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Should he do what was obvious, sensible, and rational and send this insolent young agent, surely a liability to the Sûreté and a danger to the public, back to the detachment? Where he would soon be fired. And good riddance.
Or.
“You’re incompetent,” Beauvoir was shouting, his voice rising above the crashing waves. “Stupid. And stupid is dangerous. You’ll get them all”—his arm swooped around, his finger pointing toward the men and women on the shore—“killed, if you’re not careful.”
Over Beauvoir’s shoulder Gamache saw Inspector Chernin step toward them, her face filled with fury. But a look from him stopped her. Barely.
His eyes returned to Beauvoir. He’d had enough. He was about to tell this ridiculous agent to go back to the station. Hand in his weapon and badge. He was done.
But instead, Armand Gamache found himself saying, “Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links / Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks.”
His voice was so soft Agent Beauvoir wondered if he’d really heard it, or if it was an illusion. Some trick of the wind and waves.
This was the Chief Inspector’s response to a verbal attack? To being called a coward in front of his own team? Instead of lashing out, the man was quoting some poem? He really was weak, a coward.
And yet, this response was far more terrifying than any insults the Chief might have hurled back.
Agent Beauvoir stood there, at a loss. Lost. Petrified. With force of will, he turned away and faced the lake that had just coughed up a corpse.
“Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh.” The voice, now seeming to come from inside Beauvoir’s head, continued. Unrelenting.
“There is always another story / There is more than meets the eye.”
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache reached for Beauvoir’s sleeve, holding his arm firmly. Not painfully, but as one might hold a drowning man to prevent him from going under.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Things aren’t always as they seem. It’ll be all right, son.”
Then he smiled.
The cold water pelting Jean-Guy’s face tasted inexplicably salty. With those words and that grip on his arm, Beauvoir felt something shift inside him. It was as though in that instant Armand Gamache had not just breached but shattered his defenses. And stood now in the wreckage of Jean-Guy’s young life.
But instead of recoiling, Jean-Guy felt drawn to this man, this stranger. Felt his DNA attach itself to him, like a mariner lashed to the mast in a ferocious storm, to keep from being swept overboard.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir felt totally vulnerable, but he also felt safe for the first time in his life.
Though he also recognized, in that moment, that it came at a price. If the ship should founder, he would go down with it. That was the deal. His life and future were now bound, inexorably, to this man. And probably always had been.
As he looked out across the lake, Jean-Guy Beauvoir sensed something else.
The approach of a ferocious storm.
CHAPTER 3
After hosing down Honoré and finishing a Saturday morning breakfast of banana-filled crepes with crispy bacon and maple syrup, Annie, Jean-Guy, and the children headed to the car for the drive back to Montréal.
Armand held Idola while Reine-Marie kissed her daughter and Honoré. Then she turned to her son-in-law. “See you later?”
“Absolutely.”
He sounded far more enthusiastic than he was. The last thing Jean-Guy wanted was to sit in a stuffy auditorium on this fine June day and listen to speeches. While Annie and the kids went to a barbecue with friends near their home in Montréal.
He was doing this for Armand. Jean-Guy needed to be there in case this was the day something stepped out of that blind spot.
Armand kissed his granddaughter, then handed her back to Annie and turned to Honoré. Kneeling down to eye level, Armand opened his arms. The boy raced forward, plowing into him. Though prepared, he almost tipped over, and realized it would not be long before the boy actually tackled him.
Honoré, once free of the embrace, rifled his grandfather’s pockets, where he found a wintergreen mint in one and a licorice pipe in another. Their parting ritual.
As they drove out of Three Pines, past the tiny church and the bench on the brow of the hill, Jean-Guy looked in the rearview mirror. Reine-Marie was waving, but Armand had drawn in his elbows and hunched his shoulders against a chill no one else felt.
