‘You say it’s natural for a girl Sophie’s age to be confused?’ Beauvoir asked Lacoste.
‘Lots are. Emotions are all over the place. It’d be normal for her to love Madeleine Favreau and then hate her. Then adore her again. Look at the relationships most girls have with their mothers. I called the lab,’ said Lacoste. ‘The report from the break-in won’t be ready until the morning but the coroner emailed her preliminary report and said she’d drop by on her way home. Wants to meet the chief in the bistro in about an hour.’
‘Where is he?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘Still at the old Hadley house.’
‘Alone?’
‘No. Lemieux’s there too. I need to talk to you about something.’ She shot a look at Nichol, now sitting at her desk, staring at her screen. Playing free cell, Lacoste guessed.
‘Why don’t we walk? Get some air before the storm,’ said Beauvoir.
‘What storm?’
She’d followed him to the door. He opened it and nodded.
Lacoste could only see blue sky and the odd cloud. It was a beautiful day. She looked at him in profile, staring at the sky as well, his face grim. Lacoste looked more closely. And there, just above the dark pine forest on the ridge of the hill, behind the old Hadley house, she saw it.
A black slash rising, as though the sky was a dome, cheerful and bright, and artificial. And someone was opening that dome.
‘What is that?’
‘Just a storm. They look more dramatic in the country. In the city with the buildings we can’t see all that.’ He waved casually toward the slash as though all storms looked like something wicked approaching.
Beauvoir put his coat back on, and once out the door turned to walk over the stone bridge into Three Pines but Lacoste hesitated.
‘Do you mind if we walk this way?’ She pointed in the opposite direction, away from the village. He looked and saw an attractive dirt road winding into the woods. The mature trees arched overhead, almost touching. In the summer it would be gently shaded but now, in early spring, the branches held only buds, like tiny green flares, and the sun shot through easily. They walked in silence into a world of sweet aromas and birdsong. Beauvoir remembered Gilles Sandon’s claim. That trees spoke. And maybe, sometimes, they sang.
Finally Lacoste was certain no one, especially Nichol, could overhear.
‘Tell me about the Arnot case.’
Gamache looked into the darkness and silence. He’d been in the basement once before. He’d opened this same door in the middle of a fierce storm, in the dark, desperate to find a kidnapped woman. And he’d stepped into a void. It was like every nightmare coming true. He’d crossed a threshold into nothingness. No light, no stairs.
And he’d fallen. As had the others with him. Into a wounded and bloody heap on the floor below.
The old Hadley house protected itself. It seemed to tolerate, with ill grace, minor intrusions. But it grew more and more malevolent the deeper you went. Instinctively his hand went into his pants pocket, then came out again, empty.
But he remembered the Bible in his jacket and felt a little better. Though he didn’t himself go to church, he knew the power of belief. And symbols. But then he thought about the other book he’d found and brought with him from the murder scene and whatever comfort he’d felt evaporated, seemed to be pulled from him and disappear into the void in front of him.
He shone the flashlight down the stairs. At least this time there were stairs. Putting his large foot tentatively on the first rung he felt it take his weight. Then he took a deep breath, and started down.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Beauvoir.
‘I need to know about the Arnot case,’ said Lacoste.
‘Why?’ He stopped in the middle of the country road and turned to look at her. She faced him squarely.
‘I’m no fool. Something’s going on and I want to know.’
‘You must have followed it on TV or in the papers,’ said Beauvoir.
‘I did. And in police college it was all anyone was talking about.’
Beauvoir’s mind went back to that dark time, when the Sûreté was rent. When the loyal and cohesive organization started making war on itself. It put its wagons in a circle and shot inwards. It was horrible. Every officer knew the strength of the Sûreté lay in loyalty. Their very lives depended on it. But the Arnot case changed everything.
On one side stood Superintendent Arnot and his two co-defendants, charged with murder. And on the other, Chief Inspector Gamache. To say the Sûreté was split in half would be wrong. Every officer Beauvoir knew was appalled by Arnot, absolutely sickened. But many were also appalled by what Gamache did.
‘So you know it all,’ said Beauvoir.
‘I don’t know it all, and you know that. What’s wrong? Why are you freezing me out of this? I know there’s something going on. The Arnot case isn’t dead, is it?’
Beauvoir turned and walked slowly down the road, further into the woods.
‘What?’ Lacoste called after him. But Beauvoir was silent. He brought his hands behind his back and held them, walking slowly and thinking it through.
