“She understood and she tried, she really struggled with it, but the walls were just too high and thick. So the therapy had to end. There was nothing more I could do for her. But we stayed in touch. Acquaintances.” Myrna smiled. “Even this visit, I thought maybe she’d finally open up. I’d hoped now that her last sister was dead she wouldn’t feel she was betraying family secrets.”
“But she didn’t say anything?”
“No.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked.
Myrna nodded.
“I think when she first came down it was for a pleasant visit. When she decided to return it was for another reason altogether.”
Myrna held his eyes. “What reason?”
He brought the pictures out of his pocket and selected the one of the four women.
“I think she was bringing this to you. Her most prized, most personal possession. I think she wanted to open the doors, the windows of her home, and let you in.”
Myrna let out a long breath, then took the photograph from him.
“Thank you for that,” she said quietly, and looked at the picture. “Virginie, Hélène, Josephine, Marguerite, and now Constance. All gone. Passed into legend. What is it?”
Gamache had picked up the very first picture ever taken of the Ouellet Quintuplets, when they were newborns, lined up like loaves of bread on the hacked harvest table. Their stunned father standing behind them.
Gamache turned the photograph over and looked at the words almost certainly written by their mother or father. Neatly, carefully. In a hand not used to making note of anything. In a life not very noteworthy, this was worth the effort. They’d written the names of their girls in the order in which they’d been placed on the table.
Marie-Virginie.
Marie-Hélène.
Marie-Josephine.
Marie-Marguerite.
Marie-Constance.
Almost certainly the order in which they were born, but also, he realized, the order in which they died.
SEVENTEEN
Armand Gamache woke to screams and shouts and a short, sharp explosion of sound.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, he went from deep sleep to complete awareness in a split second. His hand shot out and hovered over the nightstand where his gun sat in the drawer.
His eyes were sharp, his focus complete. He was motionless, his body tense.
He could see daylight through the curtains. Then he heard it again. An urgent shout. A cry for help. A command given. Another bang.
There was no mistaking that sound.
He put on his dressing gown and slippers, pulled back the curtain, and saw a pickup hockey game on the frozen pond, in the middle of the village green.
Henri was beside him, alert as well, nudging his nose out the window. Sniffing.
“This place’s going to kill me,” said the Chief Inspector to Henri. But he smiled as he watched the kids, skating furiously after the puck. Shouting instructions to each other. Howling in triumph, and screaming with pain, when a slap shot went in the net.
He stood, mesmerized for a moment, looking out the frosted pane of glass.
It was a brilliant day. A Saturday, he realized. The sun was just up, but the kids looked like they’d been at it for hours and could go on all day, with only short breaks for hot chocolate.
He lowered the window and opened the curtains all the way, then turned around. The house was quiet. It had taken him a moment to remember he wasn’t in Gabri’s bed and breakfast, but in Emilie Longpré’s home.
This room was larger than the one he had at the B and B. There was a fireplace on one wall, the floors were wide-plank pine, and the walls were covered in floral paper that was anything but fashionable. There were windows on two sides, making it bright and cheerful.
He looked at the bedside clock and was shocked to see it was almost eight. He’d overslept. Hadn’t bothered to set the alarm, sure he’d wake up on his own at six in the morning, as he normally did. Or that Henri would nudge him awake.
But both had fallen into a deep sleep and would still be in bed if it weren’t for a sudden breakaway goal in the game below.
After a quick shower, Gamache took Henri downstairs, fed him, put the coffee on to perk, then clipped the leash on Henri for a walk around the village green. As they strolled they watched the hockey game, Henri straining, anxious to join the other kids.
“I’m glad you keep the dumb beast on a leash. He’s a menace.”
Gamache turned to see Ruth and Rosa closing in on them over the frozen road. Rosa wore little knitted boots and seemed to walk with a slight limp, like Ruth. And Ruth appeared to have developed a waddle, like Rosa.
If people really did morph into their pets, thought Gamache, any moment now he’d sprout huge ears and a playful, slightly vacant, expression.
But Rosa was more than a pet to Ruth, and Ruth was more than just another person to the duck.
“Henri is not a dumb beast, madame,” said Gamache.
“I know that,” snapped the poet. “I was talking to Henri.”
The shepherd and the duck eyed each other. Gamache, as a precaution, tightened his grip on the leash, but he needn’t have worried. Rosa thrust out her beak and Henri leapt back and cowered behind Gamache’s legs, looking up at him.
Gamache and Henri raised their brows at each other.
“Pass,” Ruth screamed at the hockey players. “Don’t hog the puck.”
Anyone listening would have heard the implied “dumbass” tacked to the end of that sentence.
A boy passed the puck, but too late. It disappeared into a snow bank. He looked over at Ruth and shrugged.
“That’s OK, Etienne,” said Ruth. “Next time keep your head up.”
“Oui, coach.”
“Fucking kids never listen,” said Ruth, and turned her back on them, but not before a few had seen her and Rosa and stopped play to wave.
“Coach?” asked Gamache, walking beside her.
“It’s French for asshole. Coach.”
Gamache laughed, a puff of humor. “Something else you taught them, then.”
Small puffs came from Ruth’s mouth and he presumed it was a chuckle. Or sulphur.
“Thank you for the coq au vin last night,” said the Chief. “It was delicious.”
“It was for you? Christ, I thought that librarian woman said it was for the people in Emilie’s home.”
“That’s me and my friends, as you very well know.”
Ruth picked up Rosa and walked in silence for a few paces.
“Are you any closer to finding out who killed Constance?” she asked.
“A little.”
Beside them the hockey game continued, with boys and girls chasing the puck, some skating forward, some wiggling backward. As though life depended on what happened to that piece of frozen rubber.
It might appear trivial, but Gamache knew that this was where so much was learned. Trust and teamwork. When to pass, when to advance and when to retreat. And to never lose sight of the goal, no matter the chaos and distractions around you.
“Why did you take that book by Dr. Bernard?” he asked.
“What book?”
“How many books by a Dr. Bernard do you have?” he asked. “The one on the Ouellet Quints. You took it from Myrna’s bookstore.”