Dead Cold (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)(104)

He leaped out of the car and stood on the road looking one way then the other. Which way? To St-Rémy? To Williamsburg? Which way?

He forced himself to settle down, to be calm. To be still. He heard the howl of the wind and felt the cold snow plaster against him. Nothing came. There was no wall for writing, no voice whispered through the wind. But there was a voice in his head. The brittle, bitter, clear voice of Ruth Zardo.



When my death us do part



Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,



Or will it be, as always was, too late?





Jumping back in the car he headed as fast as he dared for Williamsburg, to where forgiven and forgiving would meet again. But would he be too late?

How long had that letter sat there?

After what seemed an eternity the Legion came into view. Driving beyond it he turned right. And there was the car. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or appalled. He pulled in behind and leaped out.

Standing on the brow of the small hill he looked out onto Lac Brume, snow hitting his face full on and near blinding him. In the distance, between gusts, he could just make out three figures struggling on the ice.





‘Namaste, namaste,’ Mother repeated, over and over until her lips dried and cracked and bled and she couldn’t speak any more. The word was stuck inside and there she repeated it. But it kept sliding off the terror in her heart and could find no purchase. Mother fell silent with just her terror and disbelief to keep her company.

Kaye struggled in the middle, her legs barely working any more, propped up between her friends, as she realized she’d been all her life. Why had it taken until now to understand that? And now, in the end, for it was the end, she was totally dependent upon them. They held her up, sustained her, and would guide her into the next life.

She knew then the answer to her riddle. Why her father and his friends had cried ‘Fuck the Pope’ as they went to their deaths.

There was no answer. They were his words, his life, his path and his death.

This was hers. She’d spent her entire life trying to solve something that had nothing to do with her. She’d never understand and she didn’t have to. All she had to understand was her own life and death.

‘I love you,’ she croaked, but the words were stolen by the wind and scattered far from old ears.

Em held up Kaye as the three stumbled further onto the lake. Mother had stopped shivering or trembling and even her crying had stopped until there was just the howling of the storm.

They were near the end now. Em could no longer feel her feet or hands. The only consolation was that she wouldn’t have to endure the pins and needles agony of feeling them thaw. The wind blew and through its keening she could hear something else. Across the lake there came the strains of a single violin.

Em opened her eyes, but all she could see was white.

Ice here.





Armand Gamache stood on the bank. The barbarian wind raced out of the mountains, across the lake, past the three women, past the buried curling rink and the spot where CC had died, gathering strength and pain and terror and finally hitting him in the face. He gasped for breath and clutched Em’s letter, the white paper invisible against the white snow behind and in front and all around him. He was enveloped in white, as were they.

He took a step forward, yearning to race onto the lake after them. Every part of who he was demanded he save them, but he stopped, sobbing with the effort. In her letter émilie had begged him to let them die, like the fabled Inuit elders who walked onto an ice flow and drifted to their deaths.

They’d murdered CC, of course. He’d known that since the day before. He suspected he might have known it for much longer. All along he’d known it was impossible no one saw the murder. Kaye could not have been sitting beside CC and not seen her killer.

And then there was the murder itself. It was far too complicated. The niacin, the melted snow, the tilted chair, the jumper cables. And finally the electrocution perfectly timed for when Mother cleared the house, and all eyes and ears were on her.

And then to clear up the cables afterwards.

No one person could have done it without being seen

The bitter niacin was in the tea Mother served at the Boxing Day breakfast. Em had spread the anti-freeze when she’d delivered the chairs to the site. She’d sat in the chair herself, to keep CC away from it.

Kaye was pivotal. Gamache had assumed whoever had electrocuted CC had attached the cables to the chair first, then hovered around Billy’s truck waiting for the right moment to attach them to the generator. But Em’s letter said otherwise. They’d attached the cables to Billy’s generator and then Kaye had waited for a signal from Em that Mother was about to clear the house. When it came, she’d gone to the empty chair, leaned on one corner to knock it off kilter, and attached the cables. From that moment on it had electricity coursing through it.

By then the niacin was working and CC had removed her gloves.

Mother was winding up to ‘clear the house’. All eyes were on her.

The rock was thrown, moving like thunder down the ice, the stands cheering, everyone on their feet, and CC got up. She went forward, stepped in the puddle, put her bare hands on the back of the metal chair and that was it.

They’d taken risks, of course. Kaye had to detach the cord and throw it clear, a bright orange cord lying where no cord should be. But they’d gambled that everyone would be so focused on CC they could gather it up again. Em did so, and threw it in the back of Billy’s truck. She’d almost gotten caught when Billy ran toward her to start the truck and clear the back for CC. She’d covered up by saying she’d had the same idea and was going to clean a spot in his pickup for CC and the resuscitation team.