by Louise Penny
Goddamned Pierre Arnot.
*
“Dr. Bernard is typically humble about his accomplishment,” said the newsreel announcer.
On the screen now, Dr. Bernard was out of his hospital whites and in a suit and narrow black tie. His gray hair was groomed, he was clean-shaven and wore glasses with heavy black frames.
He was standing in the Ouellet living room, alone, holding a cigarette.
“Of course, the mother did most of the work.” He spoke English with a soft Québécois accent and his voice was surprisingly high, especially compared to the cavern voice of the narrator. He looked at the camera and smiled at his little joke. The viewers were meant to believe only one thing. That Dr. Bernard was the hero of the moment. A man whose immense skill was only matched by his humility. And, thought Gamache with some admiration, he was perfectly cast for the role. Charming, whimsical even. Fatherly and confident.
“I was called out in the middle of a storm. Babies seem to prefer arriving in storms.” He smiled for the camera, inviting the viewers into his confidence. “This was a big one. A five-baby blizzard.”
Gamache glanced around and saw Gilles and Gabri and even Myrna smiling back. It was involuntary, almost impossible not to like this man.
But Ruth, at the far end of the sofa, was not smiling. Still, that was hardly telling.
“It must have been almost midnight,” Dr. Bernard continued. “I’d never met the family but it was an emergency, so I took my medical bag and got here as fast as I could.”
It was left vague as to how this man, who’d never been to the Ouellet farm, might have found it in the middle of the night, in the middle of a snowstorm, in the middle of nowhere. But perhaps that was part of the miracle.
“No one told me there were five babies.” He corrected himself, and his tense. “There would be five babies. But I set the father to boiling water and sterilizing equipment and finding clean linen. Fortunately Monsieur Ouellet is used to helping his farm animals calve and drop foals. He was remarkably helpful.”
The great man sharing credit, albeit by implying Madame Ouellet was no better than one of their sows. Gamache felt his admiration, if not his respect, grow. Whoever was behind this was brilliant. But, of course, Dr. Bernard was as much a pawn as the babies and the earnest, stunned Isidore Ouellet.
Dr. Bernard looked directly at the newsreel camera, and smiled.
*
“The Arnot case was in all the papers,” said Thérèse, lowering her own voice. “It was a sensation. You know it already. Everyone knows it.”
It was true. Pierre Arnot was as infamous as the Ouellet Quints were famous. He was their antithesis. Where the five girls brought delight, Pierre Arnot brought shame.
If they were an act of God, Pierre Arnot was the son of the morning. The fallen angel.
And still, he haunted them. And now he was back. And Thérèse Brunel would give almost anything not to resurrect that name, that case, that time.
“Oui, oui,” said Jérôme. He rarely showed his impatience, and almost never with his wife. But he did now. “It all happened a decade or so ago. I want to hear it again, and this time what didn’t make the papers. What you kept from the public.”
“I didn’t keep anything from the public, Jérôme.” Now she was herself impatient. Her voice was clipped and cold. “I was an entry-level agent at the time. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Armand? He knew the man well.”
They both, instinctively, turned to the group gathered around the door to the television.
“Do you really think that would be wise?” asked Jérôme.
Thérèse turned back to her husband. “Perhaps not.” She stared at him for a moment, searching his eyes. “You need to tell me, Jérôme. Why are you interested in Pierre Arnot?”
Jérôme’s breathing was labored, as though he’d been carrying something too heavy over too great a distance. Finally he spoke.
“His name came up in my search.”
Thérèse Brunel felt herself suddenly light-headed. Goddamned Pierre Arnot.
“Are you kidding?” But she could see he was not. “Was that the name that tripped the alarms? If it was, you need to tell us.”
“What I need, Thérèse, is to hear more about Arnot. His background. Please. You might have been entry-level then, but you’re a superintendent now. I know you know.”
She gave him a hard, assessing stare.
“Pierre Arnot was the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté,” she began, giving in, as she knew she would. “The top position, the job Sylvain Francoeur now holds. I’d just joined the Sûreté when it all came to light. I only met him once.”
Jérôme Brunel remembered all too well the day his wife, the head curator at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal, came home announcing she wanted to join the provincial police. She was in her mid-fifties and might as well have said she’d signed up for Cirque du Soleil. But he could tell she wasn’t joking, and to be fair, it hadn’t come completely out of the blue. Thérèse had been a consultant for the police on a number of art thefts and had discovered an aptitude for solving crimes.
“As you said, this all happened more than ten years ago,” said Thérèse. “Arnot had held the top post for many years by then. He was well liked. Respected. Trusted.”
“You say you met him once,” said Jérôme. “When was that?”
Her husband’s eyes were sharp. Analytical. She knew this was exactly as he must have been in the hospital, when a particularly urgent case had been wheeled in.
