How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (29 page)

Even from halfway back, she could see the kindness in his eyes. A quality some had mistaken, to their regret, for weakness.

But there wasn’t just kindness there. Armand Gamache had the personality of a sniper. He watched, and waited, and took careful aim. He almost never shot, metaphorically or literally, but when he did, he almost never missed.

But a decade ago, he’d missed. He’d hit Arnot. But not Francoeur.

And now Francoeur had assembled an army, and was planning something horrific. The question was, did Gamache have another shot in him? And would he hit the target this time?

“
Oui,
Thérèse,” he said now, and as he smiled his eyes crinkled into deep lines. “All shall be well.”

“Julian of Norwich,” she said, recognizing the phrase. All shall be well.

Through the frosted window she could see Gilles and Nichol carrying equipment up the slope and into the woods. Superintendent Brunel returned her gaze to her companion, noting the holster and gun on his belt. Armand Gamache would do what was necessary. But not before it was necessary.

“All shall be well,” she said, and went back to her reading.

Gamache had given her the documents he’d found on the Ouellet Quints while researching in the Bibliothèque nationale, with the comment that something was bothering him after watching the films the night before.

“Just one thing?” Thérèse had asked. She’d watched the DVD that morning on an old laptop Nichol had brought with her. “Those poor girls. I once envied them, you know. Every little girl wanted to be either a Quint or young Princess Elizabeth.”

And so they settled in, Superintendent Brunel with the file on the girls, and Chief Inspector Gamache with the book by Dr. Bernard. Thérèse put down the dossier an hour later.

“Well?” asked Gamache, taking off his reading glasses.

“There’s a lot in here to damn the parents,” she said.

“And a lot in here,” said Gamache, laying a large hand on the book. “Did anything strike you?”

“As a matter of fact it did. The house.”

“Go on.”

She could see by his face it was what bothered him too.

“The documents show Isidore Ouellet sold the family farm to the government shortly after the Quints were born, for a huge profit. Well beyond its worth.”

“In effect, a payment for the girls,” said the Chief.

“The Québec government would make them wards of the state, and the Ouellets would go on their merry way, unburdened by mouths they couldn’t feed.” Thérèse put the manila folder on the table with distaste. “They suggest the Ouellets were too poor and ignorant to care for the quintuplets and would have eventually had the girls taken away by the welfare officials anyway.”

Gamache nodded. The documents failed to mention it was also the depths of the Depression, when every family struggled. An economic crisis the Ouellets did not bring on themselves. And yet, again, there was the insinuation that they, uniquely, were to blame for their plight. And the benevolent government would save them and their daughters.

“They were doing the Ouellets a favor,” said Gamache. “Buying their burden. Madame Ouellet had given birth to their ticket out of the Depression. Dr. Bernard’s book says much the same thing. The language is couched, of course. No one wanted to be seen to criticize the parents, but the image of the ignorant Québécois farmer wasn’t a hard sell in those days.”

“Except they didn’t cash in at all,” said Thérèse. “Not according to the film. That
bénédiction paternelle
was when the girls were almost ten, and the Ouellets were still in their old home. They hadn’t sold it.”

Gamache tapped the manila folder with his glasses. “This is a lie. The official documents are fabricated.”

“Why?”

“To make the Ouellets look bad, in case they ever went public.”

Suddenly the letters by Isidore Ouellet took on another flavor. What had appeared wheedling, demanding, whining was in fact simply stating the truth.

The government had stolen their children. And the Ouellets wanted them back. Yes, they were poor, as Ouellet stated, but they could give the girls what they needed.

Gamache remembered the old farmhouse, and Isidore lacing up his daughters’ skates, and Marie-Harriette, haggard, handing them each a hat.

But not just any hat. She handed them their own hats. Each different.

And then, annoyed, she’d tossed one offscreen.

Gamache’s attention had been taken by that. The angry act had overshadowed the tenderness of a moment earlier, when she’d treated them as individuals. Had knitted them their own unique tuques. To protect them against the harsh world.

“Could you excuse me?”

He got up and gave her a very small bow, then put on his coat and headed into the winter day.

