A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #2)

‘Happy New Year.’ Reine-Marie smiled. She was introduced to Olivier and Gabri, Myrna and Ruth.

‘How’re Mother and Kaye?’ Peter asked, leading them into the living room.

‘Recovering,’ said Gamache. ‘Still very weak, and feeling adrift without Em.’

‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Olivier, perching on the arm of Gabri’s chair. The fire crackled and a tray of drinks was on the piano. The Christmas tree made the always inviting room even cheerier.

‘The oysters are on the piano, away from Lucy,’ Clara explained. ‘Only a Morrow would have a dog who loves oysters.’

‘We saw the barrel as we came in,’ Reine-Marie admitted, remembering the wooden keg full of oysters sitting in the snow near the Morrows’ front door. She hadn’t seen one of those in years, since her own childhood in the countryside. Barrels of oysters on New Year’s Day. A Québecois tradition.

After getting plates of oysters on the half shell, thin slices of pumpernickel lightly buttered and wedges of lemon, the two joined the others in front of the hearth.

‘How’s Crie?’ Clara asked, settling in beside Peter.

‘She’s in a psychiatric unit. Won’t stand trial for a while, if ever,’ said Gamache.

‘How did you know she’d killed her mother?’ asked Myrna.

‘I thought it was the three women,’ Gamache admitted, sipping his wine. ‘They completely fooled me. But then I remembered those baby sealskin boots.’

‘Wicked,’ said Ruth with a slurp.

‘In her letter Émilie described the niacin, the anti-freeze, the booster cables. But she left out one crucial thing.’ Gamache had their undivided attention. ‘Had they done all the things they describe in that letter, CC would still be alive. In her letter Émilie didn’t mention the boots. But CC had to have been wearing the Inuit mukluks with the metal claws. They were the key to this whole murder. I told Émilie about them yesterday and she was sickened. More than that, she was surprised. She’d heard CC clicking down the path after the Christmas Eve service, but she couldn’t see her. She had no idea what had caused the sound.’

‘None of us did,’ said Clara. ‘It sounded like a monster, with claws.’ As she listened to Gamache a familiar Christmas carol moved through her mind. Sorr’wing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb. Ironically, Clara realized, it was from ‘We Three Kings’.

‘I realized the women couldn’t have killed CC. But they knew who had,’ Gamache said, his listeners, even Lucy, silent and staring. ‘Mother told us everything. Kaye would only give us her name, rank and serial number, which was actually her phone number. Couldn’t get a straight answer out of her.’

Gabri turned to Reine-Marie. ‘I don’t give him straight answers either.’

‘Nor should you, mon beau Gabri,’ said Reine-Marie.

‘According to Mother, Kaye saw it all, and what she didn’t see they figured out later. For instance, they didn’t see Crie slip niacin into her mother’s tea. But they did see her spill windshield washer fluid behind the chair. And Émilie saw her hanging around Billy Williams’s truck. None of these things meant anything at first but when Kaye saw Crie deliberately put the chair off balance, and hook up booster cables to it, her curiosity was piqued, though she didn’t expect murder. CC was concentrating on what was happening on the ice, of course, but when she grabbed the chair and was electrocuted Kaye knew at once what had happened. After all, she’d worked all her life in a logging camp. She knew about generators and boosters. Before going to help CC Kaye unhooked the cables and tossed them aside. In all the excitement they were stepped on and buried under the snow. While you were all working on CC Kaye started gathering up the cable. Em saw her and asked what she was doing. Kaye didn’t have time to tell her everything; all she said was she had to get the booster cable back into Billy’s truck. Émilie didn’t need more of an explanation.’

‘So they knew Crie had killed her mother,’ said Myrna. ‘But did they know that CC had killed her own mother?’

‘No. Not until I told Em the other day. No, the death of CC had nothing to do with her killing her own mother. Not in a literal way anyway. Mother would probably say it was karma.’

‘So would I,’ said Clara.

‘Crie killed her mother out of self-defense. She was finally so hurt she couldn’t take it any more. It happens with children sometimes. They either kill themselves, or they kill their abuser. Émilie described Crie as deceptive, though not in an underhanded way. She meant Crie appeared flat, without a spark or talent. But she wasn’t.’