A Fatal Grace

‘How is he?’ Gabri asked as Gamache descended the staircase.

‘Asleep. Will you be here for a while?’

‘I’ll make sure I am.’

Gamache put his coat on and stood at the threshold. ‘Getting colder.’

‘Snow’s stopped. I hear tomorrow’s supposed to get down to minus twenty.’

Both men looked out the door. The sun had long since set and the trees and pond were lit. A few people were walking their dogs and skating. The bistro was throwing its welcoming light and the door opened and closed as villagers went for their late afternoon toddy.

‘Must be five,’ said Gabri, nodding toward the village green. ‘Ruth. She looks almost lifelike.’

Gamache left the warmth of the B. & B. and hurried round the Commons. He considered pausing to speak to Ruth but decided against it. Something about the woman warned against casual, or any kind of, conversation. His feet squeaked on the snow, a sure sign that the temperature was plunging. His face felt as though he was walking through a cloud of tiny needles and his eyes watered slightly. With regret he walked past the bistro. It had been his intention to sit in the bistro each afternoon with a quiet drink to review his notes and meet the villagers.

The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.

Gamache’s job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was to get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention. And the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual manner in a deceptively casual setting.

Like the bistro.

As he walked by he wondered whether the murderer was in there now, enjoying a Scotch or hot cider on this cold night. Warming himself by the open hearth and by the company of friends. Or was the murderer out here, in the cold and dark? An outsider, bitter and brittle and broken?

He walked over the arched stone bridge, enjoying the silence of the village. Snow did that. It laid down a simple, clean duvet that muffled all sound and kept everything beneath alive. Farmers and gardeners in Quebec wished for two things in winter: lots of snow and continuous cold. An early thaw was a disaster. It tricked the young and vulnerable into exposing themselves, only to be nipped in the root. A killing frost.

‘And then he falls, as I do,’ quoted Gamache to himself, surprised by the reference. Wolsey’s farewell. Shakespeare, of course. But why had he suddenly thought of that quote?

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do.

Was he falling? Was he being lulled into believing he was in control, that everything was going to plan?

The Arnot case isn’t over, his friend Michel Brébeuf had warned. Is a killing frost on the way? Gamache clapped his arms round himself a few times for warmth and reassurance. He snorted in amusement and shook his head. It was quite humbling. One moment he was the distinguished Chief Inspector Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, investigating a murder, the next he was chasing his imagination all over the countryside.

Now he paused and again took in the venerable village, with its ring of old, well-loved homes, inhabited by well-loved people.

Even Ruth Zardo. It was a tribute to this quiet, calm place that its people found space in their hearts for someone as wounded as Ruth.

And CC de Poitiers? Would they have been able to find a place for her? Or her husband and child?

He reluctantly raised his eyes from the glowing circle of light that was Three Pines up to the darkness and the old Hadley house, sitting like the error that proved the point. It stood outside the circle, on the verge of the village. Beyond the pale.

Was the murderer in there, in that foreboding and forbidding place that seemed to breed and radiate resentment?

Gamache stood in the freezing cold and wondered why CC had wanted to breed resentment. Why had she created it at every turn? He had yet to find a soul saddened by her death. Her departure diminished no one, from what he could see. Not even her family. Perhaps especially not her family. He tilted his head slightly to one side as though that might help his thinking. It didn’t. Whatever small idea he’d had was lost. Something about breeding resentment.