How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (11 page)

Many of the villagers were lingering over coffee, settling into seats by the fires with their morning papers, which came in a day late from Montréal. Some sat at the small round tables, eating French toast or crêpes or bacon and eggs.

The sun was just coming up on what would be a brilliant day.

As he walked through the door, all eyes turned to him. He was used to that. They would, of course, know about Constance. They knew she was missing, and now they’d know she was dead. Murdered.

The eyes that met his, as he scanned the open room, were curious, some pained, some searching, some simply inquisitive, as though he carried a sack of answers slung over his shoulder.

As he hung up his parka, Gamache noticed a few smiles. The villagers had recognized his companion, he of the ears. A returning son. And Henri recognized them, and greeted them with licks and wags and inappropriate sniffs as they walked through the bistro.

“Over here.”

Gamache saw Clara standing by a group of armchairs and a sofa. He returned the wave and threaded his way between tables. Olivier joined him there, a tea towel slung over his shoulder and a damp cloth in his hand. He wiped the table as the Chief greeted Myrna, Clara, and Ruth.

“Do you mind if Henri stays, or would you rather I leave him in the B and B?” Gamache asked.

Olivier looked over at Rosa. The duck was sitting in an armchair by the fire, a copy of the Montréal
Gazette
beneath her and
La Presse
slung over the arm, waiting to be read.

“I think it’ll be fine,” said Olivier.

Ruth whacked the seat beside her on the sofa, in what could only be interpreted as an invitation. It was like receiving a personalized Molotov cocktail.

Gamache sat.

“So, where’s Beauvoir?”

The Chief had forgotten that, against all odds and nature, Jean-Guy and Ruth had struck up a friendship. Or, at least, an understanding.

“He’s on another assignment.”

Ruth glared at the Chief and he held her eyes, calmly.

“Finally saw through you, did he?”

Gamache smiled. “Must have.”

“And your daughter? Is he still in love with her, or did he make a balls-up of that too?”

Gamache continued to hold the cold, old eyes.

“I’m happy to see Rosa back,” he said at last. “She looks well.”

Ruth looked from Gamache to the duck, then back to the Chief. Then she did something he’d rarely seen before. She relented.

“Thank you,” she said.

Armand took a deep breath. The bistro smelled of fresh pine and wood smoke and a hint of candy cane. A wreath hung over the mantel and a tree stood in the corner, decorated with mismatched Christmas ornaments and candies.

He turned to Myrna. “How’re you this morning?”

“Pretty awful,” she said with a small smile. And indeed, she looked as though she hadn’t had much sleep.

Clara reached out and held her friend’s hand.

“Inspector Lacoste will get all the hard evidence this morning from the Montréal police,” he told them. “I’ll drive into the city and we’ll go over the interviews. One main question is whether the person who killed Constance knew who she really was.”

“You mean, was it a stranger?” asked Olivier. “Or someone who targeted Constance on purpose?”

“That’s always a question,” admitted Gamache.

“Do you think they meant to kill her?” asked Clara. “Or was it a mistake? A robbery that got out of control?”

“Was there
mens rea,
a guilty mind, or was it an accident?” said Gamache. “Those are questions we’ll be asking.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabri, who’d joined them, but been uncharacteristically quiet. “What did you mean, ‘who she really was’? Not ‘who she was,’ but ‘who she really was.’ What did you mean by that?”

Gabri looked from Gamache to Myrna, then back again.

“Who was she?”

The Chief Inspector sat forward, about to answer, then he looked over at Myrna, sitting quietly in her chair. He nodded. It was a secret Myrna had kept for decades. It was her secret to give up.

Myrna opened her mouth, but another voice, a querulous voice, spoke.

“She was Constance Ouellet, shithead.”

ELEVEN

“Constance Ouellet-Shithead?” asked Gabri.

Ruth and Rosa glared at him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” muttered the duck.

“She’s Constance Ouellet,” Ruth clarified, her voice glacial. “You’re the shithead.”

“You knew?” Myrna asked the old poet.

Ruth picked up Rosa, placing the duck on her lap and stroking her like a cat. Rosa stretched her neck, straining her beak upward toward Ruth, and making a nest of the old body.

