Then Delorme slowly, wordlessly, closed the door until it clicked shut. And then there was another sound, as a bolt was drawn across.
Gabri stared at the wooden door. His last image of the small library fused into his memory. Of Delorme’s dark eyes and beyond him, Mary Fraser continuing to read. As though her life depended on it.
From the study Beauvoir phoned across to Lacoste at the Incident Room.
She confirmed that Cohen was at the SHU. “He’s in his car, waiting.”
“Good” was what Beauvoir said, but good was not what he felt. “Anything in the case files?”
“No, nothing yet,” she said, and hanging up, she went back to them. Like the play, she knew her answer was right in front of her if only she could find it.
Isabelle Lacoste had gone over and over the notes. The interviews. The evidence from both murders.
Antoinette Lemaitre had been killed either by someone she’d invited into her home, or when she’d surprised an intruder. It was someone who knew about Project Babylon, and knew Brian would be in Montréal. Someone who knew that her uncle was Guillaume Couture and that Dr. Couture had been Gerald Bull’s main designer. Perhaps even knew he was the real architect of Project Babylon.
Someone who thought the plans were hidden in his home. Someone who might’ve been looking for them for years.
The gun couldn’t be sold. Not anymore. But the plans could.
Lacoste stopped herself.
Sidetracked by the goddamned plans again, she thought, and gave a heavy sigh.
But still, she’d come close, before veering off. Where had she gone astray?
All right, she told herself. Let’s set aside Antoinette’s murder and go back to the first one. Laurent’s death.
She herself had been in the bistro when the boy had raced in with yet another ridiculous story, so clearly a product of his imagination.
Isabelle Lacoste tried to remember what he’d said and done.
Laurent had run in and come up to their table, jabbering excitedly, announcing to the room that he’d found a huge gun in the woods. With a monster on it.
When no one paid attention, Laurent had tugged at Gamache’s arm to follow him.
Instead, the Chief had driven him home. In the car, Laurent had entertained him with more tales about the gun, and about winged monsters and alien invasions and whatever else his fertile imagination produced.
A day later, Laurent was dead.
Who else had he told? His parents. His father. The one person who would know it wasn’t a fantasy, though Lepage claimed not to know what Dr. Bull and the others were building. Was that one more lie in a life that was itself a fabrication? Did he kill his own son to shut him up, knowing that if the massive gun was found, with his etching, questions would be asked and Frederick Lawson might be revealed?
Is that what happened? Or had Laurent run into someone else in the hours after Gamache had dropped him off? Someone who knew Laurent was telling the truth. Someone who had Laurent show him the gun, and then killed him there and placed his body by the side of the road, to make it look like an accident.
She was missing something. Or misinterpreting something. There was something she wasn’t seeing.
That’s when Beauvoir called and reported that they’d found nothing in the play. Her heart dropped. It wasn’t their only hope, but it was their best one.
She went back to the file folder and began reading again.
And then she forced herself to stop. She knew the case. Had just refreshed her mind. Now it was time to use her mind. Isabelle Lacoste closed the file, swung her chair around, and stared out the window. Forcing herself to do nothing. Except the most important thing. Think.
Gabri had called from the bistro and asked Gamache to meet him there, leaving Beauvoir alone in the study.
Jean-Guy hadn’t meant to pry but, once alone, his eyes had strayed to papers on Gamache’s desk. Letters. Offers. Stacks of them. The top one was from the UN to head up their policing division, with a particular focus on Haiti.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, Jean-Guy’s heart dropped. Haiti was close to Gamache’s own heart. It was a job that demanded diplomacy, and patience, and respect. And French. It would be dangerous, but it would be fulfilling, to train the local police in that shattered nation. It was a perfect fit for the Chief.
Then Beauvoir refocused and returned to the script in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to find something in the play.
It seemed more and more likely that Fleming was lying, at least about the play. Probably about the plans too.
The words swam in front of Jean-Guy’s eyes and nothing was going in. He read and reread the same passage. It was like the recurring nightmare where he had to get away, but couldn’t run.
He looked at the words and willed his mind to settle down. But all he could think of was Annie and the baby and a world where a goddamned gun was in the hands of a madman. And another madman was on the loose, freed by them.
Jean-Guy forced himself to close his eyes. And from his mind he pulled the fresh memory of the play being read by Clara and Myrna, Madame Gamache and Brian and Gabri. Ruth and Olivier and Monsieur Béliveau. Their familiar voices lulled him, like his grandmother’s voice reading to him at bedtime about the hockey sweater.
Slowly the scenes came alive, the characters came alive, in front of him. Beauvoir could see them. The boarders, the shopkeeper. Vivid. At once funny and heartbreaking, and surprisingly human.
John Fleming was describing a group of people who were being offered a second chance. A lifeboat. But who didn’t recognize it for what it was, because it wasn’t offered in the form they wanted.
They wanted a burning bush, a bolt of lightning. A lottery win.
It reminded Jean-Guy of Three Pines. Of the travelers who came upon the village unexpectedly. They sat in the bistro, having stopped just to relieve themselves and get something to eat. They drank their café au laits and ate their pain au chocolat, and consulted their maps. Never once looking up, and around.
And then they left, climbing out of the lifeboat and back into the ocean. And they swam away. In search of the job, the person, the big house that would save them.
But every now and then someone did look up. And around. And saw that they’d arrived. They’d made it to shore.
Jean-Guy had sat in the bistro, or on the bench, or the porch of the Gamaches’ home with Annie and seen that look on new faces, on a few faces. Not many, but it was unmistakable and unforgettable when it happened. It wasn’t joy, it wasn’t happiness. Not yet. It was relief.
He recognized it because he himself had washed ashore. Here.
Jean-Guy opened his eyes and sat up straight.
Armand Gamache stared out the bistro window at the B and B. Gabri had quietly told him about seeing Delorme and Fraser in the library there, with the Fleming play.
“I’ve never seen anyone read like that before,” he said. “She was so focused and he was like her watchdog. A pit bull.”
“Sean Delorme?” asked Gamache.
“I know,” said Gabri. “That’s why I thought you should know. He wasn’t at all happy that I’d seen them.”
Gamache was keenly aware of the clock on the mantelpiece behind him, ticking down. And Michael Rosenblatt, in the corner. Cornered.
Someone had told the CSIS agents about the significance of the play and Gamache could guess who.
Armand looked out over the village and with a great effort cleared his mind and heard again the voices of the villagers reading the Fleming play. Armand stood very still, in the window, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes closed.