Titters, quickly stifled, filled the warm kitchen.
It was a good imitation. Even in his anger the maitre d’ recognized Sandra’s smooth, cool whine. Always asking for a little bit more. Elliot might not be a natural waiter, but he had an uncanny ability to see people’s faults. And magnify them. And mock them. It was a gift not everyone would find attractive.
‘Look who I found,’ said Julia cheerfully as they stepped into the Great Room.
Reine-Marie smiled and rose to kiss her husband, holding out a bulbous cognac glass. The rest looked up, smiled, and returned to what they were doing. Julia stood uncertain on the threshold, then picked up a magazine and sat in a wing chair.
‘Feeling better?’ Reine-Marie whispered.
‘Much,’ Gamache said and meant it, taking the glass warmed by her hands and following her to a sofa.
‘Bridge later?’ Thomas stopped playing the piano and wandered over to the Gamaches.
‘Merveilleux. Bonne idee,’ said Reine-Marie. They’d played bridge most nights with Thomas and his wife Sandra. It was a pleasant way to end the day.
‘Find any roses?’ Thomas asked Julia as he walked back to his wife. There was a rat-tat-tat of laughter from Sandra as though he’d said something witty and brilliant.
‘Some Eleanor roses, you mean?’ Mariana asked from the window seat beside Bean, a look of great amusement on her face. ‘They are your favourites, aren’t they, Julia?’
‘I thought they were more along your line,’ Julia smiled. Mariana smiled back and imagined one of the wooden beams falling and crushing her older sister. It wasn’t as much fun having her back as Mariana had hoped. In fact, quite the opposite.
‘Time for bed, old Bean,’ said Mariana and put her heavy arm round the studious child. Gamache had never known a ten year old so quiet. Still, the child seemed content. As they walked by he caught Bean’s bright blue eyes.
‘What’re you reading?’ he asked.
Bean stopped and looked at the large stranger. Though they’d been together in the Manoir for three days they hadn’t really spoken, until now.
‘Nothing.’
Gamache noticed the small hands close more tightly over the hardcover book, and the loose shirt fold as the book was pressed closer to the childish body. Through the small, tanned fingers Gamache could read only one word.
Myths.
‘Come on, slowpoke. Bed. Mommy needs to get drunk and can’t before you’re in bed, now you know that.’
Bean, still looking at Gamache, suddenly smiled. ‘May I have a martooni tonight, please,’ Bean said, leaving the room.
‘You know you’re not allowed until you’re twelve. It’ll be Scotch or nothing,’ they heard Mariana say, then footsteps on the stairs.
‘I’m not completely convinced she’s kidding,’ said Madame Finney.
Gamache smiled over to her but his smile faded as he saw the stern look on her face.
‘Why do you let him get to you, Pierre?’
Chef Veronique was putting hand-made truffles and chocolate-dipped candied fruit on small plates. Her sausage fingers instinctively placed the confections in an artistic pattern. She took a sprig of mint from the glass, shook the water from it and clipped a few leaves with her nails. Absently she chose some edible flowers from her vase and before long a few chocolates had become a lovely design on the white plate. Straightening up, she looked at the man opposite her.
They’d worked together for years. Decades, come to think of it. She found it odd to think she was almost sixty and knew she looked it, though happily in the wilderness it didn’t seem to matter.
She’d rarely seen Pierre so upset by one of the young workers. She herself liked Elliot. Everyone did, as far as she could tell. Was that why the maitre d’ was so upset? Was he jealous?
She watched him for a moment, his slim fingers arranging the tray.
No, she thought. It wasn’t jealousy. It was something else.
‘He just doesn’t listen,’ said Pierre, setting the tray aside and sitting across from her. They were alone in the kitchen now. The washing up was done, the dishes away, the surfaces scrubbed. It smelled of espresso and mint and fruit. ‘He came here to learn, and he won’t listen. I just don’t understand.’ He uncorked the cognac and poured.
‘He’s young. It’s his first time away from home. And you’ll only make it worse by pushing. Let it go.’
Pierre sipped, and nodded. It was relaxing being around Chef Veronique, though he knew she scared the crap out of the new employees. She was huge and beefy, her face like a pumpkin and her voice like a root vegetable. And she had knives. Lots of them. And cleavers and cast-iron pans.
Seeing her for the first time new employees could be excused for thinking they’d taken a wrong turn on the dirt road into the woods, and ended up at a lumber camp instead of the refined Manoir Bellechasse. Chef Veronique looked like a short-order cook in a cantine.
‘He needs to know who’s in charge,’ said Pierre firmly.
‘He does know. He just doesn’t like it.’
The maitre d’ had had a hard day, she could see. She took the largest truffle from the tray and handed it to him. He ate it absently.
‘I learned French late in life,’ Mrs Finney said, examining her son’s cards.
They’d switched to the library and to French and now the elderly woman was slowly circling the card table, peering into each hand. Occasionally she’d reach out a gnarled finger and tap a certain card. At first she’d limited her help to her son and his wife, but tonight she’d included the Gamaches in her rounds. It was a friendly game, and no one seemed to mind, certainly not Armand Gamache, who could use the help.
The room was lined with books, broken only by the huge river-rock fireplace and the wall of French doors, looking into the darkness. They were open, to catch what little breeze the hot Quebec evening had to offer, which wasn’t much. What it did offer was a constant trill of calls from the wild.
Worn oriental carpets were scattered about the old pine floor and comfortable chairs and sofas were grouped together for intimate conversations or a private read. Arrangements of fresh flowers were placed here and there. The Manoir Bellechasse managed to be both rustic and refined. Roughhewn logs on the outside and fine crystal within.
‘You live in Quebec?’ Reine-Marie spoke slowly and distinctly.
‘I was born in Montreal but now live in Toronto. Closer to my friends. Most left Quebec years ago, but I stayed. Back then we didn’t need French. Just enough to speak to our maids.’
Mrs Finney’s French was good, but heavily accented.
‘Mother.’ Thomas reddened.
‘I remember those days,’ said Reine-Marie. ‘My mother cleaned houses.’
Mrs Finney and Reine-Marie chatted about hard work and raising families, about the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s, when the Quebecois finally became ‘maitres chez nous‘. Masters in their own house.
‘Though my mother still cleaned the houses of the English in Westmount,’ said Reine-Marie, organizing her cards. ‘One no trump.’
Madame Finney beetled over to look, nodding approval. ‘I hope her employers were kinder to her. I’m ashamed to say I had to learn that too. It was almost as hard as the subjunctive.’
‘It was a remarkable time,’ said Gamache. ‘Thrilling for most French Canadians, but I know it came at a terrible price for the English.’
‘We lost our children,’ said Mrs Finney, moving round the table to peer into his hand. ‘They went away to find jobs in a language they could speak. You might have become masters, but we became foreigners, unwelcome in our own home. You’re right. It was terrible.’
She tapped the ten of clubs in his hand, his highest card. Her voice was without sentiment or self-pity. But with, perhaps, a bit of reproach.
‘Pass,’ said Gamache. He was partnered with Sandra, and Reine-Marie was playing with Thomas.
‘I leave Quebec,’ said Thomas, who seemed to understand French better than he spoke it, which was certainly better than the other way round. ‘Went far to university and settle on Toronto. Quebec hard.’