How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (34 page)

It was difficult to read the tag, the printing was so small and the letters smudged.

He took off his glasses and handed the tuque back to Myrna. “What do you think it says?”

She examined it, squinting. “MA,” she finally said.

The Chief nodded, unconsciously fiddling with his glasses.

“MA,” he repeated, and looked out the window. His gaze was unfocused. Trying to see what wasn’t there.

An idea, a thought. A purpose.

Why had someone sewn MA into the tuque?

It was, he knew, the same as the tag they’d found in the other tuques in Constance’s home. Constance’s had had a pattern of reindeer, and MC on the tag. Marie-Constance.

Marguerite’s had MM inside. Marie-Marguerite.

Josephine’s tuque had MJ.

He looked down at the tuque in his hand. MA.

“Maybe it belonged to their mother,” said Myrna. “That must be it. She made one for each of the girls, and one for herself.”

“But it’s so small,” said the Chief.

“People were smaller back then,” said Myrna, and Gamache nodded.

It was true. Especially women. The Québécoise tended to be petite even today. He looked at the hat again. Would it fit a grown woman?

Maybe.

And it might make sense for Constance to keep this, the only memento of her mother. There wasn’t a single photograph of their parents in the Quints’ home. But they had something much more precious. Hats their mother had made.

One for each of them, and one for herself.

And what had she put inside? Not her initials. Of course not. She stopped being Marie-Harriette when her girls had been born, and became Mama. Ma.

Maybe this was the key to Constance after all. And maybe, in giving it to Myrna, Constance was signaling her willingness to finally let go. Of the past. Of the rancor.

Gamache wondered if Constance and her sisters ever knew that their parents hadn’t sold them to the state, but that the girls had, in effect, been expropriated.

Did Constance finally realize that her mother had loved her? Was that the albatross she’d been lugging around all her life? Not some terrible wrong, but the horror that came from realizing, too late, she hadn’t been wronged? That she’d been loved all along?

Who hurt you once, / so far beyond repair?

Maybe the answer, for the Quints and for Ruth, was simple.

They’d done it to themselves.

Ruth in writing the poem and taking on an unnecessary burden of guilt, and the Quints in believing a lie and not recognizing their parents’ love.

He looked at the tuque again, rotated it, examining the pattern. Then he lowered it.

“How could this be a key to her home?” he asked. “Does the angel pattern mean anything to you?”

Myrna looked out the window, at the village green and the skaters, and she shook her head.

“Maybe it means nothing,” said the Chief. “Why reindeer or pine trees or snowflakes? The patterns Madame Ouellet knitted into the other hats are just cheerful symbols of winter and Christmas.”

Myrna nodded, kneading the hat and watching the happy children on the frozen pond. “Constance told me she and her sisters loved hockey. They’d get up a team and play the other village kids. Apparently it was Brother André’s favorite sport.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Gamache.

“I think they might have all bought into the belief that Frère André was their guardian angel. Hence,” she held up the tuque, “the hat.”

Gamache nodded. There were plenty of references to Brother André in the archived papers as well. Both sides had invoked the saint’s potent memory.

“But why would she give me the hat?” Myrna asked. “So that she could tell me about Brother André? Was he the key to their home? I don’t get it.”

“Maybe she wanted to get it out of her house,” said Gamache, rising to his feet. “Maybe that was the key. Breaking loose from the legend.”

Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was no way to run an investigation. And time was running out. If this crime wasn’t solved by the time he and the Brunels and Nichol returned to the schoolhouse, then it would not be solved.

Not by him anyway.

“I need to see the film again,” said Gamache, making for the stairs up to Myrna’s loft.

*   *   *

“There,” Gamache pointed at the screen. “Do you see it?”

But once again he’d hit the pause button a moment too late.

He rewound and tried again. And again. Myrna sat on the sofa beside him. Over and over he played the same twenty seconds of the recording. The old film, in the old farmhouse.

The girls laughing and teasing each other. Constance sitting on the rough bench, her father at her feet, lacing the skates. The other girls at the door, teetering on their blades and already holding hockey sticks.

