Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(104)

Lacoste’s own testimony was scheduled for the next day, though she knew it would never come to that. Not after the night to come.

Chief Inspector Lacoste hadn’t been in court that day and so hadn’t heard Gamache’s testimony. But she’d certainly heard reports. From colleagues, and on the news.

She’d heard about the increasing acrimony between the Chief Crown and the Chief Superintendent. To the point where they’d both been hauled into the judge’s chambers.

What had happened there? What had Gamache said?

Had he told Judge Corriveau what had really happened that November night, when he’d returned to the basement of St. Thomas’s?

Had he told the judge the secret they’d been so desperate to conceal, to the point of Gamache perjuring himself?

It had started as an offhand remark by a crazy old poet and had developed, over drinks in Myrna’s loft, into a suspicion. Which grew into an action.

*

Once in the church basement, Gamache took off his coat, embedded with snow, and tossed it over a chair. Then he led Beauvoir across the room to the root cellar.

“Can you get an evidence kit, please? And two sets of gloves.”

While Jean-Guy did that, Gamache turned on the industrial lamps installed that day by the Scene of Crime technicians, then he paused on the edge of the room.

All murder scenes had a solemnity, a gravity, about them, often at odds with the actual surroundings. A terrible killing in a cheerful place was especially horrible.

This little room, windowless, with a dirt floor and shelves sagging with forgotten preserves, and cobwebs made by long-dead spiders, was never going to be a cheerful place. The root cellar was meant to be cold, but the killing of Katie Evans made it all the more chilling.

It was not a place even a seasoned homicide investigator would want to spend much time in.

Gamache looked at the spot on the floor where the crumpled figure of Katie Evans, dressed in the cobrador costume, had been found. The former head of homicide for the S?reté never forgot that this was not simply a job. A puzzle. An exercise for the reason and intellect.

A young woman had taken her last breaths, here. Lying in the dirt and dark, in the cold cellar. Not in bed, surrounded by loved ones, at the age of ninety, as she might have hoped.

“Madame Gamache didn’t see a bat when she found Katie Evans’s body. But it was there when Lacoste arrived. That means it was replaced, without anyone else seeing. This’s the back wall of the church.” Gamache walked up to it. “So it must be here.”

“What must?”

Gamache turned to Beauvoir. “Bootlegged alcohol was moved in and out of the church during Prohibition. They didn’t take it out the front door.”

Beauvoir’s eyes widened as he realized what Gamache was saying. “Shit.”

The two men began to carefully examine the shelving.

“Got it,” said Jean-Guy.

“Wait,” said Gamache. He picked up the Scene of Crime camera and recorded the moment Inspector Beauvoir swung out one of the shelves, then pushed on it.

A low door, built into the wall, opened.

Beauvoir got on his knees to look through it and a gust of snow blew into his face. Squinting, he saw the woods just a few steps away.

It was a fairly short haul through the forest to the American border. A smuggler’s dream.

“So that’s how the baseball bat got out, then back in,” said Beauvoir.

Gamache clicked off the video and handed the camera to Jean-Guy, who began documenting what they found.

“It’s perfect,” Gamache said under his breath, as he looked around at the windowless room.

For the cobrador and for the killing.

“Patron?” came Lacoste’s voice, from the Incident Room.

“We’re in here,” said Jean-Guy.

“I’ll just get my computer going and start downloading emails,” she called. “Be right with you.”

Gamache looked around and saw the small door just closing. And as it did, the shelf neatly, soundlessly, fell back into place.

He bent closer and examined the hinges.

In the Incident Room, Lacoste took off her coat and clicked on the email, then, on hearing a sound, she looked over to the stairway.

In the silence of the church, the footfalls on the stairs made an eerie sort of tattoo.

Buh-boom. Buh-boom. Like a heartbeat approaching.

And then Beauvoir appeared.

Isabelle’s eyes widened and she jerked her head back in a sight so comical, Jean-Guy laughed.

“Désolé,” he said.

She looked over at Gamache, who was standing at the door of the root cellar. He raised his hands slightly, to indicate that he had nothing to do with this.

“He was here,” Gamache offered.

“And now I’m here,” said Beauvoir.

Lacoste stared, from Gamache to Beauvoir, then she got up and walked over to Jean-Guy.

“Tell me how you did that.”

“I’ll show you.” Jean-Guy led her across the room to Gamache and the root cellar. “It was the chief who figured it out.”

“Though I had nothing to do with…” Gamache danced his finger toward and around Beauvoir.

Lacoste was far from sure about that. If ever two men were made for cahoots, it was these two. They were cahootites.