in snow, red-faced, laughing.
“They’ll be back,” said Gélinas. “Give it time.”
The kids skated up and down, up and down the rink, chasing the puck. All of them wore blue and red tuques with bobbing pompoms and Montréal Canadiens hockey sweaters. It was impossible to tell one team from another. But they seemed to know. By instinct.
They knew who was on their side.
When did it get so difficult to tell? Gamache wondered.
CHAPTER 29
“I’m sorry, but there’s no Mrs. Clairton here,” said the pleasant young woman on the phone.
“I said, ‘Clairton,’” repeated Isabelle Lacoste.
“Yes. No. Exactly. Clairton.”
Lacoste stared at the phone. She hadn’t been looking forward to this call, knowing it would probably end up like this. The woman with the thick British accent trying to understand the woman with the Québécois accent.
Both speaking apparently unintelligible English.
It was doubly annoying that Beauvoir, whose rough English had been picked up on the streets of east-end Montréal, had absolutely no trouble making himself understood. And understanding. While she, who’d actually studied English, was constantly misunderstood.
Lacoste looked down at the email from the woman at the gun manufacturer, McDermot and Ryan, in the UK.
She’d clearly signed it Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton.
“This is McDermot and Ryan?” asked Lacoste.
“No, you’ve reached McDermot and Ryan.”
Lacoste sighed at the completely predictable response.
“Well, good-bye then,” said the cheerful young woman.
“Wait,” said Lacoste. “How about Coldbrook? Do you have an Elizabeth Coldbrook?”
There was a long pause, during which Lacoste wondered if the receptionist had hung up. But finally the voice came down the line.
“No, but we do have an Elizabeth Coldbrook.”
“Yes, yes,” said Lacoste, hearing the desperation in her own voice.
“One moment, please.”
A few seconds later another voice, this one more efficient but less cheerful, said, “Hello, how may I help you?”
“Elizabeth Coldbrook-Clairton?”
There was a very slight hesitation. “Elizabeth Coldbrook, yes. Who’s this?”
“My name is Isabelle Lacoste. I’m investigating the murder of a professor here in Québec. Canada.”
“Oh yes, I spoke to your supervisor this morning.”
“Actually, I’m the supervisor. Chief Inspector Lacoste, of the Sûreté du Québec. You were speaking with Inspector Beauvoir.”
There was laughter down the line. “Oh, I am sorry. You’d think I’d know better than to assume, especially after all these years in public affairs and being the head of a department myself. Désolé.”
“You speak French?” asked Lacoste, still in English.
“I do. Your English is better than my French, but we can switch if you like.”
Oddly, Lacoste could understand this woman’s English perfectly. Perhaps her clipped tones made it closer to the mid-Atlantic accent she was used to in Canada.
“English is fine,” said Lacoste. “I’d like to send you a photograph. It’s a revolver.”
She hit send.
“I’ve already seen it. Your colleague emailed it to me this morning,” said Elizabeth Coldbrook. “Oh, wait a minute. This isn’t the same picture. What is it?”
“It’s a detail of a stained-glass window.”
Lacoste hit send on another picture and she heard the click as Madame Coldbrook opened it as well.
“I see. A memorial window. Striking image.”
“Oui. The sidearm the soldier is carrying, can you tell the make?”
“I can. It’s definitely one of ours. The styling is distinctive. A McDermot .45. They were issued to most of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War.”
“This was a Canadian soldier.”
“I believe many of them were also issued that revolver. At least, the officers were. He looks so young.”
Both women, both mothers, looked at the boy, with the rifle and the revolver and the frightened, determined, forgiving expression.
“This is the same make but not the same gun used in your crime,” said Madame Coldbrook. “That revolver was new. Sold to the man just a few years ago.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“You think there’s a connection between a man who died and a soldier of the Great War?”
“We’re really just tying up details.”
“I see. Well, if there’s nothing more I can do…”
“Merci. Oh, there is one other little thing. Just curious, but do you go by the name Elizabeth Coldbrook, or Clairton, or Coldbrook-Clairton? For our report.”
“Elizabeth Coldbrook is fine.”
“But you signed your email Coldbrook-Clairton. And I notice the Clairton is in a slightly different font. Is there a reason for that?”
“It’s a mistake.”
Chief Inspector Lacoste let that statement sit there. How, she wondered, did someone mistake their own name? Misspell, perhaps. Her best friend had, out of nerves, signed her first driver’s license Lousie instead of Louise. That had haunted her well beyond the expiry date, as her friends resurrected the error every time they had a few drinks.
But perhaps Madame Coldbrook had been married and was recently divorced.