Superintendent Brunel didn’t back down. The two women held each other’s eyes.
“I knew Constance,” said Myrna. “First as a client, then as a friend. She never struck me that way.”
“But you say she was closed off,” said Gamache. “Do you really know what she kept hidden?”
“Are you putting the victim on trial?” asked Myrna.
“No,” said Gamache. “This isn’t judgmental. But the better we know Constance, the easier it might be to find out who needed her dead. And why.”
Myrna thought about that. “I’m sorry. Constance was so private, I feel a need to protect her.”
She pressed the play button and they watched little Constance pray, then rise, then playfully jostle with her sisters in line, to have their father put on their skates.
But now each of them wondered how playful that really was.
They saw the look of joy on Constance’s face as her father kneeled at her feet, and her sisters, in pairs, stood behind. Watching.
Myrna’s phone rang and Gamache tensed so forcefully both women looked at him.
Myrna answered it, then held it out for him.
“It’s Isabelle Lacoste.”
“Merci,” he said, crossing the distance and taking the phone. It felt warm to the touch.
He turned away from Superintendent Brunel and Myrna, and spoke into the receiver.
“Bonjour.” His voice steady, his back straight. His head up.
From behind, the women watched as he listened. And they saw the broad shoulders sag a little, though the head remained high.
“Merci,” he said, and slowly replaced the receiver. Then Gamache turned around.
And smiled with relief.
“Good news,” he said. “Nothing to do with this case, though.”
He rejoined them. Both women looked away and didn’t say a word about the sheen in his eye.
TWENTY-SIX
“We have to go.”
Gamache stood up abruptly, and both Myrna and Thérèse looked at him. A moment earlier he’d been relieved, almost ecstatic, then something had shifted and his joy had turned to anger.
Myrna paused the recording. Five happy girls stared at them, apparently mesmerized by what was happening in Myrna’s loft.
“What is it?” Thérèse asked, as they put on their coats and walked down to the bookstore. “Who was on the phone?”
“Merci, Myrna.” Gamache paused at the door and strained to produce a smile.
Myrna watched him closely. “What just happened?”
Gamache shook his head a little. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you one day.”
“But not today?”
“I don’t think so.”
The door closed behind them and the cold closed around them. The sun was still up, but they were on the edge of the shortest day and there wasn’t much light left.
“You’ll tell me,” said Thérèse as they walked rapidly across the village green. Past Ruth on the bench. Past families skating on the frozen pond. Past the three ancient white pines.
Thérèse Brunel was not asking, but commanding.
“Beauvoir was sent on another raid today.”
Thérèse Brunel absorbed the news. Gamache’s face, in profile, was grim.
“This must stop,” said Gamache.
Up the hill they strode, Thérèse hurrying to keep pace. At the edge of the forest they found their snowshoes stuck in a snow bank where they’d left them. Strapping them on, they made their way back down the trail, though they barely needed the snowshoes anymore. The trail was hard packed and easy to find.
Too easy? Thérèse Brunel wondered. But there was no way around it now.
As they approached, they saw Gilles apparently hovering in midair, twenty feet up and five feet from the tree trunk. The woods were getting dark, but as the two senior officers got closer Thérèse could see the platform, nailed to the tree of peace.
Jér?me was standing at the base of the white pine, staring up. He glanced at them as they approached, then back up into the branches above their heads. It was then Superintendent Brunel noticed that Gilles was not alone up there. Nichol was standing on the platform, a couple feet back from Gilles as he worked to position the satellite dish on the wooden railing.
“Anything?” Gilles asked, his voice muffled by frozen lips. His red beard was white and crusty, as though his words had frozen and stuck to his face.
“Close.” Nichol was studying something in her mittens.
Gilles adjusted the dish slightly.
“There. Stop,” said Nichol.
Everyone, including Thérèse and Armand, stopped. And waited. And waited. Gilles slowly, slowly released the dish.
“Still?” he asked.
Then waited. Waited.
“Yes,” she said.
“Let me see.” He held out his gloved hand.
“It’s locked onto the satellite. We’re fine.”
“Give it to me. I want to see for myself,” snapped the woodsman, the biting cold gnawing at his patience.
Nichol handed over whatever she held and he studied it.
“Good,” he said at last, and unseen below them three streams of steam were exhaled.
Once back on firm ground, Gilles smiled. His crystalline beard made him look like Father Christmas, and as he grinned some of it cracked off.
“Well done,” said Jér?me. He was stomping his feet and all but blue with cold.
Yvette Nichol stood a few feet away, separated from the main body of the team by what looked like a long, black umbilical cord. The transmission cable.
Thérèse, Jér?me, Gilles, and Nichol, thought Gamache, looking at the glum young agent. And Nichol. Attached to their own quintuplet by a slender thread.
And Nichol. How easy it would be to cut her loose.
“Are we connected?” Gamache asked Gilles, who nodded.