The camera zoomed in on the closed front door, focused, then the door opened slightly and a woman’s head poked out, stared at the camera, mouthed something that looked like “Maintenant?” Now?
She backed up and the door closed. A moment later it opened again and a little girl appeared in a short, frilly dress with a bow in her dark hair. She wore ankle socks and loafers. She was five or six years of age now, Gamache guessed. He did a quick calculation. It would be the early forties. The war years.
A hand appeared and pushed her further out into the sunshine. Not a shove, exactly, but a push strong enough that she stumbled a little.
Then an identical girl was expelled from the home.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
The girls stood together, clasping each other as though they’d been born conjoined. And their expressions were identical too.
Terror. Confusion. Almost exactly the same expression their father had had when he’d first gazed down at them.
They turned to the door, then returned to the door, flocking around it. Trying to get back in. But it wouldn’t open for them.
The first little girl looked at the camera. Pleading. Crying.
The image flickered and went out. Then the pretty cottage reappeared. The girls were gone and the door was closed.
Again it opened and this time the little girl walked out on her own. Then her sister appeared, gripping her hand. And so on. Until the last one was out, and the door closed behind them.
As one, they stared back at it. A hand snaked through a crack in the door and waved them away, before disappearing.
The girls were rooted in place. Paralyzed.
The camera shook slightly and as one the girls turned to look into the lens. The cameraman, Gamache thought, must have called to them. Was perhaps holding up a teddy bear or candy. Something to draw their attention.
One of them began to cry, then the others disintegrated and the picture flickered and went to black.
Over and over, in Clara’s back room, they watched, the paté and drinks forgotten.
Over and over the girls came out of the pretty little house, and were hauled back in, to try it again. Until finally the first one appeared, a big smile on her face, followed by her sister, happily holding her hand.
Then the next and the next.
And the next.
They left the cottage and walked around the garden, along the border of white picket fence, smiling and waving.
Five happy little girls.
Gamache looked at Myrna, Olivier, Clara, Gilles, Gabri. He looked at Ruth, her tears following the crevices in her face, grand canyons of grief.
On the television, the Ouellet Quints smiled identical smiles, and waved identical waves into the camera, before the screen went dead. It was, Gamache knew, the scene that had come to define the Quints as perfect little girls, leading fairy-tale lives. Plucked from poverty, far from any conflict. This bit of footage had been sold to agencies around the world and was still used today in retrospectives of their lives.
As proof of how lucky the Ouellet Quints were.
Gamache and the others knew what they’d just witnessed. The birth of a myth. And they’d seen something broken. Shattered. Hurt beyond repair.
*
“How’d you know about that?” Thérèse asked. “It never came out in the trial.”
“I found references to something happening between the two men. Something near lethal.”
“You really want to know?” she asked, examining him.
“I need to know,” he said.
“This goes no further.” She received a look caught between amusement and annoyance.
“I promise not to put it into my blog.”
Thérèse didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. And Jér?me Brunel, not for the first time, wondered if he really wanted to hear this.
“Sit,” she said, and he followed her to the comfortable sofa. They faced the door, watching the backs of the other guests.
“Pierre Arnot made his mark in the S?reté detachment in the north of Québec,” she confided. “On a Cree reserve on James Bay. Lots of alcohol. Sniff. The government-issue homes were a disgrace. The sewage and water systems overflowed into each other. There was terrible disease and violence. A cesspool.”
“In the middle of paradise,” said Jér?me.
Thérèse nodded. That, of course, heightened the tragedy.
The James Bay area was spectacularly beautiful and unspoiled. At the time. Ten thousand square miles of wildlife, of clear, fresh lakes, of fish and game and old-growth forests. This was where the Cree lived. This was where their gods lived.
But a hundred years ago they’d met the devil and made a deal.
In exchange for everything they could ever need—food, medical care, housing, education, the marvels of modern life—all they had to do was sign over the rights to their ancestral land.
But not all of it. They’d be given a nice plot on which to hunt and fish.
And if they didn’t sign?
The government would take the land anyway.
A hundred years before Agent Pierre Arnot stepped off the floatplane onto the reserve, the Grand Chief and the head of Indian Affairs for Canada met.
The deed was signed.
The deed was done.
The Cree had everything they could want. Except their freedom.
They did not thrive.
“By the time Arnot arrived the reserve was a ghetto of open sewers and disease, addiction and despair,” said Thérèse. “And lives so empty they raped and beat each other for distraction. Still, the Cree had held on to their dignity longer than anyone could have expected. It had taken several generations until finally there was no dignity, no self-respect, no hope left. The Cree thought their life couldn’t get worse. But it was about to.”
“What happened?” asked Jér?me.
“Pierre Arnot arrived.”