our fiddles and started playing and everyone seemed to really like it.”
“That piece you played for us? ‘Colm Quigley’?”
“No, that’s a lament. It gets faster, but the beginning’s too slow for skaters. They wanted something peppier, so we did some jigs and reels.”
“How old were you?” Gamache asked.
“Thirteen, maybe fourteen. It was about ten years ago. Never went back.”
“Maybe this year.”
“
In the cabin in the woods Beauvoir lay awake. Normally he slept soundly, even after what happened. But now he found himself staring into the dark rafters, then at the glow of the fireplace. He could see Dr. Gilbert asleep on the two chairs he’d pulled together. The asshole saint had given Beauvoir the bed. Beauvoir felt horrible, having an elderly man who’d been so kind, sleep on a couple chairs. And he wondered, briefly, if that was the point. Why be a saint unless you could also be a martyr?
Perhaps it was the peaceful cabin, perhaps it was exhaustion after pushing himself too far, or the little half pill, but Beauvoir’s defenses were down.
And over the wall swarmed the memories.
“Homicide,” the Chief’s secretary had said. Gamache had taken the call.
11:18 the clock had said. Beauvoir had looked around the room, letting his mind wander, as the Chief spoke on the phone with the Ste-Agathe detachment.
“Agent Morin’s on the phone.” Gamache’s secretary appeared again at the doorway a moment later. The Chief covered the mouthpiece and said, “Ask him to call back in a few minutes.”
Gamache’s voice was hard and Beauvoir immediately looked at him. He was taking notes as Inspector Norman spoke.
“When was this?” Gamache’s sentences were clipped. Something had happened.
“He says he can’t.” The Chief’s secretary hovered, uncomfortable, but insistent.
Gamache nodded to Beauvoir to take the Morin call, but Gamache’s secretary stood her ground.
“He says he needs to speak to you, sir,” she said. “Now.”
Both Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir stared at her, amazed she would contradict the boss. Then Gamache made up his mind.
“
Beauvoir saw Gamache’s face change. He waved for Beauvoir to take the other phone in his office. Beauvoir picked up the receiver and saw the Chief take Agent Morin’s call on the other line.
“
“One of our agents has been shot,” Norman said, obviously on a cell phone. He sounded far away, though Beauvoir knew he was only about an hour north of Montreal, in the Laurentian Mountains. “He was checking out a car stopped on the side of a secondary road.”
“Is he—?”
“He’s unconscious, on his way to the Ste-Agathe hospital. But reports I’m getting aren’t hopeful. I’m on my way to the scene.”
“We’ll be right there, give me the location.” Beauvoir knew not only was time crucial, but so was coordination. In a case like this every cop and every department was in danger of descending and then they’d have chaos.
Across the room he could see Gamache standing at his desk, the phone to his ear, his hand gesturing for calm. Not to anyone in the room, but to whoever he was speaking with, presumably Agent Morin.
“He wasn’t alone,” Norman was saying, the transmission cutting in and out as he raced through the mountains to the scene. “We’re looking for the other agent.”
It didn’t take a homicide detective to know what that meant. One agent shot, the other missing? Lying dead or gravely wounded in some culvert. That’s what Inspector Norman was thinking, that’s what Beauvoir was thinking.
“Who’s the other agent?”
“Morin. One of yours. He’s on loan to us for the week. I’m sorry.”
“Paul Morin?”
“He’s still alive,” said Beauvoir, and felt the relief. “He’s on the phone with the Chief Inspector.”
“Oh, thank God for that. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Gamache took Morin’s call, his mind racing in response to what he’d heard from Inspector Norman. An agent gravely wounded, another missing.
“Agent Morin? What is it?”
“Chief?” The voice sounded hollow, tentative. “I’m sorry. Did you find—”
