Around the conference table there were nods of agreement. Gamache looked over at Brébeuf who cocked his brow as though to say it was a strangely benign request. They’d get off easy if this was all the council wanted.
Gamache remained silent for a moment, thinking. Then he shook his head.
‘I’m sorry. It’s private. I can’t tell you.’
It was over, Gamache knew. He bent down and placed his papers in his satchel, then made for the door.
‘You’re a stupid man, Chief Inspector,’ Superintendent Francoeur called after him, smiling broadly. ‘You walk out of here now your life will be in ruins. The media will keep picking at you and your children until even the bones are gone. No careers, no friends, no privacy, no dignity. All because of your pride. What was it one of your favorite poets said? Yeats? Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.’
Gamache stopped, turned and deliberately walked back. With each step he seemed to expand. The officers around the table, wide-eyed, leaned out of his way. He walked to Francoeur, whose smile had disappeared.
‘This center will hold.’ Gamache pronounced each word slowly and clearly, his voice strong and low and more menacing than anything Francoeur had ever heard. He tried to recover himself as Gamache turned and walked through the door, but it was too late. Everyone in the room had seen fear on Francoeur’s face and more than one wondered whether they’d backed the wrong man.
But it was too late.
As Gamache strode down the corridor, men and women on each side smiling hello and nodding to him, his mind settled. Something Francoeur said had jogged something loose. Some piece of information had twisted in that instant and he’d seen it in a different way. But in the stress of the moment Gamache had lost it. Was it to do with Arnot? Or was it the case in Three Pines?
‘Well, that went well. For Francoeur,’ said Brébeuf, catching up with him as they waited for the elevator. Gamache said nothing, but stared at the numbers, trying to recall what had struck him as so significant. The elevator came and the two men stepped in, alone.
‘You could have told him what was in the envelope, you know,’ said Brébeuf. ‘It can’t possibly be that important. What was in it anyway?’
‘I’m sorry, Michel, what did you say?’ Gamache brought himself back to the present.
‘The envelope, Armand. What was in it?’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
‘For God’s sake, man, why not tell him?’
‘He didn’t say please.’ Gamache smiled.
Brébeuf scowled. ‘Do you ever listen to yourself? All the advice you give others, does any of it penetrate your own thick skull? Why keep this secret? It’s our secrets that make us sick. Isn’t that what you always say?’
‘There’s a difference between secrecy and privacy.’
‘Semantics.’
The elevator door opened and Brébeuf stepped out. The meeting had gone better than he’d dared dream. Gamache was almost certainly out of the Sûreté, but more than that, he was humiliated, ruined. Or soon would be.
Inside the elevator Armand Gamache stood rooted like one of Gilles Sandon’s trees. And had Sandon been there he might have heard what no one else could, Armand Gamache screaming as though felled.
Behold I show you a mystery.
The haunting words of St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians swirled around Gamache’s head. The words had been prophetic. In the twinkling of an eye his world had changed. He could see clearly something that had been hidden. Something he never wanted to see.
He’d stopped at the high school in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and just caught the secretary as she left for the day. Now he sat in the parking lot staring at the two things she’d given him. An alumni list and another yearbook. She’d wondered why in the world he needed so many, but Gamache had mumbled apologies and she’d relented. He thought she might assign him lines. I will not lose another yearbook.
But it hadn’t been lost. It’d been stolen. By someone who’d been at school with Madeleine and Hazel. Someone who’d chosen to keep their identity secret. Now, looking at the alumni list and the yearbook, Gamache knew exactly who that was.
Behold I show you a mystery. Ruth’s crumbling voice came to him as she’d read the magnificent passage. And hard on that another voice. Michel Brébeuf. Accusing, angry. It’s our secrets that make us sick.
It was true, Gamache knew. Of all the things we keep inside the worst are the secrets. The things we are so ashamed of, so afraid of, we need to hide them even from ourselves. Secrets lead to delusion and delusion leads to lies, and lies create a wall.
Our secrets make us sick because they separate us from other people. Keep us alone. Turn us into fearful, angry, bitter people. Turn us against others, and finally against ourselves.
A murder almost always began with a secret. Murder was a secret spread over time.
Gamache called Reine-Marie, Daniel and Annie, and finally he called Jean Guy Beauvoir.
Then he started his car and turned it toward the country. As he drove the sun went down and by the time he arrived in Three Pines it was dark. In his headlights he saw the dirt road thick with bouncing frogs, trying to get across the road for a reason he knew would remain a mystery to him. He slowed right down and tried not to run over them. Up they jumped into his headlights as though joyfully greeting him. They looked exactly like the frogs on Olivier’s rather silly old plates. For a moment Gamache wondered whether he might buy a couple of them, to remind him of the spring and the dancing frogs. But then he knew he probably wouldn’t. He’d want nothing that would remind him of what happened today.
‘I’ve called everyone,’ said Beauvoir as soon as Gamache walked into the Incident Room. ‘They’ll be there. Are you sure you want to do it this way?’
‘I’m sure. I know who killed Madeleine Favreau, Jean Guy. It seems right that this case that started with a circle should come full circle. We meet at the old Hadley house at nine tonight. And we find a murderer.’
FORTY-ONE
Clara’s heart was in her throat, in her wrists, at her temples. Her whole body was throbbing with the pounding of her heart. She couldn’t believe they were back in the old Hadley house.
In the darkness, except for the puny candlelight.
When Inspector Beauvoir had called and told her what Gamache wanted she’d thought he must be kidding, or drunk. Certainly delusional.
But he’d been serious. They were to meet at nine in the old Hadley house. In the room where Madeleine died.
All evening she’d watched the clock creep forward. At first excruciatingly slowly, then it had seemed to race, the hands flying round the face. She’d been unable to eat and Peter had begged her not to go. And finally her terror had found purchase, and she’d agreed to stay behind. In their little cottage, by the fire, with a good book and a glass of Merlot.
Hiding.
But Clara knew if she did that she’d carry this cowardice for the rest of her life. And when the clock said five to nine she’d risen, as though in someone else’s body, put on her coat, and left. Like a zombie from one of Peter’s old black and white movies.
And she’d found herself in a black and white world. Without street lamps or traffic lights, Three Pines became bathed in black once the sun set. Except for the points of light in the sky. And the lights of the homes around the green that tonight seemed to warn her, beg her not to leave them, not to do this foolishness.
Through the darkness Clara joined the others. Myrna, Gabri, Monsieur Béliveau, the witch Jeanne, all trudging, as though they’d given up their own will, toward the haunted house on the hill.