Believe me, I know. I’m no one’s victim, Chief Inspector. Besides, I never, ever lose my keys. Can you say that?’
She was looking at Gamache as she said it, but the wide smile on her face faded a little as she turned to look directly at Jean Guy Beauvoir. Her face was so full of understanding, of caring, he almost admitted that he too had never, ever lost his keys.
He’d been born with a caul. He’d called his mother and asked and after a hesitation she’d admitted it.
‘Mais, Maman, why not tell me?’
‘I was too embarrassed. It was a shameful thing at the time, Jean Guy. Even the nuns at the hospital were upset.’
‘But why?’
‘A baby born with a caul is either cursed or blessed. It means you see things, know things.’
‘And did I?’ He felt a fool asking. After all, he should be the one to know.
‘I don’t know. Every time you said something odd we ignored you. After a while you stopped. I’m sorry, Jean Guy. Maybe we were wrong, but I didn’t want you to be cursed.’
Me, or you? he almost asked.
‘But maybe I’d be blessed, Maman.’
‘That’s a curse too, mon beau.’
He’d been delivered of his mother with a veil over his entire head. Something between himself and this world. A membrane that should have stayed with his mother but somehow ended up coming with him. It was rare and upsetting and even today, according to his research, people believed those born with cauls were fated to lead unusual lives. Lives filled with spirits, with the dead and dying. And the ability to divine the future.
Was that why he was in homicide? Was that why he chose to spend all day with the newly dead, and hunt people who created ghosts? For more than ten years he’d mocked and ribbed and criticized the chief for relying so heavily on intuition. And the chief had just smiled and continued while he himself had bowed before the perfection of facts, of things you could touch and see and feel and hear. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘What brought you here?’ Gamache was asking Jeanne Chauvet.
‘I got a brochure through the mail. It looked wonderful and I needed a rest. I think I told you this before.’
‘Being a psychic’s tiring?’ asked Beauvoir, suddenly interested.
‘Being a receptionist at a car dealership’s tiring. I needed a rest and this just seemed perfect.’
Should she tell them the rest? The writing across the top of the brochure? She’d seen the same one in the vestibule of the B. & B., and there was no writing. Had someone really taken the time to write that strange statement on her brochure just to lure her to Three Pines? Or was she paranoid?
‘Where’re you from?’ Gamache asked.
‘Montreal. Born and raised.’
Gamache handed her the yearbook. ‘Look familiar?’
‘It’s a yearbook. I have one too from my school. Haven’t looked at it in years. Probably lost it by now.’
‘I thought you said you never lose things,’ said Beauvoir.
‘Nothing I don’t want to lose,’ she smiled, handing Gamache back the book.
‘What high school did you go to?’ Gamache asked.
‘Gareth James High School, in Verdun. Why?’
‘Just trying to make connections.’ Armand Gamache swirled his cognac lazily in his glass. ‘People rarely murder people they don’t know. There’s something about this case.’
He let it hang there, not feeling any need to explain. After a moment Jeanne spoke.
‘There’s an intimacy about it,’ she said quietly. ‘No, there’s more. It feels crowded.’
Gamache nodded, still looking into his amber liqueur. ‘The past caught up with Madeleine Favreau on Easter Sunday, in the old Hadley house. You brought something to life.’
‘That’s not fair. I was invited to do the séance. It wasn’t my idea.’
‘You could have said no,’ he said. ‘You’ve just said you know things, sense things, see things. Couldn’t you see something coming?’
Outside the wind howled as Jeanne Chauvet thought back to that night in this very bistro. Someone had suggested another séance. Someone had suggested the old Hadley house. And something had changed. She’d felt it. A dread had crept into their happy, laughing circle.
She’d stolen a look at Madeleine, lovely, laughing Madeleine, looking weary and nervous. Madeleine hadn’t even recognized her.
Jeanne had seen then the thinly masked revulsion Mad felt at the very idea of a séance at the old Hadley house. And that had been enough. A truck could have been bearing down upon them and all Jeanne would see was a way to hurt Madeleine.
It had never occurred to her to decline