Read Page 88

“I do. And I won’t.”

Still, she tried to read his familiar face. The worn and torn face. Behind his eyes she could sense activity. Just as her husband and that alarming young agent were busy trying to make connections, she could see Armand doing the same thing. In his mind. Sifting through old files, names, events. Trying to find some connection he’d missed.Advertisement

A man appeared at the brow of the hill and waved.

It was Gilles and he looked pleased.

* * *

“Here she is.”

Gilles laid a hand on the rough bark of the tree. They were in the forest above the village. He’d brought snowshoes for all of them, and now Thérèse, Jérôme, Nichol, and Gamache stood beside him, only sinking a few inches into the deep snow.

“Isn’t she magnificent?”

They tilted their heads back, and Jérôme’s tuque fell off as he looked up.

“She?” asked Nichol.

Gilles chose to ignore the sarcasm in her voice. “She,” he confirmed.

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“Hate to think how he came to that conclusion,” said Nichol, not quite under her breath. Gamache gave her a stern look.

“She’s at least a hundred feet tall. White pine. Old growth,” Gilles continued. “Hundreds of years old. There’s one in New York State that they figure is almost five hundred years old. The three white pines down in the village may have seen the first loyalists come across during the American Revolution. And this one”—he turned to it, his nose touching the mottled bark, his words soft and warm against the tree—“might have been a seedling when the first Europeans arrived.”

The woodsman looked at them, a bit of bark on the tip of his nose and in his beard. “Do you know what the aboriginals called the white pine?”

“Ethel?” asked Nichol.

“The tree of peace.”

“So what’re we doing here?” asked Nichol.

Gilles pointed and they looked up again. This time Gamache’s hat fell off as he tilted his head. He picked it up and struck it against his leg to knock the soft snow off.

There, nailed twenty feet up in the tree of peace, was the hunting blind. Made for violence. It was rickety and rotten, as though the tree was punishing it.

But it was there.

“What can we do to help?” asked Gamache.

“You can help me haul the satellite dish up there,” said Gilles.

Gamache blanched.

“I think we have the answer to that request,” said Jérôme. “And you’re not going to be doing any of the wiring.”

Gamache shook his head.

“Then I suggest you and Thérèse get out of the way,” said Jérôme.

“Banished to the bistro,” said Gamache, and now Thérèse Brunel did smile.

TWENTY-FIVE

Mugs of steaming apple cider were placed in front of Thérèse Brunel and the Chief Inspector.

Clara and a friend were sitting by the fireplace and motioned them over, but after thanking Clara for dinner the night before, the Sûreté officers moved off to the relative privacy of the easy chairs in front of the bay window.

The mullions were frosted slightly but the village was still easily seen, and the two stared out in slightly awkward silence for a minute or two. Thérèse stirred her cider with the cinnamon stick, then took a sip.

It tasted of Christmas, and skating, and long winter afternoons in the country. She and Jérôme never had cider in Montréal, and she wondered why not.

“Will it be all right, Armand?” she finally asked. There was no neediness, no fear in her voice. It was strong and clear. And curious.

He also stirred his cider. Looking up, he held her eyes and once again she marveled at the quality of calm in them. And something else. Something she’d first noticed in that packed amphitheater years ago.

Even from halfway back, she could see the kindness in his eyes. A quality some had mistaken, to their regret, for weakness.

But there wasn’t just kindness there. Armand Gamache had the personality of a sniper. He watched, and waited, and took careful aim. He almost never shot, metaphorically or literally, but when he did, he almost never missed.

But a decade ago, he’d missed. He’d hit Arnot. But not Francoeur.

And now Francoeur had assembled an army, and was planning something horrific. The question was, did Gamache have another shot in him? And would he hit the target this time?

“Oui, Thérèse,” he said now, and as he smiled his eyes crinkled into deep lines. “All shall be well.” pqdm.com