How.
They walked past the corner of the lodge and both instinctively looked at the white marble cube. Then a figure detached itself from the corner of the lodge. It was as though one of the logs had righted itself and decided to walk back into the forest. In the moonlight they watched the shadow make its way across the lawn, but instead of heading into the dark woods it turned toward the lake.
Bert Finney’s steps echoed on the wooden dock and then were silent. Armand Gamache told Reine-Marie about Finney, and his father.
“And he told the others?” she asked.
Beside her Armand nodded. She looked up at the stars.
“Have you spoken to Daniel again?”
“I’ll call him tomorrow. I wanted to give him time to calm down.”
“Him time?”
“Both of us time. But I’ll call.”
Before they drove back they stopped in at the library to say goodnight.
“And don’t let the Chief Inspector leave tomorrow without bringing a jar of Chef Véronique’s honey,” she instructed Beauvoir.
“Her honey?”
“She’s a bee-keeper too. Amazing woman.”
Beauvoir agreed.
As they drove back Reine-Marie remembered where she’d seen Chef Véronique before. It was most extraordinary and unexpected. She smiled and had opened her mouth to speak when he asked about the Canada Day festivities and soon she was describing the day the villagers had planned.
Once he’d dropped her off she realized she’d forgotten to tell him, but determined not to forget the following day.
When he got back to the Manoir Gamache found Agent Lacoste on the phone to her children and Jean Guy Beauvoir sipping espresso on the sofa surrounded by books. On bee-keeping.
Gamache wandered the shelves and before long he had an espresso, a cognac and a stack of books of his own.
“Did you know there’s only one queen bee per hive?” asked Beauvoir. A few minutes later he broke into the chief’s reading with another announcement. “Did you know a wasp or hornet or queen can sting over and over but a worker bee can only sting once? Only honey bees have poison sacs. Isn’t that amazing? When they sting it gets ripped out of them and stays in the victim. Kills the bee. They give up their lives for the queen and the hive. I wonder if they know they’ll die.”
“I wonder,” said Gamache, who didn’t really. He went back to his reading, as did Beauvoir.
“Did you know honey bees are the pollinators of the world?”
It was like living with a six-year-old.
Beauvoir lowered the book and looked at the chief, sitting on the sofa opposite reading poetry.
“Without honey bees we’d all starve. Isn’t that amazing?”
For a moment Beauvoir imagined moving to the Bellechasse and helping expand Véronique’s honey empire. Together they’d save the world. They’d be given the Légion d’honneur. Songs would be written about them.
Gamache lowered his book and stared out of the window. All he could see was his own reflection and that of Beauvoir. Two ghostly men reading on a summer evening.
“Bees form a ball and protect the queen if the hive is attacked. Isn’t that beautiful?”
“It is,” Gamache nodded and went back to his reading. Every now and then Beauvoir would hear a murmur from the chief.
“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed . . . and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of.”
Beauvoir looked over and saw the chief, his eyes closed and his head tilted back, but his lips moving, repeating a phrase.
“Up, up the long delirious burning blue,
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights . . .
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.”
“Where’s that from?” asked Beauvoir.
“A poem called ‘High Flight’ by a young Canadian aviator in the Second World War.”
“Really? He must’ve loved flying. Bees love flying. Can cover long distances for food, if they have to, but they stay close to the hive if they can.”
“He died,” said Gamache.
“Pardon?”
“Says here the poet was killed. Shot down. The poem was quoted by President Reagan after the Challenger disaster.” But he’d lost Beauvoir to the bees again.
After a while Gamache put down the slim leather book of poetry and picked up the next volume. Peterson’s field guide to North American birds.
They sat together for the next hour, the quiet punctuated by Beauvoir’s bee bulletins.
