How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (23 page)

“Did I understand correctly? You used to be a lumberjack?” Thérèse asked.

Gilles became guarded. “Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said the burly man. “Personal reasons.”

Thérèse continued to stare at him, with a look that had dragged uncomfortable truths from hardened Sûreté officers. But Gilles held firm.

She turned to Gamache, who remained mute. While he knew those reasons, he wouldn’t break Gilles’s confidence. The two large men held eyes for a moment and Gilles nodded a slight thanks.

“Let me ask you this, then,” said Superintendent Brunel, taking another tack. “What’s the tallest tree up there?”

“Up where?”

“On the ridge above the village,” said Jérôme.

Gilles considered the question. “Probably a white pine. They can get to ninety feet or more. About eight stories high.”

“Can they be climbed?” Thérèse asked.

Gilles stared at her as though she’d suggested something disgusting. “Why these questions?”

“Just curious.”

“Don’t treat me like a fool, madame. You’re more than just curious.” He looked from the Brunels to Gamache.

“We’d never ask you to cut down a tree, or even hurt one,” said the Chief. “We just want to know if the tallest trees up there can be climbed.”

“Not by me they can’t,” Gilles snapped.

Thérèse and Jérôme turned away from the former forester and looked at Gamache, perplexed by Gilles’s reaction. The Chief Inspector touched Gilles’s arm and drew him aside.

“I’m sorry, I should have spoken with you privately about this. We need to bring a satellite signal down into Three Pines—”

He held up his hand to ward off Gilles’s protests, yet again, that it couldn’t be done.

“—and we wondered if a dish could be attached to one of the tall trees, and a cable strung down to the village.”

Gilles opened his mouth to protest again, but closed it. His expression went from aggressive to thoughtful.

“You’re thinking someone could climb ninety feet up a pine tree, a frozen pine tree, hauling a satellite dish with him, then not only attach it up there, but adjust it to find a signal? You must love television, monsieur.”

Gamache laughed. “It’s not for television.” He lowered his voice. “It’s for the Internet. We need to get online, and we need to do it as … umm … quietly as possible.”

“Steal a signal?” asked Gilles. “Frankly, you’d be far from the first to try it.”

“Then it’s possible?”

Gilles sighed and gnawed on his knuckles, deep in thought. “You’re talking about turning a ninety-foot tree into a transmission tower, finding a signal, then laying cable back down.”

“You make it sound difficult,” said the Chief, with a smile.

But Gilles wasn’t smiling. “I’m sorry,
patron.
I’d do anything to help you, but what you’re describing I don’t think can be done. Let’s just say I could climb to the top of the tree with the dish and attach it—there’s too much wind. The dish would blow around up there.”

He looked at Gamache and saw the fact sink in. And it was a fact. There was no way around it.

“The signal would never hold,” Gilles said. “That’s why transmission towers are made of steel, and are stable. That’s absolutely key. It’s a good idea, in theory, but it just won’t work.”

Chief Inspector Gamache broke eye contact and looked at the floor for a moment, absorbing the blow. This wasn’t just a plan, it was the plan. There was no Plan B.

“Can you think of another way to connect to high-speed Internet?” he asked, and Gilles shook his head.

“Why don’t you just go into Cowansville or Saint-Rémi? They have high-speed.”

“We need to stay here,” said Gamache. “Where we can’t be traced.”

Gilles nodded, thinking. Gamache watched him, willing an answer to appear. Finally Gilles shook his head. “People have been trying to get it for years. Legal or bootleg. It just can’t be done.
Désolé.
”

And that’s how Gamache felt, as he thanked Gilles and walked away.

Desolated.

“Well?” asked Thérèse.

“He says it can’t be done.”

“He just doesn’t want to do it,” said Superintendent Brunel. “We can find someone else.”

Gamache explained about the wind, and saw her slowly accept the truth. Gilles wasn’t being willful, he was being realistic. But Gamache saw something else. While Thérèse Brunel looked disappointed, her husband did not.

Gamache wandered into the kitchen where Clara and Gabri were preparing dinner.

“Smells good,” he said.

“Hungry?” Gabri asked, handing him a platter with pâté de campagne and crackers.

