“Well, he didn’t do the actual killing, as you know,” said Gamache. “He created a climate where the use of lethal force was encouraged. Rewarded even.”
“He did more than that, as your own investigation proved,” said Thérèse. “There were documents showing he encouraged the killings, even ordered some. That was irrefutable. What was never clear was why a senior and apparently excellent officer would do such a thing.”
“You’re right,” agreed Gamache. “From the evidence, the young men who were killed weren’t even criminals. Just the opposite. Most had no record at all.”
In a place with so much crime, why kill the ones who’d done nothing wrong?
“I need to visit Arnot,” he said.
“In the SHU? You can’t do that. They’ll know we’ve found his name in our searches.” She examined him closely. “That’s an order, Chief Inspector. You’re not to go. Understand?”
“I do. And I won’t.”
Still, she tried to read his familiar face. The worn and torn face. Behind his eyes she could sense activity. Just as her husband and that alarming young agent were busy trying to make connections, she could see Armand doing the same thing. In his mind. Sifting through old files, names, events. Trying to find some connection he’d missed.
A man appeared at the brow of the hill and waved.
It was Gilles and he looked pleased.
*
“Here she is.”
Gilles laid a hand on the rough bark of the tree. They were in the forest above the village. He’d brought snowshoes for all of them, and now Thérèse, Jér?me, Nichol, and Gamache stood beside him, only sinking a few inches into the deep snow.
“Isn’t she magnificent?”
They tilted their heads back, and Jér?me’s tuque fell off as he looked up.
“She?” asked Nichol.
Gilles chose to ignore the sarcasm in her voice. “She,” he confirmed.
“Hate to think how he came to that conclusion,” said Nichol, not quite under her breath. Gamache gave her a stern look.
“She’s at least a hundred feet tall. White pine. Old growth,” Gilles continued. “Hundreds of years old. There’s one in New York State that they figure is almost five hundred years old. The three white pines down in the village may have seen the first loyalists come across during the American Revolution. And this one”—he turned to it, his nose touching the mottled bark, his words soft and warm against the tree—“might have been a seedling when the first Europeans arrived.”
The woodsman looked at them, a bit of bark on the tip of his nose and in his beard. “Do you know what the aboriginals called the white pine?”
“Ethel?” asked Nichol.
“The tree of peace.”
“So what’re we doing here?” asked Nichol.
Gilles pointed and they looked up again. This time Gamache’s hat fell off as he tilted his head. He picked it up and struck it against his leg to knock the soft snow off.
There, nailed twenty feet up in the tree of peace, was the hunting blind. Made for violence. It was rickety and rotten, as though the tree was punishing it.
But it was there.
“What can we do to help?” asked Gamache.
“You can help me haul the satellite dish up there,” said Gilles.
Gamache blanched.
“I think we have the answer to that request,” said Jér?me. “And you’re not going to be doing any of the wiring.”
Gamache shook his head.
“Then I suggest you and Thérèse get out of the way,” said Jér?me.
“Banished to the bistro,” said Gamache, and now Thérèse Brunel did smile.
TWENTY-FIVE
Mugs of steaming apple cider were placed in front of Thérèse Brunel and the Chief Inspector.
Clara and a friend were sitting by the fireplace and motioned them over, but after thanking Clara for dinner the night before, the S?reté officers moved off to the relative privacy of the easy chairs in front of the bay window.
The mullions were frosted slightly but the village was still easily seen, and the two stared out in slightly awkward silence for a minute or two. Thérèse stirred her cider with the cinnamon stick, then took a sip.
It tasted of Christmas, and skating, and long winter afternoons in the country. She and Jér?me never had cider in Montréal, and she wondered why not.
“Will it be all right, Armand?” she finally asked. There was no neediness, no fear in her voice. It was strong and clear. And curious.
He also stirred his cider. Looking up, he held her eyes and once again she marveled at the quality of calm in them. And something else. Something she’d first noticed in that packed amphitheater years ago.
Even from halfway back, she could see the kindness in his eyes. A quality some had mistaken, to their regret, for weakness.
But there wasn’t just kindness there. Armand Gamache had the personality of a sniper. He watched, and waited, and took careful aim. He almost never shot, metaphorically or literally, but when he did, he almost never missed.
But a decade ago, he’d missed. He’d hit Arnot. But not Francoeur.
And now Francoeur had assembled an army, and was planning something horrific. The question was, did Gamache have another shot in him? And would he hit the target this time?
“Oui, Thérèse,” he said now, and as he smiled his eyes crinkled into deep lines. “All shall be well.”
“Julian of Norwich,” she said, recognizing the phrase. All shall be well.
Through the frosted window she could see Gilles and Nichol carrying equipment up the slope and into the woods. Superintendent Brunel returned her gaze to her companion, noting the holster and gun on his belt. Armand Gamache would do what was necessary. But not before it was necessary.
“All shall be well,” she said, and went back to her reading.
Gamache had given her the documents he’d found on the Ouellet Quints while researching in the Bibliothèque nationale, with the comment that something was bothering him after watching the films the night before.
“Just one thing?” Thérèse had asked. She’d watched the DVD that morning on an old laptop Nichol had brought with her. “Those poor girls. I once envied them, you know. Every little girl wanted to be either a Quint or young Princess Elizabeth.”
And so they settled in, Superintendent Brunel with the file on the girls, and Chief Inspector Gamache with the book by Dr. Bernard. Thérèse put down the dossier an hour later.
“Well?” asked Gamache, taking off his reading glasses.
“There’s a lot in here to damn the parents,” she said.
“And a lot in here,” said Gamache, laying a large hand on the book. “Did anything strike you?”
“As a matter of fact it did. The house.”
“Go on.”
She could see by his face it was what bothered him too.
“The documents show Isidore Ouellet sold the family farm to the government shortly after the Quints were born, for a huge profit. Well beyond its worth.”
“In effect, a payment for the girls,” said the Chief.
“The Québec government would make them wards of the state, and the Ouellets would go on their merry way, unburdened by mouths they couldn’t feed.” Thérèse put the manila folder on the table with distaste. “They suggest the Ouellets were too poor and ignorant to care for the quintuplets and would have eventually had the girls taken away by the welfare officials anyway.”
Gamache nodded. The documents failed to mention it was also the depths of the Depression, when every family struggled. An economic crisis the Ouellets did not bring on themselves. And yet, again, there was the insinuation that they, uniquely, were to blame for their plight. And the benevolent government would save them and their daughters.
“They were doing the Ouellets a favor,” said Gamache. “Buying their burden. Madame Ouellet had given birth to their ticket out of the Depression. Dr. Bernard’s book says much the same thing. The language is couched, of course. No one wanted to be seen to criticize the parents, but the image of the ignorant Québécois farmer wasn’t a hard sell in those days.”
“Except they didn’t cash in at all,” said Thérèse. “Not according to the film. That bénédiction paternelle was when the girls were almost ten, and the Ouellets were still in their old home. They hadn’t sold it.”