“You helped around the farm?” Gamache asked.
Pineault nodded. “Also did the cleaning and cooking. Isidore was pretty good with the outdoor stuff, but hated the inside stuff. But he liked an orderly home.”
Gamache didn’t have to look around to know André Pineault also liked one. He wondered if years with the exacting Isidore had rubbed off, or if it came naturally to the man.
“Luckily for me his favorite meal was that spaghetti in a can. The alphabets one. And hot dogs. At night we played cribbage or sat on the porch.”
“But you wouldn’t talk?”
“Not a word. He’d stare across the fields and so would I. Sometimes I’d go into town, to the bar, and when I got back he’d still be there.”
“What did he think about?”
Pineault pursed his lips, and looked out the window. There was nothing to see. Just the brick wall of the building next door.
“He thought about the girls.” André brought his eyes back to Gamache. “The happiest moment of his life was when they were born, but I don’t think he ever really got over the shock.”
Gamache remembered the photograph of young Isidore Ouellet looking wild-eyed at his five daughters wrapped in sheets and dirty towels and dish rags.
Yes, it had been a bit of a shock.
But a few days later there was Isidore, cleaned up like his daughters. Scrubbed for the newsreels. He held one of his girls, a little awkwardly, a little unsure, but so tenderly. So protectively. Deep in those tanned, strapping arms. Here was a rough farmer not schooled, yet, in pretense.
Isidore Ouellet had loved his daughters.
“Why didn’t the girls visit him when they got older?” Gamache asked.
“How’m I supposed to know? You’ll have to ask them.”
Them? thought Gamache.
“I can’t.”
“Well, if you’ve come to me for their address, I don’t have it. Haven’t seen or heard from them in years.”
Then André Pineault seemed to twig. His chair gave a long, slow scrape on the linoleum as he pushed back from the table. Away from the Chief Inspector.
“Why’re you here?”
“Constance died a few days ago.” He watched Pineault as he spoke. So far there was no reaction. The large man was simply taking it in.
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
But Gamache doubted that. He might not be happy about the news, but neither was he unhappy. As far as the Chief could tell, André Pineault didn’t care either way.
“So how many are left?” Pineault asked.
“None.”
“None?” That did seem to surprise him. He sat back and grabbed his beer. “Well, that’s it then.”
“It?”
“The last of them. No more Quints.”
“You don’t seem upset.”
“Look, I’m sure they were very nice girls, but as far as I could see a pile of merde dropped on Isidore and Marie-Harriette the moment they were born.”
“It was what their mother prayed for,” Gamache reminded him. “The whole Brother André story.”
“What do you know about that?” Pineault demanded.
“Well, it’s hardly a secret, is it?” asked Gamache. “Your sister visited Brother André at the Oratory. She climbed the steps on her knees to pray for children and ask for his intercession. The girls were born the day after Frère André died. It was a big part of their story.”
“Oh, I know,” said Pineault. “The Miracle Babies. You’d have thought Jesus Christ had delivered them himself. Marie-Harriette was just a poor farmer’s wife who wanted a family. But I’ll tell you something.” Pineault leaned his thick body closer to Gamache. “If God did that, he must’a hated her.”
“Did you read the book by Dr. Bernard?” Gamache asked.
He’d expected Pineault to get angry, but instead he grew quiet and shook his head.
“Heard about it. Everyone did. It was a bunch of lies. Made Isidore and Marie-Harriette out to be dumb farmers, too stupid to raise their own children. Bernard heard about the visit to Brother André and turned it into some Hollywood crap. Told the newsreels, the reporters. Wrote about it in his book. Marie-Harriette wasn’t the only one to go to the Oratory for Brother André’s blessing. People still do. No one talks about all the others climbing those stairs on their Goddamned knees.”
“The others didn’t give birth to quintuplets.”
“Lucky them.”
“You didn’t like the girls?”
“I didn’t know them. Every time they came home, there were cameras and nannies and that doctor and all sorts of people. At first it was fun, but then it became…” he looked for the word. “Merde. And it turned everyone’s lives into merde.”
“Did Marie-Harriette and Isidore see it that way?”