A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #15)(133)

Once again, on hearing his name, Fred raised his head. Not looking at the one who’d spoken. He was looking for someone who still hadn’t returned.

“The other was, why didn’t she leave earlier that day?” said Gamache. “When Tracey was at the art shop.”

“There’s only one answer,” said Beauvoir. “She didn’t leave in the morning and she didn’t take Fred with her to the bridge that night because she didn’t intend to go. Not yet, anyway. Her plan was always to leave with her lover.”

He stared at Cameron, who sat up straighter. The scars on his face turning white against his flushed face.

“But the call to her father,” Cameron said, his voice raised. “She told him she was leaving that night. Coming to him. Not to me. Him.”

“No,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne never planned to go to her father.”

“She lied to him?” asked Cameron.

“No,” said Beauvoir.

“So what does that mean?” said Cameron. Then his face cleared. His eyes opened wider.

“Her father lied?” He looked from one to the other of the senior officers. “I don’t understand. Why would he lie?”

“Did you know?” Isabelle Lacoste asked Cloutier.

Lysette Cloutier was very still for what felt like a long time. Balancing on the knife edge.

“I suspected. Not right away, but there were things I knew.”

“Like what?”

“On her deathbed Kathy didn’t just ask, she begged me to protect Vivienne. Not guide her, not watch over her, but to protect her. This was before Vivienne had even met Carl Tracey. So who was I supposed to protect her from? It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder. I was so upset I didn’t think more about it, about the wording. But later—”

“Last summer. When Homer said Vivienne told him to break it off with you,” said Gamache.

“I began to wonder.”

“What?” asked Cameron, trying to catch up.

“Why she’d do that. Again, at the time I was so hurt I just accepted it. Accepted that Vivienne was jealous and controlling and demanding of all her father’s attention. But then I got to wondering if it was more than that.”

“What?” demanded Cameron. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you?” asked Gamache. “The money from Homer to his daughter. His decision to break off a relationship not with just anyone, but Vivienne’s godmother. Who is also a S?reté officer.”

“The payments into Vivienne’s account started last July,” said Lysette. “Exactly when he ended the relationship. When I saw that, I wanted to believe it was a coincidence. But things started adding up.”

“What was the money?” asked Cameron. “What’re you saying?”

“Why did Vivienne marry Carl Tracey?” Beauvoir asked. “Several people asked that question. We asked it. Why would a supposedly smart young woman marry a man so clearly violent, abusive? Madame Fleury gave us the answer.”

“The devil she knew,” said Gamache. “The damage done. Homer talked about that on the bridge. I didn’t understand at the time, I was so focused on just trying to stop him. But when we were waiting on the shores of the Bella Bella for his body to be brought in, I went back over what he’d said. And then I realized something. He actually confessed.”

“Oh, my God,” said Cameron. “He beat her, too? When she was growing up?”

“I think you saw it, without realizing,” said Gamache. “When she opened the door the first time. Last summer. You saw the look in her eyes. You recognized in them what you see in the mirror. It was, I think, one of the things that drew you to her. A mutual hurt that went back to the earliest memories. Of course she’d marry an abusive man. It was all she knew, all she thought she deserved.”

Gamache looked at Cloutier. “When did you begin to suspect?”

“I didn’t, not really. Not until I saw those payments.”

“What were they?” asked Cameron. “Blackmail?”

“Restitution,” said Lacoste. “Vivienne was already planning her escape last summer. About the time she miscarried. She probably suspected that Tracey had something to do with it. She knew she needed to get out, but she also needed money. So she contacted her father and demanded payment, for all the pain.”

“And if he didn’t pay,” said Beauvoir, “she’d tell her godmother all about it. I doubt Vivienne even knew that you and her father had grown close.”

“So Homer broke it off with you and paid,” said Gamache. “Over and over again on the bridge, he told us about the pain he’d caused Vivienne. The hurt. He even said that his wife had begged him to stop it. I thought he meant stop Tracey abusing their daughter. But standing by the river, quietly, going back over it, I remembered that Kathy had never met Tracey. She couldn’t have meant him. So who did she mean? There was only one answer.”

“She was begging me to protect Vivienne from her father,” said Cloutier. “From Homer. And I didn’t. Worse, I’d fallen in love with him. I didn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it.”

“None of us did,” said Gamache.

“But you couldn’t have saved Vivienne if you had.” Cloutier’s voice rose. “I could’ve. You didn’t promise to protect her. I did. But instead I actually blamed Vivienne for being cruel to her father. For cutting him out of her life.”