Gamache had to remind himself that Constance was the victim, not a suspect. But he also remembered the police report on the first sister’s death. Virginie had fallen down the stairs. Or maybe, he thought, been pushed.
The sisters had entered into a conspiracy of silence. Myrna assumed it was in reaction to the extreme glare of publicity they’d suffered as children, but now Chief Inspector Gamache wondered if there was another reason for their silence. Something from within their own household, not from outside.
And yet, he had the impression that seventy-seven-year-old Constance was returning to Three Pines, to Myrna, and bringing with her not simply the only photo that existed of the grown-up girls, but also the story of what really happened in that home.
But Constance was killed before she could say anything.
“She’d have brought it on herself, of course,” said Jér?me.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she killed her sister.”
Gamache gawked. How could Jér?me possibly know that, or know Gamache’s suspicions?
“The reason she was alone in the sac. There were almost certainly six of them, two to a sac, but the singleton would have killed and absorbed her twin,” Jér?me explained. “Happens all the time.”
“Why do you want to know all this, Armand?” Thérèse asked.
“There’s been no public announcement, but the last Quint, Constance Ouellet, was murdered two days ago. She was preparing to come down here, to Three Pines.”
“Here?” asked Jér?me. “Why?”
Gamache told them. He could tell, as he spoke, that this was more than another death to them, even more than another murder. There was an added weight to this tragedy, as though Thérèse and Jér?me had lost someone they knew and cared about.
“Hard to believe they’re all gone,” said Thérèse, then she thought about it. “But they never seemed completely real. They were like statues. Looked human but weren’t.”
“Myrna Landers said it was like finding out her friend was a unicorn, or a Greek goddess. Hera, come to earth.”
“An interesting thing to say,” said Thérèse. “But how did this get to be your case, Armand? Constance Ouellet was found in Montréal. It would be the jurisdiction of the Montréal police.”
“True, but Marc Brault handed it to me when he realized there was a connection.”
“Lucky you,” said Jér?me.
“Lucky all of us,” said Gamache. “If not for that, we wouldn’t be in this home.”
“Which brings us to another issue,” said Jér?me. “Now that we’re here, how are we going to get out?”
“The plan?” asked Gamache.
They nodded.
The Chief paused to gather his thoughts.
Jér?me knew now would be the time to tell them what he’d found. The name. He’d only just glimpsed it in the moment before he realized he’d been caught. In the moment before he’d run. Run away. Back down the virtual corridor. Slamming doors, erasing his trail. Running, running.
He’d only just glimpsed it. And, thought Jér?me, maybe he got it wrong. In his panic, he must have gotten it wrong.
“Our only hope is to find out what Francoeur’s doing and stop it. And to do that we have to get you reconnected to the Internet,” Gamache said. “And not dial-up. It needs to be high-speed.”
“Yes,” said Thérèse, exasperated. “We know that. But how? There is no high-speed here.”
“We create our own transmission tower.”
Thérèse Brunel sat back and stared. “Have you hit your head, Armand? We can’t do that.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Well, beside the fact it would take months and require all sorts of expertise, don’t you think someone would notice we were building a tower?”
“Ahh, they’d notice that, but I didn’t say ‘build,’ I said ‘create.’” Gamache got up and walked to the kitchen window. He pointed, past the village green, past the three huge pine trees, past the homes covered in snow. And up the hill.
“What’re we looking at?” Jér?me asked. “The hill over the village? We could put a tower on it, but again, that would take expertise.”
“And time,” said Thérèse.
“But the tower’s already there,” said Gamache, and they looked again. Finally Thérèse turned to him, astonished.
“You mean the trees,” she said.
“C’est ?a,” said Gamache. “They make a natural tower. Jér?me?”
Gamache turned to the rotund man, wedged between the armchair and the window. His back to them. Staring up and out of the village.
“It might work,” he said, uncertainly. “But we’d need someone to put a satellite dish on a tree.”
They walked back to the breakfast table.
“There must be people who work with trees around here—what’re they called?” Thérèse’s city mind stumbled over itself. “Lumberjacks or something? We could get one of them to climb up with a dish. And from that height I bet we could find a transmission tower using line-of-sight. And from there we connect with a satellite.”
“But where do we find a satellite dish?” Jér?me asked. “It can’t be a regular one. It needs to be some satellite dish that can’t be traced.”
“Let’s say we do get online,” said Thérèse, her mind racing ahead, “we’d have another problem. We can’t use the S?reté log-ins to get into the system, Francoeur would be looking for those. So how do we get back in?”
Gamache placed a piece of notepaper on the wooden table.
“What is it?” Thérèse asked.
But Jér?me knew. “It’s an access code. But using what network?”
Gamache turned the paper over.
“La Bibliothèque nationale,” said Thérèse, recognizing the logo. “The national archives of Québec. Reine-Marie works there, doesn’t she?”
“Oui. I did my research on the Ouellet Quints yesterday at the Bibliothèque nationale and I remembered Reine-Marie saying that the archive network goes all over the province, into the smallest library and into the massive archives at the universities. It’s connected to every publicly funded library.”
“It also goes into the S?reté archives,” said Thérèse. “The files of all the old cases.”
“It’s our way in,” said Jér?me, his eyes glued to the bit of paper and the logo. “Is it Reine-Marie’s? A code belonging to Reine-Marie Gamache would trip an alarm.”
He knew he was looking for reasons this wouldn’t work, because he knew what was waiting on the other side of that electronic door. Prowling. Pacing. Looking for him. Waiting for him to do something stupid. Like go back in.
“I thought of that,” said Gamache, his voice reassuring. “It belongs to someone else. She’s one of the supervisors, so no one will question if that code is logged on.”
“I think it might work.” Thérèse’s voice was low, afraid to tempt the Fates.
Gamache pushed himself out of the chair. “I’m off to see Ruth Zardo, then I need to head in to Montréal. Can you speak with Clara Morrow and see if she knows anyone who puts up satellite dishes?”
“Armand,” said Thérèse at the door, as he collected his car keys and put on his coat and gloves. “You must know that you might’ve solved two ends of the problem. The satellite connection and the access codes, but how do we get from one to the other? The whole middle part is missing. We’ll need cables and computers and someone to connect it all.”
“Yes, that’s a problem. I might have an idea about that though.”
Superintendent Brunel thought Gamache looked even unhappier about the solution than the problem.
After the Chief Inspector left, Thérèse Brunel walked back into the kitchen and found her husband sitting at the table, staring at his now cold breakfast.
“The worm has turned,” she announced, joining him at the table.
“Yes,” said Jér?me, and thought that was a perfect description of them.