“I think we know why Virginie would want to do it,” said Gamache. “She seemed the most damaged by the public life.”
Lacoste was quiet, thinking. “And the neighbor, if she really is Virginie, is married. Maybe Virginie knew the only hope for a normal life was to start again, fresh. As someone else.”
“What’s her name?”
He heard clicking as Lacoste brought up the file. “Annette Michaud.”
“If she is Virginie, then Bernard and the government must have helped her,” said Gamache, musing out loud. “Why? They probably wouldn’t have done it willingly. Virginie must have had something on them. Something she was threatening to tell.”
He thought again of that little girl, locked out of her home. Turning a wretched face to the newsreel camera, begging for help.
If he was right, that meant Virginie Ouellet, one of the miracles, was also a murderer. Perhaps a double murderer. One years ago that let her escape, and one days ago, to keep her secret.
“I’ll interview her again tonight, patron,” said Lacoste.
In the background Gamache could hear shrieks of laughter from Lacoste’s young children and he looked at his dashboard clock. Six thirty. A week before Christmas. Through the half moon of cleared snow on his windshield he saw an illuminated plastic snowman and icicle lights out in front of the service station.
“I’ll go,” he said. “Besides, it’s closer for me. I’m just across the bridge.”
“It’ll already be a long night, Chief,” said Lacoste. “Let me go.”
“It’ll be a long night for both of us, I think,” said Gamache. “I’ll let you know what I find. In the meantime, try to find out as much as you can about Madame Michaud and her husband.”
He hung up and turned his car back toward Montréal. Toward the congested bridge. As he slowly made his way back into the city he thought about Virginie. Who might have escaped, but just to the house next door.
Gamache exited the bridge and negotiated the smaller back roads until he arrived at the Ouellet home. Dark. A hole in the cheerful Christmas neighborhood.
He parked his car and looked at the Michaud house. The walk had been shoveled, and one of the trees in the front yard was decked out in bright Christmas bulbs. Lights were on, though the curtains were drawn. The house looked warm, inviting.
A home like any other on the street. One among equals.
Is that what the famous Quints had yearned for? Not celebrity, but company? To be normal? If so, and if this was a long-lost Quint, she’d achieved it. Unless she’d killed to do it.
Gamache rang the doorbell, and it was answered by a man in his early eighties, Gamache guessed. He opened the door without hesitation, without worry that whoever was on the other side might wish him wrong.
“Oui?”
Monsieur Michaud wore a cardigan and gray flannels. He was neat and comfortable. His moustache was white and trimmed and his eyes were without suspicion. In fact, he looked at Gamache as though expecting the best, not the worst.
“Monsieur Michaud?”
“Oui?”
“I’m one of the officers investigating what happened next door,” said Gamache, bringing out his S?reté ID. “May I come in?”
“But you’ve been hurt.”
The voice came from behind Michaud and now the elderly man stepped back and his wife stepped forward.
“Come in,” said Annette Michaud, reaching out to Gamache.
The Chief had forgotten about his face and bloody shirt and now he felt badly. The two elderly people were looking at him with concern. Not for themselves, but for him.
“What can we do?” Monsieur Michaud asked, as his wife led them into the living room. A Christmas tree was decorated, its lights on. Beneath it some gifts were wrapped, and two stockings hung off the mantel. “Would you like a bandage?”
“No, no, I’m fine. Merci,” Gamache assured them. At Madame Michaud’s prompting he gave her his heavy coat.
She was small and plump and wore a housedress with thick stockings and slippers.
The home smelled of dinner, and Gamache thought of the dry cheese sandwich, still uneaten, in the cold car.
The Michauds sat on the sofa, side by side, and looked at him. Waiting.
Two less likely murderers would be hard to find. But Gamache, in his long career, had arrested more unlikely killers than obvious ones. And he knew the strong, wretched emotions that drove the final blow could live anywhere. Even in these nice people. Even in this quiet home with the scent of pot roast.
“How long have you lived in this neighborhood?” he asked.
“Oh, fifty years,” said Monsieur Michaud. “We bought the home when we married in 1958.”
“1959, Albert,” said Madame.
Virginie Ouellet had died July 25, 1958. And Annette Michaud arrived here in 1959.
“No children?”
“None,” said Monsieur.
Gamache nodded. “And when did your neighbors move in, the Pineault sisters?”
“That would’ve been twenty-three years ago,” said Monsieur Michaud.
“So accurate,” said Gamache with a smile.