“But you think she had a secret?” Myrna persevered. “Something she felt guilty about?”
“Look.” Ruth laid down her cutlery and stared across at Myrna. “If I was a fortune-teller, what would I say to people? I’d look them in the eye and say…” She turned to Gamache and moved her spiny hands back and forth in front of his amused face. She took on a vague eastern European accent and lowered her voice. “You carry a heavy burden. A secret. Something you’ve told no living soul. Your heart is breaking, but you must let it go.”
Ruth dropped her hands but continued to stare at Gamache. He gave nothing away, but became very still.
“Who doesn’t have a secret?” Ruth asked quietly, speaking directly to the Chief.
“You’re right, of course,” said Gamache, taking a forkful of the delicious casserole. “We all carry secrets. Most to the grave.”
“But some secrets are heavier than others,” said the old poet. “Some stagger us, slow us. And instead of taking them to the grave, the grave comes to us.”
“You think that’s what happened with Constance?” asked Myrna.
Ruth held Gamache’s thoughtful brown eyes for a moment longer, then broke off to stare across the table.
“Don’t you, Myrna?”
More frightening than the thought was Ruth’s use of Myrna’s actual name. So serious was the suddenly and suspiciously sober poet that she’d forgotten to forget Myrna’s name.
“What do you think her secret was?” asked Olivier.
“I think it was that she was a transvestite,” said Ruth so seriously that Olivier’s brows rose, then quickly descended and he glowered. Beside him, Gabri laughed.
“The Fairy Queen after all,” he said.
“How the hell should I know her secret?” demanded Ruth.
Gamache looked across the table. Myrna was the wedding guest, he suspected. The person Constance Ouellet had chosen to unburden herself to. But she never got that chance.
And, more and more, Gamache suspected it wasn’t a coincidence that Constance Ouellet, the last Quint, was murdered as she prepared to return to Three Pines.
Someone wanted to prevent her from getting here.
Someone wanted to prevent her from unburdening herself.
But then another thought struck Gamache. Maybe Myrna wasn’t the only wedding guest. Maybe Constance had confided in someone else.
The rest of the meal was spent talking about Christmas plans, menus, the upcoming concert.
Everyone, except Ruth, cleared the table while Gabri took Olivier’s trifle out of the fridge, with its layers of ladyfingers, custard, fresh whipped cream and brandy-infused jam.
“The love that dares not speak its name,” Gabri whispered as he cradled it in his arms.
“How many calories, do you think?” asked Clara.
“Don’t ask,” said Olivier.
“Don’t tell,” said Myrna.
After dinner, when the table was cleared and the dishes done, the guests took their leave, getting on their heavy coats and sorting through the jumble of boots by the mudroom door.
Gamache felt a hand on his elbow and was drawn by Gilles into a far corner of the kitchen.
“I think I know how to connect you to the Internet.” The woodsman’s eyes were bright.
“Really?” asked Gamache, barely daring to believe it. “How?”
“There’s a tower up there already. One you know about.”
Gamache looked at his companion, perplexed. “I don’t think so. We’d be able to see it, non?”
“No. That’s the beauty of it,” said Gilles, excited now. “It’s practically invisible. In fact, you can barely tell it’s there even from right under it.”
Gamache was unconvinced. He knew those woods, not, perhaps, as intimately as Gilles, but well enough. And nothing came to mind.
“Just tell me,” said the Chief. “What’re you talking about?”
“When Ruth was talking about killing that bird, it made me think of hunting. And that reminded me of the blind.”
The Chief’s face went slack from surprise. Merde, he thought. The hunting blind. That wooden structure high up in a tree in the forest. It was a platform with wooden railings, built by hunters to sit comfortably and wait for a deer to walk past. Then they’d kill it. The modern equivalent of the Ancient Mariner in his crow’s nest.
It was, for a man who’d seen far too many deaths, shameful.
But it might, this day, redeem itself.
“The blind,” whispered Gamache. He’d actually been on it, when he’d first come to Three Pines to investigate the murder of Miss Jane Neal, but he hadn’t thought of it in years. “It’ll work?”
“I think so. It’s not as high as a transmission tower, but it’s on the top of the hill and it’s stable. We can attach a satellite dish up there for sure.”
Gamache waved Thérèse and Jér?me over.
“Gilles’s figured out how to get a satellite dish up above.”
“How?” the Brunels asked together and the Chief told them.
“That’ll work?” asked Jér?me.