“I am, as a matter of fact,” said the Chief, as he spread a cracker. He could smell the yeasty scent of baking bread. It mingled with the rosemary chicken and he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “I have a favor to ask. I’ve transferred some old film onto a disk and I’d like to watch it, but Emilie’s home doesn’t have a DVD player.”

“You want to use mine?”

When he nodded she waved a piece of cutlery like a wand in the direction of the living room. “It’s in the room off the living room.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I’ll set you up. Dinner won’t be for at least half an hour.”

Gamache followed her through to a small room with a sofa and armchair. An old box television sat on a table, with a DVD player beside it. He watched while Clara pressed some buttons.

“What’s on the DVD?” asked Gabri. He stood at the door holding the platter of crackers and pâté. “Let me guess. Your audition for
Canada’s Got Talent
?”

“It would be very short if it was,” said Gamache.

“What’s going on?” Ruth demanded, pushing through, holding Rosa in one arm and a vase of Scotch in the other.

“The Chief Inspector’s auditioning for
Canadian Idol,
” Gabri explained. “This’s his audition tape.”

“Well, not—” Gamache began, then gave up. Why bother?

“Did someone say you’re auditioning for
So You Think You Can Dance
?” asked Myrna, squeezing onto the small sofa between the Chief and Ruth.

Gamache looked plaintively over at Clara. Olivier had arrived and was standing next to his partner. The Chief sighed and pressed the play button.

A familiar black and white graphic swirled toward them on the small screen, accompanied by music and an authoritative voice.

“In a small Canadian hamlet a tiny miracle has occurred,” said the grim newsreel announcer. The first grainy images appeared, and everyone in Clara’s small television room leaned forward.

TWENTY-ONE

“Five miracles,” the melodramatic narration continued, as though announcing Armageddon. “Delivered one bitter winter night by this man, Dr. Joseph Bernard.”

There on the screen stood Dr. Bernard, in full surgical smock, a mask over his nose and mouth. He waved a little maniacally, but Gamache knew that was the effect of the old black and white newsreels, where people lurched and movements were either too static or too manic.

In front of the doctor lay the five babies, wrapped up tight.

“Five little girls, born to Isidore and Marie-Harriette Ouellet.”

The sonorous voice struggled with the Québécois names. The first time they’d been pronounced on the newsreels, but would soon be on everyone’s lips. This was the world’s introduction to—

“Five little princesses. The world’s first surviving quintuplets. Virginie, Hélène, Josephine, Marguerite, and Constance.”

And Constance,
noted Gamache with interest. She would go through life hanging off the end of that sentence.
And Constance.
An outlier.

The voice became suddenly excitable. “Here’s their father.”

The scene switched to Dr. Bernard standing in a modest farmhouse living room, in front of a woodstove. He was handing a large man one of his own daughters. Like a special favor. Not a gift, though. A loan.

Isidore, cleaned up for the camera and giving a gap-toothed smile, held his child awkwardly in his arms. Unused to infants but, Gamache could see, he was a natural.

*   *   *

Thérèse felt a familiar hand on her elbow, and was drawn, reluctantly, away from the television.

Jérôme led her to a corner of Clara’s living room, as far from the gathering as possible, though they could still hear the Voice of Doom in the background. Now the Voice was talking about rustics, and seemed to imply the girls had been born in a barn.

Thérèse looked at her husband inquiringly.

Jérôme positioned himself so that he could see the guests standing around the doorway, focused on the television. He switched his gaze to his wife.

“Tell me about Arnot.”

“Arnot?”

“Pierre Arnot. You knew him.” His voice was low. Urgent. His eyes flickered between the other guests and his wife.

Thérèse could not have been more surprised had her husband suddenly stripped. She stared at him, barely comprehending.

“Do you mean the Arnot case? But that was years ago.”

“Not just the case. I want to hear about Arnot himself. Everything you can tell me.”

Thérèse stared, dumbfounded. “But that’s absurd. Why in the world would you suddenly want to know about him?”

Jérôme’s eyes shot to the other guests, their backs safely turned, before returning to his wife. He lowered his voice still further.

“Can’t you guess?”

She felt her heart drop.
Arnot. Surely not.

