Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(11)

If only Anton felt the same way about Jacqueline. Maybe if she could bake baguettes, thought Sarah, scrubbing down the counters. Yes. That might do it.

In Sarah’s world, a good baguette was a magic wand that solved all problems.

Jacqueline scooted next door to the bistro kitchen. It was midafternoon. They’d be preparing for the dinner service, but it was a fairly quiet time of day for a dishwasher.

“I was just going to come over to see you,” said Anton. “Did you see it?”

“Hard to miss.”

She kissed him on both cheeks, and he returned the kiss, but the way he might kiss Sarah.

“Should we say something?” Jacqueline asked.

“Say what?” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “To who?”

“To Monsieur Gamache, of course,” she said.

“No,” said Anton firmly. “Promise me you won’t. We don’t know what it is—”

“We have a pretty good idea,” she said.

“But we don’t know.” He lowered his voice when the chef looked over. “It’ll probably go away.”

Jacqueline had her own reasons to worry, but for the moment she was focused on Anton’s reaction to the thing.

*

Armand sat in the bistro, reading.

He could feel eyes on him. All with the same message.

Do something about that thing on the village green.

Make it go away.

What good was it to have the head of the entire S?reté as a neighbor, if he couldn’t protect them?

He crossed his legs, and heard the mutter of the open fire. He felt the warmth, smelled the maple wood smoke, and sensed the eyes of his neighbors drilling into him.

While there’d been a comfortable armchair right by the open hearth, he’d placed himself in the window. Where he could see the thing.

Like Reine-Marie, Armand had noticed that as the day went by, he’d slowly stopped thinking of the figure on the green as “he.” It had become an “it.”

And Gamache, more than any of them, knew how dangerous that was. To dehumanize a person. Because no matter how strange the behavior, it was a person beneath those robes.

It also interested him to see his own reactions. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to go out there and arrest it. Him.

For what?

For disturbing his personal peace.

It wasn’t useful to tell everyone that there was no threat. Because he didn’t know if that was true. What he did know was that there was nothing he could do. The very fact he was head of the S?reté made it less possible, not more, for him to act.

*

Reine-Marie had stood at his side at his swearing-in. Gamache in his dress uniform, with the gold epaulets and gold braid and gold belt. And the medals he wore reluctantly. Each reminding him of an event he wished hadn’t happened. But had.

He’d stood resolute, determined.

His son and daughter watching. His grandchildren there too, as he’d raised his hand and sworn to uphold Service, Integrity, Justice.

Their friends and neighbors were in the audience, packed into the grand room at the National Assembly.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his longtime second-in-command and now his son-in-law, held his own son. And watched.

Gamache had asked Beauvoir to join him in the Chief Superintendent’s department. Once again as second-in-command.

“Nepotism?” Beauvoir had asked. “A grand Québec tradition.”

“You know how much I value tradition,” said Gamache. “But you’re forcing me to admit that you’re the very best person for the job, Jean-Guy, and the ethics committee agrees.”

“Awkward for you.”

“Oui. The S?reté is now a meritocracy. So don’t—”

“Fuck up?”

“I was going to say, don’t forget the croissants, but the other works too.”

And Jean-Guy had said oui. Merci. And watched as Chief Superintendent Gamache shook hands with the Chief Justice of Québec, then turned to face the crowded auditorium.

He stood at the head of a force of thousands charged with protecting a province Armand Gamache loved. A populace he saw not as either victim or threat, but as brothers and sisters. Equals, to be respected and protected. And sometimes arrested.

“Apparently there’s more to the job,” he’d said to Myrna, during one of their quiet conversations, “than cocktail parties and luncheon clubs.”

He had, in fact, spent the past couple of months holding intense meetings with the heads of various departments, getting up to speed on dossiers from organized crime, drug trafficking, homicide, cyber crime, money laundering, arson and a dozen other files.

It was immediately obvious that the degree of crime was far worse than even he had imagined. And getting worse. And what drove the gathering chaos was the drug trade.

The cartels.

From there sprang most of the other ills. The murders, the assaults. Money laundering. Extortion.

The robberies, the sexual assaults. The purposeless violence committed by young men and women in despair. The inner cities were already infected. But it wasn’t confined there. The rot was spreading into the countryside.

Gamache had known there was a growing problem, but he’d had no idea of the scope of it.

Until now.

Chief Superintendent Gamache spent his days immersed in the vile, the profane, the tragic, the terrifying. And then he went home. To Three Pines. To sanctuary. To sit by the fire in the bistro with friends, or in the privacy of his living room with Reine-Marie. Henri and funny little Gracie at their feet.