Page 219
Smart man, thought Myrna, as she reluctantly followed the others into Clara’s studio.
“How much did you know, Colette?” asked Armand.
The Chancellor and her husband were sitting in the Gamaches’ living room. Since Jean-Paul was calmer away from crowds, they’d stayed behind while the rest of them had headed over to Clara’s, to say goodbye to Haniya Daoud.
Jean-Paul was taking books off the shelves and stacking them neatly on the floor in front of the fireplace, while Armand and Colette talked.
“Paul never told me outright, but he knew that I knew. He’d never have given Maria a peanut butter sandwich by mistake. And if it was on purpose, it was murder. And I knew he wasn’t capable of that. But I have to say, I’d always hoped it was Debbie Schneider who’d done it. Not Abigail. For Paul’s sake. But when the letter came, I could tell that he thought it was Abby who’d done it. He knew his daughter. Knew what she was capable of.”
“He wanted you to show the letter to Abigail, to let her know she was safe,” said Armand.
Jean-Paul was holding a book and staring, then he walked over and gave it to Colette. He was now almost completely silent. Though he communicated in other ways.
“Merci,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this.”
He smiled and went back to work.
Colette squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them and put the book down on the sofa beside her.
“Vincent says you invited Abigail here so that you both could try to help her. To dissuade her from the path she was on.”
“True.”
“Did Vincent also plan to tell her about his involvement with Ewen Cameron?”
“No. He didn’t realize her mother had been one of Cameron’s victims. Not until she told us.”
“With Abigail’s arrest, will that end the debate over mandatory euthanasia?” Armand asked.
“You’d think,” said Colette. “But I’m afraid the barb has gone in. She’s scared enough people into believing there won’t be enough resources to recover from the pandemic, never mind handle another. Unless the sick and elderly are allowed to die.”
“Made to die,” said Armand. By lethal injection. Capital punishment for men and women whose crime wasn’t killing, but taking too long to die.
Through the door to his study he could see the open files he’d been working on when the Roberges arrived.
They contained the mounting evidence he was quietly and privately collecting against those responsible for abandoning the elderly and frail in care homes during the pandemic.
It was Sunday afternoon. The next morning Armand Gamache had an appointment with the Premier of Québec. To show him the files. And to let him know, quietly, confidentially, that if there was any move to adopt mandatory euthanasia, or anything vaguely smelling of eugenics, those files would go public.
It was, he knew, blackmail. But he and his conscience could live with that.
That was tomorrow. Today he could sit quietly and comfortably in his living room, talking to friends.
“Will you charge Abigail with the murders?” asked Colette.
“We’ll try.”
Her eyes fell on the framed family photographs on the bookshelf behind Armand. “I can’t believe he didn’t shoot.” Her gaze drifted over to Jean-Paul, carefully placing one book on top of another. “It was love, I suppose, that stopped him.”
“Oui.”
Jean-Guy couldn’t be the father he wanted to be for his children if he’d pulled that trigger.
Clara walked right by the mess on the easel and over to a canvas leaning against the wall.
Haniya watched her host and wondered if she should say something about Clara’s whipped cream mustache, but decided not to.
Once a finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize . . .
