A Fatal Grace

‘Remember this?’ He brought over a small book and handed it to Clara. She flipped it open and read, at random,

‘You were a moth

brushing against my cheek

in the dark.

I killed you

not knowing

you were only a moth,

with no sting.’

She flipped to another poem, again at random, and another and another.

‘They’re almost all about death, or loss,’ she said, lowering the book. ‘I hadn’t realized that. Most of Ruth’s poems are about death.’ She closed the book. It was one of Ruth’s older volumes.

‘Not just about death,’ said Peter, throwing a birch log on the fire and watching it spit, before heading to the kitchen to check the casserole warming for dinner. From there he shouted, ‘But also very subtle. There’s a great deal to Ruth we don’t see.’

‘You were only a moth, with no sting.’ Clara repeated the words. Was CC only a moth? No. CC de Poitiers had a sting. To come anywhere near the woman was to feel it. Clara wasn’t sure she agreed with Peter about Ruth. Ruth got all her bitterness out in her poetry. She held nothing in, and Clara knew the kind of anger that led to murder needed to ferment for a long time, often sealed beneath a layer of smiles and sweet reason.

The phone rang and after a few short words Peter hung up.

‘Drink up,’ he called from the doorway. ‘That was Myrna inviting us for a quick one at the bistro.’

‘I have to gulp one drink to get another?’

‘Like old times, isn’t it?’

Armand Gamache stood outside the old Hadley house. The door had closed and he felt he could exhale. He also felt foolish. He’d toured the gloomy old pile with Lyon and nothing he’d seen had made him like the place more, but neither did it hide any ghouls. It was just tired and sad and it longed for laughter. Like its inhabitants.

Before he left he’d gone back into the living room where Crie was still sitting in her sundress and flip-flops. He’d put a blanket round her and sat across from her, watching her impassive young face for a moment then closing his eyes.

He tried to let her know it would be all right. Eventually. Life wouldn’t always be this painful. The world wouldn’t always be this brutal. Give it time, little one. Give it another chance. Come back.

He repeated that a few times, then opening his eyes he saw Lemieux at the door watching.

Now, outside, Gamache shrugged deeper into his coat and walked down the path toward the car. The flurries were just beginning, fluffy and light and lovely. He looked down at the village below, all sparkling in the light from the decorations and the flurries. Then something Gabri’d said floated like a flurry into his head. ‘The monster is dead and the villagers are celebrating.’ An allusion to Frankenstein. But in that story the villagers weren’t just celebrating the death of the monster, they’d killed him themselves.

Was it possible this sleepy, lovely, peaceful place had banded together and killed CC de Poitiers?

Gamache almost dismissed it. It was a crazy idea. But then he remembered. It was a crazy death.

‘Do you have a question for me?’ Gamache asked, not turning back to the young man behind him.

‘No sir.’

‘Lesson number three, son. Never lie to me.’ He turned round now and looked at Agent Lemieux in a way the young man would never forget. There was caring there, but there was also a warning.

‘What were you doing in the living room with the daughter?’

‘Crie is her name. What did it look like?’

‘You were sitting too far away to be talking to her. And, well…’

‘Go on.’

‘Your eyes were closed.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Were you praying?’ Lemieux was embarrassed to ask. Prayer, in his generation, was worse than rape, worse than sodomy, worse than failure. He felt he’d just deeply insulted the chief. Still, the man had asked.

‘Yes, I was praying, though not, I suppose, in a conventional way. I was thinking about Crie and trying to send her the message that the world could be a good place, and to give it another chance.’

This was more information that Agent Robert Lemieux wanted. Way more. He began to wonder how difficult this assignment was going to be. But as he watched the chief walk slowly, thoughtfully, back to the car Lemieux had to admit Gamache’s answer had somehow comforted him. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard. He brought out his notebook and while the two of them sat in the now warm vehicle Gamache smiled to see young Agent Lemieux write down what he’d said.