How the Light Gets In

How the Light Gets In Page 20

by Louise Penny

  The girls were supposedly praying for the paternal blessing. Gamache wondered what their father was praying for.

  “The charming little ceremony over, the girls prepare to go outside to play,” said the voice-over, as though announcing the tragic raid on Dieppe.

  What followed were scenes of the Quints putting on their snowsuits, good-naturedly teasing each other, looking into the camera and laughing. Their father helped lace up their skates and handed them hockey sticks.

  Marie-Harriette appeared, putting knitted tuques on their heads. Each hat, Gamache noticed, had a different pattern. Snowflakes, trees. She had one too many and threw the extra off camera. Not a casual toss. She whipped it, as though it had bitten her.

  The gesture was revealing. It showed a woman at the end of her tether, where something as trivial as too many hats could spark anger. She was exasperated, exhausted. Worn down.

  She turned to the camera and, in a look that chilled the Chief Inspector, she smiled.

  It was one of those moments a homicide investigator looked for. The tiny conflict. Between what was said and what was done. Between the tone and the words.

  Between Marie-Harriette’s expression and her actions. The smile, and the thrown hat.

  Here was a woman divided, perhaps even falling apart. It was through such a crack an investigator crawled to get to the heart of the matter.

  Gamache watched the screen and wondered how the woman who’d struggled up the steps of Saint Joseph’s Oratory on her knees, praying for children, came to this.

  The Chief suspected her annoyance had been directed at the ubiquitous Dr. Bernard, trying to keep him out of the frame. To, just once, leave them alone with their children.

  It had worked. Whoever she’d gestured to had backed off.

  But Gamache could tell it was a rearguard action. No one that tired would prevail for long.

  Long dead and buried in another town, Gamache remembered Ruth’s seminal poem, my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.

  In just over five years, Marie-Harriette would be dead. And in just over fifteen years Virginie would possibly take her own life. And what had Myrna said? They would no longer be Quints. They would be a quartet, then triplets, twins. Then just one. An only child.

  And Constance would become simply Constance. And now she was gone too.

  He looked at the girls, laughing together in their snowsuits, and tried to pick out the little girl who now lay in the Montréal morgue. But he could not.

  They all looked alike.

  “Yes, these rugged Canadians pass the long winter months ice fishing, skiing and playing hockey,” said the morose narrator. “Even the girls.”

  The Quints waved at the camera and wobbled on their skates out the door.

  The film ended with Isidore waving merrily to them, then turning back into the cabin. He closed the door and looked into the camera, but Gamache realized his eyes were in fact slightly off. Catching not the lens, but the eye of someone just out of sight.

  Was he looking at his wife? At Dr. Bernard? Or at someone else entirely?

  It was a look of supplication, for approval. And once again Gamache wondered what Isidore Ouellet had prayed for, and whether his prayers had ever been answered.

  But something was off. Something about this film didn’t fit with what the Chief Inspector had learned.

  He covered his mouth with his hand and stared at the black screen.

  * * *

  “Let me ask you this,” said Thérèse Brunel. “What’s the surest way to destroy someone?”

  Jérôme shook his head.

  “First you win their trust,” she said, holding his stare. “Then you betray it.”

  “The Cree trusted Pierre Arnot?” asked Jérôme.

  “He helped restore order. He treated them with respect.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, when plans for the new hydroelectric dam were unveiled, and it became clear it would destroy what was left of the Cree territory, he convinced them to accept it.”

  “How’d he do that?” asked Jérôme. As a Québécois, he’d always seen the great dams as a point of pride. Yes, he was aware of the damage up north, but it seemed a small price. A price he himself didn’t actually have to pay.

  “They trusted him. He’d spent years convincing them he was their friend and ally. Later, those who doubted him, questioned his motives, disappeared.”

  Jérôme’s stomach churned. “He did that?”

  Thérèse nodded. “I don’t know if he started out so corrupt, or if he was corrupted, but that’s what he did.”

  Jérôme lowered his eyes and thought about the name he’d found. The one buried below Arnot. If Arnot had fallen, this other man had fallen further. Only to be dug up, years later, by Jérôme Brunel.

  “When did Armand get involved?” asked Jérôme.

  “A Cree elder, a woman, was selected to travel to Quebec City, to ask for help. She wanted to tell someone in authority that young men and women were disappearing. Dying. They were found hanged and shot and drowned. The Sûreté detachment had dismissed the deaths as accidents or suicides. Some young Cree had disappeared completely. The Sûreté concluded they’d run away. Probably down south. They’d be found in some crack house or drunk tank in Trois-Rivières or Montréal.”

