How the Light Gets In

by Louise Penny

  After shoving more wood into the stove, Thérèse went over to Emilie’s to get Henri, then to the general store, where she picked up milk, cocoa and marshmallows. The hot chocolate now simmered in a pot on top of the stove, and the scent joined that of wet wool and wood smoke. She poured it into mugs and topped each with a couple of large, soft marshmallows.

  But the hot chocolate shook so badly in Gilles’s hands, Thérèse had to take the mug from him.

  “You asked what this is about,” she said.

  Gilles nodded. His teeth chattered violently as he listened, and he alternately hugged himself and held his hands out to the stove as she spoke. His beard had melted a wet stain on his sweater.

  When she finished speaking, Thérèse handed him back his hot chocolate, the marshmallow melted to white foam on the top. He gripped the warm mug to his chest like a little boy, frightened by a scary story and trying to be brave.

  Beside him, Jérôme had remained quiet while his wife described what they were looking for, and why. Dr. Brunel kneaded his feet, trying to get the blood flowing again. Pins and needles stabbed his toes as the circulation returned.

  The sun was now barely visible over the dark forest, the forest that still contained Armand Gamache and Agent Nichol. Thérèse turned on the lights and looked at the blank monitors her husband had set up that morning.

  What if this doesn’t work?

  They’d have made a very poor Scout troop, she thought. Not only were they unprepared for this to fail, they were using stolen equipment to hack into police files. If there were badges for deception, they’d be covered in them.

  They heard heavy footsteps on the wooden porch, and Thérèse opened the door to find Armand there, puffing with exertion.

  “You all right?” she asked, though they both knew she was really asking, “Are you alone?”

  “Never better,” he gasped. His face was red from exertion and the bitter cold. Dropping the cable on the stoop, he entered the schoolhouse, followed a moment later by Agent Nichol. Her face was no longer pallid. Now it was blotched, white and red. She looked like the Canadian flag.

  Thérèse exhaled, unaware until that moment just how concerned she’d really been.

  “Do I smell chocolate?” Gamache asked, through frozen lips. Henri had run over to greet him and the Chief was on one knee, hugging the shepherd. For warmth as much as affection, Thérèse suspected. And Henri was happy to give him both.

  Space was made by the woodstove for the newcomers.

  Thérèse poured them mugs of hot chocolate, and after Gamache and Nichol had stripped off their outerwear, the five sat silently around the woodstove. For the first couple of minutes Gamache and Nichol shuddered with cold. Their hands shook and every now and then they spasmed as the bitter winter, like a wraith, left their body.

  Then the little schoolhouse grew quiet, except for the odd squeal of a chair leg on the wooden floor, the crackle of the fire, and Henri’s groans as he stretched out at Gamache’s feet.

  Armand Gamache felt he could nod off. His socks were now dry and slightly crispy, the mug of hot chocolate warmed his hands, and the heat from the stove enveloped him. Despite the urgency of their situation, he felt his lids grow heavy.

  Oh, for just a few minutes, a few moments, of rest.

  But there was work to be done.

  Putting down his mug, he leaned forward, hands clasped together. He looked at the circle huddled around the woodstove in the tiny one-room schoolhouse. The five of them. Quints. Thérèse, Jérôme, Gilles, Armand, and Nichol.

  And Nichol, he thought again. Hanging off the end. The outlier.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Next?” asked Jérôme.

  He never expected it to get this far. Looking across the room at the bank of blank monitors, he knew what had to happen.

  Beneath the thick sweater he felt a trickle of perspiration, as though his round body was weeping. If Three Pines was their foxhole, he was about to raise his head. Armand had given them a weapon, but it was a pointy stick against a machine gun.

  He walked away from the warmth of the fire and felt the chill again as he approached the far reaches of the room. Two old, battered computers sat side-by-side, one on the teacher’s desk, the other on the table they’d dragged over. Above them, glued to the wall, was the cheerful alphabet, illustrated with bumblebees and butterflies and ducks and roses. And below that, musical notes.

