Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(53)

“Anything I can do, just ask.”

“Merci, patron,” said Gamache, and when Olivier had left, he indicated a seat for Lea.

She sat, and Gamache and Lacoste joined her.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to harm Katie?” asked Gamache.

“I honestly can’t,” she said.

Lacoste, not the cynical sort, always felt a slight alarm go off when anyone answered “honestly” to an interrogation question. Though Lea Roux did seem sincere, and sincerely shocked.

Though she was, Lacoste reminded herself, a politician. And politics was theater.

Now it was Lea’s turn to examine them. Her sharp eyes took in the senior S?reté officers.

“You think the cobrador killed Katie, don’t you?” She looked from one to the other.

“As does Monsieur Evans and your husband. But you don’t?”

“I don’t see why he would,” said Lea. “That would imply that the cobrador came here for Katie. That she was its target all along.”

“Maybe,” said Lacoste. “What we do know is that the man in the costume disappeared and Madame Evans was murdered. It seems a bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Lea Roux thought about it. “But that doesn’t mean she was his target. Maybe he just lashed out, and she was there. On her nightly walk.”

“But she wasn’t on her walk, was she?” said Lacoste. “She was in the church. Why was that?”

Lea sat back. Considering. “When we traveled, Katie often went into churches. As an architect, they fascinated her. Flying buttresses.” She smiled. “That’s all I can remember, and only because it became a running joke. Great big buttresses.”

She brought herself out of her reminiscence. “But that was Notre-Dame in Paris. Chartres. Mont St.-Michel. Not exactly your village chapel.”

Gamache crossed his legs and nodded. There certainly were no flying buttresses in St. Thomas’s, though it was a nicer place to sit than Notre-Dame. It all depended, of course, on what you were looking for.

“Then why do you think she was there?” he asked, repeating Lacoste’s question.

Lea shook her head. “Maybe she just needed some quiet time. Maybe it was cold and she went in to warm up. I honestly don’t know.”

Gamache noticed that Isabelle had not said that Katie was found in the basement, nor had she told them that Katie was in the cobrador costume.

A costume that was highly symbolic. It spoke of sin, of debt. Of the unconscionable and the uncollected. It spoke of revenge and shame. It was an accusation.

And it had been placed on the dead woman.

Not in error, but on purpose. With a purpose.

Yes, thought Gamache, there was a connection between Madame Evans and the cobrador.

The question was, did her friends know what it was?

“This’s my fault,” said Lea. “If I hadn’t protected him last night, he might’ve been scared away. Or beaten. But at least Katie would be alive.” Then she turned to Gamache. “It’s your fault too. You could’ve done something. But all you did was talk to him. You kept saying he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Well, now he has. If you’d stepped in, she’d still be alive.”

Gamache said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. He’d already explained many times to the villagers that there was nothing he could do. Though given what had happened, he knew he’d go back over it and over it. Wondering if that was really true.

He also knew that her rage was really directed at whoever had picked up that bat and killed her friend. He just happened to be a more convenient target.

So he let her have at it. Without backing away. Without defending himself. And when she’d finished, he was silent.

Lea Roux was in tears now, having opened the gates to her anger, her sorrow.

“Oh, shit,” she gasped, trying to regain control of herself, as though crying for a dead friend was shameful. “What have we done?”

“You did nothing wrong,” said Lacoste. “And neither did Chief Superintendent Gamache. Whoever did this is to blame.”

Lea took the tissue Lacoste offered and thanked her, wiping her face and blowing her nose. But still crying. Softer now. More sorrow. Less rage.

“You can’t really think the cobrador thing came here for Katie,” said Lea.

“Do you have another theory?” Lacoste asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe the cobrador did do it, but not on purpose. Maybe Katie followed him and found out who he was, and he killed her.”

Gamache nodded slowly. That had occurred to him as well.

But then, why put her in the costume?

And again, why kill her at all? It seemed an extreme overreaction to being exposed.

But that could mean that she recognized him.

Gamache returned his gaze to the fog outside. Far from being oppressive, he found it soothing. Enveloping, not smothering.

Was Katie Evans’s murder premeditated? Had she been the target all along? Or was it the impulsive act of a person who’d been found out? Cornered in that church basement?

“So you can’t think of anyone who might wish your friend harm?” asked Lacoste.

“Not that I know of. She was an architect. She built homes.”

“Did any project go badly wrong? An accident maybe? A collapse?”