entered Sophie. Only without the heart. Without the soul. Whatever was radiating from Sophie wasn’t joy or love or warmth.
But it was happiness. Madeleine was dead, horribly, grotesquely dead. And Sophie was happy.
It scared Hazel almost to death.
Beauvoir drove while Gamache navigated, trying to read the map while the car bounced along the heaved and holed road. He saw nothing of their progress except lurching squiggles and dots. It was fortunate he didn’t get car sick.
‘It’s just beyond here.’ Gamache folded the map and looked through the windshield. ‘Watch out.’
Beauvoir yanked the steering wheel but they hit the pothole anyway.
‘You know I was doing just fine before you looked up,’ he said.
‘You hit every hole between here and Three Pines. Watch out.’
The car rammed into another hole and Gamache wondered how long his tires would hold.
‘We go through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses and out the other side. There’s a turn off to the right. Chemin Erablerie.’
‘Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses?’ Beauvoir couldn’t believe his ears.
‘You expected maybe St-Roof Trusses?’
At least Three Pines made sense, thought Beauvoir. Williamsburg and St-Rémy made sense. Weren’t Roof Trusses something to do with building?
Goddamned English. Trust them to choose a name like that. Like calling a village Royal Bank or Concrete Foundation. Always building, always bragging. And what was with this case? Didn’t anyone die a normal death in Three Pines? And even their murders weren’t normal. Couldn’t they just haul off and stab each other, or use a gun or a bat? No. It was always something convoluted. Complicated.
Very unQuébécois. The Québécois were straightforward, clear. If they liked you they hugged. When they murdered you they just whacked you over the head. Boom, done. Convicted. Next.
None of this ‘is it’ or ‘isn’t it’ shit.
Beauvoir was beginning to take this personally, though he was grateful the case had taken him away from the Easter egg hunt with his in-laws. There weren’t actually any children. Just him and his wife, Enid. Her parents had expected them to spend the morning searching for chocolate eggs they’d hidden all over the house. They’d even kidded that it should be easy for him since he was an investigator, after all. He thought the easiest way would be to simply put his gun to his father-in-law’s head and force him to say where the goddamned eggs were. But then the miraculous call had come. His calling.
He wondered how poor Enid was doing. Well, too bad. They were her crazy parents.
They were through the village of Notre-Dame-de-Roof Trusses in no time. Sure enough there was a huge faded sign in the yard of a small factory advertising ‘Roof Trusses’. Beauvoir shook his head.
The old brick house overlooked the road, a few large maples on the front lawn and what Gamache suspected would be lush perennial beds full of flowers in a few weeks close to the house and along the drive. It was a tiny, tidy home that today spoke of potential. Leaves not yet out, flowers not yet up, grass not yet growing.
Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case. To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space. The colors, the decorations. The aromas. Were there books? What sort?
How did it feel?
He’d been in shacks in the middle of nowhere, carpets worn, upholstery torn, wallpaper peeling off. But stepping in he’d also noticed the smell of fresh coffee and bread. Walls were taken up with immense smiling graduation photos and on rusty pocked TV trays stood modest chipped vases with cheery daffodils or pussy willows or some tiny wild flower picked by worn hands for eyes that would adore it.
And he’d been in mansions that felt like mausoleums.
He was anxious to see how Madeleine Favreau’s home felt. From the outside it felt sad, but he knew most places felt just a little sad in spring, when the bright and playful snow had gone and the flowers and trees hadn’t yet bloomed.
The first thing that struck him on entering the house was that it was almost impossible to move. Even in the narrow mudroom they’d somehow managed to stuff an armoire, a bookcase and a long wooden bench under which piles of muddy boots and shoes had been thrown.
‘My name is Armand Gamache.’ He bowed slightly to the middle-aged woman who opened the door.
She was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater. Comfortable, conventional. She smiled a little as he brought out his warrant card.
‘It’s all right, Chief Inspector. I know who you are.’