Gathering information, absorbing, analyzing. Breaking it down rapidly so he’d know how to deal with the emergency. Here in Clara’s living room, with the scent of fresh baking and rosemary chicken in the air, some sudden emergency had arisen. And brought with it the mud-covered, blood-covered name of Pierre Arnot.
“It was at a lecture at the academy,” she recalled. “In the class Chief Inspector Gamache taught.”
“Arnot was his guest?” asked Jérôme, surprised.
Thérèse nodded. By then both men were already famous. Arnot for being the respected head of a respected force, and Gamache for building and commanding the most successful homicide department in the nation.
She was in the packed auditorium, just one of hundreds of students, nothing, yet, to distinguish her from the rest, except her gray hair.
As Thérèse thought about it, the living room dissolved and became the amphitheater. She could see the two men below clearly. Arnot standing at the lectern. Older, confident, distinguished. Short and slender. Compact. With groomed gray hair and glasses. He looked anything but powerful. And yet, in that very humility there was force implied. So great was his power he needn’t flaunt it.
And standing off to the side, watching, was Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.
Tall, substantial. Quiet and contained. As a professor he seemed endlessly patient with stupid questions and testosterone. Leading by example, not force. Here, Agent Brunel knew, was a born leader. Someone you’d choose to follow.
Had Arnot been alone at the front of the class, she would have been deeply impressed. But as his lecture went on, her eyes were drawn more and more to the quiet man off to the side. So intently listening. So at ease.
And slowly it dawned on Agent Brunel where the real authority lay.
Chief Superintendent Arnot might hold power, but Armand Gamache was the more powerful man.
She told Jérôme this. He thought for a moment before speaking.
“Did Arnot try to kill Armand?” he asked. “Or was it the other way around?”
*
The Movietone newsreel ended with the benign Dr. Bernard holding up one of the newborn Quints and flapping her arm at the camera.
“Bye-bye,” said the announcer, as though announcing the Great Depression. “I know we’ll be seeing a lot more of you and your sisters.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Gamache noticed Ruth raise one veined hand.
Bye-bye.
The screen went b
lank, but only for a moment before another image, familiar to Canadians, came on. The black and white stylized eye and then the stenciled words, with no attempt at creativity or beauty.
Just facts.
National Film Board of Canada. The NFB.
There was no grim voice-over. No cheerful music. It was just raw footage taken by an NFB cameraman.
They saw the exterior of a charming cottage in summer. A fairy-tale cottage, with fish-scale shingles and gingerbread woodwork. Flower boxes were planted at each window and cheery sunflowers and hollyhocks leaned against the sunny home.
The little garden was ringed by a white picket fence.
It was like a doll’s house.
The camera zoomed in on the closed front door, focused, then the door opened slightly and a woman’s head poked out, stared at the camera, mouthed something that looked like “Maintenant?” Now?
She backed up and the door closed. A moment later it opened again and a little girl appeared in a short, frilly dress with a bow in her dark hair. She wore ankle socks and loafers. She was five or six years of age now, Gamache guessed. He did a quick calculation. It would be the early forties. The war years.
A hand appeared and pushed her further out into the sunshine. Not a shove, exactly, but a push strong enough that she stumbled a little.
Then an identical girl was expelled from the home.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
The girls stood together, clasping each other as though they’d been born conjoined. And their expressions were identical too.
Terror. Confusion. Almost exactly the same expression their father had had when he’d first gazed down at them.
They turned to the door, then returned to the door, flocking around it. Trying to get back in. But it wouldn’t open for them.
The first little girl looked at the camera. Pleading. Crying.
The image flickered and went out. Then the pretty cottage reappeared. The girls were gone and the door was closed.
Again it opened and this time the little girl walked out on her own. Then her sister appeared, gripping her hand. And so on. Until the last one was out, and the door closed behind them.
As one, they stared back at it. A hand snaked through a crack in the door and waved them away, before disappearing.
The girls were rooted in place. Paralyzed.
The camera shook slightly and as one the girls turned to look into the lens. The cameraman, Gamache thought, must have called to them. Was perhaps holding up a teddy bear or candy. Something to draw their attention.
One of them began to cry, then the others disintegrated and the picture flickered and went to black.
Over and over, in Clara’s back room, they watched, the pâté and drinks forgotten.
Over and over the girls came out of the pretty little house, and were hauled back in, to try it again. Until finally the first one appeared, a big smile on her face, followed by her sister, happily holding her hand.
Then the next and the next.
And the next.
They left the cottage and walked around the garden, along the border of white picket fence, smiling and waving.
Five happy little girls.
Gamache looked at Myrna, Olivier, Clara, Gilles, Gabri. He looked at Ruth, her tears following the crevices in her face, grand canyons of grief.
On the television, the Ouellet Quints smiled identical smiles, and waved identical waves into the camera, before the screen went dead. It was, Gamache knew, the scene that had come to define the Quints as perfect little girls, leading fairy-tale lives. Plucked from poverty, far from any conflict. This bit of footage had been sold to agencies around the world and was still used today in retrospectives of their lives.
