Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(128)

“I knew Reine-Marie was describing exactly what was there when she found the body. And what was not. So how did the bat return, without anyone seeing?”

“I’d locked the church door. The only way in,” she said.

“So.” Zalmanowitz lifted his hands. “How do you explain it?”

“I couldn’t. Until a casual conversation later that day with friends. One mentioned that the root cellar already had a criminal past. It’d been used by bootleggers during Prohibition.”

Both the Crown and the judge were nodding now. It was quite a famous chapter in Québec history, one many prominent families wished would go away.

“That’s when it began to come together,” said Gamache. “The smugglers would never have hauled the contraband liquor out the front door of the church. There must be, I realized, another door. A hidden door, in the root cellar.”

“That’s how the murder weapon reappeared,” said the judge. “The murderer used the hidden door. But how did she even know about it?”

“Jacqueline followed Anton to the Ruiz home,” said Beauvoir. “And got a job there to be close to him, to watch him. Then, when Ruiz went back to Spain, she followed Anton to Three Pines. She was watching him closely, and one night she saw him use the door.”

“But then, how did he know about it?”

“Anton grew up in a household where old war stories meant turf wars, speakeasies, bootlegging,” said Gamache. “Stories of getting booze across the border. How they did it. Where they did it. His father, his uncle, his uncle’s best friend, all saw these as part of the lore, their history, almost mythology, but not pertinent today. What separated Anton from the rest of his family, from the rest of the leadership of the cartels, is that he dismissed nothing. If something was history, it didn’t make it less useful. He took everything in. Some he discarded, some he kept in his mind for later use. And some he repurposed. To others, the Prohibition stories were a way to pass cold winter nights. For Anton, they were a revelation.”

“He did his homework,” said Beauvoir. “And discovered where all the crossing points, all the hidden rooms and passages used by the bootleggers were. He used them all, but as his main crossing point he chose a hidden room in a hidden village.”

“It was perfect,” said Gamache.

“So you discovered how the bat, the murder weapon, got in and out, or out and in,” said Judge Corriveau. “But how did you know it was being used for drug smuggling?”

“The hinges,” said Beauvoir. “They’d been oiled. And not recently. The room, and the door, had been used far longer than the cobrador had been in residence.”

“And when asked, none of the friends admitted using the door. They had no idea it was there,” said Gamache. “So the hinges must’ve been oiled for another purpose. I didn’t know right away, of course. But I began to think maybe the smugglers were back. It had perplexed us for a while, how so many drugs were getting across the border. The traditional routes we knew about, but far more was crossing than we could account for.”

“But wait a minute,” said the Crown. “Everything you’re saying still points to Anton being the murderer. How did you figure out it was Jacqueline?”

“If Anton Boucher wanted someone killed, do you think he’d do it himself?” asked Beauvoir. “And even if he did, would he panic, and take, then replace the murder weapon? Why not just burn it? That’s when Jacqueline came to us and confessed about the cobrador.”

Jean-Guy remembered the bitterly cold November night when Gamache and Lacoste, along with the dogs, had blown back into the house, as he’d gotten off the phone with Myrna and Ruth.

Both admitted knowing about the little room. Ruth had told Myrna, and Myrna, after some thought, remembered telling Lea. Though while he’d gently probed, neither seemed to know about the hidden door.

“She didn’t confess to the murder of Katie Evans,” said Gamache. “Her confession was about the cobrador. But the bat continued to worry us. I knew the bat’s only purpose, after it had killed Madame Evans, was to point to the murderer. But not, of course, the real one.”

“She wanted Anton Boucher charged with the crime,” said Zalmanowitz.

“Oui. That was Jacqueline’s plan all along. Again, very simple. Kill Katie, and blame Anton. The two people she considered responsible for her brother’s death. The Conscience had more than one debt to collect. Edouard jumped while out of his mind on drugs sold to him by Anton. But what sent him over the edge was his breakup with Katie. It broke his heart, and the drugs warped his mind. He was, by all reports, a gentle, sensitive young man, who loved her too much. And Katie Evans was a gentle, kind woman whose crime was that she didn’t love him back.”

“Edouard told his sister all about it,” said Beauvoir. “He was enraged. He painted Katie as cruel. Heartless. He didn’t mean it, of course. He was insane with jealousy and the drugs had warped his thinking. I know what they can do. How we turn on the very people who care for us the most.”

“And then, having placed all his bile in his sister’s head, he killed himself,” said Gamache. “Leaving Jacqueline to despise Katie. Neither Katie, nor the drug dealer, had paid any price for her brother’s death. But she would see to that.”