‘I was under the impression this wasn’t your favorite place,’ she said, regaining some ground on him. Beauvoir didn’t know what it was with this woman. She was squat and unattractive. She wobbled instead of walked and her hair stuck out in all directions. And she wore sheets, or perhaps curtains, or maybe they were slipcovers. By all standards she was ludicrous. And yet there was something about her.

‘I came down with the flu when I was last here. I’m sorry if I behaved badly.’ Although it caught in his throat to apologize Gamache had pointed out that it actually gave him an advantage. And he’d noticed, over the years, that it was true. People felt a certain superiority if they thought they had something on you. But as soon as you apologized they had nothing. Pissed them off.

Now Beauvoir felt equal to Madame Mayer.

‘Namaste,’ she said, putting her hands together in prayer and bowing.

Damn her. He felt off balance again. He knew he was meant to ask, but didn’t. Taking his boots off he strode through to the large meditation room with its soothing aqua walls and warm green-carpeted floor.

‘I have some questions for you.’ He turned to watch Madame Mayer waddle toward him. ‘What did you think of CC de Poitiers?’

‘I’ve already told the Chief Inspector about that. In fact, you were here, though I suppose you might have been too ill to listen.’

She was exhausted. Her compassion was spent. She didn’t care any more. She knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer, and now she yearned for the end. She no longer woke in the middle of the night and worried. Now she simply didn’t go to sleep.

Mother was dead tired.

‘CC was delusional. Her entire philosophy was crap. She’d taken a bunch of teachings and mashed them together and come up with this poisonous idea that people shouldn’t show emotions. That’s ridiculous. We are emotion. That’s what makes us who we are. Her idea that truly evolved people feel no emotions is ridiculous. Yes, we want to be in balance, but that doesn’t mean not feeling or showing things. It means the opposite. It means,’ now Mother was getting worked up, too exhausted to contain herself any longer, ‘it means feeling things fully, passionately. It means embracing life. And then letting go.

‘She thought she was so great, coming here and lording it over us. Li Bien this, Be Calm that. All her tasteful white clothes and furnishings and bedding linens and stupid aura pillows and calming baby blankets and God knows what other crap. She was sick. Her emotions were denied and stunted and twisted and made into something grotesque. She claimed to be so balanced, so grounded. Well, she was so grounded it killed her. Karma.’

Beauvoir wondered whether karma was an Indian word for irony.