Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(3)

And now Judge Corriveau sat on the bench, in her robes, in judgment. And tried to figure out what Chief Superintendent Gamache was up to.

This was closer than she’d ever been to him, and for a more sustained length of time. The deep scar at his temple was still there, and always would be, of course. As though his job had branded him. Close up, she could see the lines radiating from his mouth. And eyes. Life lines. Laugh lines, she knew. She had them too.

A man at the height of his career. At ease. At peace with what he’d done and must now do.

But in those eyes?

The look she’d caught a long time ago, in the halls, had been so unexpected that Maureen Corriveau had followed him, and listened to his testimony.

It was kindness.

But what she saw today wasn’t that. It was worry. Not doubt, she thought. But he was worried.

And now she was too, though Judge Corriveau couldn’t say why.

She turned away and they both returned their attention to the Crown attorney. He was playing with a pen, and when he made to lean against his desk, Judge Corriveau gave him a look so stern he immediately straightened up. And put down the pen.

“Let me rephrase the question,” he said. “When did you first have your suspicions?”

“Like most murders,” said Gamache, “it began long before the actual act.”

“So you knew a murder would happen, even before the death?”

“Non. Not really.”

No? Gamache asked himself. As he had asked himself every day since the body was found. But really what he asked himself was how he could not have known.

“So again, I ask you, Chief Superintendent, when did you know?”

There was an edge of impatience in Zalmanowitz’s voice now.

“I knew there was something wrong when the figure in the black robe appeared on the village green.”

That caused a commotion in the courtroom. The reporters, off to the side, bent over their electronic notebooks. He could hear the tapping from across the room. A modern Morse code, signaling urgent news.

“By ‘village,’ you mean Three Pines,” said the prosecutor, looking at the journalists as though the Chief Crown knowing the name of the village where Gamache lived, and the victim died, should be noteworthy. “South of Montréal, by the Vermont border, is that correct?”

“Oui.”

“It’s quite small, I believe.”

“Oui.”

“Pretty? Tranquil even?”

Zalmanowitz managed to make “pretty” sound lackluster and “tranquil” sound tedious. But Three Pines was far from either.

Gamache nodded. “Yes. It’s very pretty.”

“And remote.”

The Crown made “remote” sound disagreeable, as though the further one got from a major city, the less civilized life became. Which might be true, thought Gamache. But he’d seen the results of so-called civilization and he knew that as many beasts lived in cities as in forests.

“Not so much remote as off the path,” explained Gamache. “People mostly come upon Three Pines because they’re lost. It’s not the sort of place you drive through on the way to somewhere else.”

“It’s on the road to nowhere?”

Gamache almost smiled. It was probably meant as an insult, but it was actually apt.

He and Reine-Marie had chosen to live in Three Pines primarily because it was pretty, and hard to find. It was a haven, a buffer, from the cares and cruelty of the world he dealt with every day. The world beyond the forest.

They’d found a home there. Made a home there. Among the pines, and perennials, the village shops, and villagers. Who had become friends, and then family.

So that when the dark thing appeared on the pretty, tranquil village green, displacing the playing children, it had felt like more than an oddity. More than an intruder. It was a violation.

Gamache knew his sense of unease had really begun the night before. When the black-robed creature first appeared at the annual Halloween party in the bistro.

Though real alarms didn’t go off until he’d looked out his bedroom window the next morning and seen him still there. Standing on the village green. Staring at the bistro.

Just staring.

Now, many months later, Armand Gamache looked at the Chief Crown. In his black robes. Then over to the defense table. In their black robes. And the judge, just above and beside him, in her black robes.

Staring. At him.

There seemed, thought Gamache, no escape from black-robed figures.

“It really began,” he amended his testimony, “the night before. At the Halloween party.”

“Everyone was dressed up?”

“Not everyone. It was optional.”

“And you?” asked the Crown.

Gamache glared at him. It was not a pertinent question. But it was one designed to slightly humiliate.

“We decided to go as each other.”

“You and your wife? You went in drag, Chief Superintendent?”

“Not exactly. We pulled names from a hat. I got Gabri Dubeau, who runs the local B&B with his partner, Olivier.”

Armand had, with Olivier’s help, borrowed Gabri’s signature bright pink fluffy slippers and a kimono. It was an easy, and extremely comfortable, costume.

Reine-Marie had gone as their neighbor, Clara Morrow. Clara was a hugely successful portrait artist, though it seemed she mostly painted herself.