“Not at first. I thought she was just some boring old fart. Like you.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabri, waving his large hand in front of him as though trying to clear away the confusion. “Constance Pineault was Constance Ouellet?”

He turned to Olivier.

“Did you know?” But it was clear his partner was equally amazed.

Gabri looked around the gathering and finally came to rest on Gamache.

“Are we talking about the same thing? The Ouellet Quints?”

“C’est ça,”
said the Chief.

“The quintuplets?” Gabri insisted, still unable to fully grasp it.

“That’s it,” Gamache assured him. But it only seemed to increase Gabri’s bafflement.

“I thought they were dead,” he said.

“Why do people keep saying that?” Myrna asked.

“Well, it all seems so long ago. Once upon a time.”

They sat in silence. Gabri had nailed it. Exactly what most of them had been thinking. Not so much amazement that one of the Ouellet Quints was dead, but that any were still alive. And that one had walked among them.

The Quints were legend in Québec. In Canada. Worldwide. They were a phenomenon. Freaks, almost. Five little girls, identical. Born in the depths of the Depression. Conceived without fertility drugs. In vivo, not in vitro. The only known natural quintuplets to survive. And they had survived, for seventy-seven years. Until yesterday.

“Constance was the only one left,” said Myrna. “Her sister, Marguerite, died in October. A stroke.”

“Did Constance marry?” asked Olivier. “Is that where Pineault came from?”

“No, none of the Quints married,” said Myrna. “They went by their mother’s maiden name, Pineault.”

“Why?” asked Gabri.

“Why do you think, numb nuts?” asked Ruth. “Not everyone craves attention, you know.”

“So how did you know who she was?” Gabri demanded.

That shut Ruth up, much to everyone’s amazement. They’d expected a brusque retort, not silence.

“She told me,” Ruth finally said. “We didn’t talk about it, though.”

“Oh, come on,” said Myrna. “She told you she was a Ouellet Quint and you didn’t ask a single question?”

“I don’t care if you believe me,” said Ruth. “It’s the truth, alas.”

“Truth? You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the alas,” said Gabri.

Ruth ignored him and focused on Gamache, who’d been watching her closely.

“Was she killed because she was a Ouellet Quint?” Ruth asked him.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I can’t see why,” Ruth admitted. “And yet…”

And yet, thought Gamache, as he rose. And yet. Why else would she be killed?

He looked at his watch. Almost nine. Time to get going. He excused himself to make a phone call from the bar, remembering in time that his cell phone didn’t work in Three Pines, and neither did email. He almost expected to see messages fluttering back and forth in the sky above the village, unable to descend. Waiting for him to head up the hill out of Three Pines, and then dive-bombing him.

But as long as he was here, none could reach him. Armand Gamache suspected that partly explained his good night’s sleep. And he suspected it also explained Constance Ouellet’s growing ease in the village.

She was safe there. Nothing could reach her. It was only in leaving that she’d been killed.

Or …

As the phone rang his thoughts sped along.

Or …

She hadn’t been killed when she left, he realized. Constance Ouellet had been murdered when she’d tried to return to Three Pines.

“Bonjour, patron.”
Inspector Lacoste’s bright voice came down the landline.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.

“The caller ID said ‘Bistro.’ It’s our code word for you.”

He paused for a moment, wondering if that was true, then she laughed.

“You’re still in Three Pines?”

“Yes, just leaving. What do you have?”

“We got the autopsy and forensics from the Montréal police, and I’m reading through the statements from the neighbors. It’s all been sent to you.”

Among the messages hovering overhead, thought Gamache.

“Anything I should know?”

“Not so far. It seems the neighbors didn’t know who she was.”

“Do they now?”

“We haven’t told them. Want to keep it quiet for as long as possible. There’ll be a media storm when it comes out that the last Quint hasn’t just died, but been murdered.”

“I’d like to see the scene again. Can you meet me at the Ouellet home in an hour and a half?”

“D’accord,”
said Lacoste.