As proof of how lucky the Ouellet Quints were.
Gamache and the others knew what they’d just witnessed. The birth of a myth. And they’d seen something broken. Shattered. Hurt beyond repair.
*
“How’d you know about that?” Thérèse asked. “It never came out in the trial.”
“I found references to something happening between the two men. Something near lethal.”
“You really want to know?” she asked, examining him.
“I need to know,” he said.
“This goes no further.” She received a look caught between amusement and annoyance.
“I promise not to put it into my blog.”
Thérèse didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. And Jérôme Brunel, not for the first time, wondered if he really wanted to hear this.
“Sit,” she said, and he followed her to the comfortable sofa. They faced the door, watching the backs of the other guests.
“Pierre Arnot made his mark in the Sûreté detachment in the north of Québec,” she confided. “On a Cree reserve on James Bay. Lots of alcohol. Sniff. The government-issue homes were a disgrace. The sewage and water systems overflowed into each other. There was terrible disease and violence. A cesspool.”
“In the middle of paradise,” said Jérôme.
Thérèse nodded. That, of course, heightened the tragedy.
The James Bay area was spectacularly beautiful and unspoiled. At the time. Ten thousand square miles of wildlife, of clear, fresh lakes, of fish and game and old-growth forests. This was where the Cree lived. This was where their gods lived.
But a hundred years ago they’d met the devil and made a deal.
In exchange for everything they could ever need—food, medical care, housing, education, the marvels of modern life—all they had to do was sign over the rights to their ancestral land.
But not all of it. They’d be given a nice plot on which to hunt and fish.
And if they didn’t sign?
The government would take the land anyway.
A hundred years before Agent Pierre Arnot stepped off the floatplane onto the reserve, the Grand Chief and the head of Indian Affairs for Canada met.
The deed was signed.
The deed was done.
The Cree had everything they could want. Except their freedom.
They did not thrive.
“By the time Arnot arrived the reserve was a ghetto of open sewers and disease, addiction and despair,” said Thérèse. “And lives so empty they raped and beat each other for distraction. Still, the Cree had held on to their dignity longer than anyone could have expected. It had taken several generations until finally there was no dignity, no self-respect, no hope left. The Cree thought their life couldn’t get worse. But it was about to.”
“What happened?” asked Jérôme.
“Pierre Arnot arrived.”
*
“Here the girls are asking their father for his blessing,” the Movietone newsreel narrator said, as though announcing the bombing of London. “Like obedient children. It’s a ritual still practiced in the hinterlands of Quebec.”
He pronounced it Kwee-bek, and his voice was hushed, documenting a rare species caught in its natural habitat.
Gamache sat forward. The girls were now eight or nine years of age. They weren’t in their fairy-tale cottage. This was back at the family farmhouse. Through the windows he could see it was winter.
Their coats and hats and skates were neatly hung on pegs by the door. Hockey sticks formed a teepee in the corner. He recognized the woodstove and braided rag rug and furnishings from the very first film, when the girls had been born. Almost nothing had changed. Like a museum.
The girls were kneeling, hands clasped in front of them, heads bowed, wearing identical dresses, identical shoes, identical bows. He wondered how anyone could tell them apart, and he wondered if they even bothered. As long as there were five of them, the details didn’t seem to matter.
Marie-Harriette knelt behind her daughters.
It was the first time the newsreels had captured the Quints’ mother. Gamache put his elbows on his knees and leaned further forward, trying to get a good look at this epic mother.
With
surprise, Gamache realized this wasn’t, in fact, the first time he’d seen her. It had been Marie-Harriette who’d pushed her daughters out that door. Then closed it on them.
Over and over. Until they got it right.
He’d presumed it was some NFB producer, or even a nurse or teacher. But it was their own mother.
Isidore Ouellet stood at the front of the room facing his family, his arms straight out in front of him. His eyes were closed. His face was in repose, like a zombie seeking enlightenment.
Gamache recognized the ritual. It was the New Year’s Day blessing of the children by their father. It was a solemn and meaningful prayer, though one rarely practiced in Québec anymore. He’d never considered doing it and Reine-Marie, Annie and Daniel would have howled with laughter had he tried. He had a brief thought that the holidays were approaching and the whole family would be together in Paris. Perhaps on New Year’s Day, with his children and grandchildren, he could suggest it. Just to see the looks on their faces. It would almost be worth it. Though Reine-Marie’s mother had remembered, as a child, kneeling with her siblings for the blessing.
And here it was, being played out for the insatiable newsreel audience, sitting in dark theaters around the world in the mid-forties, the Quints’ lives a prelude to the latest Clark Gable or Katharine Hepburn film.
There was a definite odor of the gaslights about what they were seeing on this grainy black and white film. A staged event, played for effect. Like the native drumming and dances performed for paying tourists.
Genuine, absolutely. But here more mercantile than spiritual.
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.