Page 9

She did. And slowly over the years she’d gained more and more access to the head of the Montréal mob, even as she rose through the Sûreté ranks.

But what worried him now was that Evelyn Tardiff might have known about the poisoning plot and said nothing. What really worried him now was that he no longer knew whose side she was on.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “Though the question is now moot, thankfully. It’s over.”

Armand left it at that. He wasn’t ready to tell her about the suspicions that propelled him out of his warm bed, to sit within the light of the luminous boys and ponder the unimaginable. The unforgivable.

“Morning, numbnuts.”

Jean-Guy started, spilling a bit of coffee out of each mug. For a moment a trick of the young light made it look as though one of the stained-glass boys had spoken. And called him numbnuts. That could not be good.

Though Jean-Guy quickly realized who it must be. It was not much better.

Ruth Zardo, the elderly poet, popped up in the pew where she’d apparently been napping.

“Sleeping it off, you old hag?” He slipped onto the bench beside her. Rosa the duck looked at him, clearly pissed off at having been woken up. But then ducks were often pissed off. At least, this one was.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Rosa muttered before once again burying her beak between her chest and wing.

“Looking for Clouseau?” Ruth took one of the mugs from Jean-Guy. “For me?”

“Actually—”

Before he could stop her, she took a long sip. “Just coffee. Blech. Why would you bring me that?”

“I—”

“He’s in the basement. No doubt hiding from you. Can’t say I blame him.”

Jean-Guy stared at the mug and wondered how to get it away from her. Armand needn’t know she’d taken a sip. “How does he seem to you?”

Ruth considered the question. “Perhaps a bit better. Hard to tell. He seems worried.” Now she looked at Jean-Guy more closely. “What’s going on? What’s he worried about? Why’s he down there?”

“Hiding from you, I suspect. Can’t say I blame him.”

“Shit-head.”

“Witch.”

He looked at the warm mug cupped in her cold hands and decided not to wrestle her for it. She’d probably win.

As he walked to the stairs, he heard, “Say hi to your boss.”

Though on leave from the Sûreté, Armand Gamache was still, and would always be, Beauvoir’s mentor and boss. His Chief Inspector. No matter what happened.

And a lot had.

“Bonjour, Jean-Guy.”

Beauvoir stopped dead at the bottom of the basement stairs, his eyes wide with surprise. “Did you hear me coming?”

Armand’s back remained to him, his hands clasped together behind him. Jean-Guy could see the red slashes, scars where the zip ties had bitten into Armand’s wrists.

Then the older man turned, and his face broke into a smile of genuine pleasure. At over six feet tall, he was solidly built. His face was worn from days and nights in windswept fields, trudging through forests, kneeling in deep snow beside some unfortunate who had become a corpse, but never just a case.

And yet, if met by chance at a party, Chief Inspector Gamache would easily be mistaken for a professor of ancient history at the Université de Montréal. Someone who studied the lives of those long dead instead of the head of homicide, hunting those who dealt out fresh death.

Jean-Guy had watched him at social events, listening closely as strangers told Armand the minutiae of their lives. He listened and nodded, asking questions. He let whoever he was with know they were not just fascinating, they were precious. Their stories heard and valued.