by Louise Penny
“And what’s that?”
“If they can’t get in, we can’t get out.”
Jérôme opened his eyes and leaned forward.
“It’s a beautiful village, but it’s a little like a foxhole at Vimy, isn’t it? We might be safe, but we’re stuck. And we can’t stay here forever.”
Gamache nodded. He’d bought them time, but not eternity.
“I don’t want to spoil the moment, Armand, but Francoeur and whoever’s behind him will find us eventually. Then what?”
Then what? It was a good question, Gamache knew. And he didn’t like the answer. He knew, as a man used to fear, the great danger of letting it take control. It distorted reality. Consumed reality. Fear created its own reality.
He leaned forward in his seat, toward Jérôme, and lowered his voice.
“Then we’ll just have to find them first.”
Jérôme held his eyes, not wavering. “And how do you propose to do that? Telepathy? We’re fine here, for now. For tomorrow even. Maybe for weeks. But as soon as we arrived a clock started ticking. And no one, not you, not me, not Thérèse, not even Francoeur, knows how long we have before they find us.”
Dr. Brunel looked around the bistro, at the villagers lingering over their drinks. Some chatting. Some playing chess or checkers. Some just sitting, quietly.
“And now we’ve dragged them into this,” he said softly. “When Francoeur finds us, that’ll be it for our peace and quiet. And theirs.”
Gamache knew Jérôme wasn’t being melodramatic. Francoeur had proven he was willing to do anything to achieve his goal. What preoccupied the Chief, what gnawed at him, was that he hadn’t yet figured out what that goal was.
He needed to keep his fear at bay. A little was good. Kept him sharp. But fear, unchecked, became terror and terror grew into panic and panic created chaos. And then all hell broke loose.
What he needed, what they all needed, and what they could only find here in Three Pines, was peace and peace of mind and the clarity that came with it.
Three Pines had given them time. A day. Two. A week. Jérôme was right, it wouldn’t last forever. But please, Lord, prayed Gamache, let it be enough.
“The problem, Armand,” Jérôme continued, “is that the very thing that keeps us safe is what will eventually be our undoing. No telecommunications. Without that, I can’t make any progress. I was getting close, that much is certain.”
He lowered his eyes and swirled his cognac in the bulbous glass. Now was the time to tell Armand what he’d done. What he’d found. Who he’d found.
He looked up into Gamache’s thoughtful eyes. Beyond his companion, Dr. Brunel saw the cheerful fire, the frosted mullioned windows, the Christmas tree with the presents underneath.
Dr. Brunel realized he had no desire to stick his head out of this pleasant foxhole. Just for this one night, he wanted peace. Even if it was pretend peace. An illusion. He didn’t care. He wanted just this one quiet night, without fear. Tomorrow he’d face the truth and tell them what he’d found.
“What do you need to continue the search?” Gamache asked.
“You know what I need. A high-speed satellite link.”
“And if I could get you one?”
Dr. Brunel studied his companion. Gamache was looking relaxed. Henri lay at his feet beside the chair and Armand’s hand was stroking the dog.
“What’re you thinking?” asked Jérôme.
“I have a plan,” said Gamache.
Dr. Brunel nodded thoughtfully. “Does it involve spaceships?”
“I have another plan,” said Gamache, and Jérôme laughed.
“You said we can’t stay and we can’t leave,” said the Chief, and Jérôme nodded. “But there’s another option.”
“And what’s that?”
“Create our own tower.”
“Are you mad?” Jérôme glanced furtively around and dropped his voice. “Those towers go up hundreds of feet. They’re engineering marvels. We can hardly ask the schoolchildren of Three Pines to make one out of Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.”
“Not Popsicle sticks perhaps,” said Gamache with a smile. “But you’re close.”
Jérôme downed the last of his cognac, then examined Gamache. “What’re you thinking?”
“Can we talk about it tomorrow? I’d like to run it by Thérèse at the same time. Besides, it’s getting late and I still need to speak with Myrna Landers.”
