The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3)

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3) Page 140

The word splashed into Gamache’s face, no longer smiling. He stared at Francoeur, who was trembling with rage. Gamache nodded then turned and left. Some things, he knew, refused to die.

A few days later the Gamaches, including Henri, were invited to a party in Three Pines. It was a sunny spring day, the young leaves in full bloom and turning the trees every shade of fresh green. As they bumped and thumped along the dirt road, the canopy of lime green overhead shining like the stained glass in St Thomas’s, they noticed unusual activity off to one side. Though they couldn’t quite see it yet, Gamache knew it was at the old Hadley house and wondered if the villagers were finally tearing it down. A man stepped into the center of the road and waved them to the side. Monsieur Béliveau, in overalls and a painter’s cap, was smiling.

‘Bon. We all hoped you’d come.’ The grocer leaned into the open window, patting Henri who’d climbed over Gamache to see who was there so that it appeared a dog was driving the car. Gamache opened the door and Henri bounced out to great yells of recognition from villagers who hadn’t seen him since he was a puppy.

Within minutes Reine-Marie was up a ladder, scraping flaking paint from the old house, and Gamache was scraping trim around ground floor windows. He didn’t like heights and Reine-Marie didn’t like trim.

As he scraped he had the impression the house was moaning, as Henri did when he rubbed his ears. With pleasure. Years of decay, years of neglect, of sorrow, were being scraped away. It was being taken down to its real self, the layers of artifice removed. Had that been the moaning all along? Had the old house been moaning for pleasure when company finally arrived? And they’d thought it sinister?

Far from tearing it down, the villagers of Three Pines had decided to give the old Hadley house another chance. They were restoring it to life.

Already the place seemed to preen in the sun, shining where the new paint had been applied. Teams were installing new windows and others were cleaning inside.

‘A good spring clean,’ as Sarah the baker said, her long auburn hair falling out of the bun at the back of her head.

A barbecue was fired up and the villagers took a break for beer or lemonade, burgers and sausages. Gamache took his beer and stood staring over the hill, into Three Pines. It was quiet. Everyone was here, old and young; even the ill had been helped up and given lawn chairs and a brush so that all souls of the village touched the Hadley house and broke the curse. The curse of anguish and sorrow.

But most of all, loneliness.

The only people not there were Peter and Clara Morrow.

‘I’m ready,’ Clara sang from her studio. Her face was streaked with paint and she rubbed her hands on an oil rag, too soiled to do any good.

Peter stood outside her studio, steadying himself. Breathing deeply and saying a prayer. A begging prayer. Begging for the painting to be truly, unequivocally, irredeemably horrible.

He’d given up fighting the thing he’d run from as a child, hidden from as the words chased him through his days and into his dreams. His disappointed father demanding he be the best, and Peter knowing he’d always fail. Someone was always better.

‘Close your eyes.’ Clara came to the door. He did as he was told and felt her small hand on his arm, leading him.

‘We buried Lilium on the village green,’ said Ruth, coming up beside Gamache.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She leaned heavily on her cane and behind her stood Rosa, growing into a fine and sturdy duck.

‘Poor little one,’ she said.

‘Fortunate one, to have known such love.’

‘Love killed her,’ said Ruth.

‘Love sustained her,’ said Gamache.

‘Thank you,’ said the old poet then turned to look at the Hadley house. ‘Poor Hazel. She really did love Madeleine, you know. Even I could see it.’

Gamache nodded. ‘I think jealousy’s the cruellest emotion. It twists us into something grotesque. Hazel was consumed by it. It ate away her happiness, her contentment. Her sanity. In the end Hazel was blinded by bitterness and couldn’t see that she already had everything she wanted. Love and companionship.’

‘She loved not wisely but too well. Someone should write a play about that,’ said Ruth, smiling ruefully.

‘Never work,’ said Gamache. After a moment’s silence he said almost to himself, ‘The near enemy. It isn’t a person, is it? It’s ourselves.’

Both looked at the old Hadley house, and the villagers working to restore it.

‘Depends on the person,’ said Ruth, then her face changed to surprise. She pointed to the woods at the back of the old Hadley house. ‘My God, I was wrong. There are fairies at the end of the garden.’