Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(54)

“No, never.”

“Her marriage to Patrick,” said Gamache. “Was it a happy one?”

“I think so. She wanted children but he didn’t. You might’ve noticed, he’s a bit of a child himself. Not in a playful way, more in a needy way. He needed mothering. Katie gives him that. She gives us all that. She’s very maternal. Would’ve made a wonderful mother. She’s godmother to our eldest. Never forgets a birthday.”

Lea looked down at the tissue, twisted into shreds in her hands.

“I think their relationship was good,” she said. “I couldn’t see it myself. Especially when—” She looked at Lacoste, then over at Gamache.

They remained silent, waiting for her to finish the sentence.

“When she could’ve had Edouard.”

“Your friend from college,” said Gamache. “The one who killed himself.”

“Or just fell,” she said. It was something she had to believe. Struggled to believe. Lea gave a huge sigh. “Love. What can you do?”

Gamache nodded. What could you do?

Beauvoir, Matheo and Dr. Harris returned, having gotten Patrick to bed.

“He’ll be fine,” said Sharon Harris. “Needs sleep is all.”

“I’ll walk you out,” said Gamache, putting on his coat.

Instead of going through the crowded bistro, they took the doors out onto the patio, and around the back of the shops.

In the bakery next door, through the window, they saw Anton and Jacqueline, talking.

“Monsieur Evans’s friend,” said the coroner. “The woman. Is that Lea Roux, the politician?”

“It is.”

“She said she gave him one Ativan. I’ve never seen a collapse like that in an adult from just one.”

“You think she gave him more?”

“Two at least. Of course, she might’ve been embarrassed to admit it, or maybe she gave him the bottle and he helped himself.”

“I doubt that, don’t you? Is it possible it’s not Ativan, but something else?”

She stopped and considered it.

Gamache could feel the mist creep down his collar and up his sleeves.

“It could be. You suspect a pharmaceutical, an opioid? Without a blood test, I can’t tell. Is there a reason you suspect it?”

“Not really. There’s just so much of it about.”

“You have no idea,” said the coroner, who saw victims every day on her stainless steel gurney.

Gamache didn’t say anything, but he actually had a far better idea than Dr. Harris.

He walked her to her car, but before she got in, she turned to him. “Monsieur Evans kept repeating something about a bad conscience. Is that significant, Armand?”

“The costume the victim was in was something to do with a conscience” was all he said, and she could tell it was all she was going to get.

There wasn’t time, or need, to tell Dr. Harris about the cobrador.

What could sound like a confession on Patrick Evans’s part was simply, almost certainly, a warning. There was a bad, a very bad, conscience at work.

“Merci,” he said. “Your report?”

“As soon as I can. I hope to have something to you by morning.”

When he returned to the back room of the bistro, he found Matheo and Lea sitting facing Lacoste and Beauvoir. Not exactly, explicitly, adversarial. But close.

Lines had been drawn.

He joined Lacoste and Beauvoir.

“We’ve been thinking, assuming, the cobrador killed Katie,” said Matheo. “But maybe not.”

“Go on,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.

“The cobrador came here for someone. Someone who’d done something terrible. Isn’t it possible he killed Katie?”

“Why would he?” asked Lacoste. “Wouldn’t he be more likely to kill the guy in the costume?”

“Maybe he did,” said Lea. “And maybe Katie saw it happen.”

“Then where is he?” asked Lacoste. “The fellow in the costume? Why leave Katie’s body behind, but hide his?”

“Maybe it’s not hidden, really,” said Matheo. “Maybe you just haven’t found it.”

Lacoste raised her brows. She was actually a few steps ahead of them, having ordered the woods around the village searched.

“What can you tell us about Madame Evans?” asked Lacoste.

“Can’t tell you much about her childhood,” said Matheo. “I know she was raised in Montréal. Has a sister. Her parents— Oh,” he sighed, when he realized they would have to be told.

“Do you have their address?” asked Gamache, and took it down from Lea.

“We met, as we told you last night,” Matheo said to Gamache, “at university. We were taking different courses but were in the same dorm. A wild place. My God, I can’t believe we survived.”

Though, thought Gamache, not all of them did.

“Away from home for the first time,” said Matheo. “Young. No rules. No boundaries. All the restraints were off, you know? We went wild. But Katie was calm. She was always up for stuff, but she had self-control. Not a prude, more like common sense. The rest of us had sorta lost our minds.”

“Katie was our safe harbor,” said Lea.