“Who?”
“She owns the bookstore.” Gamache nodded toward the internal door connecting the bistro with the bookstore. “I popped by while Olivier was getting our drinks. She’s expecting me.”
“Is she going to give you a book on building your tower?” Jérôme asked as he put on his parka.
“She was friends with a woman who was killed yesterday.”
“Oh, oui, I’d forgotten you’re actually here on business. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all. The sad fact is, it’s a perfect cover. If anyone asks, it explains why I’m in Three Pines.”
They said their good nights, and while Jérôme walked back to Emilie Longpré’s and a warm bed next to Thérèse, Armand and Henri entered the bookstore.
“Myrna?” he called, and realized he’d done exactly the same thing, at almost exactly the same time, the night before. But this time he wasn’t bringing news of Constance Ouellet’s murder—this time he came bearing questions, and lots of them.
FIFTEEN
Myrna greeted him at the top of the stairs.
“Welcome back,” she said.
She wore an enormous flannel nightie covered in scenes of skiers and snowshoers, frolicking all over Mont Myrna. The nightie went down to her shins, and thick knitted slippers met it there. A Hudson’s Bay blanket was spread across her shoulders.
“Coffee? Brownie?”
“Non, merci,” he said, and took the comfortable chair she pointed to beside the fire, while she poured herself a mug and brought over a plate of fudge brownies, in case he changed his mind.
Her home smelled of chocolate and coffee, and something else musky and rich and familiar.
“You made the coq au vin?” he asked. He’d presumed it was Olivier or Gabri.
She nodded. “Ruth helped. Rosa, however, was no help at all. It was very nearly canard au vin.”
Gamache laughed. “It was delicious.”
“I thought you could use something comforting,” she said, watching her guest.
He held her eyes. Waiting for the inevitable questions. Why was he here? Why did he bring the elderly couple? Why were they hiding, and who from?
Three Pines had taken them in. Three Pines could, reasonably, expect answers to those questions. But Myrna simply took a brownie and bit into it. And he knew then he really was safe, from prying eyes and prying questions.
Three Pines, he knew, was not immune to dreadful loss. To sorrow and pain. What Three Pines had wasn’t immunity but a rare ability to heal. And that’s what they offered him, and the Brunels. Space and time to heal.
And comfort.
But, like peace, comfort didn’t come from hiding away or running away. Comfort first demanded courage. He picked up one of the brownies and took a bite, then he reached into his pocket for his notebook.
“I thought you’d like to hear what we’ve found so far about Constance.”
“I take it that doesn’t include whoever killed her,” said Myrna.
“Unfortunately not,” he said as he put on his reading glasses and glanced at his notebook. “I spent much of the day researching the Quints—”
“Then you think that had something to do with her death? The fact she was a Ouellet Quintuplet?”
“I don’t really know, but it’s extraordinary, and when someone is murdered we look for the extraordinary, though, to be honest, we often find the killer hiding in the banal.”
Myrna laughed. “Sounds like being a therapist. People normally came into my office because something happened. Someone had died, or betrayed
them. Their love wasn’t reciprocated. They’d lost a job. Gotten divorced. Something big. But the truth was, while that might’ve been the catalyst, the problem was almost always tiny and old and hidden.”
Gamache raised his brows in surprise. It did sound exactly like his job. The killing was the catalyst, but it almost always started as something small, invisible to the naked eye. It was often years, decades, old. A slight that rankled and grew and infected the host. Until what had been human became a walking resentment. Covered in skin. Passing as human. Passing as happy.
Until something happened.
Something had happened in Constance’s life, or the life of her killer, that provoked the murder. It might have been big, clearly visible. But more likely it was tiny. Easily dismissed.
