A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #2)

‘That’s it.’ Émilie nodded. ‘You like people.’

‘I love people,’ he admitted.

‘What was your God doing to the wall in the diner?’

‘He was writing.’

‘God wrote on the wall of the diner?’ Em was incredulous, though she didn’t know why. Her God walked around with a prefabricated construction sign.

Gamache nodded and remembered watching the grizzled, beautiful fisherman at the screen door to the fly-filled diner that smelled of the sea. He’d looked back at Gamache and smiled. Not the radiant, full frontal beam of a few minutes earlier, but a warm and comforting smile, as though to say He understood and that everything would be all right.

Gamache had gotten up and slid into the booth and read the writing on the wall. He’d pulled out his notebook, stuffed with facts about death, about murder and sorrow, and he’d written down the four simple lines.

He knew then what he had to do. Not because he was a brave man or a good man, but because he had no choice. He had to return to Montreal, to Sûreté headquarters, and he had to sort out the Arnot case. He’d known for months he had to do it, and yet he’d run from it and hidden behind work. Behind dead bodies and the solemn, noble need to find killers, as though he was the only one on the force who could.

The writing on the wall hadn’t told him what to do. He knew that. It’d given him the courage to do it.

‘But how do you know you did the right thing?’ Em asked, and Gamache realized he’d said all that out loud.

The blue eyes were steady and calm. But something had shifted. The conversation seemed to have another purpose. There was an intensity about her that hadn’t been there before.

‘I don’t know. Even now I’m not absolutely sure. Lots of people are convinced I was wrong. You know that. I’m sure you read about it in the papers.’

Émilie nodded. ‘You prevented Superintendent Arnot and his two colleagues from killing more people.’

‘I stopped them from killing themselves,’ said Gamache. He remembered that meeting clearly. He’d been part of the inner circle of the Sûreté then. Pierre Arnot was a senior and respected officer in the force, though not by Gamache. He’d known Arnot since his days as a rookie and the two had never gotten along. Gamache suspected Arnot thought him weak, while he thought Arnot a bully.

When it was obvious what Arnot and two of his top men had done, when even his friends couldn’t deny it any longer, Arnot had had one request. That they not be arrested. Not yet. Arnot had a hunting cabin in the Abitibi region, north of Montreal. They’d go there and not return. It was decided it was best, for Arnot, for the co-defendants, for the families.

Everyone agreed.

Except Gamache.

‘Why did you stop them?’ Émilie asked.

‘There had been enough death. It was time for justice. An old-fashioned notion.’ He looked up and smiled into her face. After a moment’s silence he continued. ‘I believe it was right, but I still struggle sometimes. I’m like a Victorian preacher. I have doubts.’

‘Really?’

Gamache looked into the fire again and thought long and hard. ‘I’d do it again. It was the right thing to do, at least for me.’

He looked back at her and paused.

‘Who was L, madame?’

‘Elle?’

Gamache reached into his satchel and brought out the wooden box, turning it over to reveal the letters taped to the bottom. He pointed to the L. ‘L, Madame Longpré.’

Her eyes, while still holding his, seemed to drift and focus on a spot in the distance.

Ice ahead. They were almost there now.

THIRTY-FOUR

‘She was our friend,’ said Émilie, holding Gamache’s eyes. ‘We called her El, but she signed her name with just the letter L.’ Em felt calm for the first time in days. ‘She lived next door to me.’ Em pointed to a small Québecois house with a steep metal roof and tiny dormers. ‘Her family sold it years ago and moved away. After El disappeared.’

‘What happened?’

‘She was younger than the rest of us. Very sweet, very kind. Some children like that get picked on. Other kids know they won’t fight back. But not El. She was one of those children who seemed to bring out the best in others. She was bright, in every way. A shining child. When she walked into a room the lights went on and the sun rose.’

Em could still see her, a child so lovely no one was even jealous of her. Perhaps, too, they all sensed that someone that kind and good couldn’t last long. There was something precious about El.