Chapter 18
“Bert Whitehead knows, or suspects, something,” said Armand.
“If he does, the General wasn’t going to tell me,” Beauvoir said. “He expected you, patron.”
“I can’t cross the border,” said Gamache. “I don’t want any trail, any way for my movements to be tracked. And he can’t come up here for the same reason.”
How to meet in person without either of them crossing the border?
He was quiet for a moment. “There is one way.”
He sent an invitation to the chair of the Joint Chiefs. Bert Whitehead answered almost immediately. He was obviously expecting a message from the Chief Inspector. Though perhaps not this.
A ticket, Armand? You want me to see a play about someone named Billy Bishop? Whitehead wrote.
So, you know about Napoleon, but not Billy Bishop?
Well, Napoleon was the Emperor of France and I don’t think your Mr. Bishop was.
Come to the play and find out, my friend, wrote Armand. It’s a musical. I know you like them.
Even though they were using the secure messaging app, they were both being cautious. Keeping it light.
Armand stared at the three dots, undulating.
And finally: You’re wrong, Armand. I don’t like musicals.
Armand’s brows dropped in surprise. Bert was refusing?
I think you’ll like this one, he pounded out. It’s very catchy. He didn’t dare say more.
I understand. I just can’t make it.
For God’s sake, Bert— But before he could write more, the connection was lost. Bert Whitehead had hung up.
Armand went online, ordered tickets, and sent one to General Whitehead.
He’ll show, thought Armand.
Yvette Nichol was struggling with the laptop, unable to get into it.
“Take a break,” said Gamache from the door into the study.
“No, not yet.”
“Take a break, Agent Nichol,” Gamache repeated, making it clear this was not a suggestion.
Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he put on his field coat and called the dogs, and Gracie. Then Gamache, Lacoste, and Beauvoir walked slowly around the village green. The sun had set without them noticing. The wind had picked up.
It was an unpredictable season. Anything could be coming their way.
They walked in silence, breathing in the fresh air, feeling the bracing cold against their cheeks. Each lost to their own thoughts. Behind them they heard the galumphing steps of Yvette Nichol as she ran to catch up.
“I can’t—” she began, before the Chief Inspector stopped her.
“You’re not alone,” he said softly, and held her worried gaze. “None of us is making headway. That’s why we’re out here. To clear our heads and do something useful.” He picked up the slimy orange tennis ball Henri had dropped at his feet and gave it to her.
She made a face, tossed it, then wiped her hands over her jeans.
The dogs, and Gracie, ran after it, joyous.
If this is useful, we’re doomed.
And yet she found herself smiling. She looked at Gamache, then over to Beauvoir and Lacoste, all watching the romping animals. All smiling.
Twice around the green, and then they all veered off to the bistro for drinks and an early dinner. Clara, Myrna, and Reine-Marie were already there.
Reine-Marie had met her husband on his return and seen that now familiar expression as he once again strained to understand what she said.
She hugged him and silently hoped that flight had been worth it. And it might have been. She’d also seen the laptop.
Nichol pulled up a chair next to Ruth.
“I see they’re down to scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said the old poet.
“Are you still alive?” asked Nichol.
“She’s lost the will to die,” said Gabri, joining them.
“I was talking to the duck,” said Nichol.
As they drank their wine and Pepsi and hot chocolate and put in their orders for dinner, Ruth studied Yvette Nichol. Who was studying Gamache. Who was looking at the pitcher of water on the table.
“What’re you thinking?” Ruth asked Yvette.
“That he’s aged since I last saw him. More lines down his face.”
“He claims they’re laugh lines,” said Ruth.
“Nothing’s that funny.”
Ruth let out a cackle and touched the young officer’s arm. “We’ve missed you.”
“You might’ve, but they haven’t.”
Ruth looked at the other S?reté officers, then back at Nichol. “You wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want you.”
“I came down on my own. They didn’t ask.”
“But you’re still here. Clearly they need you.”
“Sure,” said Nichol, taking a slab of smoked trout and putting it on pumpernickel. “They need me, but they don’t like me.”
“Is that important?”
Nichol studied the elderly woman, then looked at the others, so comfortable with each other. “Even you know it is.” Then she looked out the mullioned window to the village beyond, and the bright orange ball sitting among the leaves on the green.
“This rock is Eden,” said Ruth quietly. “Shipwreck here.”