In the background the bleak voice implied that the hand of God had assisted in the delivery. But the hand of God felt very far from this little room, with the cheery fire and aroma of fresh baking. And the rancid name hanging foul in the air.

Goddamned Pierre Arnot.

*   *   *

“Dr. Bernard is typically humble about his accomplishment,” said the newsreel announcer.

On the screen now, Dr. Bernard was out of his hospital whites and in a suit and narrow black tie. His gray hair was groomed, he was clean-shaven and wore glasses with heavy black frames.

He was standing in the Ouellet living room, alone, holding a cigarette.

“Of course, the mother did most of the work.” He spoke English with a soft Québécois accent and his voice was surprisingly high, especially compared to the cavern voice of the narrator. He looked at the camera and smiled at his little joke. The viewers were meant to believe only one thing. That Dr. Bernard was the hero of the moment. A man whose immense skill was only matched by his humility. And, thought Gamache with some admiration, he was perfectly cast for the role. Charming, whimsical even. Fatherly and confident.

“I was called out in the middle of a storm. Babies seem to prefer arriving in storms.” He smiled for the camera, inviting the viewers into his confidence. “This was a big one. A five-baby blizzard.”

Gamache glanced around and saw Gilles and Gabri and even Myrna smiling back. It was involuntary, almost impossible not to like this man.

But Ruth, at the far end of the sofa, was not smiling. Still, that was hardly telling.

“It must have been almost midnight,” Dr. Bernard continued. “I’d never met the family but it was an emergency, so I took my medical bag and got here as fast as I could.”

It was left vague as to how this man, who’d never been to the Ouellet farm, might have found it in the middle of the night, in the middle of a snowstorm, in the middle of nowhere. But perhaps that was part of the miracle.

“No one told me there were five babies.” He corrected himself, and his tense. “There would be five babies. But I set the father to boiling water and sterilizing equipment and finding clean linen. Fortunately Monsieur Ouellet is used to helping his farm animals calve and drop foals. He was remarkably helpful.”

The great man sharing credit, albeit by implying Madame Ouellet was no better than one of their sows. Gamache felt his admiration, if not his respect, grow. Whoever was behind this was brilliant. But, of course, Dr. Bernard was as much a pawn as the babies and the earnest, stunned Isidore Ouellet.

Dr. Bernard looked directly at the newsreel camera, and smiled.

*   *   *

“The Arnot case was in all the papers,” said Thérèse, lowering her own voice. “It was a sensation. You know it already. Everyone knows it.”

It was true. Pierre Arnot was as infamous as the Ouellet Quints were famous. He was their antithesis. Where the five girls brought delight, Pierre Arnot brought shame.

If they were an act of God, Pierre Arnot was the son of the morning. The fallen angel.

And still, he haunted them. And now he was back. And Thérèse Brunel would give almost anything not to resurrect that name, that case, that time.

“Oui, oui,”
said Jérôme. He rarely showed his impatience, and almost never with his wife. But he did now. “It all happened a decade or so ago. I want to hear it again, and this time what didn’t make the papers. What you kept from the public.”

“I didn’t keep anything from the public, Jérôme.” Now she was herself impatient. Her voice was clipped and cold. “I was an entry-level agent at the time. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Armand? He knew the man well.”

They both, instinctively, turned to the group gathered around the door to the television.

“Do you really think that would be wise?” asked Jérôme.

Thérèse turned back to her husband. “Perhaps not.” She stared at him for a moment, searching his eyes. “You need to tell me, Jérôme. Why are you interested in Pierre Arnot?”

Jérôme’s breathing was labored, as though he’d been carrying something too heavy over too great a distance. Finally he spoke.

“His name came up in my search.”

Thérèse Brunel felt herself suddenly light-headed. Goddamned Pierre Arnot.

“Are you kidding?” But she could see he was not. “Was that the name that tripped the alarms? If it was, you need to tell us.”

“What I need, Thérèse, is to hear more about Arnot. His background. Please. You might have been entry-level then, but you’re a superintendent now. I know you know.”

She gave him a hard, assessing stare.

“Pierre Arnot was the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté,” she began, giving in, as she knew she would. “The top position, the job Sylvain Francoeur now holds. I’d just joined the Sûreté when it all came to light. I only met him once.”