Gamache looked up, into the mirror behind the bar. In it he saw himself reflected, and behind him the bistro, with its Christmas decorations, and the window into the snowy village. The sun was now up, cresting the tree line, and the sky was the palest of winter blues. Most of the patrons of the bistro had gone back to their conversations, excited now, animated by the news that they’d met, in person, a Ouellet Quint. Gamache could sense the ebb and flow of their emotions. Excitement at the discovery. Then remembering she was dead. Then back to the Quint phenomenon. Then the murder. It was like atoms racing between poles. Unable to rest in any one place.

Around the fireplace, the friends were commiserating with Myrna. And yet— He’d had the impression that as he’d looked into the reflection, there’d been a movement. Someone had been staring at him and had quickly dropped their eyes.

But one set of eyes remained on him. Staring, unyielding.

Henri.

The shepherd sat perfectly contained, oblivious to the hubbub around him. He stared at Gamache. Transfixed. Waiting. He would wait forever, secure in the absolute certainty that Gamache would not forget him.

Gamache held the shepherd’s eyes and smiled into the mirror. Henri’s tail twitched, but the rest of his body remained stone still.

“What now,
patron
?” asked Olivier, coming around the bar as Gamache replaced the phone.

“Now I head back to Montréal. Work to do, I’m afraid.”

Olivier picked up the phone. “And I have work to do as well. Good luck, Chief Inspector.”

“Good luck to you,
mon vieux.
”

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Gamache met Isabelle Lacoste just outside Constance’s home and they went in together.

“Where’s Henri?” she asked, turning on the lights in the house. It was a sunny day, but the home felt dull, as though the color was draining from it.

“I left him in Three Pines with Clara. They both seemed pretty happy about that.”

He’d assured Henri he’d be back, and the shepherd had believed him.

Gamache and Lacoste sat at the kitchen table and went over the interviews and forensics. The Montréal police had been thorough, taking statements and samples and fingerprints.

“Only her prints, I see,” said Gamache, not looking up as he read the report. “No sign of forced entry and the door was unlocked when we arrived.”

“That might not mean anything,” said Lacoste. “When you get to the statements by the neighbors, you’ll see that most don’t lock their doors during the day, when they’re at home. It’s an old, established neighborhood. No crime. Families have lived here for years. Generations in some cases.”

Gamache nodded but suspected Constance Ouellet had probably locked her doors. Her most valued possession seemed to be privacy, and she wouldn’t have wanted any well-meaning neighbor stealing it.

“Coroner confirms she was killed before midnight,” he read. “She’d been dead a day and a half by the time we found her.”

“That also explains why no one saw anything,” said Lacoste. “It was dark and cold and everyone was inside asleep or watching television or wrapping gifts. And then it snowed all day and covered any tracks there might’ve been.”

“How did he get in?” Gamache asked, looking up and meeting Lacoste’s eyes. Around them the dated kitchen seemed to be waiting for one of them to make a pot of tea, or eat the biscuits in the tin. It was a hospitable kitchen.

“Well, the door was unlocked when we arrived, so either she left it unlocked and he let himself in, or she had it locked, he rang, and she let him in.”

“Then he killed her and left,” said Gamache, “leaving the door unlocked behind him.”

Lacoste nodded and watched as Gamache sat back and shook his head.

“Constance Ouellet wouldn’t have let him in. Myrna said she was almost pathologically private, and this confirms it.” He tapped the forensics report. “When was the last time you saw a house with only one set of prints? No one came into this home. At least, no one was invited in.”

“Then the door must’ve been unlocked and he let himself in.”

“But an unlocked door was also against her nature,” said the Chief. “And let’s say she’d gotten into the habit of keeping her door unlocked, like the rest of the neighborhood. It was late at night and she was getting ready for bed. She’d have locked the door by then,
non
?”

Lacoste nodded. Constance either let her killer in, or he let himself in.

Neither possibility seemed likely, but one of them was the truth.

Gamache read the rest of the reports while Inspector Lacoste did her own detailed search of the house, starting in the basement. He could hear her down there, moving things about. Beyond that, though, there was just the clunk, clunk as the clock above the sink noted the passing moments.

Finally he lowered the reports and took off his glasses.

The neighbors had seen nothing. The oldest of them, who’d lived on the street all her life, remembered when the three sisters moved into the home, thirty-five years ago.