How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (12 page)

Constance, Marguerite, and Josephine.

As far as she knew, Marguerite was the oldest, though Josephine was the first to die, five years ago. Cancer.

The sisters had been friendly, but private. Never having anyone in, but always buying boxes of oranges and grapefruit and Christmas chocolate from the children when they’d canvassed to raise money, and stopping to chat on warm summer days as they gardened.

They were cordial without being intrusive. And without allowing intrusion.

The perfect neighbors
, the woman had said.

She lived next door and had once had a lemonade with Marguerite. They’d sat together on the porch and watched as Constance washed the car. They’d called encouragement and jokingly pointed out areas she’d missed.

Gamache could see them. Could taste the tart lemonade and smell the cold water from the hose as it hit the hot pavement. He wondered how this elderly neighbor could not have known she was sitting with one of the Ouellet Quints.

But he knew the answer to that.

The Quints only existed in sepia photographs and newsreels. They lived in perfect little castles and wore impossibly frilly dresses. And came in a cluster of five.

Not three. Not one.

Five girls, forever children.

The Ouellet Quints weren’t real. They didn’t age, they didn’t die. And they sure didn’t sip lemonade in Pointe-Saint-Charles.

That’s why no one recognized them.

It helped, too, that they didn’t want to be recognized. As Ruth said, not everyone seeks attention.

“It’s the truth, alas,” Ruth had said.

Alas, thought Chief Inspector Gamache. He left the kitchen and began his own search.

*   *   *

Clara Morrow placed a bowl of fresh water on the floor but Henri was too excited to notice. He ran around the home, sniffing. Clara watched, her heart both swelling and breaking. It hadn’t been all that long ago that she’d had to put her golden retriever, Lucy, down. Myrna and Gabri had gone with them, and yet Clara felt she’d been alone. Peter wasn’t there.

She’d debated calling to tell him about Lucy, but Clara knew that was just an excuse to make contact.

The deal was, they’d wait a year, and it hadn’t been six months since he’d left.

Clara followed Henri into her studio, where he found an old banana peel. Taking it from him, she paused in front of her latest work, barely an outline so far.

This ghost on the canvas was her husband.

Some mornings, some evenings, she came in here and talked to him. Told him about her day. She even, sometimes, fixed dinner and brought a candle in and ate by candlelight, in front of this suggestion of Peter. She ate, and chatted with him, told him the events of her day. The little events only a good friend would care about. And the huge events. Like the murder of Constance Ouellet.

Clara painted and talked to the portrait. Adding a stroke here, a dab there. A husband of her own creation. Who listened. Who cared.

Henri was still sniffing and snorting around the studio. Having found one banana peel, there was reason to hope there’d be more. Pausing in her painting for a moment, Clara realized he wasn’t looking for a banana peel. Henri was looking for Armand.

Clara reached into her pocket for one of the treats Armand had left, then she bent down and called the dog over. Henri stopped his scurrying and looked at her, his satellite ears turning toward her voice, having picked up his favorite channel. The treat channel.

He approached, sat, and gently took the bone-shaped cookie.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, resting her forehead against his. “He’ll be back.”

Then Clara returned to the portrait.

“I asked Constance to sit for me,” she said to the wet paint. “But she refused. I’m not really sure why I asked. You’re right, I am the best artist in Canada, perhaps the world, so she should’ve been pleased.”

Might as well exaggerate—this Peter couldn’t roll his eyes.

Clara leaned away from the canvas and put the brush in her mouth, smearing raw umber paint on her cheek.

“I stayed over at Myrna’s last night.” She described for Peter how she’d pulled the warm duvet around her, rested the old
Life
magazine on her knees, and studied the cover. As she’d looked at it, the image of the girls moved from endearing, to uncanny, to vaguely unsettling.

“They were all the same, Peter. In expression, in mood. Not just similar, but exactly the same.”

Clara Morrow, the artist, the portraitist, had searched the faces for any hint of individuality. And found none. Then she’d sat back in bed and remembered the elderly woman she’d met. Clara didn’t ask many people to sit for a portrait. It demanded too much of her to be done on a whim. But, apparently on a whim, she’d popped the question to Constance. And been firmly rebuffed.