Which was why Gamache knew he had to look closely, carefully. Where other investigators bounded ahead, dramatically covering ground, Armand Gamache took his time. Indeed, he knew that to some it might even appear as inactivity. Walking slowly, his hands behind his back. Sitting on a park bench, staring into space. Sipping coffee in the bistro or brasserie, listening.
Thinking.
And while others, in glorious commotion, raced right by the killer, Chief Inspector Gamache slowly walked up to him. Found him hiding, in plain sight. Disguised as everyone else.
“Shall I tell you what I know?” he asked.
Myrna leaned back in her large armchair, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket around her, and nodded.
“This is culled from all sorts of sources, some of them public, but most came from private notes and diaries.”
“Go on,” said Myrna.
“Her parents were Isidore Ouellet and Marie-Harriette Pineault. They were married in the parish church of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu in 1928. He was a farmer. Twenty when they married, and Marie-Harriette was seventeen years old.”
He looked up at Myrna. Whether this was news to her or not, he couldn’t tell. It was, he had to admit, not exactly headline grabbing. That came later.
“The girls were born in 1937.” He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair, as though done. But they both knew he, and the story, were far from finished. “Now, why that gap? Almost ten years between the marriage and the first child. Children. It’s inconceivable, so to speak, that they weren’t trying to have children. This was a time when the Church and the parish priest were the greatest influences in people’s lives. It was considered the duty of any couple to conceive. In fact, the only reason to get married and have sex was to procreate. So why didn’t Isidore and his young wife?”
Myrna held her coffee mug and listened. She knew he wasn’t asking her anything. Not yet.
“Families at that time routinely had ten, twelve, even twenty children. My own wife comes from a family of twelve children, and that was a generation on. In a small village, in the country, in the 1920s? It would have been their sacred duty to have children. And any couple that failed to conceive would be shunned. Considered unblessed. Even, perhaps, evil.”
Myrna nodded. This attitude no longer existed in Québec, but it had until fairly recently. Well within living memory. Until the Quiet Revolution gave women back their bodies and Quebeckers back their lives. It invited the Church to leave the womb and restrict itself to the altar. It almost worked.
But in a farming community, in the twenties and thirties? Gamache was right. Every year that passed without children, the Ouellets would be more and more ostracized. Viewed with either pity or suspicion. Shunned, as though their childless state was communicable and would curse them all. People, animals, land. All would become infertile, barren. Because of one young couple.
“They’d have been desperate,” said Gamache. “Marie-Harriette describes spending most of her days in the village church, praying. Going to confession. Doing penance. And then, finally, eight years on, she made the long journey to Montréal. It would have been a horrendous trip for a woman alone, from the Montérégie area all the way into Montréal. And then this farmer’s wife, who’d never been outside her village, walked from the train station all the way to Saint Joseph’s Oratory. That alone would’ve taken her most of a day.”
As he spoke, he watched Myrna. She’d stopped sipping her coffee. Her brownie sat on her plate, half eaten. She listened, wholly and completely. Even Henri, at Gamache’s feet, seemed to listen, his satellite ears turned to his master’s voice.
“It was May of 1936,” he said. “Do you know why she went to the Oratoire Saint-Joseph?”
“Brother André?” Myrna asked. “Was he still alive?”
“Barely. He was ninety years old and very ill. But he continued to see people. They came from all over the world by then,” said Gamache. “Have you been to the Oratory?”
“Yes,” said Myrna.
It was an extraordinary sight, the great dome, illuminated at night, visible from much of Montréal. The designers had created a long, wide pedestrian boulevard that ran from the street straight to the front door. Except that the church had been built on the side of the mountain. And the only way in was up. Up, up the many stone stairs. Ninety-nine of them.
And once inside? The walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with crutches and canes. Left because they were no longer needed.
Thousands of weak and crippled pilgrims had dragged themselves up those stone steps into the presence of the tiny old man. And Brother André had healed them.
He was ninety years old when Marie-Harriette Ouellet made her pilgrimage, and walking off the end of his life. It would be understandable if he conserved what strength he had left. But the wizened little man in the simple black robes continued to heal others while growing weaker himself.