  “She came to Quebec City to ask for help in finding them?” asked Jérôme.

  “No, she wanted to tell someone in authority that it was lies. Her own son was among the missing. She knew they hadn’t run away, and the deaths weren’t accidents or suicides.”

  Jérôme could see how dredging up these memories was affecting Thérèse. As a senior Sûreté officer. As a woman. As a mother. And it sickened him too, but they’d gone too far. They couldn’t stop in the middle of this quagmire. They had to keep going.

  “No one believed her,” said Thérèse. “She was dismissed as demented. Another drunk native. It didn’t help that she didn’t know where to find the National Assembly, so she stopped people going into and out of the Château Frontenac.”

  “The hotel?” asked Jérôme.

  Thérèse nodded. “It’s such an imposing building, she thought it was where the leaders must be.”

  “But how did Armand get involved?”

  “He was in Quebec City for a conference at the Château and saw her sitting on a bench, distraught. He asked her what was wrong.”

  “She told him?” asked Jérôme.

  “Everything. Armand asked why she hadn’t gone to the Sûreté with that information.” Thérèse lowered her eyes to her manicured hands.

  Out of the corner of his eye Jérôme could see the gathering in the TV room breaking up, but he didn’t hurry his wife. They’d come to the bottom of the swamp at last, to the final words that needed to be dredged up. She was clearly struggling to speak the unspeakable.

  “The Cree elder said she hadn’t reported it to the Sûreté because the Sûreté were doing it. They were killing the young Cree. Including, probably, her own son.”

  Jérôme stared at his wife. Holding on to those familiar eyes. Not wanting to let go and slide into a world where such a thing was possible. He could tell that Thérèse was almost relieved. Believing she was near the end now. That the worst was over.

  But Jérôme knew they were very far from the worst. And nowhere near the end.

  “What did Armand do?”

  He could see Clara heading to the kitchen and Olivier was making his way toward them. But still he held his wife’s eyes.

  She leaned toward him and whispered, just before Olivier arrived.

  “He believed her.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Dinner!” Clara called.

  They’d watched to the end of the DVD. After the NFB footage and the newsreels, there were more clips of the Quints. At First Communion, meeting the young Queen, curtsying to the Prime Minister.

  In unison, of course. And the great man laughing, delighted.

  It was odd, thought

Clara, as she took the casserole from the oven, to see someone she only knew as an elderly woman as an infant. It was odder still to see her grow up. To see so much of her, and so many of her.

  Seeing those films one after the other went from charming, to disconcerting, to devastating. It was made even odder by not being able to tell which one was Constance. They were all her. And none were.

  The films ended suddenly when the girls reached their late teens.

  “Can I help?” asked Myrna, prying the warm bread from Clara’s hand.

  “What did you think of the film?” Clara asked, putting the baguette Myrna sliced into a basket. Olivier was placing plates on the long pine table while Gabri tossed the salad.

  Ruth was either trying to light the candles or set the house on fire. Armand was nowhere to be seen, and neither were Thérèse or her husband Jérôme.

  “I keep seeing that first sister, Virginie, I think, looking at the camera.” Myrna paused in her slicing and stared ahead.

  “You mean when their mother wouldn’t let them back into the house?” Clara asked.

  Myrna nodded and thought how strange it was that, when talking with Gamache, she’d used the house analogy, saying that Constance was locked and barricaded inside her emotional home.

  What was worse, Myrna wondered. To be locked in, or locked out?

  “They were so young,” Clara said, as she took the knife from Myrna’s suspended hand. “Maybe Constance didn’t remember.”

  “Oh, she’d have remembered,” said Myrna. “They all would. If not the specific event, they’d remember how it felt.”

  “And they couldn’t tell anyone,” said Clara. “Not even their parents. Especially not their parents. I wonder what that does to a person.”

  “I know what it does.”

  They turned to Ruth, who’d struck another match. She stared, cross-eyed, as it burned down. Just before it singed her yellowed nails she blew it out.

  “What does it do?” Clara asked. The room was quiet, all eyes on the old poet.

  “It turns a little girl into an ancient mariner.”

  There was a collective sigh. They’d actually thought maybe Ruth had the answer. They should have known better than to look for wisdom in a drunken old pyro.

  “The albatross?” asked Gamache.

  He was standing just inside the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. Myrna wondered how long he’d been listening.

  Ruth struck another match and Gamache held her blazing eyes, looking beyond the flame to the charred core.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gilles broke the silence. “An old sailor and a tuna?”

  “That’s albacore,” said Olivier.

  “Oh, for chrissake,” snapped Ruth, and flicked her hand so that the flame went out. “One day I’ll be dead and then what’ll you do for cultured conversation, you stupid shits?”