From her armchair, Thérèse Brunel watched him walk briskly along the road ringing the village green and over to Gabri’s B and B. He disappeared inside.

*   *   *

“Yes, Chief,” said Inspector Lacoste. “I have it here.”

Gamache could hear the keys click on her computer. He’d called her on her cell and caught her at home this Sunday afternoon.

“It’ll take me just a moment.” Her voice was muffled and he could see her pinning the phone between her shoulder and ear, while tapping away on her laptop. Trying to find the one obscure reference.

“No rush,” he said, and sat on the side of the bed. In what he considered “his” bedroom at the B and B. And it still was. He’d kept it, paid for it, and even had a few of his personal items around.

In case anyone came looking.

And whenever he needed to make a call to Montréal, or Paris, he came here. If he was right, they’d be traced. He wanted nothing traced back to the Longpré house.

“Got it,” said Lacoste, and her voice became clear again as she read. “In Marguerite’s room … let’s see … two pairs of gloves. Some heavy mitts. Four winter scarves. And yes, here it is. Two hats. One warm and store-bought and one looked hand-knitted.”

Gamache stood up. “The hand-knitted one, can you describe it?”

He held his breath. Lacoste wasn’t looking at the actual inventory, that was still in the little home. She was reading from the notes she’d taken.

“It was red,” she read, “and had pine trees around it. A tag was sewn into it with MM on it.”

“Marie-Marguerite. Anything else?”

“About the tuque? Sorry, Chief, that’s it.”

“And the other bedrooms? Did Constance and Josephine also have those handmade hats?”

There was another pause and more clicking.

“Yes. Josephine’s was green with snowflakes. The tag inside says MJ. The one in Constance’s room had reindeer—”

“And a tag with MC.”

“How’d you guess?”

Gamache gave a short laugh. Lacoste went on to describe two other tuques, found in the back of the front hall closet, with MV and MH sewn in.

All accounted for.

“Why’s this important, Chief?”

“It might not be, but their mother knitted those hats. It seems the only things they kept from their childhoods. The only souvenirs.”

Remembrances, thought Gamache, of their mother. Of being mothered. And being individuals.

“There’s something else,
patron.
”

“And what’s that?”

He was so focused on the find that for a split second he failed to take in her darkening tone. The warning pulse before the impact. He started to stand up, to meet it. To bring up his defenses.

But he was just too late.

“Inspector Beauvoir’s been sent on another raid. You caught me in because I was monitoring it. This one’s bad.”

Chief Inspector Gamache felt his cheeks both flush and drain. The atmosphere around him seemed to disappear, as though he was suddenly in a sensory deprivation tank. All his senses seemed to fail at once, and he felt like he was suspended. Then falling.

Within a moment he started breathing again, and then his senses rushed back. Acute. Everything was suddenly stark, loud, bright.

“Tell me,” he said.

He gathered himself, steadied himself. With the exception of his right hand. That he kept closed in a tight, and tightening, fist.

“It was last-minute. Martin Tessier himself is leading it. Only four agents, from what I can gather.”

“What’s the target?” His voice was clipped, commanding. Assessing.

“A meth lab on the South Shore. Must be Boucherville, judging by the route they took.”

There was a pause.

“Inspector?” demanded Gamache.

“Sorry, Chief. Seems to be Brossard. But they took the Jacques Cartier Bridge.”

“The bridge doesn’t matter,” he said, irritated. “Has the raid begun?”

“Just. They’re meeting resistance. There’s arms fire.”

Gamache pressed the telephone to his ear, as though that would bring him closer.

“An ambulance has just been called. Medics going in. Officer hit.”

Lacoste, used to making reports, tried to make this one simply factual. And she almost succeeded.

“Officer down,” she repeated the phrase. The one she herself had shouted, over and over, as she’d seen both Beauvoir and the Chief shot down. In that factory.

Officer down.

“Christ,” she heard down the telephone line. It sounded more like a plea than profanity.

Gamache saw movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around. Agent Nichol was standing in the open doorway to his room. The perpetual sneer froze when she saw his face.

The Chief looked at her for a moment, then reached out and slammed the door shut with such force the pictures shook on the walls.

