Whoever had made this exquisite work of art years ago had recently signed into the Old Brewery Mission in Montreal to escape the killing cold. She’d become a vagrant, a homeless bag lady. And finally, a body with a closed file in homicide. But now Gamache felt he’d at least brought her home. To Three Pines. L was CC’s mother. He was sure of it. But that meant something else. L was dead. CC was dead.

Someone was killing the women in that family.

THIRTY

Gamache and Beauvoir hurried into their coats and boots, Beauvoir remembering to press the remote start on his car keys, to at least give it a minute or so to warm up.

‘Just a moment.’ Gamache took off his tuque and returned to his desk, picking up his phone and dialing. ‘This is Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Is this the duty officer?’

Beauvoir was almost out the door when he turned back and signaled to Nichol to join them. She leaped from her desk.

‘No.’ Gamache covered the mouthpiece of the phone and turned to Nichol. ‘You stay here. Agent Lemieux, you come with us.’

Stunned, as though slapped, Nichol stood still and watched as Agent Lemieux hurried past, giving her a slight apologetic smile. She could have killed him.

Beauvoir looked at the chief for a moment, puzzled, then hurried into the cold. He thought he was prepared for the outside world, but he was wrong. The temperature had plummeted even further and now it burned his skin as he walked, then trotted and finally ran the few yards to his car. The vehicle was struggling to keep turning over, its fluids sluggish and near frozen. The windows were etched with frost and Beauvoir opened the groaning door and grabbed a couple of scrapers. Shavings of frost jumped from the blades as though he was a carpenter whittling a car. Lemieux joined him and the two men furiously scraped the windows. Tears obscured Beauvoir’s vision as the bitter cold found every inch of exposed flesh.

‘I called ahead. He’s expecting us,’ said Gamache, getting in and automatically buckling up even though they were going less than a kilometer. On any other night they’d walk. But not tonight.

Up ahead was their destination. Beauvoir had been so intent on getting the car going he hadn’t thought about where they were headed. Now, as he applied the brakes, the reality hit. The old Hadley house. Last time he was here he’d been coughing up blood. This place seemed to crave blood, and fear. Lemieux jumped out of the car and was halfway down the walk before Beauvoir could even stir himself. He felt a heaviness on his arm and looked at Gamache beside him.

‘It’s all right.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ snapped Beauvoir.

‘Of course not,’ said Gamache.