What he finds rips apart the Surete and tests loyalties. Gamache, with his noticing and listening skills, first notices her then listens and conducts his own investigation. One Cree woman whose son is missing goes to Montreal and sits outside what she thinks is the National Assembly, but it really a hotel. The Surete closed ranks and there was no one for the natives to complain to. Then Arnot put agents in place to first stir up trouble, and then to kill, and some of the young native men began to disappear. Things came to a head when violence on the native reserved were allowed to go unchecked as Arnot felt it was an internal issue, best handled by the natives.

Gamache took in the oddballs on his team, seeing something worthy in them, while Arnot took the best and the brightest, but was a bully and demanded conformity.

Beauvoir relates how Arnot and Gamache began their careers at the same time, both rising stars. Then Lacoste demands Beauvoir tell her about the Arnot case which is the ominous sword hanging over Gamache’s head. As Gamache explores the basement he’s discovered by Lemieux, who is holding a gun, which Gamache thinks correctly is no accident. Lacoste can’t wait to escape and takes the first excuse to leave, while Lemieux takes a call from Brebeuf. Gamache goes off to explore on his own, leaving Lacoste and Lemiux alone.

Gamache asks them what’s different about the house. Gamache, Lacoste and Lemieux go back to the Old Hadley House. It’s also clear there’s another newspaper article about Gamache but he refuses to discuss it or show that it might bother him.īeauvoir and Nichol go to re-interview Hazel, who is apprehensive when she sees them and focused on Sophie. Hazel is busy waiting on Sophie, who has injured her foot.Īs the team reviews the latest evidence, it comes out that Madeleine was suffering from breast cancer and that’s the reason she left her husband and moved in with Hazel. And the singular.” What a profound description of grief. Hazel plans Madeleine’s funeral and thinks “Everything had changed. and you were too.” The meaning of this becomes clear later. Beauvoir encounters Gamache and Chauvet sitting together, and is angry as he thinks she’s a charlatan. In the second half of the book, things begin to amp up, and the damaging newspaper articles about Gamache begin to get worse.

Louise penny the cruellest month