“Chief?” called Lacoste down the line. “Are you all right? What was that?”

It sounded like a gunshot.

“The door,” he said, and turned his back on it. Through a crack in the gauzy curtains at the window he could see diffuse light, and hear slap shots and laughter. He turned his back on that. And stared at the wall. “What’s happening?”

“There seems a fair amount of chaos,” she reported. “I’m trying to make sense of the communications.”

Gamache held his tongue and waited. Feeling his rage rising. Feeling the almost irrepressible need to slam his fist, already made and waiting to be used, into the wall. To hit it over and over, until the wall bled.

Instead, he steadied himself.

The fools. To go on a raid unprepared.

The Chief knew what the goal was, the purpose. It was simple and sadistic. It was to unhinge Beauvoir and unbalance the Chief. To push both over the edge. And possibly worse.

Officer down.

He himself had shouted that, as he’d held Jean-Guy. Held a bandage to Beauvoir’s abdomen. To staunch the blood. Seeing the pain and terror in the young man’s eyes. Seeing the blood all over Beauvoir’s shirt. And all over his own hands.

And now Gamache could almost feel it again, in this peaceful, pleasant room. The warm, sticky blood on his hands.

“I’m sorry, Chief, all communications have gone down.”

Gamache stared at the wall for a moment. All communications down. What did that mean?

He tried not to go to the worst possible conclusion. That they were down because everyone who might communicate was down.

No. He forced his mind away from that. Stick with the simple facts. He knew how catastrophic a rampant imagination, driven by fear, could be.

He stepped away from that. Time enough to have it confirmed. And whatever had happened had happened by now.

It was over. And there was nothing he could do.

He closed his eyes and tried not to see Jean-Guy. Not the terrified, wounded man in his arms. Not the drained man of recent weeks and months. And certainly not the Jean-Guy Beauvoir sitting in the Gamaches’ living room. Drinking a beer and laughing.

That was the face Gamache tried hardest to keep away.

He opened his eyes.

“Keep monitoring, please,” he said. “I’ll be in the bistro or at the bookstore.”

“Chief?” asked Lacoste, her voice uncertain.

“It will be all right.” His voice was calm and composed.

“Oui.”
She didn’t sound completely convinced, but she did sound less shaky.

All shall be well,
he repeated as he walked with resolve across the village green.

But he wasn’t sure he believed it.

*   *   *

Myrna Landers sat on the sofa in her loft and stared at the TV screen.

Frozen there was a smiling little girl, her skates being laced by her father while her sisters, their skates already on, waited.

On her head she wore a tuque with reindeer.

Myrna was caught between tears and a smile.

She smiled. “She looks radiant, doesn’t she?”

Gamache and Thérèse Brunel nodded. She did.

Now that he’d figured out who was who, Gamache wanted to see this film again.

Behind little Constance, her sisters Marguerite and Josephine looked on, impatient to be outside. Each girl was now distinguishable by their tuques. The pines for Marguerite, and snowflakes for Josephine. Marie-Constance looked like she could sit there all day, being tended to by her father. Reindeer racing around her head.

Virginie and Hélène stood by the door. They also wore knitted hats, and slight scowls.

On Gamache’s request, Myrna again pressed rewind and they were back at the beginning. With Isidore holding out his arms, administering the
bénédiction paternelle.

But this time they knew which little penitent was Constance, having followed her back, back, back to the beginning. She was kneeling at the end of the row.

And Constance,
thought Gamache.

“Does this help us find whoever killed Constance?” Myrna asked.

“I’m not sure,” admitted the Chief. “But at least now we know which girl was which.”

“Myrna,” Thérèse began, “Armand told me that when you first found out who Constance was, you thought it was like having Hera as a client.”

Myrna glanced at Thérèse, then back at the screen. “Yes.”

“Hera,” Thérèse repeated. “One of the Greek goddesses.”

Myrna smiled. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Myrna paused the image and turned to her guest. “Why?” She thought about that. “When Constance told me she was one of the Ouellet Quints, she might as well have said she was a Greek goddess. A myth. I was making a joke, that’s all.”