A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(111)

“The reason you can’t find it is that it isn’t called Roof Trusses anymore. The name was changed some time ago.”

“To what?”

“Notre-Dame-de-Doleur,” said Gabri.

“Our Lady of Pain?” asked Gélinas.

Armand sat back in his chair. “Or it could be Our Lady of Grief.”

“It’s not there anymore,” said Ruth. “It died.”

“Can’t think the name helped,” said Gabri.

“Can you show us on a map?” asked Gamache.

“Have you not been listening, Miss Marple?” asked Ruth. “It’s not on a map. It’s gone.”

“Thank you for clarifying that,” said Armand, with exaggerated courtesy. “I did just manage to grasp it. But can you show us where the village once was?”

“I suppose.”

“Can we get back to the archives?” asked Reine-Marie. “Any idea where all the material on the Great War might’ve gone?”

“Do you know,” said Myrna slowly, “I do have an idea. Didn’t the historical society put on a special retrospective at the Legion in Saint-Rémy a few years back?”

“That’s right,” said Clara. “In 2014, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the start of the war.”

“So where’s all that material now?” asked Olivier.

“Damnatio memoriae,” said Reine-Marie.

Like Three Pines. Like Roof Trusses and Notre-Dame-de-Doleur, the war to end all wars had been banished from memory.

*

Armand and Reine-Marie walked Ruth home after dinner. Olivier and Gabri offered, but the Gamaches felt the need for fresh air, and distance from Paul Gélinas. They both hoped he’d be asleep by the time they returned.

The cadet Nathaniel was sitting on the sofa in Ruth’s living room, reading. He sprang up as though kicked in the derriere when he heard them come in.

“Sir,” he said.

“No need to call me sir,” said Ruth. “Sit.”

Nathaniel sat.

“No, I meant them.” She pointed to Armand and Reine-Marie, who also sat smartly.

Reine-Marie turned to Nathaniel. “What’re you reading?”

“A book I found on the table.”

He showed it to them.

“We have that same book,” said Armand.

“Exactly the same book,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s ours.”

“Oh.”

“Come here,” commanded Ruth from the kitchen.

And they did.

She’d found a worn old map of the area and spread it out on her white plastic table. A notebook with her crablike scribbling was open, as it always was, beside a curdling cup of tea.

Armand recognized the cup. It was theirs.

Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She made use of things before people threw them out.

“We’re looking up Roof Trusses,” Armand said to Nathaniel, who was studying the map with excruciating earnestness.

“But we already tried,” said the cadet, looking up. “It’s not there, remember?”

“Why didn’t you ask me?” demanded Ruth.

“Wh— ah— um.”

“The future of the S?reté?” Ruth asked Armand.

“He didn’t ask you, Ruth,” said Reine-Marie kindly, with patience, “because he thinks you’re a crazy old woman.”

“I do not,” said Nathaniel, turning very red, then very white.

Ruth stood there, duck feathers on her pilled sweater, with Rosa muttering obscenities in her flannel nest beside the stove.

And Ruth laughed. Reaching out her hand to Reine-Marie to steady herself.

Nathaniel took a small step behind the Commander. Now she looked like a crazy old woman.

“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Ruth said, finally getting some control over herself. “But I’m happy. Are you?”

The young man, practically peeking out from behind Gamache, colored.

“Are you happy, Ruth?” asked Reine-Marie, touching her thin arm.

“I am.”

“Oh, I’m so pleased to hear it. I was—”

“Roof Trusses?” asked Armand. He could see the two women were settling in to discuss the human condition and the nature of happiness. Normally a conversation he’d love to hear, but not that evening.

“There.” Ruth’s gnarly finger landed on the map, squishing a spot about ten kilometers from Three Pines. “That’s where Roof Trusses used to be. But the name was changed to Notre-Dame-de-Doleur a while back.”

Nathaniel wrote that down, then took a closer look at the map.

“But there’s nothing there. You’re just pointing to a field.”

He stared at Ruth. Ruth glared at him.

“And now, Cadet Smythe, comes another lesson in police work,” said the Commander. “Who to believe. Is Madame Zardo telling you the truth, or messing with you?”

“Could be a mind-fuck,” agreed Ruth.

“How can you tell?” Nathaniel asked Gamache.

“You can’t, with certainty. You can be taught to gather facts, evidence, but the very best investigators learn to trust something we’re told early in our lives is useless. Even dangerous. Instinct. You use your head and your heart and your gut. The whole animal, like a good hunter. What does your instinct tell you about Madame Zardo? Is she telling the truth?”