“Of the S?reté. I just left your place.”
“Yes, of course. I’d forgotten your name.”
“Did the police return your wife’s car to you?”
“No. But they gave me back what was in it.”
“Any papers? A briefcase?”
“She had a briefcase, but they didn’t return it.”
Gamache rubbed his face, and was surprised by the stubble. No wonder Villeneuve hadn’t been all that anxious to invite him in. He must look like a vagrant, between the gray stubble and the bruise.
He focused his thoughts. Audrey Villeneuve had planned to go to the Christmas party. Had been excited, happy, perhaps even relieved. Finally she could pass on what she’d found to someone who could do something about it.
She must have felt a huge weight lift.
But she’d also realize that the Premier of Québec wouldn’t just take her word for it, no matter how attractive she was in her new dress.
She’d have to give him proof. Proof she’d have carried with her to the party.
“All??” said Villeneuve. “You still there?”
“Just a moment, please,” said Gamache. He was almost there. Almost at the answer.
Audrey might have carried a clutch with her to the party, but not a briefcase, or a file folder, or loose papers. So how did she plan to pass the proof to the Premier?
Audrey Villeneuve was killed because of what she’d found out, and what she’d failed to find. That one last step that would have taken her to the man behind it all. The very man she’d be approaching. Premier Georges Renard.
“May I come back?” Gamache asked. “I need to see what she had in the car.”
“It’s not much,” said Villeneuve.
“I need to see anyway.” He hung up, turned his car around, went back through the Ville-Marie Tunnel, holding his breath like a child passing a graveyard, and was back at the Villeneuve home a few minutes later.
*
Jér?me Brunel sat on the arm of Myrna’s chair. Everyone leaned forward, to catch the story. Of miracles, and myth, and murder.
Everyone except Thérèse Brunel. She stood at the window, listening to the words, but looking out. Scanning the roads into the village.
The sun was bright and the skies clear. A beautiful winter day. And behind her, a dark story was being told.
“The girls were taken from their mother and father when they were still infants,” said Myrna. “It was at a time when the government didn’t need a reason, but they provided one anyway, by having the good doctor intimate that, though good people, the Ouellets were a little slow. Perhaps even congenitally so. Fit to raise cows and pigs, but not five little angels. They were a gift from God, Frère André’s last earthly miracle, and as such they belonged to all of Québec, and not some subsistence farmer. Dr. Bernard also hinted that the Ouellets were well paid for the girls. And people believed it.”
Clara looked at Gabri, who looked at Olivier, who looked at Ruth. They’d all believed that the Quints had been sold by their greedy parents. It was an essential part of the fairy tale. Not just that the Quints were born, but that they were saved.
“The Quints were sensations,” said Myrna. “All over the world people crushed by the Depression clamored for news of the miracle babies. They seemed proof of good in a very bad time.”
Myrna held the envelope containing the pages Armand Gamache had painstakingly written the night before. Twice. Once for his colleague. Once for Myrna. He knew Myrna had loved Constance, and deserved to know what had happened to her. He had no Christmas gift to give her, but he gave her this instead.
“To Bernard and the government it was clear that a fortune could be made from the girls. From films, to merchandise, to tours. Books, magazine articles. All chronicling their gilded life.”
Myrna suspected Armand would not be thrilled to know she was telling everyone what he’d written. In fact, he’d printed Confidential across the first page. And now she was blabbing it freely. But when she’d seen the anxiety in their faces, felt the gravity of the situation pressing down on them, she knew she had to take their minds off their fears.
And what better way than a tale of greed, of love, both warped and real. Of secrets and rage, of hurt beyond repair. And finally, of murder. Murders.
She thought the Chief Inspector might forgive her. She hoped she’d get a chance to ask for it.
“And it was a gilded life for the five girls,” she continued, looking around the circle at the wide, attentive eyes. “The government built them a perfect little cottage, like something out of a storybook. With a garden, a white picket fence. To keep the gawkers out. And the girls in. They had beautiful clothes, private tutoring, music lessons. They had toys and cream cakes. They had everything. Except privacy and freedom. And that’s the problem with a gilded life. Nothing inside can thrive. Eventually what was once beautiful rots.”
“Rots?” Gabri asked. “Did they turn on each other?”