Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(36)

“Oui.”

“I guess Paul Marchand scared him off after all.”

“I guess so.”

He was relieved. But he was also curious, and as they walked slowly around the village green, he wondered if they’d ever know why the cobrador had appeared. And why it had disappeared.

The entire village seemed lighter, leavened. The sun was even trying to break through the chilly mist.

They’d grown almost used to the presence on the green, as one grew used to the smell of manure spread on fields. It was necessary. It might even be good. But that didn’t make it pleasant.

And now the cobrador, the Conscience, was gone. The great accusation in the center of their lives had left. And they had their little village back.

Beside him, Myrna took a long, deep breath, and exhaled. A warm puff in the fresh morning air.

Armand smiled. He felt the same way. Relaxed for the first time in days.

“Do you think he got what he came for?” asked Myrna.

“He must have, otherwise why leave? If he was willing to risk a beating from Monsieur Marchand, I can’t imagine what would make him suddenly give up.”

“I wonder what success for the cobrador would look like,” she said.

“I was wondering the same thing,” said Armand. “The modern one, the one with the top hat, knows when the debt has been paid. It’s a financial transaction. This debt is far different.”

Myrna nodded. “Okay, what I really want to know is who he came for, and what that person did. There, I admit it.”

“Well now, that’s not natural at all,” he said with a smile.

“You too?”

“Maybe just a little curiosity.”

They walked quietly for a moment.

“Not just curiosity, Armand. There’s something else. The Conscience is gone.”

“And that leaves someone here without one. Maybe.”

Neither seemed willing to go further. They both wanted to enjoy this moment. This especially fresh November morning, with the woodsmoke from fireplaces in the air. With the soft sun and cool mist infused with the scent of the musky, muddy earth and sweet pine.

“The children in the apple tree,” said Myrna, watching Henri and Gracie play among the pines. “Heard, half-heard, in the stillness.”

“Hmmm,” hummed Armand. Her thucking steps beside him, far from being annoying, were rhythmic. Like a calming metronome. “T. S. Eliot.”

More and more birds were returning to the village green, and now Henri had Gracie on the wet grass, rolling her over as her tail wagged furiously and her little legs pretended to push him away.

“‘Little Gidding,’” said Myrna.

For a moment he thought she said “giddy.” That Gracie was a little giddy, which she was. But then he realized Myrna was talking about the poem she’d just quoted.

“I’ve been there, you know,” he said.

“To Little Gidding?” asked Myrna. “It’s a real place? I thought T. S. Eliot made it up.”

“Non. It’s not far from Cambridge. Huh,” he said, smiling.

“What is it?”

“The population of Little Gidding is about twenty-five. It reminds me a bit of here.”

They took a few more steps through the soft world.

“And all shall be well,” he quoted the poem. “And all manner of thing shall be well.”

“Do you believe it?” asked Myrna.

The poem, she knew, was about finding peace and simplicity.

“I do,” said Armand.

“Julian of Norwich said it first, you know,” said Myrna. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Her rubber boots kept the soothing rhythm, so that the words and the world fused.

“I believe it too,” she said. “Hard not to on a day like this.”

“The trick is to believe it in the middle of the storm,” said Armand.

And Myrna remembered that while the poem was about finding peace, it came only after a conflagration. A dreadful cleansing.

“Little Gidding” also spoke of a broken king. She looked at her companion, and remembered their conversation the night before. About conscience.

They had a broken king. In fact, they were all broken.

“I think everyone in this village believes that all shall be well,” Armand was saying. “That’s why we’re here. We all fell down. And then we all came here.”

He made it sound such a simple, reasonable, logical course of magical events.

“Ashes, ashes,” Myrna chanted under her breath, “we all fall down.”

Gamache smiled. “My granddaughters were playing that last time they visited. Right there.”

He pointed to the village green. And the exact spot where the cobrador had stood.

He could see Florence and her sister, Zora, dancing in a circle, holding hands with other village children, chanting the old folk song. There was something innocent but also disturbing about those old rhymes.

He could see the children laughing. And then falling to the ground. Sprawled there. Still.

He’d found it both funny and upsetting. To see those he loved lying, as though dead, on the village green. Reine-Marie said that the folk song was centuries old and originated in the Black Death. The plague.