“Was it wearing pajamas?” she asked, baffling Beauvoir even more.
“Is it your elephant?” Gamache asked. It was, he had to admit, a question he’d never asked in a murder investigation before. Actually, had never asked, period.
Olivier bent down but didn’t touch. “It sure looks like it, but this one has engraving on it, ours didn’t. But man, it sure looks like it. Gabri would know.”
“Can you get me the guest’s name and when they were here?” Gamache asked.
“Easily.”
From the other side of the painting they heard very soft singing. “Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer…”
“But how can it be ours?” asked Olivier.
“How can any of this be?” Billy asked.
“Hooray, hooray, hooray,” sang Amelia.
CHAPTER 20
The investigators were gathered in the Old Train Station. The photograph of Ruth, taken when she’d won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, glared down at them.
Jean-Guy had contacted a conservator at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal, who’d be arriving first thing in the morning. The painting was now safely locked away in the Incident Room along with the other items from the attic. Except the grimoire. Reine-Marie still had that.
Crime scene tape had been placed across the hole in Myrna’s wall. When asked why, since no crime had actually been committed, neither Gamache nor Beauvoir explained fully, preferring to say it was a precaution.
The autopsy report on Patricia Godin hadn’t yet arrived, but the investigators were assured it would before morning, and analysis of the Stone letter was under way at the Sûreté labs.
That too would arrive the next day.
“Come over to our place for dinner,” Gamache said to Amelia. “But first, check into the B&B. There’s a young man staying there, Sam Arsenault. I want you to get to know him. You have any marijuana on you?”
“Me? Marijuana?”
It was now legal in Canada. Gamache understood the hypocrisy of him enjoying a scotch after work but discouraging his agents from relaxing with a joint. Which he did.
“Yes, you.”
He’d consider himself lucky if all she had was a joint, though in joining homicide she’d pledged to be clean.
“Why? You want some?” she asked.
He smiled thinly. “If you do, offer it to him. Imply that you’re breaking my rules.”
“I would be,” she said. “No need to imply.”
“It’s not a rule,” he said. “Just a strong suggestion.”
She smiled at the all-but-nonexistent distinction. “For what it’s worth, I’m clean, but I know where I can get some.”
“Good. But don’t you use.”
Chief Inspector Gamache knew Agent Choquet well. Very well. Knew her better than she realized.
He was the one who’d reviewed her application to the Sûreté Academy. He’d seen her all-too-obvious flaws. Her frailties. Her drug use, her petty crimes. She’d dropped out of high school and ended up on the street, at times resorting to prostitution.
He’d seen the tattoos, many obviously self-administered. Not as body art but as a form of self-mutilation. The piercings and studs, the tears and scars.
But he’d also seen that she’d read every school textbook she could get her hands on, either borrowed or stolen. She’d devoured books on philosophy, math, literature. Art. Poetry. She’d taught herself ancient Greek and read Socrates, and Italian and read Italo Calvino in the original. Her favorite, and his, was, If on a winter’s night a traveler.
She spoke Russian and learned Mandarin.
She’d passed her high school equivalency with such high marks the education board had given her, just out of curiosity, the test to get into McGill University. She wrote her answers upside down and backward. Once her examiners figured it out, they saw that she had scored higher than anyone else that year. McGill offered her a scholarship.
She’d accepted, then didn’t show up. Amelia Choquet had disappeared back into the sewer of inner-city Montréal.
But then she’d bobbed up again, one last time, and applied to, of all things, the Sûreté Academy.
At first, Gamache thought it was a joke. A dare perhaps. Then he’d looked deeper and seen it wasn’t a joke, it was a lifeboat. He saw the totality of her application. Of her life. It was immediately apparent that Amelia Choquet was an omnivore, the greatest autodidact Armand Gamache had ever come across.
She was clearly a genius. Or perhaps she was mad. Gamache couldn’t decide.
In the end, he’d rejected her application. As the new head of the Sûreté Academy at the time, he was responsible for all the cadets. He could not risk letting Amelia Choquet into an Academy already riven with deceit and corruption. Armand Gamache was very aware of the effect of one bad apple. And there was the smell of rot about Amelia Choquet.
He had a duty to protect the other students. Had to protect a fragile institution from an unstable, disruptive, even dangerous influence.
The truth, though, was far more complex, and far less noble.
He’d ultimately changed his mind and admitted her. Not everyone thought it was the wisest of decisions. And even he took a long time making peace with it. With her.
Now they sat in armchairs Agent Choquet had wrangled from Olivier. At least, they assumed Olivier was aware she’d taken them. The chairs now formed a sitting area in the Incident Room, along with a rug, side tables, and lamps. Also from the bistro.
Beauvoir brought over drinks from the well-stocked mini-fridge, and had to admit it was not only the most efficient Incident Room he’d ever worked in, it was about the most comfortable.
Though that was not saying much. Over the years, he and the Chief Inspector had worked out of pigsties, spider-infested toolsheds, hotels they were pretty sure were haunted. At least, Beauvoir was.
They’d once dug a quinzhee out of snow when caught in a blizzard while investigating a murder in Nunavut. It was so comfortable they ended up using the snow hut as their Incident Room. Far better than the two-hole outhouse they’d been forced to use in the Gaspé.
Annie refused to believe that was true, but it was.
“I want you to bad-mouth me to Sam Arsenault,” said Gamache, taking a fistful of nuts Amelia had put out in bowls, along with chips. “Subtly.”
“Do you do subtle?” asked Beauvoir.
Amelia spread her arms and smirked. Her tongue stud clicked against her teeth.
She was tapping out, Subtle, c’est moi. Gamache wondered if she realized he too knew Morse code.
“I want Sam Arsenault to think you’re unhappy,” said Gamache. “That you’re only in the Sûreté to steal drugs. Evidence. Whatever. You can figure that out. But be careful. He’s smart. He has a rare ability to see into people. To find their triggers. To manipulate.”
Jean-Guy shifted and inhaled. They both looked at him.
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“Who’s this Sam guy?” asked Amelia.
Gamache nodded to Beauvoir, who told her about the investigation into the death of Clotilde Arsenault and the fallout.
Amelia listened. It was a just-the-facts account, and when he’d finished, she said to Gamache, “But you don’t believe it? You don’t think the sister did it.”
“I believe they killed their mother. As to who delivered the actual blow, I don’t know. I’m willing to believe it was Fiona, but I don’t think that part matters. Those children were tortured, abused, broken. They were acting in self-defense. I believe the justice system failed them both, but especially Fiona.”