“Yes, but even I grew to hate it. Where did you find it?” Evie asked.
“On the ground by the gun,” said Lacoste. “Did you notice it missing?”
Both Al and Evie shook their heads.
“Why would Laurent take it there?” Evie asked.
“Well, either he did or his killer did,” said Beauvoir.
It took a moment for the implication to penetrate, but when it did Al Lepage stood and faced Beauvoir.
“Are you accusing us? Me?”
“I’m stating what must be obvious,” said Beauvoir, also getting to his feet. “Why would Laurent have a cassette with music he hated?”
“To hide it?” asked Evie, standing beside her husband. Holding his hand not for comfort but to stop him from doing something they’d all regret.
Here was a man who might hate violence, Beauvoir knew, but who was capable of it.
“We’ve heard the rumors,” said Al. “They think I killed my own child. Some are even saying Laurent wasn’t mine. That Evie…” He was overcome and couldn’t go on. The massive man stood within six inches of Beauvoir, staring at him. Not angry anymore, but desperate. If Al Lepage was a mountain, they were witnessing a landslide.
“Al,” said Evie, pulling him away. “It doesn’t matter what people say. We have to help the police find out who did this to Laurent. That’s all that matters.” She turned from her husband to Lacoste. “You have to believe it wasn’t us. Please.”
The other Sûreté agents came up from the basement and shook their heads. Nothing.
Chief Inspector Lacoste picked up the cassette. “Thank you for your time.”
“May I take this with me?” asked Beauvoir, holding up Al Lepage’s record. “I’ll be careful with it.”
Al waved at him, dismissing the man, the record, the question.
Clara walked with Lacoste and Beauvoir to the cars.
“You don’t really think Al or Evie had anything to do with Laurent’s death, do you?” she asked.
“I think people can do terrible things,” said Beauvoir. “Lash out. Hurt or even kill someone they love. That man is coming apart.”
“From grief,” said Clara.
“From something,” said Beauvoir.
Once in the car, Beauvoir turned to Lacoste. “Did you notice anything strange about the Lepages?”
Lacoste had been quiet, thinking. Now she nodded.
“Neither of them asked about the gun,” she said.
Beauvoir nodded. “Exactly.”
They spent the balance of the afternoon following up on the interviews and checking facts and details.
Isabelle saw Gamache leave his home with Henri, first glancing in the direction of the old train station, then turning away and walking out of sight.
A few minutes later she found him on the bench above the village, Henri sitting by his side.
“You aren’t avoiding me, are you?” she asked, joining Gamache on the bench. “Because this isn’t a very good hiding place.”
He smiled. His face creasing with amusement.
“Perhaps I am,” he admitted. “It’s not personal.”
“It’s professional,” she said, and nodded. “It must be strange not to be in charge of the investigation.”
“It is, a little,” he admitted. “It’s hard not to slip back into the old roles. Especially since—” He spread his large hands, and she understood the enormity of his struggle. “Laurent.”
She nodded. This murder had hit home.
“You need your space, Isabelle. It’s your investigation. I have no desire to return, but—”
“But it’s in the blood.”
She glanced down at his hands. Those expressive hands. That she’d held, as he lay dying. As he’d sputtered to her what they both knew would be the last thing he’d say.
Reine-Marie.
She’d been the vessel into which he’d poured his final feelings, his eyes pleading with her to understand.
And she did.
Reine-Marie.
She’d held his hand tightly. It was covered in his own blood and that of others. And it mingled with the blood on her hands. Her own, and others.
And now catching killers was in their blood.
Chief Inspector Gamache hadn’t died. And he’d continued to lead them for many investigations. Until the time had come to come here.
He’d done enough. It was someone else’s turn.
Hers.
“You and Madame Gamache seem happy here.”
“We are. Happier than I ever thought possible.”
“But are you content?” Isabelle probed.
Gamache smiled again. How different she was from Jean-Guy, who’d come right out and demanded, “Are you going to stay here doing nothing, or what, patron?”
He’d tried to explain to Jean-Guy that stillness wasn’t nothing. But the taut younger man just didn’t understand. And neither would he have, Gamache knew, in his thirties. But in his fifties Armand Gamache knew that sitting still was far more difficult, and frightening, than running around.
No, this wasn’t nothing. But the time was coming when this stillness would allow him to know what to do. Next.
What next?
“Please take the Superintendent’s position, patron. There’s a lot left to do at the Sûreté. A mess still to clean up. And you saw those two recent recruits. The new agents have no discipline, no pride in the service.”
“I did notice that.”
“If those are the ones coming up through the ranks, we’ll be back where we started within ten years.” She turned to fully face him. “Please, take the job.”
He looked down at the village.
“It’s so beautiful,” he said, almost under his breath.
She followed his gaze and looked at the cottages, the gardens, the three soaring evergreens on the village green. And she knew those weren’t what made this village so attractive.
Gabri came out of the bistro and headed to the B and B. He spotted them on the ridge and waved. Sarah stood at the door of her boulangerie and flapped a towel embedded with flour. They could see movement through the window of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore.
Isabelle suddenly felt horrible, for making him feel this shouldn’t be enough.
Gamache lifted his gaze from the village to the rolling mountains covered in a forest that had taken root thousands of years ago. The brilliant autumn leaves interspersed with pines.
“Look at it,” he said, shaking his head slightly, almost in disbelief. “I sometimes sit here and imagine the wildlife, the lives, going on in that forest. I try to imagine what it must’ve been like for the Abenaki, before the Europeans came. Or for the first explorers. Were they amazed by it? Or was it just an obstacle?”
He spent a moment imagining himself an early explorer.
He’d have been amazed. He was even now.
“Not surprising the gun wasn’t found,” he said. “Even if you knew it was there, and were looking for it, you’d probably never find it. You could walk within a foot of the thing and still miss it.”
Isabelle Lacoste stared across the village to the vast forest.
“What’s shocking is that it was found at all,” he said.
“What’s shocking is that it’s there,” said Lacoste, and saw him nod.
“After you left this morning I asked Professor Rosenblatt about that.”
He told her about the two theories put forward by the scientist. That the Supergun was either a display model to show potential buyers, or it was placed deliberately to hit targets in the United States.
“But either way, why here?” she asked. “Why not the forests of New Brunswick or Nova Scotia? Or somewhere else in Québec along the U.S. border? Why here?”
She pointed to the ground.
Armand Gamache had been sitting there wondering the same thing. Someone had planned this, probably for a very long time. And then placed it. Carefully. Intentionally. Here.