The Cruelest Month

While Gamache approaches the basement, Lemieux finally answers his phone. Brébeuf wants an update on the case, and when he finds out that Gamache was not upset by the newspaper article, he is disappointed.

Beauvoir, Nichol, and Lacoste return to the incident room, where they discuss Hazel and Sophie and wonder if Sophie had a crush on Madeleine. Lacoste asks to speak privately with Beauvoir, and they go outside to get away from Nichol. She asks him to tell her about the Arnot case. Arnot was a charismatic superintendent who had inspired loyalty among the officers he chose for his division. However, he was also a bully who decided to stop policing native reserves that were under his jurisdiction and ordered his officers to do the same.

In the basement, Gamache hears noises but doesn’t see anything. Reine-Marie calls and tells him she has called Daniel about the article. He doesn’t understand why it was necessary, until she explains that there has been a second one. After he hangs up, he sees Lemieux coming out of the shadows, gun drawn. When he sees Gamache, he puts his gun away and apologizes, but Gamache reprimands him. Lemieux thought to pull the same trick that he had with the ephedra website, and after Gamache is initially stern with him, he softens.

Beauvoir tells Lacoste that Arnot didn’t stop at refusing to police his jurisdiction—he had actually sent his officers in to make trouble and then to start killing. The indigenous people had no recourse, because the only place to report the crimes was to the Sûreté. Arnot’s actions finally came to light when Gamache connected with a Cree woman outside the Sûreté and found out what had been happening. He had investigated the matter and then returned to Montreal to expose Arnot.

After they discuss the Arnot case, Lacoste brings up Nichol. Beauvoir believes that Nichol is spying on Gamache for Superintendent Francoeur. Francoeur is one of the officers who sees Gamache’s exposure of Arnot as a betrayal of the Sûreté. They run into Clara and Peter, who show them the second newspaper article. It features a picture of Gamache handing his son, Daniel, an envelope. The accompanying text implies that they are doing something criminal. Gamache joins them and tells them that he is not going to publicly respond. At first Beauvoir is angry, but he believes that Gamache has a larger plan.

Dr. Sharon Harris, the coroner, drives into Three Pines. She sits on a bench on the village green and watches Ruth lead her ducklings. Gamache joins her, and she tells him that the autopsy confirmed that Madeleine died from ephedra, most likely in her dinner. When he wonders why the others, who ate the same thing, were not affected, she tells him that Madeleine had a heart condition. That, combined with the ephedra and the séance, had killed her. She also tells him that Madeleine’s cancer had returned, but they are not sure whether Madeleine knew.

Gamache is at the bistro, looking over the books he took from Madeleine’s room and the Hadley house. Myrna is also there and tells him that the book from the house, with a red hand on the cover, is about magic. The other book, about Sarah Binks, which he had found in Madeleine’s room, she recognizes, but he does not understand her jumpy reaction to it.

Myrna tells Gamache about the near enemy. In her previous career as a psychologist, she saw examples of emotions that look like others but are hiding a different motive. The near enemy is a twisted emotion that looks like a nobler emotion. Attachment is the near enemy of love, pity of compassion, and indifference of equanimity. They discuss whether Monsieur Béliveau’s ability to work the day after Madeleine’s death indicates equanimity or indifference.

Beauvoir takes Hazel’s yearbook to the bistro and gives it to Gamache. He finds reference to a girl named Jeanne and wonders if, though the last name is different, it is the same woman. Gamache tells Beauvoir about the heart condition, which means that Madeleine’s killer must have known her well.

Jeanne Chauvet is sitting alone in the bistro, pretending that she does not mind everyone ignoring her. Gamache and Beauvoir ask to join her, and the three of them share an after-dinner liqueur. Jeanne tells them about when she first discovered she was psychic, and Gamache realizes how alone she must have always felt. Beauvoir reflects that he had called his mother after Jeanne had spoken to him, and that she was right, he had been born with a caul.