“One of yours?”
“Auden.”
“My luck to shipwreck on Gilligan’s Island.”
Ruth wasn’t fooled. She’d seen the yearning on that young face. Heard it in her voice. “We all shipwrecked here. Don’t look now, but I think you’re heading for the shallows.”
Ruth cocked her head toward where Chief Inspector Gamache was looking at Yvette. And smiling.
This rock is Eden.
After dinner, Armand and Jean-Guy drove the hour to the theater. There they sat, in the dark, Jean-Guy watching the actors on stage. Armand watching the door. But no one joined them.
When it was over, they drove home. In silence.
Once back, Armand went online again, ordered tickets again, and sent one to Bert Whitehead. Again. Then he went to bed.
Yvette Nichol accepted the Gamaches’ offer to stay the night.
After borrowing what she needed from Madame Gamache, she crawled into bed, the cool sheets warming around her small body.
She drifted off to the soft murmur of the others, Walton-like, wishing each other good night, and awoke a few hours later to the sound of sleet hitting the windows. It was two thirty in the morning.
Unable to go back to sleep, she went down to the study and worked some more on the laptop, knowing that whatever was in there was vital. Once again unable to make headway, she was about to return to bed when she noticed, through the squalls outside, a light. Up the hill.
At the church.
Putting on boots, a heavy coat, and a pink tuque she found in the closet, Yvette Nichol bent into the wind and sleet and wet snow—and was that freezing rain?—and plodded up to St. Thomas’s.
“Chief Inspector?”
He was sitting in a preformed plastic chair in the basement and staring at the wall. Actually, at a map of Québec.
Reaching out, she touched his shoulder, then leaped back when he abruptly stood up and wheeled around, sending the chair flying and bracing for a fight.
It took just an instant for him to realize who it was, but it was terrifying to Nichol.
She’d seen him in action before, and was always surprised at the rapidity of his reactions and ferocity of his fight instinct.
He dropped his hands to his sides. “What’re you doing here?”
“I saw the light.”
His face broke into a smile, and he wondered if she knew how that sounded, standing as she was in church. He resisted saying, Hallelujah. But only just.
“Couldn’t sleep.” She’d spoken directly to him, enunciating carefully. Her father was losing his hearing. She recognized the signs.
Without being invited, she stepped forward and looked at the map, then turned to him. “What’s so special about this?”
“It belonged to Charles Langlois.” While his hearing had improved greatly, clearly that plane trip had set it back. “He hid it.”
“Why?”
“We think because of this.” Gamache put his finger on the lake. “It’s the last place he visited before being killed. It’s where we found his laptop.”
Now they stood side by side.
“‘What happens when the water runs out?’” said Nichol. “Isn’t that what your friend in the States said? And you said, ‘Nothing good.’ But it won’t run out. How can it? Look how much we have.”
It’s what Armand had been doing. Staring at the amount of blue in the map. Indicating water. Freshwater lakes, rivers, streams, reservoirs. The area to the north of the St. Lawrence River was almost more water than land.
So what did Bert Whitehead mean? Armand wondered. That was the first question he would ask the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when they met that evening.
He’ll show. He must … He must.
The weather wasn’t helping. But Gamache would snowshoe to their rendezvous if he had to. He suspected Bert had the answers they needed. Or at least significant parts.
Nichol was right, of course. Unless there was some sort of cosmic, or seismic, catastrophe heading their way, there was no way Canada would run out of water. There were droughts, especially out West, but there was still far more fresh water than almost any other nation enjoyed.
But if it did run out? What then?
What happened to a country that ran out of the most precious of resources? The only thing vital to life on earth, or anywhere. Wasn’t that what astronomers looked for in surveys of distant planets? Signs of water. Without it, there would be no sign of life.
After a while Yvette Nichol cocked her head to one side and stepped closer to the map.
“What is it?” asked Gamache. But she was silent, staring at the lake he’d indicated.
“I’m just wondering…” She continued to stare, then turned to him so he could understand what she was saying. “Can I take a photo of the lake?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He himself had taken a close-up of the numbers and symbols on that last lake and sent it to Shona Dorion, asking if she could figure out what they meant. But there was no way for her to tell where they were from.
“Don’t you see, patron? They’re the right length for a password.”
His eyes opened wide and he whispered, “Well, I’ll be damned.”