  He hummed it slowly, following the notes.

  “Why’re you singing that?” asked Gamache.

  Jérôme started a little. He hadn’t realized Armand was with him and he hadn’t realized he was humming.

  “It’s that.” Jérôme pointed to the notes. “Do-re-mi is the top line, and then this song is beneath it.”

  He hummed some more and then, to his surprise, Armand started quietly, slowly, singing.

  “What do you do with a drunken sailor…”

  Jérôme examined his friend. Gamache was staring at the music and smiling. Then he turned to Jérôme.

  “… early in the morrrr … ning.”

  Jérôme smiled in genuine amusement and felt some of his terror detach and drift away on the back of the musical notes and the silly words from his serious friend.

  “An old sea shanty,” Gamache explained, and returned to look at the notes on the wall. “I’d forgotten that Miss Jane Neal was the teacher here, before the school was closed and she retired.”

  “You knew her?”

  Gamache remembered kneeling in the bright autumn leaves and closing those blue eyes. It was years ago now. Felt like a lifetime.

  “I caught her killer.”

  Gamache gazed again at the wall, with the alphabet and music.

  “Way, hey, and up she rises…” he whispered. It felt somehow comforting to be in this room where Miss Jane Neal had done what she loved, for children she adored.

  “We need to get the cable in here,” said Jérôme, and for the next few minutes, while Gilles drilled a hole in the wall to snake the cable through, Jérôme and Nichol crawled under the desks and sorted out the wires and boxes.

  Gamache watched all this, marveling that they’d begun the day thirty-five thousand kilometers from any communication satellite and now they were just centimeters from that connection.

  “Did you make your connection?” Thérèse Brunel asked as she joined him. She nodded toward the young agent.

  Her husband and Nichol were squeezed under the desk, trying not to elbow each other. At least, Dr. Brunel was trying not to—it looked as though Agent Nichol was doing her best to shove her bony elbows into him whenever she could.

  “I’m afraid not,” Gamache whispered.

  “But you both made it back, Chief Inspector. That’s something.”

  Gamache grinned, though without amusement. “Some victory. I didn’t gun down one of my own agents in cold blood.”

  “Well, we take our victories where we can get them,” she smiled. “I’m not sure Jérôme would’ve passed up the chance.”

  By now the two under the desk were openly elbowing each other.

  The hole in the schoolhouse wall was completed and Gilles shoved the cable through. Jérôme grabbed it and pulled.

  “I’ll take it.”

  Before Jérôme knew it, Nichol had grabbed the cable from him and was attaching it to the first of the metal boxes.

  “Wait.” He yanked it back. “You can’t connect it.” He gripped the cable in both hands and tried to bring his sudden panic under control.

  “Of course I can.” She almost swiped it from him and might have, had Superintendent Brunel not cut in.

  “Agent Nichol,” she commanded. “Get out from there.”

  “But—”

  “Do as you’re told,” she said, as though speaking to a willful child.

  Both Jérôme and Nichol crawled out from under the desk, Jérôme still gripping the black cable. Behind them they could hear the hiss as

Gilles, still outside, sprayed the hole he’d made with foam insulation.

  “What’s the problem?” Gamache asked.

  “We can’t connect it,” said Jérôme.

  “Yes we ca—”

  But the Chief raised his hand and cut Nichol off.

  “Why not?” he asked Jérôme. They’d come so far. Why not the last few inches?

  “Because we don’t know what’ll happen once we do.”

  “Isn’t tha—”

  But again, Nichol was cut off. She shut her mouth, but fumed.

  “Why not?” Gamache asked again, his voice neutral, assessing the situation.

  “I know it sounds overcautious, but once this is plugged in, we have the ability to connect to the world. But it also means the world can connect to us. This”—he held up the cable—“is a highway that goes in both directions.”

  Agent Nichol looked like she was about to wet her pants.

  Chief Inspector Gamache turned to her and nodded.

