‘Monsieur Béliveau wasn’t with her?’