Page 186 of The Grey Wolf
When he returned, he still carried the manuscript, but there was something else in his hands.
“Merci.” Gamache accepted the seat at the kitchen table and looked at the couple, whose only child had died within inches of this stranger now sitting in the heart of their home.
Beside him, Jean-Guy’s knee was bobbing up and down. Time, time was slipping away from them.
“Charles gave you something to keep,” said Gamache, without preamble. “His notebooks. He knew no one would come looking for them here since he’d made it known you hadn’t spoken in years.”
Monsieur and Madame Langlois did not react. They sat side by side, not saying a word. Vitally, what Armand did not hear was a denial.
Beauvoir’s knee slowed but didn’t stop completely.
“We need to see them.”
Charles’s parents looked at each other, then both got up and left the room. They returned less than a minute later with a canvas bag. On it was a yin-and-yang design and a leaping fish. The logo of Action Québec Bleu.
It wasn’t heavy. There were just two notebooks inside.
Beauvoir took the bag while Armand thanked them. There was a clear question in Madame Langlois’s expression.
“Oui,” said Gamache. “You’ve done the right thing.”
Isabelle Lacoste took what Brother Constantine was offering.
Two clippings, in French, from the Québec newspaperLe Soleil. They were dated two days apart. One described the murder of a postal worker in Chicoutimi. The other the murder of a retired teacher on Les Îles de la Madeleine.
There were no markings on the clippings. Just creases where they’d been folded for mailing.
“Nothing else?” she asked the monk, who shook his head.
“What are they?” asked Sébastien, straining to see.
“Just a moment.” She took a photo of them and sent it to Gamache and Beauvoir.
Gamache read Lacoste’s email and looked at the photo.
Any news?she wrote.
Found Langlois’s notebooks, he quickly replied.More soon.
Lacoste put away her phone. Then, holding up the clippings, she turned to Frère Sébastien. “Proof.”
“Of what?”
“That the threats were real. These two”—she waved the clippings—“were killed to warn Brother Robert. One of them’s his aunt.”
“And the other?”
“I’m guessing a stranger, chosen at random. To make sure Robert realized who he was dealing with, in case there was any doubt, and to let him know he was responsible for two deaths.”
“Responsible? How?”
“He met with Dom Philippe, despite their warnings not to tell anyone. But one thing I can’t figure out is how they knew he’d met the Abbot. Can you?”
She watched as Brother Sébastien thought, then shook his head. He held Lacoste’s eyes as she continued to stare at him.
Brother Constantine, sensing something had changed, gripped the manuscript tighter to his barrel chest.
Jean-Guy drove to a side street and parked. The immense Charles-J.-Des Baillets water-treatment plant was lit up in the dark and loomed a block away.
