Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #13)(6)

No need to antagonize. Time enough for that later, if need be.

But the figure remained silent. Not exactly at attention, it wasn’t that wooden. There was about it a sense of confidence, of authority even. It was as if it not only belonged on that spot, but owned it.

Though Gamache suspected that impression came more from the robes and the silence than the man.

It always struck him how much more effective silence was than words. If the effect you were after was to disconcert. But he didn’t have the luxury of silence himself.

“Why are you here?” Gamache asked. First in French, then in English.

Then waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty-five seconds.

*

In the bistro, Myrna and Gabri watched through the leaded-glass window.

Two men, staring at each other.

“Good,” said Gabri. “Armand’ll get rid of him.”

“Who is he?” Myrna asked. “He was at your party last night.”

“I know, but I have no idea who he is. Neither does Olivier.”

“Finished with that?” asked Anton, the dishwasher and morning busboy.

He reached for Myrna’s plate, now just crumbs. But his hand stopped. And, like the other two, he stared.

Myrna looked up at him. He was fairly new to the place but had fit in quickly. Olivier had hired him to do the dishes and bus, but Anton had made it clear he hoped to be head chef.

“There is only one chef,” Anton had confided in Myrna one day while buying vintage cookbooks at her shop. “But Olivier likes to make it sound like there’s a fleet of them.”

Myrna laughed. Sounded like Olivier. Always trying to impress, even people who knew him too well for that.

“Do you have a specialty?” she asked as she rang up the total on her old cash register.

“I like Canadian cuisine.”

She’d paused to look at him. In his mid-thirties, she thought. Surely too old, and too ambitious, to be a busboy. He sounded well educated, and was well turned out. Lean and athletic. With dark brown hair trimmed on the sides and longer on top so that it flopped over his forehead in a way that made him look more boyish than he actually was.

He was certainly handsome. And an aspiring chef.

Had she been twenty years younger …

A gal can dream. And she did.

“Canadian cuisine. What’s that?”

“Exactly,” Anton had said, smiling. “No one really knows. I think it’s anything that’s native to the land. And rivers. And there’s so much out there. I like to forage.”

He’d said it with a deliberate leer, as a voyeur might have said, “I like to watch.”

Myrna had laughed, blushed slightly, and charged him a dollar for both cookbooks.

Now Anton, stooping over their table at the bistro, stared out the window.

“What is that?” he asked in a whisper.

“Weren’t you at the party last night?” Gabri asked.

“Yes, but I was in the kitchen all night. I didn’t come out.”

Myrna looked from the thing on the village green to this young man. A party just through the swinging doors, and he’d been stuck doing dishes. It sounded like something out of a Victorian melodrama.

He seemed to know what she was thinking and turned to smile at her.

“I could’ve come out, but I’m not big on parties. Being in the kitchen suits me.”

Myrna nodded. She understood. We all have, she knew, a place where we’re not only most comfortable, but most competent. Hers was her bookstore. Olivier’s was the bistro. Clara’s was her studio.

Sarah’s, the bakery. And Anton’s was the kitchen.

But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.

“What’s he saying?” Anton asked, taking a seat and gesturing toward Gamache and the robed figure.

*

“Is there something I can help you with?” Armand asked. “Someone you’d like to speak to?”

There was no answer. No movement. Though he could see steam coming from where the mouth would be.

Evidence of life.

It was steady. Like the long, easy plume of a train moving forward.

“My name is Gamache. Armand Gamache.” He let that rest there for a moment. “I’m the head of the S?reté du Québec.”

Was there a slight shift in the eyes? Had the man glanced at him, then away?

“It’s cold,” said Armand, rubbing his frigid hands together. “Let’s go inside. Have a coffee and maybe some bacon and eggs. I live just over there.”

He gestured toward his home. He wondered if he should have identified his home, but realized this person probably already knew where he lived. He’d just come from there, after all. It was hardly a secret.

He waited for the robed figure to respond to his breakfast invitation, wondering briefly what Reine-Marie might think when he brought home his new friend.

When there was no response, Armand reached out to take hold of his arm. And coax him along.

*

All conversation had stopped in the bistro, the morning service grinding to a halt.

Everyone, patrons and servers alike, was staring out at the two men on the village green.

“He’s going to drag the guy away,” said Olivier, joining them.