  “But the power isn’t on.” The dam broke and the words rushed from her. “That might as well be rope for all the connecting it’ll do. We have to attach it to the computers and we have to turn the power on. We have to make sure it works. Why wait?”

  Gamache felt a chill on his neck and turned to see Gilles walking into the tense atmosphere. He shut the door, took off his tuque and mitts and coat, and sat by the door as though guarding it.

  Gamache turned to Thérèse.

  “What do you think?”

  “We should wait.” On seeing Nichol open her mouth again, Thérèse headed off any comment. Looking directly at the young agent she spoke. “You’ve just arrived, but we’ve been living with this for weeks, months. We’ve risked our careers, our friendships, our homes, perhaps even more. If my husband says we pause, then we pause. Do you understand?”

  Nichol gave in with bad grace.

  As they left, Gamache turned the key in the Yale lock and put it in his breast pocket. Gilles joined him for the short walk through the dark, back to Emilie’s home.

  “You know that young woman’s right?” Gilles said, his voice low and his eyes on the snowy ground.

  “We need to test it?” said Gamache, also in a whisper. “Oui, I know.”

  He watched Nichol, up ahead, and behind her Jérôme and Thérèse.

  And he wondered what Jérôme was really afraid of.

  * * *

  After a dinner of beef stew, they took their coffees into the living room, where a fire had been laid.

  Thérèse put a match to the newspaper and watched it flare and burn bright. Then she turned to the room. Gamache and Gilles sat together on one of the sofas and Jérôme sat across from them. Nichol was in the corner, working on a jigsaw puzzle.

  After plugging in the lights on the Christmas tree, Thérèse joined her husband.

  “Wish I’d thought to bring gifts,” she said, gazing at the tree. “Armand, you look pensive.”

  Gamache had followed her gaze and was looking under the tree. Something had twigged, some little thought to do with trees, or Christmas, or presents. Something triggered by what Thérèse just said, but the direct question had chased it away. He furrowed his brow and continued to look at the cheerful Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Bare underneath. Barren of gifts.

  “Armand?”

  He shook his head and met her gaze. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

  Jérôme turned to Gilles. “You must be exhausted.”

  Jérôme looked exhausted himself.

  Gilles nodded. “Been a while since I climbed a tree.”

  “Do you really hear them talk?” Jérôme asked.

  The woodsman studied the rotund man across from him. The man who’d stayed at the base of the white pine in the bitter cold, calling encouragement, when he could have left. He nodded.

  “What do they say?” Jérôme asked.

  “I don’t think you want to know what they’re saying,” said Gilles with a smile. “Besides, mostly I just hear sounds. Whispers. Other stuff.”

  The Brunels looked at him, waiting for more. Gamache held his coffee, and listened. He knew the story.

  “Have you always been able to hear them?” Thérèse finally asked.

  In the corner, Agent Nichol looked up from the puzzle.

  Gilles shook his head. “I was a lumberjack. I cut down hundreds of trees with my chain saw. One day, as I cut into an old-growth oak, I heard it cry.”

  Silence met the remark. Gilles stared into the fireplace, and the burning wood.

  “At first I ignored it. Thought I was hearing things. Then it spread, and I could hear not just my tree, but all the trees crying.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “It was horrible,” he whispered.

  “What did you do?” Jérôme asked.

  “What could I do? I stopped cutting and I made my team stop.” He looked at his huge, worn hands. “They thought I was mad, of course. I’d have thought the same thing, if I hadn’t heard it myself.”

  Gilles looked directly at Jérôme as he spoke.

  “I could live in denial for a while, but once I knew, I could never un-know. You know?”

  Jérôme nodded. He did know.

  “Gilles now makes the most wonderful furniture, from found wood,” said Gamache. “Reine-Marie and I have a couple of pieces.”

  Gilles smiled. “Doesn’t pay the bills, though.”

  “Speaking of payment—” Gamache began.

  Gilles looked at the Chief Inspector. “Don’t say any more.”

  “Désolé,” said Gamache. “I shouldn’t have said that much.”

