A Fatal Grace

‘Hello.’ It came out in a more healthy register.

‘Mr Lyon? My name is Armand Gamache. I’m the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. I’m sorry to intrude.’

‘I understand,’ said Lyon, pleased with his tone and his words. They didn’t sound rehearsed. ‘A terrible, terrible day. We’re devastated, of course. Come in.’

To Gamache’s ear the man sounded rehearsed. But not, perhaps, quite enough. He had the words right but the tone wrong, like a poor actor speaking from his head and not his heart.

Gamache took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. He was almost surprised to find that ghosts and demons weren’t swirling around his head, that something cataclysmic and catastrophic didn’t happen.

Instead, he found himself in a dreary front hall. He almost laughed.

The house hadn’t changed all that much. Its dark wood paneling still greeted guests in the unwelcoming entrance hall. The cold marble floors were spotless. As they followed Lyon through the hall into the living room Gamache noticed there didn’t seem to be any Christmas decorations up. Nor were many lights on. A few pools of light here and there, but not nearly enough to take the gloom from the room.

‘I wonder if we might turn on more lights?’ Gamache nodded to Lemieux who went quickly round the room, switching on lamps until the place was bright, if not cheerful. The walls were bare, except for the rectangles where old Timmer Hadley had had pictures. Neither CC nor her husband had bothered to repaint. In fact, they didn’t seem to have bothered to do anything. The furniture looked as though it probably came with the house. It was heavy and ornate, and, as he was about to discover, extremely uncomfortable.

‘My daughter Crie.’ Lyon waddled ahead of them and pointed to a huge girl wearing a yellow sundress and sitting on the sofa. ‘Crie, these men are with the police. Please say hello.’

She didn’t.

Gamache sat down beside her and looked at her staring straight ahead. He wondered whether she was autistic. She was certainly withdrawn, but then she’d just witnessed her mother’s murder. It would be unusual for a child not to be.

‘Crie, my name is Armand Gamache. I’m with the Sûreté. I’m so sorry about what happened to your mother.’

‘She’s always like this,’ explained Lyon. ‘Though she’s good at school apparently. I guess it’s natural for a young girl. Moody.’ This is going all right, he said to himself. You have him fooled. Just don’t screw up. Be sad about your wife but supportive of your daughter. Be a man.

‘How old is Crie?’

Lemieux sat at a small chair in a corner and took out his notebook.

‘Thirteen. No, wait. She’s twelve. Let me see. She was…’

Oh oh.

‘That’s all right, Mr Lyon, we can look it up. I’m thinking perhaps we should talk in private.’

‘Oh, Crie won’t mind, will you?’

There was silence.

‘But I will,’ said Gamache.

Listening to this and taking notes Lemieux tried to heed Gamache’s advice and not jump to conclusions about this weak, jabbering, mincing, stupid little man.

‘Crie, would you go up and watch television for a while?’

Crie continued to stare.

Lyon reddened a little. ‘Crie, I’m speaking to you. Please leave…’

‘Perhaps we should go to another room.’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘Yes it is,’ Gamache said gently and got up. He held out his arm, guiding Lyon before him. The little man waddled ahead and across the entrance hall into the room beyond. At the door Gamache looked back at Crie, plump and plucked, as though bred for the pot.

This was still a tragic house.

THIRTEEN

‘Yes, we were at the community breakfast this morning,’ said Lyon.

‘All three of you?’

‘Yes.’ Lyon hesitated.

Gamache waited. They were in the dining room now.

‘We arrived in separate cars, CC and I. She was visiting a colleague.’

‘Before breakfast?’

‘It’s a very stressful time for her. A very important time. Big things happening.’

‘What did your wife do?’

‘You don’t know?’ Lyon seemed genuinely surprised.

Gamache raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

Lyon got up and ran out of the room returning a moment later with a book. ‘This is CC.’

Gamache took it and stared at the cover. It was all white with arched black eyebrows, two piercing blue eyes, nostrils, and a red slash of lips hovering in the middle. It was artful and bizarre. The effect was repellent. The photographer, Gamache thought, must have despised her.