Then their mother enters the frame and hands out the hats. But there’s an extra hat, which she throws offscreen.

Over and over, Chief Inspector Gamache played it. The extra hat was only visible for an instant as it whirled out of the frame. Finally, he captured it, frozen in that split second between when it left Marie-Harriette’s hand and when it left the screen.

They leaned closer.

The tuque was light in color, that much they could see. But in a black and white film it was impossible to say what the color was exactly. But now they could see the pattern. It was fuzzy, blurry, but clear enough.

“Angels,” said Myrna. “It’s this one.” She looked down at the hat in her hand. “It was the mother’s.”

But Gamache was no longer looking at the frozen hat. He was looking at Marie-Harriette’s face. Why was she so upset?

“May I use your phone?”

Myrna brought it over and he placed his call.

“I checked the death certificates, Chief,” Inspector Lacoste reported in answer to his question. “They’re definitely all dead. Virginie, Hélène, Josephine, Marguerite, and now Constance. All the Ouellet Quints are gone.”

“Are you sure?”

It was rare for the Chief to question her findings, and it made her question herself.

“I know we thought maybe one was still alive,” said Lacoste. “But I’ve found death certificates and burial records for all of them. All interred in the same cemetery close to their home. We have proof.”

“There was proof Dr. Bernard delivered the babies,” Gamache reminded her. “Proof Isidore and Marie-Harriette sold them to Québec. Proof Virginie died in an accidental fall, when we now suspect that was almost certainly not the case.”

Inspector Lacoste took his point.

“They were extremely private,” she said slowly, getting her head around what he was saying. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“They weren’t just private, they were secretive. They were hiding something.” The Chief thought for a moment. “If they are all dead, is it possible there was more to their deaths than we know?”

“Like Virginie’s, you mean?” asked Lacoste, her own mind churning to catch up with his.

“If they lied about one death, they could lie about them all.”

“But why?”

“Why does anyone lie to us?” he asked.

“To cover up a crime,” she said.

“To cover up murder.”

“You think they were murdered?” she asked, not succeeding in keeping the astonishment out of her voice. “All of them?”

“We know Constance was. And we know Virginie died a violent death. What do we really know about that?” asked the Chief. “The official record says she died from a fall down the stairs. Corroborated by Hélène and Constance. But the doctor’s notes and the initial police reports had a different version.”

“
Oui.
Suicide.”

“But maybe even that was wrong.”

“You think Hélène or Constance killed her?”

“I think we’re getting closer to the truth.”

It felt to Gamache as though they’d finally broken into the Ouellet home. He and Lacoste were stumbling around in the dark, but soon whatever that wounded family was hiding would be revealed.

“I’ll go back over my notes,” said Lacoste, “and dig deeper into the old files, see if there was even a hint that those deaths were anything but natural.”

“Good. And I’ll check the parish records.”

It was where the priest kept records of births and deaths. The Chief knew he’d find, written in longhand, the record of the five births. He wondered how many deaths he’d find.

*   *   *

Chief Inspector Gamache drove directly to the Sûreté forensics lab and dropped the tuque off, with instructions to give him a full report by the end of the day.

“Today?” the technician asked, but he was speaking to the Chief Inspector’s back.

Gamache went up to his offices and arrived in time for the briefing. Inspector Lacoste was leading it, but only a few officers had bothered to show up. She rose as the Chief Inspector entered. The others did not, at first. But on seeing his stern face, they got up.

“Where’re the others?” Gamache asked brusquely.

“On assignment,” replied one of the officers. “Sir.”

“My question was for Inspector Lacoste.” He turned to her.

“They were told of the meeting, but chose not to come.”

“I’ll need their names, please,” said Gamache, and was about to leave when he stopped and looked at the agents, still standing. He considered them for a moment and seemed to sag.

“Go home,” he finally said.

This they hadn’t expected, and they stood there surprised and uncertain. As was Lacoste, though she struggled not to show it.

“Home?” one of them asked.

