The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3)

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3) Page 137

‘But you hated the job,’ said Gabri.

‘I did. But I hated being left out more. Everyone does, don’t you know that?’

Clara thought of all the wedding invitations she hadn’t received and how she’d felt. Partly relieved at not having to go to the party and bring a gift they couldn’t afford, but mostly offended at being left out. Forgotten. Or worse. Remembered but not included.

‘Then she took Monsieur Béliveau,’ Gamache said.

‘When Ginette was dying she’d often say he and I would make a good couple. Keep each other company. I began to hope, to think maybe that was true.’

‘But he wanted more than just company,’ said Myrna.

‘He wanted her,’ said Hazel, the bitterness seeping out. ‘And I started to see I’d made a terrible mistake. But I couldn’t see how to get out of it.’

‘When did you decide to kill her?’ Gamache asked.

‘When Sophie came home for Christmas, and kissed her first.’

The simple, devastating fact sat in their sacred circle, like the dead little bird. Gamache was reminded of the one thing they were told over and over: don’t go into the woods in spring. You don’t want to get between a mother and her baby.

Madeleine had.

Finally Gamache spoke. ‘You’d kept Sophie’s ephedra from a few years ago. Not because you planned to use it then, but because you don’t throw anything away.’

Not furniture, not books, not emotions, thought Gamache. Hazel let nothing go.

‘According to the lab, the pills used were too pure to be the recent manufacture. At first I thought the ephedra was from your store,’ he said to Odile. ‘But then I remembered there’d been another bottle of pills. A few years ago. Hazel said Madeleine had found it and confiscated them, but that wasn’t true, was it, Sophie?’

‘Mom?’ Sophie sat wide-eyed, stunned.

Hazel reached for her hand, but Sophie quickly withdrew it. Hazel looked more affected by that than anything else.

‘You found them. And you used them on Madeleine for me?’

Clara tried to ignore the inflection, the hint of satisfaction in Sophie’s voice.

‘I had to. She was taking you away. Taking everything.’

‘You first tried to kill her at the Friday night séance,’ said Gamache, ‘but you didn’t give her enough.’

‘But she wasn’t even there,’ said Gabri. ‘No, but her casserole was,’ said Gamache, turning to Monsieur Béliveau. ‘You said you couldn’t sleep that night and thought it was because you were upset by the séance. But the séance wasn’t all that frightening. It was the ephedra that kept you awake.’

‘Est-ce que c’est vrai?’ Monsieur Béliveau asked Hazel, astonished. ‘You put that drug in the casserole and gave it to us? You could have killed me.’

‘No, no.’ She reached out to him but he quickly leaned away. One by one everyone was backing away from Hazel. Leaving her in the one place she most feared. Alone. ‘I’d never take the risk. I knew from news reports that ephedra only kills if you have a heart condition and I knew you didn’t.’

‘But you knew Madeleine did,’ said Gamache.

‘Madeleine had a bad heart?’ asked Myrna.

‘It was brought on by her chemotherapy,’ confirmed Gamache. ‘She told you about it, didn’t she, Hazel?’

‘She didn’t want to tell anyone else because she didn’t want to be treated like a sick person. How’d you know?’

‘The coroner’s report said she had a bad heart and her doctor confirmed it,’ said Gamache.

‘No, I mean how’d you know that I knew? I didn’t tell anyone, not even Sophie.’

‘Aspirin.’

Hazel sighed. ‘I thought I’d been clever there. Hiding Mad’s pills in among all the rest.’

‘Inspector Beauvoir noticed them when you were looking for something to give Sophie for her ankle. You have a cupboard full of old pills. What struck him was that you didn’t give Sophie the aspirin. Instead you kept searching for another bottle.’

‘The ephedra was hidden in the aspirin bottle?’ asked Clara, lost.

‘We thought so. We had the contents analyzed. It was aspirin.’

‘So what was the problem?’ asked Gabri.

‘Its strength,’ said Gamache. ‘It was low dose. Way below normal. People with heart conditions often take a low dose aspirin once a day.’