thing too long. “The ancestor of the current cobrador. I’d hear whispers that the thing was still alive, in remote villages. In the mountains. But I could never find one, or find anyone who admitted hiring one.”
“And that original cobrador is different?” asked Reine-Marie.
“It’s still a collector, but the debt is different.”
“Degree of debt?” asked Gamache.
“Type of debt. One is financial, often ruinous,” said Matheo, looking at the photo on the table.
“The other is moral,” said Lea.
Matheo nodded. “An elderly man I spoke with in a village outside Granada had seen one, but only once, as a boy, and in the distance. It was following an old woman. They disappeared around a corner and he never saw either again. He wouldn’t speak on the record, but he did show me this.”
From his pocket, Matheo pulled a blurry photocopy of a blurry photograph.
“He took this with his Brownie camera.”
The image was grainy. Black and white.
It showed a steep, narrow street and stone walls that came right to the road. There was a horse and cart. And in the distance, at a corner, something else.
Gamache put his glasses back on and brought the paper up so that it almost touched his nose. Then he lowered it and handed it to Reine-Marie.
Removing his glasses, quietly, he folded them. All the while staring at Matheo.
The photo showed a robed, masked figure. Hood up. And in front of the dark figure there was a gray blur. A gray ghost, hurrying to get away.
“Taken near the end of the Spanish Civil War,” said Matheo. “I hate to think…”
There was no mistaking it. In the photo, almost a hundred years old, was the thing that now stood in the center of Three Pines.
* * *
“And did you believe it, Chief Superintendent?” asked the Crown.
His rank now seemed more a mockery in the mouth of the Crown than an advantage.
“It was hard to know, at that moment, what to believe. It seemed not only extraordinary but, frankly, incredible. That some sort of ancient Spanish debt collector had appeared in a small village in Québec. And I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not seen it for myself. The photograph and the real thing.”
“I understand you took that piece of paper Matheo Bissonette showed you.”
“I took a copy of it, yes.”
The Crown turned to the clerk.
“Exhibit B.”
The photograph of Three Pines that gray November morning was replaced by what looked, at first, like a Rorschach test. Blots of black and gray, the borders bleeding, uncertain.
And then it coalesced into an image.
“Is that it?”
“It is,” said Gamache.
“And is that what was on your village green?”
Gamache stared at the image, the collector of moral debts, and felt again that frisson.
“It is.”
CHAPTER 5
Jacqueline kneaded the dough, leaning into it. Feeling it both soft and firm beneath her hands. It was meditative and sensual, as she rocked gently back and forth, back and forth.
Her eyes closed.
She kneaded and rocked. Kneaded and rocked.
Other hands, older, colder, plump, were laid on top of hers.
“I think that’s enough, ma belle,” said Sarah.
“Oui, madam.”
Jacqueline blushed, realizing she’d overworked the baguette yet again.
If she didn’t get this right, she’d lose her job. No matter how well she baked brownies and pies and mille-feuilles, if you couldn’t do a baguette in Québec, you were useless to a small boulangerie. Sarah wouldn’t want to let her go, but she’d have no choice.
All depended on this. And she was blowing it.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” said Sarah, her voice reassuring. “Why don’t you finish your petits fours? Madame Morrow has ordered two dozen. She says they’re for guests, but…”
Sarah laughed. It was full-bodied and wholehearted. An antidote to Jacqueline’s fears.
She wondered if Anton was next door, cooking. Trying to come up with a dish to impress Olivier. To convince the bistro owner to elevate him to chef. Or even sous chef. Or to a prep station even.
Anything other than dishwasher.
But she suspected his heart wasn’t in cooking anymore. Not since the robed figure appeared.
If she lived to be a hundred, Jacqueline would not forget the look on Anton’s face when they’d discussed the thing on the village green. When she’d suggested approaching Gamache. Telling the Sûreté officer that they both knew what it was.
“Are you all right?” asked Sarah.
“I was just thinking,” said Jacqueline.
“Maybe that’s the problem. When you make baguette, you should clear your mind. Open your mind. You’d be surprised, all the beautiful things that appear when you let your mind go.”