‘Mesdames et messieurs.’ Monsieur Béliveau’s voice bellowed over the gathering. The eating stopped and everyone gathered at the porch of the old Hadley house. Beside Monsieur Béliveau stood Odile Montmagny, looking very nervous, but sober.
‘I read Sarah Binks,’ Gamache whispered to Myrna, who joined them just as Ruth sidled up. ‘It’s delightful.’ He withdrew it from his jacket pocket. ‘It’s a supposed tribute to this Prairie woman’s poetry, except the poetry’s awful.’
‘Our own Odile Montmagny has written an ode to the day and to this house,’ Monsieur Béliveau was saying as Odile shifted from foot to foot, as though she suddenly needed to relieve herself.
‘But Sarah Binks was my book. I was going to give it to her.’ Ruth grabbed it from his hand and used it to gesture toward Odile. ‘Where’d you get it?’
‘It was hidden in Madeleine’s bedside table,’ said Gamache.
‘Madeleine? She stole it from me? I thought I’d just lost it.’
‘She took it from you when she realized what you were going to do with it,’ hissed Myrna. ‘When you told Odile she reminded you of Sarah Binks she thought it was a compliment. She worships you. Madeleine didn’t want you to hurt her, so she hid it.’
‘This is a little something I wrote last night while watching the hockey game,’ said Odile. Nods greeted this insight into the creative process, this natural affinity between poetry and the playoffs.
She cleared her throat.
‘A cursed duck pecked off his ear,
And his face grew peaked and pale;
“Oh, how can a woman love me now?”
Was his constant and lonely wail;
But a woman came and she loved the man,
With a love serene and clear –
She loved him as only a woman can love
A man with only one ear.’
A silence greeted the last word. Odile stood uncertainly on the porch. Then, to his horror, Gamache saw Ruth move through the crowd, the Sarah Binks book clutched in her hand and Rosa quacking behind.
‘Make way for the duck and the fuck,’ yelled Gabri.
Ruth hauled herself onto the porch and stood beside Odile, taking the younger woman’s hand. Gamache and Myrna held their breaths.
‘I have never heard a poem that moved me so much. That speaks so clearly of loneliness and loss. Using the man as an allegory for the house was brilliant, my dear.’
Odile looked confused.
‘And like the blighted man the old Hadley house will be loved again,’ Ruth continued. ‘Your poem brings hope to all of us who are old and ugly and flawed. Bravo.’
Ruth slipped the book into her tattered sweater as she embraced Odile, who looked as though she’d found heaven on the battered porch of the old Hadley house.
Peter and Clara arrived, carrying a welcome case of beer. But they stopped just short of the house. Gamache watched and wondered what they’d do. More than any villager the old Hadley house had haunted Peter and Clara. And now the two stood outside the buzz of activity, and stared. Then Clara bent down and lifted the ‘For Sale’ sign. Using her sleeve she wiped the worst of the mud and dirt from its face, then she handed it to Peter, who thrust it into the ground. The sign stood upright, clean and proud.
‘Do you think anyone will buy it?’ Clara asked, wiping her hands on her jeans.
‘Someone will buy it and someone will love it,’ said Gamache.
‘But a woman came and she loved the man, With a love serene and clear – She loved him as only a woman can love A man with only one ear,’ Ruth quoted, joining them again. ‘Ridiculous poem, of course. But still…’ She limped off to join Odile, giving kindness another chance. Little Rosa waddled behind.
‘At least Ruth now has an excuse for the quacking,’ said Clara.
In the bright sunshine Armand Gamache watched as the old Hadley house was brought back to life, then he put down his beer and joined them.
READING GROUP DISSCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. We’re told that Three Pines is “only ever found by people lost.” In what way are Peter and Clara, Ruth, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier, and even Gamache and his team of investigators, lost people?
2. Early in the story, when Peter is looking at Clara’s unfinished painting: “He suddenly felt something grab him. From behind. It reached forward and right into him…. Tears came to his eyes as he was overcome by this wraith that had threatened all his life. That he’d hidden from as a child, that he’d run from and buried and denied. It had stalked him and finally found him. Here, in his beloved wife’s studio. Standing in front of this creation of hers the terrible monster had found him. And devoured him.” What do you think Peter’s “monster” is? How does it manifest itself throughout the story? What becomes of the monster in the end?
3. Peter, Ruth and Olivier stay behind when the group heads to the Hadley house for the séance. Discuss these characters and their various reasons for avoiding the house and/or the ritual.
4. What do you think is the difference between magic and miracles?
5. How does the novel’s epigraph, from T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” resonate with the story? What do you think of Peter’s interpretation of April’s cruelty: “All those spring flowers slaughtered. Happens almost every year. They’re tricked into blooming, into coming out. Opening up. And not just the spring bulbs, but the bulbs on the trees…. All out and happy. And then boom, a freak snowstorm kills them all.”
6. As the plot proceeds, is it possible to guess or deduce the killer? If so, at what point, and on what grounds?
7. Louise Penny is unusually sensitive to the difficulties of finding love and the struggle to champion it in a harsh world. In The Cruelest Month, the relationships between Odile and Gilles, Hazel and Madeleine, and Clara and Peter, are very different. What does each relationship say about love? Are there any common elements shared by all?
8. How does Gamache’s trusting nature, seen by many as his greatest failing, ultimately serve him?
9. “How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes,” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. Discuss the various manifestations of jealousy in The Cruelest Month. What makes Gamache so much happier than his seemingly more fortunate best friend, Brébeuf?
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
READING GROUP DISSCUSSION QUESTIONS