Marie-Harriette Ouellet had traveled alone from her small farm to beg the saint for a miracle.
Gamache spoke without need of his notes. What happened next was not easily forgotten.
“Saint Joseph’s Oratory wasn’t what it is today. There was a church there, and a long promenade and stairs, but the dome wasn’t completed. Now it’s overrun with tourists, but back then almost everyone who visited was a pilgrim. The sick, the dying, the crippled, desperate for help. Marie-Harriette joined them.”
He paused and took a deep breath. Myrna, who’d been looking into the dying fire, met his eyes. She knew what almost certainly came next.
“At the gate, the foot of the long pedestrian boulevard, she dropped to her knees and said the first of the Hail Marys,” said Gamache.
His voice was deep and warm, but neutral. There was no need to infuse his words with his own feelings.
The images came alive as he spoke. Both he and Myrna could see the young woman. Young by their standards, elderly by the judgment of her time.
Twenty-six-year-old Marie-Harriette, dropped to her knees.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, she prayed. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Into the quiet loft, Armand Gamache spoke the familiar prayer.
“All night she crawled on her knees along the promenade, stopping to say the Hail Mary at every step,” said Gamache. “At the bottom of the stairs Marie-Harriette didn’t hesitate. She headed up them, her bloody knees staining her best dress.”
It must have looked, thought Myrna, like menstruation. Blood staining a woman’s dress. As she prayed for children.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
She imagined the young woman, exhausted, in pain, desperate, crawling up the stone stairs on her knees. Praying.
“Finally, at dawn, Marie-Harriette reached the top,” said Gamache. “She looked up, and standing at the door of the church was Brother André, apparently waiting for her. He helped her up and they went in together and prayed. He listened to her pleas, and he blessed her. Then she left.”
The room fell silent and Myrna took a deep breath. Relieved the long climb was over. She could feel the sting in her knees. Could feel the ache in her own womb. And she could feel Marie-Harriette’s belief, that with the he
lp of a chaste priest and a long-dead virgin, she might finally have a child.
“It worked,” said Gamache. “Eight months later, in January 1937, the day after Brother André died, Marie-Harriette Ouellet gave birth to five healthy daughters.”
Even though she knew how the story ended, Myrna was still amazed.
She could see how this would be considered a miracle. Proof that God existed and was kind. And generous. Almost, thought Myrna, to a fault.
SIXTEEN
“It was, of course,” said Gamache, voicing Myrna’s thoughts, “considered a miracle. The first quintuplets to have ever survived childbirth. They became sensations.”
The Chief leaned forward and placed a photograph on the coffee table.
It showed Isidore Ouellet, their father, standing behind the babies. He was unshaven, his farmer’s face weather-beaten, his dark hair unkempt. It looked like he’d spent the night running his immense hands through it. Even in the grainy picture, they could see the dark circles under his eyes. He wore a light shirt with a collar, and a frayed suit jacket, as though he’d thrown on his Sunday best at the last minute.
His daughters lay on the rough kitchen table in front of him. They were tiny, newborn, wrapped in hastily brought sheets and dish towels and rags. He was looking at his children in amazement, his eyes wide.
It would be comical if there wasn’t so much horror in that beaten face. Isidore Ouellet looked as though God had come for dinner and burned down the house.
Myrna picked up the picture and took a close look. She’d never seen it before.
“You found this in her home, I imagine,” she said, still distracted by the look in Isidore’s eyes.
Gamache put another photograph on the table.
She picked it up. It was slightly out of focus, but the father had disappeared and now standing behind the babies was an older woman.
“Midwife?” asked Myrna, and Gamache nodded.
She was stout, no-nonsense, her hands on her hips and a stained pinafore covering her large bosom. She was smiling. Weary and happy. And, like Isidore, amazed, but without his horror. Her responsibility, after all, was over.