A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #2)

‘Crie, it’s Chief Inspector Gamache. How are you?’

No reply.

‘It’s cold in here. Do you mind if I give you my sweater?’ He removed his cardigan and draped it over her bare shoulders, then turned to Lyon.

‘When I leave I suggest you put a blanket round her and light the fireplace.’

‘But it doesn’t throw much heat,’ said Lyon. Don’t sound petulant. Sound strong, sound like the man of the house. Sound decisive. ‘Besides, there’s no wood.’

‘There’s wood in the basement. I’ll help you bring it up, and you’re probably right about the heat, but the fire is cheerful and bright. Those things are important as well. Now, I have some questions for you.’ Gamache walked out of the living room and into the hall. He didn’t want to spend much time there. He wanted to meet Myrna in her bookstore before it closed.

‘What was your wife’s real name?’

‘De Poitiers.’

‘Her real name.’

Lyon looked completely at sea. ‘Not de Poitiers? What’re you saying?’

‘She made that up. You didn’t know?’

Lyon shook his head.

‘What are your finances, Monsieur Lyon?’

He opened his mouth then clamped it shut before the lie could escape. There was no longer any need to lie, to pretend to be something and someone he wasn’t. CC was the one who insisted and had made him go along. Pretend they were born to be in a house like this, the manor house, the one on the hill. Born to greatness. Born to riches.

‘I signed over my pension to buy this house,’ he admitted. ‘We’re in way over our heads.’

He was surprised how easy that was. CC had told him they could never admit the truth. If people knew what life was really like for them, they’d be ruined. But deceit and secrecy had brought them to ruin anyway. And now Richard Lyon told the truth and nothing bad happened.

‘Not any more. Your wife was insured for hundreds of thousands of dollars.’

Something bad just happened, and now Lyon deeply regretted telling the truth. What would President Roosevelt do? Captain Picard? CC?

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Lie.

‘Your signature’s on the policy. We have the documents.’

Something very bad indeed was happening.

‘You’re an engineer by training, and an inventor. You could easily hook up the booster cables that electrocuted your wife. You’d know that she’d need to be standing in water and have bare hands. You could have slipped her the niacin over breakfast. You knew her well enough to know she’d take the best seat under the heat lamp.’ Now Gamache’s voice, which had been so reasonable it somehow added to the nightmare, grew very quiet. He reached into the satchel and brought out a photograph. ‘What’s troubled me from the very start was how the murderer knew CC would grab the chair in front of her. It’s not the sort of thing people do. Now I know. This is how.’

He showed Richard Lyon the picture. Richard saw his wife in the minute or so before she died. Beside her Kaye was saying something, but CC’s attention was riveted on the chair in front.

Richard Lyon blanched.

‘You, sir, would know too.’

‘I didn’t do it.’ His voice was tiny and reedy. Even the voices in his head had fled, leaving him alone now. All alone.

‘He didn’t do it,’ said Myrna twenty minutes later.

‘How d’you know?’ Gamache asked, settling into the rocking chair. He stretched his long legs out in front of the woodstove, which was radiating heat. Myrna had stirred up a hot rum toddy for him and it sat on a stack of New York Review of Books on the blanket box between them. Gamache was thawing out.

‘He sat beside me on the bleachers the whole time.’

‘I remember you told me that, but is it possible he left for a few minutes without you noticing?’

‘As you were walking here from the old Hadley house would you have noticed if your coat had fallen off, just for a few minutes?’ She had a twinkle in her eye as she asked.

‘Maybe.’ He knew what she was getting at, and didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear that his perfect suspect, his only perfect suspect, couldn’t have done it because Myrna here would have noticed the sudden absence of Lyon’s body heat, if not his personality.

‘Look, I don’t have any love for the man,’ she said. ‘Someone over a period of years has screwed Crie up to the point where she’s almost comatose. At first I thought she might be autistic, but after spending a few minutes with her I don’t think so. I think she’s run away, inside her head. And I think Richard Lyon’s to blame.’