Chapter 14
Reine-Marie dropped Myrna and Clara off, then parked in front of Ruth’s home.
“Have you seen the map?” she asked.
“The one in the basement?” Ruth nodded toward St. Thomas’s Church. “Yes. I was there when Armand put it up. He’s obviously shown you too. I didn’t think he was that bright.”
Reine-Marie smiled. An insult from Ruth was the equivalent of an embrace. A declaration of profound friendship and, perhaps more important for the wizened old poet, trust.
“Well, he bumbles along,” she said, and saw Ruth smile. “I think we should talk.”
“Your place or mine?”
“The church.”
They picked up Rosa, then walked up the hill.
For the first time since moving to Three Pines, Reine-Marie did not want to go home.
Clearly their “guests” were still there.
The last thing she wanted to do was run into “that man.” She’d called him that for years, not wanting to humanize him by saying his name.
A name his parents had given him. A name repeated by godparents and the priest at his christening.
Was holy water sprinkled on that head? Did it scald?
It was strange to think of that man having parents. A wife. A daughter. A personal life.
She knew that in refusing to name him, she was giving him more power than he deserved. More power over her. He’d become, inadvertently, not less than human but, in his anonymity, superhuman.
But her heart overruled her head, and she still did not name the man who’d almost killed their son. And who’d almost certainly ordered her husband murdered.
As she walked up the hill toward the church, Reine-Marie wondered how Armand was getting on. Would she return to find fresh-turned soil in their back garden?
If so, she would plant digitalis over it, a perennial that could kill but also heal, and get on with life.
The body of Frederick Castonguay was delivered to the forensic pathologist in Montréal.
“Would you like to stay?” she asked Isabelle.
“Non. I need to speak to his family. Can you let me know as soon as possible how long ago you think he was killed?
Dr. Harris looked down at the body on the table.
“It won’t be easy, but I’ll give you my best guess.
Won’t be for a while though.” Now she studied Isabelle.
They’d worked together for years, often in the worst of conditions.
Rarely had she seen the senior homicide officer so stressed.
“Everything all right? I’ve been following the fallout from the poisoning plot. Horrific. Can you imagine—?”
She stopped. Of course Inspector Lacoste could imagine what would have happened if …
“But at least it’s over now.”
“Oui.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just please let me know what you find, as soon as possible.”
“Should I copy Chief Inspector Gamache and Beauvoir?”
Lacoste nodded, distracted by her next task.
The team at S?reté HQ had reported that Frederick Castonguay’s family lived on rue de Bullion, just off boulevard Saint-Laurent, the long artery that bisected Montréal.
Not geographically but culturally. For decades the Anglos lived to the west of what was called “the Main,” and the Francophones lived to the est. And never the twain, on the Main, shall meet.
That was no longer the case, and yet the sensibility was still there, of the Two Solitudes.
Isabelle stood outside the Castonguay home and tilted her head back.
It was an old town house, restored. The door, painted a glossy and cheery cherry red, opened right onto the sidewalk.
It was attached to other houses on both sides, the homes marching up and down the block, undivided, as though locking arms for support. For company. For security.
Once a neighborhood of immigrants, the homes were now bought up by creatives and academics. Though here and there were still the old working-class families. Homes kept in the same family for generations. You could tell them by their slightly weary but dignified exteriors, and the lace curtains.
The Castonguays’ was not one of those. Their place was immaculately restored and renovated. The stone re-pointed, the windows new, and not a hint of lace at any of them.
Her team had informed her that Frederick was one of four children. Two boys, two girls. He was the second oldest.
His father taught at the Université de Montréal in the economics department. His mother was a senior organizer for the Parti québécois, the separatist political party in Québec, and had a PhD in sociology. Frederick himself was a poli-sci grad from Laval in Québec City.
Isabelle wondered how his souverainistes parents felt about their son working for a federal and federalist party.
Though as a civil servant it was possible to harbor different political views from your bosses.
Politicians came and went. The civil service was the constant, providing memory and stability.
Unless you worked for Marcus Lauzon.
Frederick came from an intellectual, well-connected, almost certainly comfortable family. Who were about to be exploded.