She hadn’t really exaggerated to Peter. Clara Morrow had become surprisingly famous for her portraits. At least, it surprised her. And it had sure surprised her artist husband.

She remembered what John Singer Sargent had said.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

Clara had lost her husband. Not because she’d painted him, but because she’d outpainted him. Sometimes, on dark winter nights, she wished she’d stuck to gigantic feet and warrior uteruses.

“But my paintings didn’t send you from our home, did they?” she asked the canvas. “It was your own demons. They finally caught up with you.”

She considered him closely.

“How much that must have hurt,” she said quietly. “Where are you now, Peter? Have you stopped running? Have you faced whatever ate your happiness, your creativity, your good sense? Your love?”

It had eaten his love, but not Clara’s.

Henri settled on the worn piece of carpet at Clara’s feet. She picked up her brush and approached the canvas.

“He’ll be back,” she whispered, perhaps to Henri.

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Gamache opened drawers and closets and cupboards, examining the contents of Constance Ouellet’s home. In the front hall closet he found a coat, a small collection of hats, and a pair of gloves.

No hoarding here.

He looked at the bookshelves and mantelpiece. He got on his hands and knees and looked under furniture. From what the Montréal police could tell, Constance hadn’t been robbed. Her purse was still there, money and all. Her car sat on the road. There were no blank spots on the walls where a painting might have once hung, or gaps in the curio cabinet where a surprisingly valuable knickknack might have sat.

Nothing was taken.

But still he looked.

He knew he was going over territory the Montréal police had already covered, but he was looking for something different. Their initial search was for clues to the killer. A bloody glove, an extra key, a threatening note. A fingerprint, a footprint. Signs of theft.

He was looking for clues to her life.

“Nothing, Chief,” said Lacoste, wiping her hands of the dust from the basement. “They didn’t seem a sentimental lot. No baby clothes, no old toys, no sleds or snowshoes.”

“Snowshoes?” asked Gamache, amused.

“My parents’ basement is full of that sort of stuff,” Lacoste admitted. “And when they die, mine will be.”

“You won’t get rid of it?”

“Couldn’t. You?”

“Madame Gamache and I kept a few things from our parents. As you know, she has three hundred siblings so there was no question of it all coming to us.”

Isabelle Lacoste laughed. Every time the Chief described Madame Gamache’s family, the number of siblings grew. She supposed for an only child like the Chief, it must have been overwhelming to suddenly find himself in a large family.

“What was downstairs?” he asked.

“A cedar chest with summer clothing, the outdoor furniture brought in for the winter. Mostly that cheap plastic stuff. Garden hoses and tools. Nothing personal.”

“Nothing from their childhood?”

“Nothing at all.”

They both knew that, even for people who were rigorously unsentimental, that was unusual. But for the Quints? Whole industries had been built around them. Souvenirs, books, dolls, puzzles. He was fairly sure if he looked hard enough in his own home he’d find something from the Quints. A spoon his mother collected. A postcard from Reine-Marie’s family with the girls’ smiling faces.

At a time when the Québécois were just beginning to turn from the Church, the Quints had become the new religion. A fantastic blend of miracle and entertainment. Unlike the censorious Catholic Church, the Quints were fun. Unlike the Church, whose most powerful symbol was of sacrifice and death, the lingering image of the Ouellet Quints was of happiness. Five smiling little girls, vibrant and alive. The world fell to its knees before them. It seemed the only ones not enamored of the Quints were the Quints themselves.

Gamache and Lacoste walked down the hall, each one taking a bedroom. They met up a few minutes later and compared notes.

“Nothing,” said Lacoste. “Clean. Tidy. No clothing and no personal effects.”

“And no photographs.”

She shook her head.

Gamache exhaled deeply. Had their lives really been so antiseptic? And yet, the home didn’t feel cold. It felt like a warm and inviting place. There were personal possessions, but no private ones.

