*
Marc Brault returned to the front room, walking slowly this time.
“I told the others,” he said, his voice almost dream-like. “We searched her bedroom. You know, Armand, if you hadn’t told us who she was we wouldn’t have known. Not until we ran her through the system.”
Brault looked around the small front room.
“There’s nothing at all to suggest she was one of the Ouellets. Not here, not in the bedrooms. There might be papers or photographs somewhere, but so far nothing.”
The two men looked around the front room.
There were china figurines and books and CDs and crossword puzzles and worn boxes of jigsaw puzzles. Evidence of a personal life, but not of a past.
“Is she the last one?” Brault asked.
Gamache nodded. “I think so.”
The coroner poked his head in and said they were about to leave with the body, and did the officers want one last look? Brault turned to Gamache, who nodded.
The two men followed the coroner down the narrow corridor, to a bedroom at the very back of the home. There, a Scene of Crime team from the Montréal homicide squad was collecting evidence. When Gamache arrived, they stopped and acknowledged him. Isabelle Lacoste, who’d simply been observing the operation, saw their eyes widen when they realized who he was.
Chief Inspector Gamache, of the S?reté. The man most Québec cops dreamed of working with. With the exception of the very cops who were now assigned to the Chief’s own homicide division. She stepped around the tape marking Madame Ouellet’s body and joined the two men at the door. The little room was suddenly very crowded.
The bedroom, like the front room, had many personal touches, including her suitcase, open and packed, on the neatly made bed. But also like the front room, there wasn’t a single photograph.
“May I?” Gamache asked the Scene of Crime investigator, who nodded. The Chief knelt beside Constance. She wore a dressing gown, buttoned up. He could see a flannel nightie underneath. She’d clearly been killed in the act of packing the night before leaving for Three Pines.
Chief Inspector Gamache held her cold hand and looked into her eyes. They were wide. Staring. Very blue. Very dead. Not surprised. Not pained. Not fearful.
Empty. As though her life had simply run out. Drained, like a battery. It would have been a peaceful scene, except for the blood under her head and the broken lamp, its base covered in blood, beside her body.
“Looks unpremeditated,” said one of the investigators. “Whoever did this didn’t bring a weapon. The lamp came from there.” She pointed to the bedside table.
Gamache nodded. But that didn’t make it unpremeditated. It only meant the killer knew where a weapon could be found.
He looked back down at the woman at his feet and wondered if her murderer had any idea who she was.
*
“Are you sure?” Clara asked.
“Pretty sure,” said Myrna, and tried not to smile.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Constance didn’t want anyone to know. She’s very private.”
“I thought they were all dead,” said Clara, her voice low.
“I hope not.”
*
“Frankly,” Marc Brault admitted as they prepared to leave the Ouellet home, “this couldn’t come at a worse time. Every Christmas husbands kill wives, employees kill employers. And some people kill themselves. Now this. Most of my squad is going on holiday.”
Gamache nodded. “I’m off to Paris in a week. Reine-Marie’s already there.”
“I’m heading to our chalet in Sainte-Agathe on Friday.” Brault gave his colleague an appraising look. They were out on the sidewalk now. Neighbors had begun to gather and stare. “I don’t suppose…” Marc Brault rubbed his gloved hands together for warmth. “I know you have plenty of your own cases, Armand…”
Brault knew more than that. Not because Chief Inspector Gamache had told him, but because every senior cop in Québec, and probably Canada, knew. The homicide department of the S?reté was being “restructured.” Gamache, while publicly lauded, was being privately and professionally marginalized. It was humiliating, or would be except that Chief Inspector Gamache continued to behave as though he hadn’t noticed.
“I’ll be happy to take it over.”
“Merci,” said Brault, clearly relieved.
“Bon.” The Chief Inspector signaled to Lacoste. It was time to leave. “If your team can complete the interviews and forensics, we’ll take over in the morning.”
They walked to the car. Some of the neighbors asked for information. Chief Inspector Brault was vague, but reassuring.
“We can’t keep her death quiet, of course,” he said to Gamache, his voice low. “But we won’t announce her real name. We’ll call her Constance Pineault, if the press asks.” Brault looked at the worried faces of the neighbors. “I wonder if they knew who she was?”
“I doubt it,” said Gamache. “She wouldn’t have erased all evidence of who she was, including her name, just to tell her neighborhood.”
“Maybe they guessed,” said Brault. But, like Gamache, he thought not. Who would guess that their elderly neighbor was once one of the most famous people not just in Québec, or Canada, or even North America, but in the world?
Lacoste had started the car and put the heat on to defrost the windshield. The two men stood outside the vehicle. Instead of walking away, Marc Brault lingered.
“Just say it,” said Gamache.
“Are you going to resign, Armand?”
“I’ve been on the case for two minutes and you’re already asking for my resignation?” Gamache laughed.
Brault smiled and continued to watch his colleague. Gamache took a deep breath and adjusted his gloves.
“Would you?” he finally asked.
“At my age? I have my pension in place, and so do you. If my bosses wanted me out that badly, I’d be gone like a shot.”
“If your bosses wanted you out that badly,” said Gamache, “don’t you think you’d wonder why?”
Behind Brault, Gamache could see the snowman across the street, its arms raised like the bones of an ill-formed creature. Beckoning.
“Take retirement, mon ami,” said Brault. “Go to Paris, enjoy the holidays, then retire. But first, solve this case.”