“Merci. They found that you were exactly as you claimed. Modest upbringing in Notre-Dame-de-Grace in Montreal. An accountant. Worked here and there after the war but jobs were scarce, so many men suddenly looking. Your old friend Charles hired you and you stayed on. Very loyal.”
“It was a good job with a good friend.”
“But you told me you’d never been a prisoner.”
“And I haven’t.”
“But you have, monsieur. Your war record states you were in Burma when the Japanese invaded. You were captured.”
He was speaking to a survivor of the Burma campaign, of the brutal fighting and atrocious, inhumane captivity. Almost none survived. But this man had. He’d lived to be almost ninety, as though he was taking all the years stolen from the rest. He’d lived to marry, to have stepchildren and to stand peacefully on a dock on a summer’s morning, discussing murder.
“You’re so close, Chief Inspector. I wonder if you know how close you are. But you still have some things to figure out.”
And with that Bert Finney turned and walked onto the grass, heading off slowly to wherever men like him go.
Armand Gamache watched, still feeling the touch of the withered old hand on his arm. Then he closed his eyes and turned his face to the sky, his right hand just lifting a little to take a larger hand.
“Oh, I have slipped,” he murmured to the lake, “the surly bonds of earth.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Gamache had a light breakfast of homemade granola and watched Jean Guy Beauvoir eat almost an entire hive of honey.
“Did you know honey bees actually flap their wings over the honeycomb and that evaporates water?” said Beauvoir, chewing on a mouthful of honeycomb and trying to look as though it didn’t taste like wax. “That’s why honey is so sweet and thick.”
Isabelle Lacoste dabbed fresh raspberry jam on a buttery croissant and looked at Beauvoir as though he was a bear of very little brain.
“My daughter did a project on honey for her grade one class,” she said. “Did you know bees eat honey and then throw it up again? Over and over. That’s how honey’s made. Bees’ barf she called it.”
The spoon with a bit of honeycomb and dripping golden liquid paused. But adoration won out and it went into Beauvoir’s mouth. Anything Chef Véronique touched was fine with him. Even bees’ barf. Eating the thick, almost amber liquid gave him comfort. He felt cared for and safe near the large, ungainly woman. He wondered if that was love. And he wondered why he didn’t feel this way with his wife, Enid. But he retreated from the thought before it could take hold.