Page 122 of The Grey Wolf
Comparing it to the one he’d dug out of the recycling bin, he saw no difference. Same emblem. Same writing. Same alcohol content.
Returning inside, he asked the manager if she could see a difference. It took her all of ten seconds.
“One has a smallEdown here.” She pointed to the bottle he’d just bought. The letter was tiny. “The other doesn’t.”
“What does theEmean?”
“Export. The one we sell is for export. The other”—she handed him back the empty bottle—“is not. It must’ve been bought at the source, in France, and brought back in their luggage. Chief Inspector?”
He looked like he’d been flash frozen. “Merci, merci infiniment.”
She watched as he hurried from the SAQ, clutching both bottles as though he’d just quit AA.
CHAPTER28
Reine-Marie was sitting in the bistro when Armand walked in.
“So much for ‘I’ll be right back.’”
“Sorry. But I did send your two children over to relieve you. Forgiven?”
She looked at him and saw the gleam in his eyes. “Something’s happened. Something good.”
He nodded but could not yet tell her that the Abbot had not been in Rome, but in France. At the monastery of Grande Chartreuse. Where the liqueur was distilled. Where the bottle was from.
Why choose to meet at that particular monastery? It was Carthusian, not Dominican. But that meant anyone searching for the monks would not think to look in the remote French monastery, hidden in the mountains.
But the real question now was whether Sébastien and the American monk were still there.
Did Dom Philippe want him to go to Grande Chartreuse? It seemed so. But time was too short, and there was too much to do here, and it was too far to go. And he might be wrong. And even if he was right, he might’ve been too slow off the mark, and Sébastien and the American might have already left Grande Chartreuse.
But he had no choice. He had to try.
Once back in Three Pines, the bottles beside him on the passenger’sseat, he’d sent a message to Isabelle Lacoste telling her if neither monk was in the Curia, she needed to get to Grande Chartreuse.
Gamache then pondered his next move. The problem was, Lacoste did not have authority in France. If the monks were there and refused to cooperate, he’d need someone who did.
He looked at his watch, then placed a call. “Claude? Did I wake you?”
“Not quite. Is everything all right?”
Claude Dussault was the former head of the Paris police. He’d retired as Prefect and was now living with his wife in a village in the south of France.
“Do you know the monastery of Grande Chartreuse?”
“Now, of all the things I thought you might call about in the middle of the night, that was not one. Yes, I know it. Well, I know of it. Never been.”
“Would you like to go?”
“Not really. I’m afraid to ask, but would you like me to go?”
“Maybe. I need to find two monks who might be hiding there.”
“There are probably quite a few monks hiding there. I can’t say I blame them. And who are they hiding from? You?”
“I can’t tell you more except to say, as far as I know, neither has done anything wrong. I need to interview them. One’s a Gilbertine.”
Armand could see Reine-Marie in the bistro chatting with Clara and Myrna. Gabri had joined them.