“Leave,” said the Chief. “Make of it what you will, but just go.”

The agents looked at each other and grinned.

He turned his back on them and made for the door.

“Our cases?”

Gamache stopped and turned back to see the young officer he’d tried to help a few days ago.

“Will your cases really be further along if you stay?”

It was a rhetorical question.

He knew these agents, looking at him so triumphantly, were spreading the word throughout the Sûreté that Chief Inspector Gamache was finished. Had given up.

And now he’d done them the very great favor of confirming it. By in effect closing his department.

“Consider this a Christmas gift.”

They no longer tried to hide their satisfaction. The coup was complete. They’d brought the great Chief Inspector Gamache to his knees.

“Go home,” he said, his voice weary. “I intend to, soon.”

He left the room, his back straight, his head up. But he walked slowly. A wounded lion just trying to survive the day.

“Chief?” said Inspector Lacoste, catching up.

“My office, please.”

They went in and he closed the door, then motioned her to take a seat.

“Anything more on the Ouellet case?” he asked.

“I spoke to the neighbor again, to find out if the sisters ever had any visitors. She told me what she first told the investigators. No one ever went to the house.”

“Except her, as I recall.”

“Once,” said Lacoste, “for lemonade.”

“Did she think it was strange that she was never invited inside?”

“No. She said after a few years you get used to different eccentricities. Some neighbors are nosy, some like parties, some are very quiet. It’s an old, established neighborhood and the sisters had been there for many years. No one seemed to question.”

Gamache nodded and was quiet for a moment, playing with the pen on his desk.

“You need to know that I’ve decided to retire.”

“Retire? Are you sure?”

She tried to read his expression. His tone. Was he saying what she thought he was?

“I’ll write my letter of resignation and deliver it tonight or tomorrow. It’ll be effective immediately.” He sat forward at his desk and examined his hands for a moment, noticing that the tremor was gone. “You’ve been with me for a long time, Inspector.”

“Yes, sir. You found me on the garbage pile, as I remember.”

“Dumpster diving.” He smiled.

It wasn’t totally inaccurate. Chief Inspector Gamache had hired her away from the Serious Crimes division on the day she was to quit. Not because she couldn’t do the job. Not because she’d screwed up. But because she was different. Because her colleagues had caught her at the scene of a particularly vicious crime against a child with her eyes closed and her head bowed.

Isabelle Lacoste’s error was in telling the truth when asked what she was doing.

She’d been meditating, sending thoughts to the victim, reassuring her that she wouldn’t be forgotten. From then on the other agents had made Isabelle Lacoste’s life one long hell, until she couldn’t take it anymore. She knew it was time to go.

And she was right. She simply hadn’t realized where she’d be going.

Chief Inspector Gamache had heard about the meditation and wanted to meet the young agent who’d become the laughingstock of the Sûreté. When she was finally called in to her boss’s office, letter of resignation in hand, she’d expected it to be just the two of them. Instead, another man rose from the large chair. She’d recognized him immediately. She’d seen Chief Inspector Gamache at the academy. Seen him on television and read about him in the newspaper. She’d once ridden with him in an elevator, and been so close she could smell his cologne. So attractive had been that aroma, and so powerful had been the pull of the man, she’d almost followed him from the elevator.

Chief Inspector Gamache had risen from his seat when she’d entered her boss’s office, and bowed slightly. To her. There was something old-worldly about him. Something otherworldly about him.

He extended his hand. “Armand Gamache,” he’d said.

She’d taken it, feeling light-headed. Not at all sure what was happening.

She hadn’t left his side since.

Not literally, of course. But professionally, emotionally. She would follow wherever he went.

And now he was telling her he was resigning.

She couldn’t say this was a complete surprise. She’d, in fact, been expecting it for some time. Since the department had begun to be dismantled and the agents spread among the other departments. Since the atmosphere at Sûreté headquarters had grown dank and sour with the smell of rot.

“Thank you for all you’ve done for me,” he said. He got up and smiled. “I’ll email you a copy of my resignation letter. Perhaps you can circulate it.”