TWENTY-NINE
Myrna took the Christmas present to a seat by the window of her bookshop.
Everyone leaned forward as she peeled off the tape, except Ruth, who remained where she was and looked out the window at the endless snow.
“What did she give you?” Olivier craned his neck. “Let me see.”
“More mitts,” said Clara.
“No, I think it’s a hat,” said Gabri. “A tuque.”
Myrna lifted it up. It was light blue and it was indeed a tuque. And on it was a design.
“What’s the pattern?” asked Clara. It looked like bats to her, but that probably didn’t make sense.
“They’re angels,” said Olivier.
They leaned closer.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” said Gabri, stepping back. “You were her guardian angel.”
“It’s wonderful.” Myrna held up the hat, admiring it and trying to hide her disappointment. Myrna had let herself believe that the package would magically reveal Constance. Her most private life. That the gift would finally let Myrna enter Constance’s home.
It was a lovely gesture, but it was hardly a key to anything.
“How’d you know it was there?” Clara asked Gamache.
“I didn’t,” he conceded, “but it seemed unlikely she’d give you a gift and not bring one for Myrna. Then I realized if she had brought one for Myrna it would have been on her first visit, since she didn’t expect to return.”
“Well, mystery solved,” said Gabri. “I’m heading back to the bistro. You coming, Maigret?”
“Right behind you, Miss Marple,” said Olivier.
Ruth got up with a grunt. She stared at the package, then at Gamache. He nodded to her, and she to him. Only then did she and Rosa leave.
“You two seem to have developed telepathy.” Clara watched the old poet walk carefully down the snowy path, the duck in her arms. “Not sure I’d want her in my head.”
“She’s not in my head,” he assured her. “But Ruth is often on my mind. Did you know that her poem ‘Alas’ was written for Virginie Ouellet, after she died?”
“No,” admitted Myrna, her hand resting on the tuque, watching Ruth pause and give the hockey players instructions, or hell. “It made Ruth famous, didn’t it?”
Gamache nodded. “I don’t think she’s ever recovered from that.”
“The fame?” asked Clara.
“The guilt,” said Gamache. “Of profiting from someone else’s sorrow.”
“Who hurt you once, so far beyond repair that you would greet each overture / with curling lip?”
Myrna whispered the words as she watched Ruth and Rosa, heads bowed into the snow. Making for home.
“We all have our albatrosses,” she said.
“Or ducks,” said Clara, and knelt by her friend’s chair. “Are you all right?”
Myrna nodded.
“Would you like to be alone?”
“Just for a few minutes.”
Clara stood, kissed Myrna on the top of her head, and left.
But Armand Gamache did not leave. Instead he waited for the connecting door to close, then he sat in the chair vacated by Ruth and stared at Myrna.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Myrna lifted the tuque and put it on. The knitted hat perched on Myrna’s head like a light blue light bulb. Then she handed it to him. After examining it, Gamache lowered the hat to his knee.
“This wasn’t made for you, was it?”
“No. And it’s not new,” she said.
Gamache could see the wool was worn, slightly pilled. And he saw something else. A tiny tag had been sewn into the inside of the tuque. Putting on his reading glasses, he brought the hat to his face so that the rough wool almost rubbed his nose.
It was difficult to read the tag, the printing was so small and the letters smudged.
He took off his glasses and handed the tuque back to Myrna. “What do you think it says?”
She examined it, squinting. “MA,” she finally said.
The Chief nodded, unconsciously fiddling with his glasses.
“MA,” he repeated, and looked out the window. His gaze was unfocused. Trying to see what wasn’t there.
An idea, a thought. A purpose.
Why had someone sewn MA into the tuque?
It was, he knew, the same as the tag they’d found in the other tuques in Constance’s home. Constance’s had had a pattern of reindeer, and MC on the tag. Marie-Constance.
Marguerite’s had MM inside. Marie-Marguerite.
Josephine’s tuque had MJ.
He looked down at the tuque in his hand. MA.
“Maybe it belonged to their mother,” said Myrna. “That must be it. She made one for each of the girls, and one for herself.”
“But it’s so small,” said the Chief.
“People were smaller back then,” said Myrna, and Gamache nodded.
It was true. Especially women. The Québécoise tended to be petite even today. He looked at the hat again. Would it fit a grown woman?
Maybe.