Each day, when the door had been unlocked and he’d been allowed out, Armand had returned to his office at Sûreté headquarters in Montréal and stared out the window at the people below. Waiting for lights to change. Going for drinks, or to the dentist. Thinking about groceries, and bills, and the boss.
They didn’t know. They read the newspapers and saw the television reports on the trial and thought Fleming a monster. But they didn’t know the half of it.
Armand Gamache was eternally grateful to the judge who’d had the courage to enact that most extreme of clauses. And he wondered if the courtroom had been scrubbed down when it was over. Disinfected. Burned to the ground.
Or had they simply closed the doors and gone back to their lives and, in the nighttime, in the darkness, had they prayed to a God they hoped was powerful, to forget? Prayed for dreamless sleep. Prayed to turn back the clocks to a time when they did not know.
Knowledge wasn’t always power. Sometimes it was crippling.
Myrna had suggested therapy could, over time, rid Fleming of his demons. But Armand Gamache knew that wasn’t true. Because John Fleming was the demon.
And now, from that prison cell, he’d managed to escape. He’d slid out between the bars. In the form of words.
John Fleming was out in the world again.
He’d come to play.
CHAPTER 5
“What do you want?” Antoinette called into the darkness.
She stood on the brightly lit stage, her hand to her forehead, peering like a mariner looking for land.
“To talk to you,” came Armand’s voice from the theater.
“I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”
Brian came out of the wings carrying a prop lamp. “Who’re you talking to?”
Armand climbed the steps onto the stage. “Me. Salut, Brian.”
“Are you happy?” Antoinette demanded, walking over to him. “Myrna and Gabri have quit. Brian here has to take over Gabri’s lead role—”
“I do?”
“A play’s hard enough to put on without actors dropping out,” she said.
“You’re going on with the production then?” Gamache asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Despite all your efforts. The other actors are going to be here in a few minutes. I’d like you to leave before you do more damage.”
“Are you going to tell them who wrote the play?”
“Because if I don’t you will? Is that why you’re here? To make sure you well and truly destroy the production? Christ, you’re a fascist after all.”
“I don’t want to debate with you,” said Gamache.
“Of course not, because that would be more free speech,” said Antoinette. For his part, Brian stood by the sofa, still holding the lamp. Like a failed Diogenes.
“Gabri and Myrna made up their own minds,” said Gamache. “But I didn’t try to dissuade them. I think doing the play is wrong.”
“Yes, I got that. But we’re doing it anyway. And you know why? Because while the man might be horrible, his play is extraordinary. If you have your way, no one will ever read it or see it performed. What a champion of the free society.”
“A free society comes at a cost,” he snapped, then reined himself in.
Antoinette smiled. “Hit a nerve, did I? What’re you so afraid of, Armand? The man’s in prison, has been for years. He’ll never get out.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You’re terrified,” said Antoinette. “If I was casting a man driven by fear, I’d beg you to do the role.”
“I’d like to talk,” said Gamache, ignoring what she just said. “Can we sit down?”
“Fine, but make it quick before the others arrive.”
“Can I join you?” Brian asked, putting the lamp down. “Or is this private?”
“Yes,” said Armand. “This involves you too.”
He sat on a threadbare armchair, part of the stage set. The few times he’d actually been on a stage, it had surprised him how very shabby everything was. From a distance, from the audience, the actors could look like kings and queens, titans of business. But close up? The costumes were cheap, worn, often smelly. Their castles were falling apart.
The illusion shattered. That was the price of looking at things too closely.
As an investigator he’d spent his career examining things, examining people. Looking behind the façade, at what was really there. The worn and shabby and threadbare interiors.
But sometimes, sometimes, when he pulled back the illusion, what he found was something shiny, bright, far better than the stage set.
He looked at Antoinette. Middle-aged, clinging on perhaps a little too tightly to the illusion of youth. Her hair was dyed purple, her clothes could have been considered bohemian, had they not been so studied.
He genuinely liked Antoinette and admired her. Admired her even now, for standing up for what she believed in. And, after all, she didn’t know the full truth about Fleming.
“I’m here because we’re friends,” he said. “I don’t want this disagreement to come between us.”
“You didn’t even read the play, Armand,” Antoinette said, the anger draining from her voice. “How can you condemn it?”
“Perhaps the life of the writer shouldn’t matter,” he said, his own voice soft now. “But it does to me. In this case.”
“I’m not going to pull the play,” she said. “It might be crap now, with Brian in the lead—”
“Hey,” said Brian.
“I’m sorry, you’ll be fine, but you don’t have much time to rehearse, and when you came in late for rehearsal today I thought you’d also—”
“I’d never quit,” said Brian, looking shocked and upset. “How could you even think such a thing?”
Gamache wondered if Antoinette knew how lucky she was to have such a loyal partner. He also wondered about Brian, who could be so morally blinded by love.
“Honestly, Armand,” she said. “You’re behaving as though our very survival is at stake. It’s just a play.”
“If it’s just a play, then cancel it,” he said, and they were back where they’d started.
She stared at him. He stared at her. And Brian just looked unhappy.
“How did you come to have the Fleming play?” Gamache asked.
“I told you, Brian found it among my uncle’s papers,” she said.
“What was your uncle’s name?”
“Guillaume Couture.”
“Was he a theater director? An actor?” Armand asked.
“Not at all. As far as I know he never went to the theater. He built bridges. Little ones. Overpasses really. He was a quiet, gentle man.”
“Then why did he have the play? Did he know Fleming?”
“Of course not,” she said. “He barely left Three Pines his whole life. He probably picked it up at a yard sale. We don’t owe you an explanation. We’ve committed no crime, and you’re no cop.” She got up. “Now please leave. We have work to do.”
She turned her back on him and so did Brian, but not before giving Armand a slightly apologetic grimace.
As he drove down the dirt road toward Three Pines, feeling the familiar and almost comforting washboard bumps, Armand Gamache came to a realization. One he’d probably known since he’d discovered who’d written She Sat Down and Wept.
He would have to read the play.
Armand walked up the path and onto the rickety front stoop. And then he knocked.
“What do you want?” Ruth demanded through the closed door.
“To read the play.”
“What play?”
“For God’s sake, Ruth, just open the door.”
Something in his tone, perhaps the weariness, must have gotten through to her. A bolt slid back and the door opened a crack.
“Since when have you locked your door?” he asked, squeezing in.