  “Touché,” said Myrna.

  Ruth gave Gamache one final, stern look, then turned to the rest of the room.

  “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” When that was met with blank stares she went on. “Epic poem. Coleridge?”

  Gilles leaned toward Olivier and whispered, “She’s not going to recite it, is she? I get enough poetry at home.”

  “Right,” said Ruth. “People are always confusing Odile’s work with Coleridge.”

  “At least they both rhyme,” said Gabri.

  “Not always,” Gilles confided. “In her latest, Odile has ‘turnip’ rhyming with ‘cowshed.’”

  Ruth sighed so violently her latest match blew out.

  “OK, I’ll bite,” said Olivier. “Why does any of this remind you of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”

  Ruth looked around. “Don’t tell me Clouseau and I are the only ones with classical educations?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Gabri. “I remember now. Didn’t the ancient mariner and Ellen DeGeneres save Nemo from a fish tank in Australia?”

  “I think that was the Little Mermaid,” said Clara.

  “Really?” Gabri turned to her. “Because I seem to remember—”

  “Stop it.” Ruth waved them to be quiet. “The Ancient Mariner carried his secret, like a dead albatross, around his neck. He knew the only way to get rid of it was to tell others. To unburden himself. So he stopped a stranger, a wedding guest, and told him everything.”

  “And what was his secret?” asked Gilles.

  “The mariner had killed an albatross at sea,” said Gamache, stepping into the kitchen and taking the breadbasket to the table. “As a consequence of this cruel act, God took the lives of the entire crew.”

  “Jeez,” said Gilles. “I’m no fan of hunting, but a bit of an overreaction, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Only the mariner was spared,” said Gamache. “To stew. When he was finally rescued he realized that he could only be free if he talked about what had happened.”

  “That a bird died?” asked Gilles, still trying to wrap his mind around it.

  “That an innocent creature was killed,” said Gamache. “That he’d killed it.”

  “You’d think God should also have to answer for slaughtering the entire crew,” Gilles suggested.

  “Oh, shut up,” snapped Ruth. “The Ancient Mariner brought the curse on himself and them. It was his fault, and he had to admit it, or carry it the rest of his life. Got it?”

  “Still doesn’t make sense to me,” mumbled Gilles.

  “If you think this is difficult, try reading The Faerie Queene,” said Myrna.

  “Fairy Queen?” asked Gabri, hopefully. “Sounds like bedtime reading to me.”

  They sat down for dinner, the guests jockeying not to sit next to Ruth, or the duck.

  Gamache lost.

  Or perhaps he wasn’t playing.

  Or perhaps he won.

  “You think Constance had an albatross around her neck?” he asked Ruth as he spooned chicken and dumplings onto her plate.

  “Ironic, don’t you think?” Ruth asked, without thanking him. “Talking about the killing of an innocent bird while eating chicken?”

  Gabri and Clara put down their forks. The rest pretended they hadn’t heard. It was, after all, very tasty.

  “So what was Constance’s albatross?” asked Olivier.

  “Why ask me, numb nuts? How would I know?”

  “But you think she had a secret?” Myrna persevered. “Something she felt guilty about?”

  “Look.” Ruth laid down her cutlery and stared across at Myrna. “If I was a fortune-teller, what would I say to people? I’d look them in the eye and say…” She turned to Gamache and moved her spiny hands back and forth in front of his amused face. She took on a vague eastern European accent and lowered her voice. “You carry a heavy burden. A secret. Something you’ve told no living soul. Your heart is breaking, but you must let it go.”

  Ruth dropped her hands but continued to stare at Gamache. He gave nothing away, but became very still.

  “Who doesn’t have a secret?” Ruth asked quietly, speaking directly to the Chief.

  “You’re right, of course,” said Gamache, taking a forkful of the delicious casserole. “We all carry secrets. Most to the grave.”

  “But some secrets are heavier than others,” said the old poet. “Some stagger us, slow us. And instead of taking them to the grave, the grave comes to us.”

  “You think that’s what happened with Constance?” asked Myrna.

  Ruth held Gamache’s thoughtful brown eyes for a moment longer, then broke off to stare across the table.

  “Don’t you, Myrna?”

  More frightening than the thought was Ruth’s use of Myrna’s actual name. So serious was the suddenly and suspiciously sober poet that she’d forgotten to forget Myrna’s name.

  “What do you think her secret was?” asked Olivier.

  “I think it was that she was a transvestite,” said Ruth so seriously that Olivier’s brows rose, then quickly descended and he glowered. Beside him, Gabri laughed.