They walked into Constance’s bedroom. The bloodstained carpet was still there. The suitcase sat on the bed. The murder weapon had been taken away, but there was police tape indicating where it had been dropped.

Gamache walked over to the small suitcase and lifted items out, putting them neatly on the bed. Sweaters, underwear, thick stockings, a skirt and comfortable slacks. Long underwear and flannel nightgown. All the things you’d pack for Christmas in a cold country.

Packed between warm shirts he found three gifts, covered in candy cane wrapping paper. He squeezed and the paper crinkled. Whatever was inside was soft.

Clothing, he knew, having received his share of socks and ties and scarves from his children. He looked at the tags.

One for Clara, one for Olivier, and one for Gabri.

He handed them to Lacoste. “Can you unwrap these, please?”

While she did he felt around the suitcase. One of the sweaters didn’t give as much as it should. Gamache picked it up and unrolled the wool.

“A scarf for Clara,” said Lacoste, “and mittens for Olivier and Gabri.”

She wrapped them up again.

“Look at this,” said Gamache. He held up what he’d found in the center of the sweater. It was a photograph.

“That wasn’t listed in the search by the Montréal cops,” said Lacoste.

“Easy to miss,” said Gamache. And he could imagine their thinking. It was late, it was cold, they were hungry, and this would soon not even be their case.

They hadn’t been so much incompetent as less than thorough. And the small black and white photo was almost hidden in the thick wool sweater.

He took it over to the window, and he and Lacoste examined it.

Four women, in their thirties Gamache guessed, smiled at them. Their arms were around each other’s waists, and they looked directly at the camera. Gamache found himself smiling back, and noticed Lacoste was as well. The girls’ smiles weren’t big, but they were genuine and infectious.

Here were four happy people.

But while their expressions were identical, everything else about them was different. Their clothes, their hair, their shoes, their style. Even their bodies were different. Two were plump, one skinny, one average.

“What do you think?” he asked Lacoste.

“It’s obviously four of the sisters, but it looks like they’ve done all they can to make sure they’re not alike.”

Gamache nodded. That was his impression as well.

He looked at the back of the picture. There was nothing there.

“Why only four?” Lacoste asked. “What happened to the other one?”

“I think one died quite young,” he said.

“Shouldn’t be hard to find out,” said Lacoste.

“Right. Sounds like a job for me, then,” said Gamache. “You can look after the hard stuff.”

Gamache put the photograph in his pocket and they spent the next few minutes searching Constance’s room.

A few books were stacked on the bedside table. He went back to the suitcase and found the book she was reading. It was
Ru
by Kim Thúy.

He opened it to the bookmark and deliberately turned the page. He read the first sentence. Words Constance Ouellet would never get to.

As a man who loved books, a bookmark placed by the recently dead always left him sad. He had two books like that in his possession. They were in the bookcase in his study. They’d been found by his grandmother, on the bedside table of his parents’ room, after they’d been killed in a car accident when Armand was a child.

Every now and then he pulled the books out and touched the bookmarks, but hadn’t yet found the strength to pick up where they left off. To read the rest of the story.

Now he lowered Constance’s book and looked out the window into the small backyard. He suspected that, beneath the snow, there was a small vegetable garden. And in the summer the three sisters would sit on the cheap plastic chairs in the shade of the large maple and sip iced tea. And read. Or talk. Or just be quiet.

He wondered if they ever talked about their days as the Ouellet Quints. Did they reminisce? He doubted it.

The home felt like a sanctuary, and that was what they were hiding from.

Then he turned back to look at the stain on the carpet, and the police tape. And the book in his hand.

Soon he’d know the full story.

“So, I can understand why the Ouellet sisters might not want everyone to know they were the Quints,” said Lacoste, when they were ready to leave. “But why not have personal photographs and cards and letters in the privacy of their own home? Does that strike you as strange?”

Gamache stepped off the porch. “I think we’ll find that very little about their life could be considered normal.”

They walked slowly down the snow-packed path, squinting against the brilliant sun bouncing off the snow.

“Something else was missing,” the Chief said. “Did you notice?”