Jeanne came to Three Pines after getting a brochure in the mail, but she does not tell them about the message that had been written along the top. They show her Hazel’s yearbook, but she tells them she went to school elsewhere. Gamache asks her why, if the second séance felt wrong, she had gone ahead with it. She does not answer but thinks to herself that because it gave her the opportunity to hurt Madeleine, she never thought of saying no.

Clara is still working on her painting, but she is exhausted and out of ideas. Peter keeps sowing doubt and suggests throwing a dinner party, even though he knows that she should be working instead. When he suggests it, Clara thinks the same thing, but decides that Peter knows her well and agrees to the party.

Early that same morning, Gabri knocks on Gamache’s door to give him the newspaper. A new article accuses his daughter of sleeping with a prosecutor to get Gamache out of trouble. He thinks it is the Sûreté wanting him to resign, but Reine-Marie is not sure. He calls his daughter and then Brébeuf, who encourages him to hold a press conference. Gamache decides not to, but when Brébeuf offers to work with the press for him, he agrees.

After breakfast, Clara sees Gamache walking around the green and invites him to a dinner party that night. He asks her opinion of Madeleine and about their dinner party before the second séance. They wonder why the murderer waited until the second séance to kill Madeleine. Clara also tells him about the argument she overheard between Madeleine and Odile the night of the murder. From there, the conversation goes to Odile’s terrible poetry, and Clara equates her own painting with it. Gamache, who has seen her work, reassures her. They see Ruth and her ducklings, one of which seems unhealthy and underdeveloped. Clara invites her to dinner, and Gamache asks her to invite Jeanne, too. Clara reluctantly agrees.

Lacoste is waiting for the fingerprint report and thinking over her interview with Madeleine’s ex-husband. He admits that they divorced because she had been too perfect; he compares it to “living too close to the sun” (220). He also admits that he was not surprised to hear about her murder because she hurt people without realizing it.

Gamache, Beauvoir, Lemieux, and Nichol meet at the incident room. The question of why Madeleine was killed at the second séance is raised again. Nichol and Lemieux argue when Nichol asks how the two séances are different. However, Gamache approves of her question, and Lemieux gets angry. They make a list of differences, including participants and the degree of preparation. They also examine a photo of Hazel, Madeleine, and Sophie, and realize that Sophie was overweight when she was younger. Lacoste calls to tell Gamache that she got the fingerprint report and knows who broke into the crime scene.

The team gets a warrant to search Hazel and Sophie’s house. Beauvoir searches their medicine cabinet but doesn’t find ephedra. Another officer finds a bottle of ephedra in Sophie’s room, but she claims it isn’t hers.

Gamache goes to Monsieur Béliveau’s house to confront him about breaking into the crime scene. He admits that he had gone there so that the house could kill him as it had killed Madeleine. He had his back to the door but says he heard the evil arrive. It flew around his head and he fought it off and ran out of the house. Gamache tells him that it had been a baby robin that had flown around his head, and he had killed it.

Gamache’s team again meets at the incident room to discuss their various findings. Beauvoir reports finding the ephedra, but when Lemieux asks a question, Nichol attacks him. Gamache calls her outside to tell her that she has gone too far and sends her to Queens University to find out more about Sophie. Back inside, Lacoste reports on Madeleine and Hazel’s high school,] and gives Gamache the yearbooks and student reports she collected. Gamache realizes that Sophie is a strong suspect.

When Gamache is alone with Beauvoir, he tells the other man how, after he exposed Arnot, the Sûreté had decided to keep it a secret and let the men kill themselves. Gamache had stopped them and brought them to be charged with their crimes. He was seen as a hero by many, but some saw his actions as betrayal. When he refuses to fill Beauvoir in about his current thoughts and plans, Beauvoir loses his temper. Gamache apologizes, tells Beauvoir that he is like a son, and then tells him everything.