“Bonne nuit,” he said to them, putting his large mittened hand on the leader’s shoulder as he passed.
“Really?” said Ruth. “You can make a bomb out of shit?” She seemed interested. “I don’t believe it.”
“Chemical fertilizer, not shit. And don’t believe it. I don’t care,” said Beauvoir. In fact, he preferred it that way. There were times he didn’t believe it himself. They were the best times. “Hag,” he mumbled.
“Numb nuts,” Ruth said, and poured him a cup of tea that looked like rancid water. She sat and rewrapped her torso with her arms. “So what was the other thing the crazy farmer said he’d done?”
Beauvoir still saw Gamache’s face, would always see his face. The look of disbelief and surprise. Not yet dismay, not yet alarm. That would come in a moment.
“What have you done?” Gamache had asked.
“I’ve rigged it up.”
“How?”
“I need you to be occupied, to give me time.” Again the voice was wheedling, whiny, as though asking Gamache’s permission, or understanding, or forgiveness.
Outside in the large common area of their division office, agents were bending over computer screens, tapping away, grabbing headphones. Giving and taking orders.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur stared at Beauvoir then turned and marched away. Beauvoir took a breath, unaware he’d been holding it, then quickly stepped back into the Chief’s office.
“Tell me,” said Gamache, his voice authoritative.
And the man did. Then he handed the phone back to Agent Paul Morin.
It was the last they ever heard from the man, though he might have been among the dead.
“I’m sorry,” Agent Morin repeated. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Are you hurt?” Gamache had asked.
“No.” He sounded terrified and trying not to show it.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find you.”
There was a pause. “Yes sir.”
“But you still haven’t answered my question,” said Ruth, impatiently. “Do you think I have all night? What had the farmer done, besides the shit bomb?”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir looked down at the white, plastic garden table, feeling its rough edges. No doubt the demented old poet had found it by the side of some road or in a Dumpster.
Some piece of trash no one else wanted. She’d brought it home with her.
He stared for a very long time at the table, in a daze. No one had been told this, it hadn’t been made public. And Beauvoir knew he shouldn’t be saying anything now.
But he had to tell someone and who better than someone who didn’t care? There’d be no sympathy, no pity, no real understanding. There’d be no awkwardness when they saw each other in the village, because while he’d bared his soul to her she wouldn’t care.
“The bomb was wired to the phone line,” he finally said, still staring at his hands and the expanse of white table. “It would go off if the line was cut.”
“Okay,” she said.
“And it would be cut if there was dead air. If they stopped talking for more than a few seconds.”
There was silence then. “So you all took turns talking,” said Ruth.
Beauvoir took a deep breath and sighed. There was something in the corner, by Ruth’s chair, something he couldn’t quite make out. A sweater she’d dropped or a dish towel.
“It didn’t work that way. He needed Gamache tied to Morin, so he couldn’t search for him.”
“What do you mean, ‘tied to Morin’?”
“There was voice recognition. It needed to be the two of them. Morin and the Chief.”
“Oh, come on,” laughed Ruth. “There’s no such thing. You’re making this up.”
Beauvoir was silent.
“Well, okay, maybe you’re not, but the farmer sure was. Are you telling me some backwoods bumpkin made a bomb, then a timer, then attached it to the phone line with, what did you call it? Voice recognition?”
“Would you risk it?” he growled, his eyes hard, daring her to go further. Hating her, as he knew he would, for seeing him so vulnerable. For not caring, for mocking. But he already hated her, what was a little more bile?
He pressed his lips together so hard he could feel his teeth cutting through.
In the office he watched his Chief as Gamache realized what this meant.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” the young voice said down the phone line.