A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15) - Louise Penny Page 0,139

needed money. So she contacted her father and demanded payment, for all the pain.”

“And if he didn’t pay,” said Beauvoir, “she’d tell her godmother all about it. I doubt Vivienne even knew that you and her father had grown close.”

“So Homer broke it off with you and paid,” said Gamache. “Over and over again on the bridge, he told us about the pain he’d caused Vivienne. The hurt. He even said that his wife had begged him to stop it. I thought he meant stop Tracey abusing their daughter. But standing by the river, quietly, going back over it, I remembered that Kathy had never met Tracey. She couldn’t have meant him. So who did she mean? There was only one answer.”

“She was begging me to protect Vivienne from her father,” said Cloutier. “From Homer. And I didn’t. Worse, I’d fallen in love with him. I didn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it.”

“None of us did,” said Gamache.

“But you couldn’t have saved Vivienne if you had.” Cloutier’s voice rose. “I could’ve. You didn’t promise to protect her. I did. But instead I actually blamed Vivienne for being cruel to her father. For cutting him out of her life.”

“So that’s why Tracey killed Vivienne,” said Cameron. “He knew about that money.”

“But how would he?” asked Beauvoir. “Would she really have told him? I think if she was going to confide in anyone about the money, it would be someone she trusted. A lover, for example. Don’t you?”

His voice had grown quiet. Almost a whisper. As he locked eyes with Cameron across the fire.

Cameron flushed red, almost purple. And closed his hands into fists.

“There was something else Homer said on the bridge,” said Gamache. “Before you all arrived. Or, actually, something he didn’t say.”

He looked at the circle of faces, all of them focused on him. Even Cameron broke contact with Beauvoir and shifted his gaze.

“When he was preparing to take Tracey with him, he said it was punishment for all the years Tracey had hurt Vivienne.”

“Yes,” said Cameron. “Exactly.”

“You’re not listening,” said Beauvoir.

“Wait,” said Lysette Cloutier, who understood what Gamache was saying. “Wait. That can’t be true.”

“Yes it is,” said Lacoste.

“What?” said Cameron, looking from one to the other.

“Homer Godin was punishing Tracey for abusing his daughter,” Beauvoir explained. “But not for killing her.”

He let that sink in.

“He never once said that, not on the bridge anyway,” said Gamache. “Before, yes. I think he’d convinced himself Vivienne’s death was Tracey’s fault. If Tracey hadn’t been abusing her, she’d never have needed to get away. Never have needed to demand the money. Never have needed to meet her father on the bridge.”

“And Homer would not have killed her,” said Beauvoir.

The words sat there. No one protesting. No one denying them.

It was, finally, the truth.

Lysette Cloutier hung her head, dropping it toward her heart. While Bob Cameron, wide-eyed, absorbed what had been said.

“I should’ve seen it sooner,” said Beauvoir quietly. “Only two numbers were called from the house that day. One a wrong number. The other was to her father. Vivienne was on that bridge to meet someone, and it could only be the one person she’d spoken to that day. Her father.”

Finally it was that simple. That obvious.

“But what about Fred?” asked Reine-Marie. And once again the dog raised his head. Then lowered it to his paws. “Why did she leave him behind?”

“Her plan was never to go away that night,” said Armand. “She wanted to get the money from her father, then return home and talk to you.” He turned to Cameron. “That’s why she didn’t leave when Tracey was at the art store, and that’s why she didn’t take Fred to the bridge. You didn’t break off the affair last fall, did you?”

“No. I broke it off just after Christmas. I couldn’t do that to my family.”

Gamache nodded. “I think she genuinely believed the child was yours.”

“She wanted to tell you,” said Beauvoir, “and see if maybe—”

“I’d go with her,” he said.

He didn’t tell them what his answer would have been, nor did they ask.

“She called over and over, trying to get through to you,” said Beauvoir. “She finally gave up and went to the bridge to meet her father.”

“But if she’d refused to see him since she left home, why agree to meet him that night?” asked Cameron.

“Yes,” said Cloutier. “The money could’ve been wired into her account, like all the rest. No need to see him at all.”

“The baby,” said Beauvoir. “That changed everything. The idea of