“Coffee? Brownie?”
“Non, merci,” he said, and took the comfortable chair she pointed to beside the fire, while she poured herself a mug and brought over a plate of fudge brownies, in case he changed his mind.
Her home smelled of chocolate and coffee, and something else musky and rich and familiar.
“You made the coq au vin?” he asked. He’d presumed it was Olivier or Gabri.
She nodded. “Ruth helped. Rosa, however, was no help at all. It was very nearly canard au vin.”
Gamache laughed. “It was delicious.”
“I thought you could use something comforting,” she said, watching her guest.
He held her eyes. Waiting for the inevitable questions. Why was he here? Why did he bring the elderly couple? Why were they hiding, and who from?
Three Pines had taken them in. Three Pines could, reasonably, expect answers to those questions. But Myrna simply took a brownie and bit into it. And he knew then he really was safe, from prying eyes and prying questions.
Three Pines, he knew, was not immune to dreadful loss. To sorrow and pain. What Three Pines had wasn’t immunity but a rare ability to heal. And that’s what they offered him, and the Brunels. Space and time to heal.
And comfort.
But, like peace, comfort didn’t come from hiding away or running away. Comfort first demanded courage. He picked up one of the brownies and took a bite, then he reached into his pocket for his notebook.
“I thought you’d like to hear what we’ve found so far about Constance.”
“I take it that doesn’t include whoever killed her,” said Myrna.
“Unfortunately not,” he said as he put on his reading glasses and glanced at his notebook. “I spent much of the day researching the Quints—”
“Then you think that had something to do with her death? The fact she was a Ouellet Quintuplet?”
“I don’t really know, but it’s extraordinary, and when someone is murdered we look for the extraordinary, though, to be honest, we often find the killer hiding in the banal.”
Myrna laughed. “Sounds like being a therapist. People normally came into my office because something happened. Someone had died, or betrayed them. Their love wasn’t reciprocated. They’d lost a job. Gotten divorced. Something big. But the truth was, while that might’ve been the catalyst, the problem was almost always tiny and old and hidden.”
Gamache raised his brows in surprise. It did sound exactly like his job. The killing was the catalyst, but it almost always started as something small, invisible to the naked eye. It was often years, decades, old. A slight that rankled and grew and infected the host. Until what had been human became a walking resentment. Covered in skin. Passing as human. Passing as happy.
Until something happened.
Something had happened in Constance’s life, or the life of her killer, that provoked the murder. It might have been big, clearly visible. But more likely it was tiny. Easily dismissed.
Which was why Gamache knew he had to look closely, carefully. Where other investigators bounded ahead, dramatically covering ground, Armand Gamache took his time. Indeed, he knew that to some it might even appear as inactivity. Walking slowly, his hands behind his back. Sitting on a park bench, staring into space. Sipping coffee in the bistro or brasserie, listening.
Thinking.
And while others, in glorious commotion, raced right by the killer, Chief Inspector Gamache slowly walked up to him. Found him hiding, in plain sight. Disguised as everyone else.
“Shall I tell you what I know?” he asked.
Myrna leaned back in her large armchair, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket around her, and nodded.
“This is culled from all sorts of sources, some of them public, but most came from private notes and diaries.”
“Go on,” said Myrna.
“Her parents were Isidore Ouellet and Marie-Harriette Pineault. They were married in the parish church of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu in 1928. He was a farmer. Twenty when they married, and Marie-Harriette was seventeen years old.”
He looked up at Myrna. Whether this was news to her or not, he couldn’t tell. It was, he had to admit, not exactly headline grabbing. That came later.
“The girls were born in 1937.” He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair, as though done. But they both knew he, and the story, were far from finished. “Now, why that gap? Almost ten years between the marriage and the first child. Children. It’s inconceivable, so to speak, that they weren’t trying to have children. This was a time when the Church and the parish priest were the greatest influences in people’s lives. It was considered the duty of any couple to conceive. In fact, the only reason to get married and have sex was to procreate. So why didn’t Isidore and his young wife?”