Dead Cold (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)(52)

The walls of the meditation room were a soothing aqua. The floor was carpeted in a deep, warm green. The ceiling was cathedral and a fan moved lazily around. Some pillows were piled in the corners, awaiting bottoms, Gamache guessed.

He and Beauvoir had driven into St-Rémy to visit Mother Bea at her meditation center. He turned around, taking in the floor to ceiling windows looking into the darkness. All he could see was his own reflection, and Beauvoir behind him standing as though he’d entered the Gates of Hell.

‘You expecting some spirit to attack?’

‘You never know.’

‘I thought you were an atheist.’

‘I don’t believe in God, but there might be ghosts. Do you smell something?’

‘It’s incense.’

‘I think it’s making me sick.’

Gamache turned to the back wall. Written in fine calligraphy across the top was Be Calm. The name of Madame Mayer’s center was Be Calm. Coincidentally, it was also what CC had called her business and her book.

Be Calm.

Ironically, neither woman, from what he could tell, was gifted with calm.

Below the words there was more writing on the wall. The sun had set and the room was lit discreetly. He couldn’t make out the writing from where he was so he moved closer but as he approached Mother arrived, her purple caftan billowing behind her and her hair sticking out like a firestorm.

‘Hello, welcome. Have you come for the five o’clock class?’

‘No, madame.’ Gamache smiled. ‘We came to visit you, to ask for your help.’

Mother stood in front of him, warily. She seemed a woman used to traps, or at least to imagining them.

‘It’s obvious to me you’re a woman of sensitivities. You see and feel things others don’t. I hope I’m not being presumptuous.’

‘I don’t think I’m any more intuitive than anyone else,’ she said. ‘If anything I’ve been blessed to have been able to work on myself. Probably because I needed it more than most.’ She smiled at Gamache and ignored Beauvoir.

‘The enlightened are always the last to say it,’ said Gamache. ‘We wanted to speak to you in private, madame, to get your help. We need your insights on Madame de Poitiers.’

‘I didn’t know her well.’

‘But you wouldn’t have to, would you? You’re a teacher; you see so many people from all walks. You probably know them better than they know themselves.’

‘I try not to be judgmental, Chief Inspector.’

‘Not judgment, madame, discernment.’

‘CC de Poitiers was, I believe, in a lot of pain.’ Mother led them over to a gathering of pillows and indicated one. Gamache sat, more or less falling the last third of the way down. He only just stopped himself from tumbling over backwards. Beauvoir decided not to risk it. Besides, it was ridiculous and perhaps even insulting to offer a homicide investigator a pillow to sit on.

Mother lowered herself expertly, landing in the center of the crimson pillow like a paratrooper. Granted, she hadn’t all that far to fall.

‘A lost soul, I believe. Had she not been murdered and had she had the humility to ask I believe I could have helped her.’

Beauvoir thought maybe he was going to throw up.

‘She came here once, you know. I was heartened to see her, imagining she’d come to seek guidance. But I was wrong.’

‘What did she want?’

‘I have no idea.’ Now Mother looked genuinely puzzled. It was, Beauvoir thought, the first real thing about her. ‘I came in and she was standing over there, straightening the pictures.’ Mother indicated some framed photographs on the wall and a couple on what looked like a small shrine. ‘She had her fingers on everything in the room. Everything had been moved.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, kind of lined up. When the classes are over the students just toss the pillows into the corners, as you can see. I like it like that. It’s God’s will where the pillows land. I don’t like imposing myself too much.’

Another wave of nausea washed over Beauvoir.

‘But CC didn’t seem to be able to enter a room without touching and straightening everything. Very unevolved. No room for the spirit if you need to do that. All the cushions were neatly stacked and lined up with the wall, all the pictures in perfect alignment, everything just so.’

‘Why did she come here?’ Gamache asked.

‘I don’t really know. When she saw me she looked surprised, as though I’d caught her doing something wrong. After she left I looked around to see if anything was missing, she’d looked so guilty. She tried to cover it up by being aggressive. Very typical.’

‘Of what?’ Gamache asked.

The question seemed to stump Mother and Beauvoir wondered whether she wasn’t used to being questioned.

‘Well, of unhappy people, of course,’ she snipped after a moment. ‘I had the impression she was looking for something, and I don’t mean enlightenment. I think she was so deluded she actually thought she had that. But a less enlightened person would be hard to find.’

‘Very discerning of you,’ said Gamache. Mother looked closely for signs of sarcasm. ‘What makes you think she thought she was enlightened?’

‘Have you read her book? It’s smug and self-satisfied. She had no center, no real beliefs. She grabbed whatever philosophy floated by. A bit of this, a bit of that. She’d cobbled together a bumpy, pitted, muddy spiritual path. It reminded me of Frankenstein. She’d cannibalized all sorts of faiths and beliefs and came up with that Li Bien.’