  “I was glad to help. I can stay if you’d like. That way I’ll be here if you need help.”

  “Thank you,” said Gamache, getting to his feet. “We’ll call if we need you.”

  “Well, I’ll come tomorrow morning. You’ll find me in the bistro if you need me.”

  With his coat on and his large hand on the doorknob, Gilles looked at the four of them.

  “There’s a reason thieves steal at night, you know.”

  “Are you calling us thieves?” asked Thérèse with some amusement.

  “Aren’t you?”

  Armand closed the door and looked at his colleagues.

  “We have some decisions to make, mes amis.”

  * * *

  Jérôme Brunel drew the curtains and walked back to his seat by the fire.

  It was almost midnight and, while bone-tired, they’d gotten their second, or third, wind. More coffee had been made, another maple log was tossed on the fire, Henri had been walked and now slept curled up by the hearth.

  “Bon,” said Gamache, leaning forward and looking into their faces. “What do we do now?”

  “We’re not ready to connect,” said Jérôme.

  “What you mean is, you’re not ready,” Nichol said. “What’re you waiting for?”

  “We won’t get a second chance,” Jérôme snapped. “When I operated on a patient I didn’t think, Well, if I screw up I can always try again. No. One shot, that’s it. We have to make sure we’re prepared.”

  “We are prepared,” Nichol insisted. “Nothing more’s going to happen. No more equipment’s going to show up. No more help. You have everything you’re ever going to have. This is it.”

  “Why’re you so impatient?” Jérôme demanded.

  “Why aren’t you?” she replied.

  “That’s enough,” said Gamache. “What can we do to help, Jérôme? What do you need?”

  “I need to know about all that equipment she brought.” He glanced at Nichol, who was sitting with her arms across her chest. “Why do we need two computers?”

  “One’s for me,” Nichol said. She decided to speak to them as though to Henri. “I’ll be encrypting the channel we use to access the Sûreté network. If anyone picks up your signal, they’ll need to break the encryption. It buys us time.”

  That last bit they understood, even Henri, but they needed to think about the encryption part.

  “What you’re saying,” said Thérèse, slowly picking her way through the technical talk, “is that when Jérôme types something on the keyboard it’s put into code? Then that code is scrambled?”

  “Exactly,” said Nichol. “All before it leaves the room.” She paused and her arms closed even tighter across her body, like steel straps.

  “What is it?” Gamache asked.

  “They’ll still find you.” Her voice was soft. It held no triumph. “My programs only make it difficult for them to see you, but not impossible. They know what they’re doing. They’ll find us.”

  It didn’t escape the Chief Inspector that within a breath, the “you” had become “us.” There were few more significant breaths.

  “Will they know who we are?” he asked.

  Gamache saw the vise grip loosen around the young agent’s chest. She leaned slightly forward.

  “Now that’s an interesting question. I’ve intentionally created an encryption that appears clunky, unsophisticated.”

  “Intentionally?” asked Jérôme, not convinced it was on purpose at all. “Why would anyone do that? We don’t need ‘clunky,’ for God’s sake. We need the best there is.”

  He looked at Gamache, and the Chief Inspector could see the slight lash of panic.

  Nichol was silent, either because she’d finally figured out the immense power of silence, or because she was miffed. Gamache suspected the latter, but it gave him time to consider Jérôme’s very good question.

  Why appear unsophisticated?

  “To throw them off,” he said at last, turning to the petulant little face. “They might see us, but they might not take us seriously.”

  “C’est ça,” Nichol said, unwinding slightly. “Exactly. They’ll be looking for a sophisticated attack.”

  “It’ll be like taking a stone to a nuclear war,” said Gamache.

  “Yes,” said Nichol. “If found, we won’t be taken seriously.”

  “For good reason,” said Thérèse. “How much damage can a stone do?”

  The David and Goliath analogy aside, the reality was a stone wasn’t much of a weapon. She turned to Jérôme, expecting to see a dismissive look on his face, and was surprised to see admiration.

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