FIVE
Isabelle Lacoste and Chief Inspector Gamache sat in rush hour traffic, on the approach to the Champlain Bridge back into Montréal. It was barely four thirty, but the sun was down and it felt like midnight. The snow had stopped and Gamache looked past Isabelle Lacoste, out the window, and across the six lanes of traffic. To the spot where Audrey Villeneuve had chosen death over life.
By now her family had been told. Armand Gamache had done enough of that, and it never got easier. It was worse than looking into the faces of the dead. To look into the faces of those left behind, and to see that moment when their world changed forever.
It was a sort of murder he performed. The mother, the father, the wife or husband. They opened the door to his knock, believing the world a flawed but fundamentally decent place. Until he spoke. It was like throwing them off a cliff. Seeing them plummet. Then hitting. Dashed. The person they’d been, the life they’d known, gone forever.
And the look in their eyes, as though he’d done it.
Before they’d left, Myrna had given him Constance’s home address.
“When she was here, how’d she seem?” Gamache had asked.
“As she always did. I hadn’t seen her for a while, but she seemed her usual self.”
“Not worried about anything?”
Myrna shook her head.
“Money? Health?”
Myrna shook her head again. “She was a very private person, as you might expect. She didn’t tell me a lot about her life, but she seemed relaxed. Happy to be here and happy to be coming back for the holidays.”
“You noticed nothing odd at all? Did she have an argument with anyone here? Hurt feelings?”
“You suspect Ruth?” asked Myrna, a shadow of a smile on her face.
“I always suspect Ruth.”
“As a matter of fact, Constance and Ruth hit it off. They had a certain chemistry.”
“Do you mean chemistry or medication?” asked Lacoste, and Myrna had smiled.
“Are they alike?” Gamache asked.
“Ruth and Constance? Completely different, but for some reason they seemed to like each other.”
Gamache took that in, with some surprise. The old poet, as a matter of principle, disliked everyone. She’d have hated everyone if she could have worked up the energy hate required.
“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair that you would greet each overture / with curling lip?” said Myrna.
“I’m sorry?” said Gamache, taken aback by the question.
Myrna smiled. “It’s from one of Ruth’s poems. Constance quoted it to me one night when she came back from visiting Ruth.”
Gamache nodded and wondered if, when they eventually found her, Constance would have been hurt beyond repair.
Gamache crossed the bookstore to retrieve his coat. At the door he kissed Myrna on both cheeks.
She held him at arm’s length, looking into his face. “And you? Are you all right?”
He considered the question, and all his possible responses, from flippant to dismissive, to the truth. It was, he knew, very little use lying to Myrna. But neither could he tell her the truth.
“I’m fine,” he said, and saw her smile.
She watched them get into their car and drive up the hill out of Three Pines. Constance had taken that same route, and not returned. But Myrna knew Gamache would come back and bring with him the answer she had to hear.
*
The traffic started to creep forward, and before long the S?reté officers were over the Champlain Bridge and driving through the city. Inspector Lacoste pulled up in front of a modest home in the Pointe-Saint-Charles quartier of Montréal.
Windows were lit in houses up and down the street. Christmas decorations were on, reflecting red and yellow and green in the fresh snow.
Except for here. This house was a hole in the cheerful neighborhood.
Chief Inspector Gamache checked the address he’d been given. Yes, this was where Constance Ouellet lived. He’d expected something different. Bigger.
He looked at the other homes. A snowman sat on a lawn across the street, his twig arms open in a hug. Gamache could see clearly through the front window. A woman was helping a child with homework. Next door, an elderly couple watched television while decorations on their mantelpiece blinked on and off.
Everywhere there was life. Except at the dark home of Constance Ouellet.
The clock on the dashboard said it was just after five.
They got out of the car. Inspector Lacoste grabbed a flashlight and swung a satchel over her shoulder. The Scene of Crime kit.
The path to Madame Ouellet’s home had not been shoveled and there were no footprints in the snow. They mounted the steps and stood on the small concrete porch, their breaths puffing and disappearing into the night.
Gamache’s cheeks burned in the slight breeze, and he could feel the cold sneak up his sleeves and past the scarf at his neck. The Chief ignored the chill and looked around. The snow on the windowsills was undisturbed. Inspector Lacoste rang the doorbell.
They waited.
A great deal of police work involved waiting. For suspects. For autopsies. For forensic results. Waiting for someone to answer a question. Or a doorbell.
It was, he knew, one of Isabelle Lacoste’s great gifts, and one so easily overlooked. She was very, very patient.
Anyone could run around, not many could quietly wait. As they did now. But that didn’t mean Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Lacoste did nothing. As they waited they took in their surroundings.
The little home was in good repair, the eaves troughs tacked in place, the windows and sills painted and without chips or cracks. It was neat and tidy. Christmas lights had been strung around the wrought-iron rail of the porch, but they remained off. A wreath was on the front door.
Lacoste turned to the Chief, who nodded. She opened the outer door and peered through the semi-circle of cut glass, into the vestibule.
Gamache had been inside many similar homes. They’d been built in the late forties and early fifties for returning veterans. Modest homes in established neighborhoods. Many of the houses had since been torn down, or added to. But some, like this, remained intact. A small gem.
“Nothing, Chief.”
“Bon,” he said. Walking back down the stairs, he gestured to the right and watched Lacoste step into the deep snow. Gamache himself walked around the other side, noting that the snow there was also unmarred by footprints. He sank up to his shins. The snow tumbled down into his boots and he felt the chill as it turned to ice water and soaked his socks.
Like Lacoste, he looked into the windows, cupping his hands around his face. The kitchen was empty and clean. No unwashed dishes on the counter. He tried the windows. All locked. In the tiny backyard he met Lacoste coming around the other side. She shook her head, then stood on tiptoes and looked in a window. As he watched, she turned on her flashlight and shone it in.
Then she turned to him.
She’d found something.
Wordlessly, Lacoste handed the flashlight to Gamache. He shone it through the window and saw a bed. A closet. An open suitcase. And an elderly woman lying on the floor. Far beyond repair.