A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(115)

“Can you call Isabelle?”

“It’s five twenty. In the morning. It’s still dark out.”

But Armand just looked at him as though none of that mattered.

And it didn’t, Jean-Guy realized.

“What’s up?” he asked as he walked into the study and dialed the familiar number.

“I’ll tell you when Isabelle gets here.”

As he waited for the line to engage, Jean-Guy looked across the village green, past the three tall trees. And noticed that theirs wasn’t the only light in Three Pines.

“Oui, all?,” said Isabelle, instantly awake.



* * *



Clara sat on the stool in her studio. Stale chocolate crumbs and icing in her hair. Leo at her feet.

The miniatures on the easel in front of her.

Suppose, her drunken mind had allowed the traitor thought in. Suppose …



* * *



“Suppose,” Gamache began as they sat with their coffees around the warm wood fire, “we were wrong.”

Isabelle had arrived, looking more than a little scruffy herself, but at least fully dressed.

Jean-Guy had also showered and dressed while they waited for Isabelle. Armand stayed in the living room, not wanting to risk Homer sneaking out.

“What do you mean?” she asked, putting her mug of coffee down and leaning closer. “Wrong about what?”

“Just suppose,” Gamache said, “Carl Tracey was telling the truth.”

Jean-Guy’s eyes narrowed. “How much wine did you have last night?”

Gamache ran his hand through his hair, but instead of smoothing it down, he just managed to make it stand up even more. Far from looking comical, he looked deadly serious.

Armand Gamache might hold a rank equal to or even below their own, for now. But both knew he was in fact their superior. Always would be. And had earned the right to be heard. If not agreed with.

So now, they supposed …

Gamache remained quiet, watching their faces. Seeing the concentration and the skepticism. Seeing them try to imagine the inconceivable. What it might look like if Carl Tracey had been telling the truth.

Isabelle was the first to put into words what Jean-Guy could not. “But that would mean Tracey didn’t kill his wife?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. What I do know is that we’re stuck. There seems no way to convict him.”

“So we try to convict someone else?” asked Jean-Guy. At the look of surprise on Gamache’s face, he backtracked. “Désolé. I didn’t mean you were suggesting we arrest an innocent person, just … I can’t quite get my head around what you’re saying. And why.”

“There’re enough things in this case that we can’t explain,” said Gamache. “Why Vivienne left her dog behind. Why was she on that bridge at all? Why would Carl Tracey kill her there and not at home? Who was she calling in the last hour of her life?”

“Why she didn’t want her father to come get her when he offered earlier in the day,” said Isabelle.

“All last night a phrase kept repeating itself. Dominica Oddly even used it as the title of her piece on Tracey.”

“All truth with malice in it,” said Beauvoir. “It’s a quote, right? Where’s it from? Not ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’ I hope.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Gamache, clearing his throat in advance of a recitation.

He smiled slightly as Jean-Guy’s eyes widened and he recoiled from what promised to be an onslaught of poetry. It was a familiar bit of mutual self-mockery.

Dear God, thought Isabelle. How’re they going to live without each other?

“Non,” she said, smiling at this set piece. “It’s from Moby-Dick.”

“You were thinking about a fish?” asked Jean-Guy.

“About human nature,” said Armand. “About obsession. About allowing rancor to cloud judgment. About what happens when we see the malice but fail to see the truth. We were all appalled by what happened to Vivienne. Even before she was found, we more than suspected that her drunken, abusive husband had done something to her. I thought that myself. I had absolutely no doubt that if something had happened to Vivienne, her husband did it.”

“It wasn’t a wild guess,” said Isabelle. “Experience points to him. The statements of others, including a local S?reté cop, point to him. Her father. Even Agent Cloutier.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Gamache.

He leaned forward. Trying to get them to see what he saw.

“And that’s the point. It was all so obvious, we never even considered anything, anyone else. Not seriously, anyway. I’m not saying Tracey didn’t murder Vivienne. I am saying we owe it to her to look at all possibilities. Including that he was telling the truth.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing all night?” asked Beauvoir, looking at the papers scattered on the coffee table and sofa.

“Yes.” Gamache sorted through them until he found Tracey’s statements.

“I’ll call in Cloutier and Cameron,” said Beauvoir. “We’ll need their help to go back over all this. Again.”

It was impossible to miss the exasperation in his voice. This was, Beauvoir knew, a waste of time. They should be concentrating on nailing Tracey, not looking elsewhere.