Chief Inspector Gamache had cleaned up the Sûreté, but he knew his work was only half done. Now Commander Gamache would turn his attention to the academy.
So far, while firing former professors and hiring new ones, he had not named a second-in-command. Everyone assumed he’d approach Jean-Guy. The younger man had assumed that too, and waited. And was still waiting. And beginning to wonder.
“Would you take it?” Annie had asked one morning over breakfast.
Never a petite person, she had blossomed with pregnancy, which was one way of putting it. All Jean-Guy cared about was that she and the baby were healthy. He would kill if he had to, to get her that last tub of Häagen-Dazs.
“Do you think I should?” Jean-Guy had replied, and seen Annie smile.
“You’re kidding, right? Give up your position as inspector in the homicide division, one of the most senior officers in the Sûreté, to go to the academy? You?”
“Then you think I should do it?”
She’d laughed in that full-hearted way she had. “I don’t think ‘should’ has ever entered your thinking. I think you will do it.”
“And why would I?”
“Because you love my father.”
It was true.
He would follow Armand Gamache through the gates of Hell, and the Sûreté Academy was as close as Québec got to Hades.
Reine-Marie sat in the bistro and looked out at the darkness and the three great pines, visible only because of the Christmas lights festooned on them. The blue and red and green lights, luminous under a layer of fresh snow, looked as though they were suspended in midair.
It was just five o’clock but it could have been midnight.
Patrons had begun arriving at the bistro, meeting friends for a cinq à sept, the cocktail hour at the end of the day.
Armand hadn’t joined her, preferring the peace and quiet of the study as the first day of term approached. She looked across the village green, past the cheerful trees, to their home, and the light at the study window.
Reine-Marie had been relieved when she’d heard his decision to take over the academy. It seemed a perfect fit for a man more inclined to track down a rare book than a murderer. But find killers he’d done, for thirty years. And he’d been strangely good at it. He’d hunted serial killers, singular killers, mass murderers. Those who premeditated and those who meditated not at all, but simply lashed out. All had taken lives, and all had been found by her husband, with very few exceptions.
Yes, Reine-Marie had been relieved when, after reviewing all the offers and discussing them with her, Armand had decided to take on the task of commanding the Sûreté Academy. Of clearing up the mess left by years of brutality and corruption.
She’d been relieved, right up until the moment she’d surprised that grim look on his face.
And then a chill had seeped into her. Not a killing cold, but a warning of worse to come.
“You’ve been looking at that for a day now,” said Myrna, breaking into Reine-Marie’s thoughts and gesturing toward the paper in Ruth’s hand. The old poet held it delicately, at the edges.
“May I see it?” Reine-Marie asked, her voice gentle, her hand out as though coaxing a lost dog into a car. Had she had a bottle of Scotch, Ruth would’ve been wagging her tail on the front seat by now.
Ruth looked from one to the other, then she relinquished it. But not to Reine-Marie.
She gave it to Clara.
CHAPTER 5
“It’s a map,” said Armand, bending over it.
“What was your first clue, Miss Marple?” asked Ruth. “Those lines? They’re what we call roads. This”—she placed her knotted finger on the paper—“is a river.”
She spoke the last few words slowly, with infinite patience.
Armand straightened up and looked at her over his reading glasses, then went back to studying the paper on the table under the lamp.
They’d gathered at Clara’s place this wintery night for a dinner of bouillabaisse, with fresh baguette from Sarah’s boulangerie.
Clara and Gabri were in the kitchen just putting the final ingredients into the broth. Scallops and shrimp and mussels and chunks of pink salmon, while Myrna sliced and toasted the bread.
A delicate aroma of garlic and fennel drifted into the living room and mingled with the scent of wood smoke from the hearth. Outside, the night was crisp and starless as clouds rolled in, threatening yet more snow.
But inside it was warm and peaceful.
“Imbecile,” mumbled Ruth.
The fact was, despite Ruth’s comments, it wasn’t obvious what the paper was.
At first glance, it didn’t look like a map at all. While worn and torn a little, it was beautifully and intricately illustrated, with bears and deer and geese placed around the mountains and forests. In a riot of seasonal confusion, there were spring lilac and plump peony beside maple trees in full autumn color. In the upper-right corner, a snowman wearing a tuque and a habitant sash, a ceinture fléchée, around his plump middle held up a hockey stick in triumph.
The overall effect was one of unabashed joy. Of silliness that somehow managed to be both sweet and very affecting.
This was no primitive drawing by a rustic with more enthusiasm than talent. This was created by someone familiar enough with art to know the masters, and skilled enough to imitate them. Except for the snowman, which, as far as Gamache knew, had never appeared in a Constable, Monet, or even Group of Seven masterpiece.
Yes, it took a while to see beyond all that, to what it really was, at its heart.
A map.
Complete with contour lines and landmarks. Three small pines, like playful children, were clearly meant to be their village. There were walking paths and stone walls and even Larsen’s Rock, so named because Sven Larsen’s cow got stuck on it before being rescued.
Gamache bent closer. And yes, there was the cow.
There were even, faint like silk threads, latitude and longitude lines. It was as though a work of art had been swallowed by an ordnance map.
“See anything strange?” asked Ruth.
“Yes, I do,” he said, turning to look at the old poet.
She laughed.
“I meant in the map,” she said. “And thank you for the compliment.”
Now it was Gamache’s turn to smile as he went back to studying the paper.
There were many words he’d use to describe it. Beautiful. Detailed. Delicate yet bold. Unusual, certainly, in its intersection of practicality and artistry.
But was it strange? No, that wasn’t a word he’d use. And yet he knew the old poet. Ruth loved words and used them intentionally. Even the thoughtless words were used with thought.
If she said “strange,” she meant it.
Though Ruth’s idea of strange might not be anyone’s. She thought water was strange. And vegetables. And paying bills.
His brow furrowed as he noticed the celebrating snowman seemed to be pointing. There. He bent closer. There.
“There’s a pyramid.” Armand’s finger hovered over the image.
“Yes, yes,” said Ruth impatiently, as though there were pyramids everywhere. “But do you notice anything strange?”
“It’s not signed,” he said, trying again.
“When was the last time you saw a map that was?” she demanded. “Try harder, moron.”
On hearing Ruth’s querulous voice, Reine-Marie looked over, caught Armand’s eye, and smiled in commiseration before going back to her own conversation.
She and Olivier were discussing the blanket-box finds that day. A layer of Vogues from the early 1900s.