Page 222 of A Better Man

“That Saturday night she was killed, you said you met Vivienne on the bridge. How did you arrange that?”

“Like I said, I called and we set it up.”

“But there’re no records of your calling their home in the days before her death.”

“I called from another line.”

“Non. Every number is accounted for. Every call. There weren’t many, so it didn’t take long. There were no calls from an unidentified number.” Beauvoir put his tea down and leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “So how did you do it?”

“I called,” she repeated.

“Why’re you lying?” asked Beauvoir. “You know you didn’t do it.”

“What?” said Cameron, looking from Beauvoir to Cloutier. Then back to Beauvoir. “Didn’t do what?”

“Agent Cloutier didn’t kill Vivienne,” said Chief Inspector Beauvoir.

“So it was Tracey,” said Cameron. “We were right all along.” He turned to Gamache. “You told Homer that Tracey didn’t do it, but that was a lie. You just wanted him to drop Tracey.”

“Non,” said Gamache, holding the gaze of the man who’d saved his life. “I wasn’t lying. We were wrong all along. I was wrong. I’d warned you not to assume Tracey was guilty, and then I fell into the same trap. The evidence against Tracey was strong but circumstantial. He was vile, but he was also telling the truth. Those posts between himself and Pauline Vachon were about the clay. That night, after their fight, he left Vivienne bruised but alive. Carl Tracey did not murder his wife. She’d arranged to meet someone else on that bridge.”

His gaze was so prolonged, so considered, that Cameron shifted in his seat. His large body tensing. His damaged face alert. It felt like that moment just before the quarterback called out the last number. That moment, suspended in time, just before they passed the point of no return.

Gamache turned back to the others.

“Before you arrived, I tossed things out to Homer, trying to break his concentration. Anything that came into my head. And what did were the two nagging questions. Why didn’t Vivienne take Fred with her when she left home?”

Once again, on hearing his name, Fred raised his head. Not looking at the one who’d spoken. He was looking for someone who still hadn’t returned.

“The other was, why didn’t she leave earlier that day?” said Gamache. “When Tracey was at the art shop.”

“There’s only one answer,” said Beauvoir. “She didn’t leave in the morning and she didn’t take Fred with her to the bridge that night because she didn’t intend to go. Not yet, anyway. Her plan was always to leave with her lover.”

He stared at Cameron, who sat up straighter. The scars on his face turning white against his flushed face.

“But the call to her father,” Cameron said, his voice raised. “She told him she was leaving that night. Coming to him. Not to me. Him.”

“No,” said Beauvoir. “Vivienne never planned to go to her father.”

“She lied to him?” asked Cameron.

“No,” said Beauvoir.

“So what does that mean?” said Cameron. Then his face cleared. His eyes opened wider.

“Her father lied?” He looked from one to the other of the senior officers. “I don’t understand. Why would he lie?”

“Did you know?” Isabelle Lacoste asked Cloutier.

Lysette Cloutier was very still for what felt like a long time. Balancing on the knife edge.

“I suspected. Not right away, but there were things I knew.”

“Like what?”

“On her deathbed Kathy didn’t just ask, she begged me to protect Vivienne. Not guide her, not watch over her, but to protect her. This was before Vivienne had even met Carl Tracey. So who was I supposed to protect her from? It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder. I was so upset I didn’t think more about it, about the wording. But later—”

“Last summer. When Homer said Vivienne told him to break it off with you,” said Gamache.