Isabelle had walked around the block a couple of times, stopping to look in the windows of a few Portuguese bakeries and small restaurants specializing in roast chicken.
She never got used to the task ahead. If she ever did, that would be the day to quit. The Chief mostly took it upon himself to tell families their loved one was not just dead but murdered. But today it fell to her.
It was getting late in the day. A Sunday. She hoped they were home. She hoped they were not.
She rang the bell and heard a buzzing. A cheerful voice sang out, “I’ll get it.”
The door opened, and a girl no more than twelve stood there, her face friendly and curious. “Oui?”
All four strolled, two by two, in silence for some minutes along the path through the leaf-strewn forest, instinctively kicking the musky leaves ahead of them.
Armand held his hands loosely behind his back. His head was bowed in thought, lifting now and then to gaze at the familiar surroundings. Beside him, Evelyn Tardiff was in his peripheral vision. Where he’d had her for a number of years.
They’d left the sunshine of the village and entered twilight in the forest. It was peaceful. Calm. Not day, not yet night.
Beside Beauvoir, Marcus Lauzon was taking everything in. He stopped once to pick up a particularly perfect red maple leaf, placing it in his pocket.
They finally emerged onto the dirt road that led down into Three Pines.
“S’il vous pla?t.” Armand indicated the bench on the hill overlooking the village.
Lauzon sat on the warm wooden slats and closed his eyes, instinctively turning his face toward the sun, now just touching the horizon.
“Do you not think it’s too obvious?” asked Armand, taking a seat and staring out across the valley, to the Green Mountains of Vermont.
“What do you mean?”
“That Prime Minister Woodford is the Black Wolf.”
“I never said that.”
“True, but you’ve been hinting at it all afternoon. If not you, then who? There’s only one answer to that.”
“Isn’t the obvious often the answer?”
“You were, and still are, the most obvious answer, Monsieur Lauzon,” said Gamache, turning to look at him. “All evidence points to you. It’s a firehose of damnation.”
Lauzon laughed at that last word. “Are you still offering me salvation?”
“Non. I’m not the one who damned you. I’m not the one who can save you.
But I am the one offering you a path forward.
You’ve been convicted of leading a terrorist plot to murder tens of thousands.
You’ve been convicted of ordering the killing of Charles Langlois.
” Armand faced the only person in the world he actually, actively hated.
“If you really aren’t guilty of all those things, why won’t you save yourself?
All you have to do is tell me who is really behind all this. You know.”
Even at his trial, while protesting his innocence but putting up a feeble defense, Lauzon had refused to say who, if not him, was behind the terrorist plot.
Lauzon’s eyes were still closed, his face turned away from Gamache. “But I’ve told you.”
Gamache shook his head in frustration. There was only one answer to Lauzon’s question. What was worse than not getting what you most want?
Losing what you had.
In this case, tasting power, holding it. Finally possessing it. Wielding it.
Then having it taken away. Or facing that possibility.
Who held the most power in the nation? And therefore had the most to lose?
The Prime Minister of Canada.
Marcus Lauzon had all but named James Woodford as the Black Wolf.
Raised in poverty, working menial jobs to support a mentally unstable single mother and two siblings, Woodford had left school early and grown into an angry, disenfranchised young man.
To escape the grinding poverty, he’d enlisted, rising through the ranks, getting an education, becoming an officer.
Leading troops in conflict and peacekeeping, which had proved much more difficult than war.
Once a civilian again, he’d found an outlet for his skills in community organizing, which led, naturally, to politics. All this was widely known.
Smart, inspirational, charismatic. A natural leader. Woodford spoke perfect French and English and was, by his own admission, left of center in a party that itself leaned left.
Elected on a platform of social justice, of human rights and reform, promising to increase environmental protection and refugee targets, to bring big industry to heel, he’d shot up the ladder, quickly surpassing more seasoned colleagues.
Including Marcus Lauzon.
When they stood side by side, Lauzon looked sallow, shifty, old. The poster boy for a decaying establishment.
Woodford had won the party leadership in a landslide that had effectively, and permanently, buried Lauzon’s chances of getting the top job. Though not, it seemed, his ambitions.