The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3)

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3) Page 110

Beauvoir wondered what exactly Sandon considered the ‘real’ world.

‘Why don’t you like Monsieur Béliveau?’ asked Gamache. It took Sandon a moment to tear his mind away from Madeleine and focus on the austere grocer. He looked down at his massive hands and picked at a callus.

‘There was a magnificent oak on his land. It’d been hit by lightning and a huge limb was hanging loose. I could hear it crying so I asked if I could remove the limb, help the tree. He refused.’

‘Why?’ asked Beauvoir.

Gilles looked at them. ‘Said I’d kill the whole tree by taking off the branch. That was a risk, I admitted, but told him the tree was in pain and it would be more merciful for it to either live healthy or die quickly.’

‘But he didn’t believe you?’

He shook his head. ‘Took four years for that tree to die. I could hear it crying for help. I begged Béliveau but he wouldn’t hear of it. Thought the tree was getting better.’

‘He didn’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘He was afraid.’

Gilles shrugged, dismissive.

‘And the fact he was seeing Madeleine wasn’t part of it?’ asked Gamache.

‘He should have protected her. He should have protected the tree. He looks so gentle but he’s a bad one.’

What had Monsieur Béliveau called himself? Gamache tried to remember. The thing that brings death. That was it. First his wife, then Madeleine, then the bird. And the tree. Things died around Monsieur Béliveau.

The men were silent, inhaling the sweet, musty aroma of moist pines and autumn leaves and new buds.

‘Now I come out here and find trees already dead and turn them into furniture.’

‘Give them new life,’ said Gamache.

Sandon looked at him. ‘I don’t suppose you hear the trees?’

Gamache cocked his head, listening, then shook it. Sandon nodded.

‘Are there any ginkgo trees around?’ Gamache asked.

‘Ginkgo? A few, not many. They’re mostly from Asia, I think. Very old trees.’

‘You mean they live a long time?’ asked Beauvoir.

‘That too, though not as long as sequoias. Some of them are thousands of years old, can you believe it? Love to have a conversation with one of them. No, a ginkgo doesn’t last that long, but it’s the oldest tree known. Prehistoric. Considered a living fossil. Imagine that.’

Gamache was impressed. Sandon knew a lot about the ginkgo tree. The ancient ginkgo family that produced ephedra.

A newspaper was folded neatly at his desk when they arrived back at the Incident Room. It was five o’clock and Robert Lemieux was working on his computer. He looked up and waved as they came in, his eyes falling on the newspaper as though commiserating with Gamache.

Jean Guy Beauvoir stood beside the chief as he reached for the paper. Gamache was reminded of a nature show he once saw about gorillas. When threatened they ran forward, focusing on the attacker, screaming and pounding their chests. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla next to them. To make sure they weren’t alone.

Beauvoir was the gorilla next to him.

There, on the front page, was a picture of Gamache looking foolish, his eyes half-closed, his mouth in a strange grimace.

SOÛL! insisted the type underneath, in capital letters. Drunk!

‘I see you’re a drunken, blackmailing, pimping murderer,’ said Beauvoir.

‘A Renaissance man,’ said Gamache, shaking his head. But he was relieved. He first skimmed the article looking for Daniel, Annie, Reine-Marie. But all he found was his own name and Arnot’s. Always linked, as though one didn’t exist without the other.

He called his family and spent the next half-hour catching up with them, making sure all was as well as could be.

It was a strange world, he realized as he and Beauvoir made their way back to the B. & B. with their dossiers and yearbooks, when a good day was one where he was only accused of drunken incompetence.

THIRTY-SEVEN

For the first time in twenty-five years Clara Morrow closed the door to her studio. Olivier and Gabri were arriving. Armand Gamache and his inspector, Jean Guy Beauvoir, had just walked in. Myrna had arrived earlier with shepherd’s pie and a massive arrangement of flowers, branches in bud and what looked like a bonnet

‘There’s a gift in there for you,’ she said to Gamache.

‘Really?’ He hoped she didn’t mean the bonnet.

Clara showed Jeanne Chauvet into the living room where everyone was massed. Gamache caught Clara’s eye and smiled his thanks. She smiled back but he thought she looked tired.