“Brother André,” said Gabri. “Literally.”
“That’s what Constance was trying to tell us,” said Myrna. “What she did tell us. Me. She actually said that hockey was brother André’s favorite sport. I was the one who capitalized the B, not her. Not Brother André, but brother André. The sixth sibling. Named after the saint who’d produced a miracle.”
“He killed Constance so she wouldn’t tell you that he’d killed Virginie,” said Clara. “That was what the sisters had kept secret all those years, what kept them prisoners long after the public stopped prying.”
“But how did he know she’d tell?” Olivier asked.
“He didn’t,” said Myrna. “But Gamache thinks they kept in touch. André Pineault claimed not to know where the girls lived, but he later said he’d written to tell them their father was dead. He knew their address. That suggested they kept in some contact. It was strange that Pineault would lie about that.
“Gamache thinks Constance must have told him what her plans were for Christmas. To visit her friend and former therapist. And Pineault got frightened. He must have suspected that with Marguerite dead, Constance might want to tell someone the truth, before her time came. She wanted the truth about Virginie’s death to be known. She’d kept his secret all those years but now, for her own and Virginie’s sake, she needed to be free of it.”
“So he killed her,” said Ruth.
Jér?me saw Thérèse’s back stiffen, then he heard a sound. He got up and walked swiftly across to the window to join her.
He looked out. A large black SUV followed by a van were driving very slowly down the hill.
“They’re here,” said Thérèse Brunel.
THIRTY-NINE
Armand Gamache drove onto the Champlain Bridge. There was no sign, yet, of any effort to close it but he knew if anyone could do it, it would be Isabelle Lacoste.
The traffic was heavy and the road still snowy. He passed a car and glanced in. A man and a woman sat in the front and behind them an infant was strapped into a car seat. Two lanes over he could see a young woman alone in her car, tapping her steering wheel and nodding to music.
Red brake lights appeared. The traffic was slowing. They were now creeping along. Bumper-to-bumper.
And ahead, the huge steel span rose.
Gamache knew almost nothing about engineering. About load tests and concrete. But he did know that 160,000 cars crossed this bridge every day. It was the busiest span in Canada and it was about to be blown into the St. Lawrence River. Not by some enraged foreign terrorist, but by two of the most trusted people in Québec.
The Premier and the head of the police force.
It had taken Gamache a while, but finally he thought he knew why.
What made this different from the other bridges, the tunnels, the neglected overpasses? Why target this?
There had to be a reason, a purpose. Money, maybe. If a bridge came down, it would have to be rebuilt. And that would put hundreds of millions more dollars in pockets across Québec. But Gamache knew it was more than money. He knew Francoeur, and what drove the man. It was one thing. Had always been one thing.
Power.
How could bringing down the Champlain Bridge give him more than he already had?
One lane over, a young boy looked out his window and stared directly at the Chief Inspector. And smiled.
Gamache smiled back. His own car slowed to a stop, joining the column of stalled cars in the middle of the bridge. Gamache’s right hand trembled a little, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Pierre Arnot had started it, decades ago, on the remote reserve.
While up there he’d met another young man on the rise. Georges Renard.
Arnot was with the S?reté detachment, Renard was an engineer with Aqueduct, planning the dam.
Both were clever, dynamic, ambitious and they triggered something in the other. So that over time, clever became cunning. Dynamic became obsessed. Ambitious became ruthless.
It was as though, in that fateful meeting, something had changed in each man’s DNA. Up until then, both had been driven, but ultimately decent. There was a limit to how far they were willing to go. But when Arnot met Renard, and Renard met Arnot, that limit, that line, had vanished.
Gamache had known Pierre Arnot, had even admired parts of the man. And now, as he inched along the bridge toward the highest point of the span, Gamache wondered what might have become of Arnot, had he not met Renard.
And what might have become of Renard, had he not met Arnot?
He’d seen it in others, the consequences of failing to choose companions wisely. One slightly immoral person was a problem. Two together was a catastrophe. All it took was a fateful meeting. A person who told you your meanest desires, your basest thoughts, weren’t so bad. In fact, he shared them.
Then the unthinkable was thought. And planned for. And put into action.