by Louise Penny
It had worried him then. It worried him now. Even more.
It suggested that he’d not only missed all the rot, but he’d missed the source of it.
It suggested someone had protected Sylvain Francoeur. Covered for him. And hadn’t covered for Arnot. Someone had thrown Arnot to the wolves.
Was that possible?
“Oui,” he said. “It was hard to find, but evidence linking Arnot with the killings was there.”
“He always maintained his innocence, Armand. You don’t think…”
“That he really was innocent?” asked Gamache, shaking his head. “No. Not a chance.”
But, he thought to himself, perhaps Pierre Arnot was not quite as guilty as he’d thought. Or, perhaps, there was someone who carried even more guilt. Someone still free.
“Why did Chief Superintendent Arnot do it?” asked Thérèse. “That never came out in court, or in any of the confidential documents. He seemed to respect, even admire the Cree at the beginning of his career. Then thirty years later he’s involved in killing them. For no reason, apparently.”
“Well, he didn’t do the actual killing, as you know,” said Gamache. “He created a climate where the use of lethal force was encouraged. Rewarded even.”
“He did more than that, as your own investigation proved,” said Thérèse. “There were documents showing he encouraged the killings, even ordered some. That was irrefutable. What was never clear was why a senior and apparently excellent officer would do such a thing.”
“You’re right,” agreed Gamache. “From the evidence, the young men who were killed weren’t even criminals. Just the opposite. Most had no record at all.”
In a place with so much crime, why kill the ones who’d done nothing wrong?
“I need to visit Arnot,” he said.
“In the SHU? You can’t do that. They’ll know we’ve found his name in our searches.” She examined him closely. “That’s an order, Chief Inspector. You’re not to go. Understand?”
“I do. And I won’t.”
Still, she tried to read his familiar face. The worn and torn face. Behind his eyes she could sense activity. Just as her husband and that alarming young agent were busy trying to make connections, she could see Armand doing the same thing. In his mind. Sifting through old files, names, events. Trying to find some connection he’d missed.
A man appeared at the brow of the hill and waved.
It was Gilles and he looked pleased.
* * *
“Here she is.”
Gilles laid a hand on the rough bark of the tree. They were in the forest above the village. He’d brought snowshoes for all of them, and now Thérèse, Jérôme, Nichol, and Gamache stood beside him, only sinking a few inches into the deep snow.
“Isn’t she magnificent?”
They tilted their heads back, and Jérôme’s tuque fell off as he looked up.
“She?” asked Nichol.
Gilles chose to ignore the sarcasm in her voice. “She,” he confirmed.
“Hate to think how he came to that conclusion,” said Nichol, not quite under her breath. Gamache gave her a stern look.
“She’s at least a hundred feet tall. White pine. Old growth,” Gilles continued. “Hundreds of years old. There’s one in New York State that they figure is almost five hundred years old. The three white pines down in the village may have seen the first loyalists come across during the American Revolution. And this one”—he turned to it, his nose touching the mottled bark, his words soft and warm against the tree—“might have been a seedling when the first Europeans arrived.”
The woodsman looked at them, a bit of bark on the tip of his nose and in his beard. “Do you know what the aboriginals called the white pine?”
“Ethel?” asked Nichol.
“The tree of peace.”
“So what’re we doing here?” asked Nichol.
Gilles pointed and they looked up again. This time Gamache’s hat fell off as he tilted his head. He picked it up and struck it against his leg to knock the soft snow off.
There, nailed twenty feet up in the tree of peace, was the hunting blind. Made for violence. It was rickety and rotten, as though the tree was punishing it.
But it was there.
“What can we do to help?” asked Gamache.
“You can help me haul the satellite dish up there,” said Gilles.
Gamache blanched.
“I think we have the answer to that request,” said Jérôme. “And you’re not going to be doing any of the wiring.”
Gamache shook his head.
“Then I suggest you and Thérèse get out of the way,” said Jérôme.
“Banished to the bistro,” said Gamache, and now Thérèse Brunel did smile.
TWENTY-FIVE
Mugs of steaming apple cider were placed in front of Thérèse Brunel and the Chief Inspector.
Clara and a friend were sitting by the fireplace and motioned them over, but after thanking Clara for dinner the night before, the Sûreté officers moved off to the relative privacy of the easy chairs in front of the bay window.
The mullions were frosted slightly but the village was still easily seen, and the two stared out in slightly awkward silence for a minute or two. Thérèse stirred her cider with the cinnamon stick, then took a sip.
It tasted of Christmas, and skating, and long winter afternoons in the country. She and Jérôme never had cider in Montréal, and she wondered why not.
“Will it be all right, Armand?” she finally asked. There was no neediness, no fear in her voice. It was strong and clear. And curious.
He also stirred his cider. Looking up, he held her eyes and once again she marveled at the quality of calm in them. And something else. Something she’d first noticed in that packed amphitheater years ago.
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 do
“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.
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