A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #2)

‘May I give you a piece of advice?’

Again she’d nodded, eager to hear what he might say.

‘Let it go. You have your own life. Not Uncle Saul’s, not your parents’.’ His face had grown very serious then, his eyes searching. ‘You can’t live in the past and you certainly can’t undo it. What happened to Uncle Saul has nothing to do with you. Memories can kill, Yvette. The past can reach right up and grab you and drag you to a place you shouldn’t be. Like a burning building.’

He’d looked out again at the hungry, licking flames, then back at her. He’d leaned forward then until their heads were almost touching. It was the most intimate moment she’d known. In a soft voice he’d whispered, ‘Bury your dead.’

Now she lay in bed, warm and safe. It’s going to be all right, she said to herself, noticing the soft snow falling on the windowsill. She brought the duvet up to her chin and buried her nose in the bedding. It smelled of smoke.

And with the smell came a ragged phrase, shouted through the smoke. Cutting through and finding her curled on the floor, terrified and alone. She was going to die, she knew. Alone. And instead of the rescuers finding her, their words did.

She’s not worth it.

She was going to burn to death, alone. Because she wasn’t worth saving. The voice had belonged to Beauvoir. What didn’t chase those words down that corridor, through the acrid smoke, was Gamache’s voice saying, ‘Yes she is.’

All she’d heard was the roar of the approaching fire, and her own heart howling.

Fucking Gamache would have left her to die. He wasn’t looking for her, he wanted to find Petrov. Those were the first words out of his mouth when he’d found her. ‘Where’s Petrov?’ Not ‘Are you all right,’ not ‘Thank God we found you’.

And he’d tricked her into telling him about Uncle Saul. Into betraying her father. Her family. Now he knew everything. Now he knew for sure she wasn’t worth it.

God damn Gamache.

‘It must have been arson,’ said Beauvoir, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth. He was famished.

‘Ruth doesn’t think so,’ said Gamache, spreading strawberry jam on his croissant and sipping his strong, hot coffee. They were in the dining room of the B. & B., a warm, cozy room dominated by a huge fireplace and a window with a view of the forests and the mountains beyond, obscured now by the heavily falling snow.

Both men were whispering, their throats raw from the smoke and the shouting of the night before. Gabri looked like hell, and Olivier had closed the bistro and would only reopen for lunch.

‘You’re getting what you’re getting this morning. No special orders,’ Gabri had snapped when they’d shown up. Then he’d produced an exquisite breakfast of eggs and maple-cured back bacon, French toast and syrup. And steaming, buttery croissants. ‘Fortunately for you, I cook when I’m stressed. What a night. Tragic.’

After he’d retreated to the kitchen Beauvoir turned back to Gamache.

‘What d’you mean she thinks it wasn’t arson? What else could it be? A main suspect, at the very least a witness in a murder case, dies in a fire and it isn’t murder?’

‘She says the neighbor saw flames shooting out the chimney.’

‘So? Flames were shooting out everywhere. They were almost shooting out my ass.’

‘The neighbor thinks it was an accident, a chimney fire. We’ll see. The fire inspector’ll be there now. We’ll get a report by this afternoon. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Jean Guy.’

‘And when it bursts into flames, what is it then? No, sir. That was arson. Saul Petrov was murdered.’

The rest of the day was spent in slow motion, as everyone recovered from the fire and waited for the results of the fire marshal’s investigation. Lemieux had found out that Saul Petrov’s next of kin was a sister in Quebec City. An agent was despatched to break the news and gather more background.

After breakfast Beauvoir trudged through the knee-deep fluffy snow, kicking it ahead of him as he went house to house, interviewing villagers in the hope of finding someone who knew a woman with a name beginning with L who’d lived in the area forty-five years before. Lemieux searched the parish records.

It was a quiet, almost dream-like day, their lives muffled by exhaustion and the thick layer of gathering snow. Gamache sat at his desk. Behind him the volunteer firefighters cleaned the pumper truck and put their equipment in order. Occasionally he nodded off, his feet on his desk, his eyes closed and his hands folded over his stomach.