unusual lives. Lives filled with spirits, with the dead and dying. And the ability to divine the future.
Was that why he was in homicide? Was that why he chose to spend all day with the newly dead, and hunt people who created ghosts? For more than ten years he’d mocked and ribbed and criticized the chief for relying so heavily on intuition. And the chief had just smiled and continued while he himself had bowed before the perfection of facts, of things you could touch and see and feel and hear. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘What brought you here?’ Gamache was asking Jeanne Chauvet.
‘I got a brochure through the mail. It looked wonderful and I needed a rest. I think I told you this before.’
‘Being a psychic’s tiring?’ asked Beauvoir, suddenly interested.
‘Being a receptionist at a car dealership’s tiring. I needed a rest and this just seemed perfect.’
Should she tell them the rest? The writing across the top of the brochure? She’d seen the same one in the vestibule of the B. & B., and there was no writing. Had someone really taken the time to write that strange statement on her brochure just to lure her to Three Pines? Or was she paranoid?
‘Where’re you from?’ Gamache asked.
‘Montreal. Born and raised.’
Gamache handed her the yearbook. ‘Look familiar?’
‘It’s a yearbook. I have one too from my school. Haven’t looked at it in years. Probably lost it by now.’
‘I thought you said you never lose things,’ said Beauvoir.
‘Nothing I don’t want to lose,’ she smiled, handing Gamache back the book.
‘What high school did you go to?’ Gamache asked.
‘Gareth James High School, in Verdun. Why?’
‘Just trying to make connections.’ Armand Gamache swirled his cognac lazily in his glass. ‘People rarely murder people they don’t know. There’s something about this case.’
He let it hang there, not feeling any need to explain. After a moment Jeanne spoke.
‘There’s an intimacy about it,’ she said quietly. ‘No, there’s more. It feels crowded.’
Gamache nodded, still looking into his amber liqueur. ‘The past caught up with Madeleine Favreau on Easter Sunday, in the old Hadley house. You brought something to life.’
‘That’s not fair. I was invited to do the seance. It wasn’t my idea.’
‘You could have said no,’ he said. ‘You’ve just said you know things, sense things, see things. Couldn’t you see something coming?’
Outside the wind howled as Jeanne Chauvet thought back to that night in this very bistro. Someone had suggested another seance. Someone had suggested the old Hadley house. And something had changed. She’d felt it. A dread had crept into their happy, laughing circle.
She’d stolen a look at Madeleine, lovely, laughing Madeleine, looking weary and nervous. Madeleine hadn’t even recognized her.
Jeanne had seen then the thinly masked revulsion Mad felt at the very idea of a seance at the old Hadley house. And that had been enough. A truck could have been bearing down upon them and all Jeanne would see was a way to hurt Madeleine.
It had never occurred to her to decline the second seance.
THIRTY-THREE
‘Shouldn’t you be in the studio?’ Peter asked, pouring himself another coffee and walking to the long pine table in their kitchen. He’d promised himself he’d say nothing. And certainly not remind Clara time was slipping away. The last thing she needed to hear was that Denis Fortin would be there in just a few days. To see her still unfinished work.
‘He’ll be here in less than a week,’ he heard himself saying. It was as though something had possessed him.
Clara was staring at the morning paper. The front page talked about the terrible storm that downed trees, cut off roads, caused power failures across Quebec, and then disappeared.
The day had dawned overcast and a little drizzly. A normal day in April. The snow and hail had melted by morning and the only signs of the storm were twigs blown down and flowers flattened.
‘I know you can do it.’ Peter sat beside her. Clara looked exhausted. ‘But maybe you need a little break. Take your mind off the painting.’
‘Are you nuts?’ She looked up. Her deep blue eyes were bloodshot and he wondered if she’d been crying. ‘This is my big chance. I don’t have any time left.’
‘But if you go into your studio now you might mess it up even more.’
‘Even more?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.’
‘God, what’m I going to do?’ She wiped her tired eyes with her hand. She’d been awake most of the night, at first lying in bed trying to get back to sleep. When that hadn’t worked she’d obsessed about the painting. She no
