Gamache saw movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around. Agent Nichol was standing in the open doorway to his room. The perpetual sneer froze when she saw his face.
The Chief looked at her for a moment, then reached out and slammed the door shut with such force the pictures shook on the walls.
“Chief?” called Lacoste down the line. “Are you all right? What was that?”
It sounded like a gunshot.
“The door,” he said, and turned his back on it. Through a crack in the gauzy curtains at the window he could see diffuse light, and hear slap shots and laughter. He turned his back on that. And stared at the wall. “What’s happening?”
“There seems a fair amount of chaos,” she reported. “I’m trying to make sense of the communications.”
Gamache held his tongue and waited. Feeling his rage rising. Feeling the almost irrepressible need to slam his fist, already made and waiting to be used, into the wall. To hit it over and over, until the wall bled.
Instead, he steadied himself.
The fools. To go on a raid unprepared.
The Chief knew what the goal was, the purpose. It was simple and sadistic. It was to unhinge Beauvoir and unbalance the Chief. To push both over the edge. And possibly worse.
Officer down.
He himself had shouted that, as he’d held Jean-Guy. Held a bandage to Beauvoir’s abdomen. To staunch the blood. Seeing the pain and terror in the young man’s eyes. Seeing the blood all over Beauvoir’s shirt. And all over his own hands.
And now Gamache could almost feel it again, in this peaceful, pleasant room. The warm, sticky blood on his hands.
“I’m sorry, Chief, all communications have gone down.”
Gamache stared at the wall for a moment. All communications down. What did that mean?
He tried not to go to the worst possible conclusion. That they were down because everyone who might communicate was down.
No. He forced his mind away from that. Stick with the simple facts. He knew how catastrophic a rampant imagination, driven by fear, could be.
He stepped away from that. Time enough to have it confirmed. And whatever had happened had happened by now.
It was over. And there was nothing he could do.
He closed his eyes and tried not to see Jean-Guy. Not the terrified, wounded man in his arms. Not the drained man of recent weeks and months. And certainly not the Jean-Guy Beauvoir sitting in the Gamaches’ living room. Drinking a beer and laughing.
That was the face Gamache tried hardest to keep away.
He opened his eyes.
“Keep monitoring, please,” he said. “I’ll be in the bistro or at the bookstore.”
“Chief?” asked Lacoste, her voice uncertain.
“It will be all right.” His voice was calm and composed.
“Oui.” She didn’t sound completely convinced, but she did sound less shaky.
All shall be well, he repeated as he walked with resolve across the village green.
But he wasn’t sure he believed it.
*
Myrna Landers sat on the sofa in her loft and stared at the TV screen.
Frozen there was a smiling little girl, her skates being laced by her father while her sisters, their skates already on, waited.
On her head she wore a tuque with reindeer.
Myrna was caught between tears and a smile.
She smiled. “She looks radiant, doesn’t she?”
Gamache and Thérèse Brunel nodded. She did.
Now that he’d figured out who was who, Gamache wanted to see this film again.
Behind little Constance, her sisters Marguerite and Josephine looked on, impatient to be outside. Each girl was now distinguishable by their tuques. The pines for Marguerite, and snowflakes for Josephine. Marie-Constance looked like she could sit there all day, being tended to by her father. Reindeer racing around her head.
Virginie and Hélène stood by the door. They also wore knitted hats, and slight scowls.
On Gamache’s request, Myrna again pressed rewind and they were back at the beginning. With Isidore holding out his arms, administering the bénédiction paternelle.
But this time they knew which little penitent was Constance, having followed her back, back, back to the beginning. She was kneeling at the end of the row.
And Constance, thought Gamache.
“Does this help us find whoever killed Constance?” Myrna asked.
“I’m not sure,” admitted the Chief. “But at least now we know which girl was which.”
“Myrna,” Thérèse began, “Armand told me that when you first found out who Constance was, you thought it was like having Hera as a client.”
Myrna glanced at Thérèse, then back at the screen. “Yes.”
“Hera,” Thérèse repeated. “One of the Greek goddesses.”
Myrna smiled. “Yes.”
“Why?”
Myrna paused the image and turned to her guest. “Why?” She thought about that. “When Constance told me she was one of the Ouellet Quints, she might as well have said she was a Greek goddess. A myth. I was making a joke, that’s all.”
“I understand,” said Thérèse. “But why Hera?”
“Why not?” Myrna was clearly confused. “I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What’re you thinking?” asked Gamache.
“It’s probably ridiculous,” said Thérèse. “When I was head curator at the Musée des beaux-arts, I saw a lot of classical art. Much of it based in mythology. Victorian artists in particular liked to paint Greek goddesses. An excuse, I always suspected, to paint naked women, often battling serpents. An acceptable form of pornography.”
“But you digress,” suggested Gamache, and Thérèse smiled.
“I got to know the various gods and goddesses. But two goddesses in particular seemed to fascinate artists of that era.”
“Let me guess,” said Myrna. “Aphrodite?”
Superintendent Brunel nodded. “The goddess of love—and prostitutes, wouldn’t you know. Conveniently, she didn’t seem to own many clothes.”
“And the other?” asked Myrna, though they all knew the answer.
“Hera.”
“Also naked?” asked Myrna.
“No, the Victorian painters liked her because of her dramatic potential, and she suited their cautionary view of strong women. She was malicious and jealous.”
They turned to the screen. The film was paused on the praying face of little Constance.
Myrna looked at Thérèse. “You think she was malicious and jealous?”
“I’m not the one who called her Hera.”
“It’s just a name, the only goddess who came to mind. I could have just as easily called her Aphrodite or Athena.” Myrna was sounding testy, defensive.
“But you didn’t.”