How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (38 page)

Pineault took a swig of beer and smiled. “Hope it runs in the family. It’s how I’d like to die.” He looked around the small, neat kitchen and remembered where he was. And how he was likely to die. Though Gamache suspected facedown in a bucket of milk was probably not as much fun as it sounded.

“You helped around the farm?” Gamache asked.

Pineault nodded. “Also did the cleaning and cooking. Isidore was pretty good with the outdoor stuff, but hated the inside stuff. But he liked an orderly home.”

Gamache didn’t have to look around to know André Pineault also liked one. He wondered if years with the exacting Isidore had rubbed off, or if it came naturally to the man.

“Luckily for me his favorite meal was that spaghetti in a can. The alphabets one. And hot dogs. At night we played cribbage or sat on the porch.”

“But you wouldn’t talk?”

“Not a word. He’d stare across the fields and so would I. Sometimes I’d go into town, to the bar, and when I got back he’d still be there.”

“What did he think about?”

Pineault pursed his lips, and looked out the window. There was nothing to see. Just the brick wall of the building next door.

“He thought about the girls.” André brought his eyes back to Gamache. “The happiest moment of his life was when they were born, but I don’t think he ever really got over the shock.”

Gamache remembered the photograph of young Isidore Ouellet looking wild-eyed at his five daughters wrapped in sheets and dirty towels and dish rags.

Yes, it had been a bit of a shock.

But a few days later there was Isidore, cleaned up like his daughters. Scrubbed for the newsreels. He held one of his girls, a little awkwardly, a little unsure, but so tenderly. So protectively. Deep in those tanned, strapping arms. Here was a rough farmer not schooled, yet, in pretense.

Isidore Ouellet had loved his daughters.

“Why didn’t the girls visit him when they got older?” Gamache asked.

“How’m I supposed to know? You’ll have to ask them.”

Them?
thought Gamache.

“I can’t.”

“Well, if you’ve come to me for their address, I don’t have it. Haven’t seen or heard from them in years.”

Then André Pineault seemed to twig. His chair gave a long, slow scrape on the linoleum as he pushed back from the table. Away from the Chief Inspector.

“Why’re you here?”

“Constance died a few days ago.” He watched Pineault as he spoke. So far there was no reaction. The large man was simply taking it in.

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

But Gamache doubted that. He might not be happy about the news, but neither was he unhappy. As far as the Chief could tell, André Pineault didn’t care either way.

“So how many are left?” Pineault asked.

“None.”

“None?” That did seem to surprise him. He sat back and grabbed his beer. “Well, that’s it then.”

“It?”

“The last of them. No more Quints.”

“You don’t seem upset.”

“Look, I’m sure they were very nice girls, but as far as I could see a pile of
merde
dropped on Isidore and Marie-Harriette the moment they were born.”

“It was what their mother prayed for,” Gamache reminded him. “The whole Brother André story.”

“What do you know about that?” Pineault demanded.

“Well, it’s hardly a secret, is it?” asked Gamache. “Your sister visited Brother André at the Oratory. She climbed the steps on her knees to pray for children and ask for his intercession. The girls were born the day after Frère André died. It was a big part of their story.”

“Oh, I know,” said Pineault. “The Miracle Babies. You’d have thought Jesus Christ had delivered them himself. Marie-Harriette was just a poor farmer’s wife who wanted a family. But I’ll tell you something.” Pineault leaned his thick body closer to Gamache. “If God did that, he must’a hated her.”

“Did you read the book by Dr. Bernard?” Gamache asked.

He’d expected Pineault to get angry, but instead he grew quiet and shook his head.

“Heard about it. Everyone did. It was a bunch of lies. Made Isidore and Marie-Harriette out to be dumb farmers, too stupid to raise their own children. Bernard heard about the visit to Brother André and turned it into some Hollywood crap. Told the newsreels, the reporters. Wrote about it in his book. Marie-Harriette wasn’t the only one to go to the Oratory for Brother André’s blessing. People still do. No one talks about all the others climbing those stairs on their Goddamned knees.”

“The others didn’t give birth to quintuplets.”

“Lucky them.”

“You didn’t like the girls?”

“I didn’t know them. Every time they came home, there were cameras and nannies and that doctor and all sorts of people. At first it was fun, but then it became…” he looked for the word. “
Merde.
And it turned everyone’s lives into
merde.
”

“Did Marie-Harriette and Isidore see it that way?”

“How would I know? I was a kid. What I do know is that Isidore and Marie-Harriette were good, decent people just trying to get by. Marie-Harriette wanted to be a mother more than anything, and they didn’t let her. They took that from her, and from Isidore. That Bernard book said they’d sold the girls to the government. It was bullshit, but people believed it. Killed her, you know. My sister. Died of shame.”

“And Isidore?”

“Got even quieter. Didn’t smile much anymore. Everyone whispering behind his back. Pointing him out. He stayed pretty close to home after that.”

“Why didn’t the girls visit the farm once they grew up?” Gamache asked. He’d asked before and been rebuffed, but it was worth another try.

“They weren’t welcome and they knew it.”

“But Isidore wanted them to come, to look after him,” said Gamache.

Pineault grunted with laughter. “Who told you that?”

“The priest, Father Antoine.”

“What does he know? Isidore wanted nothing more to do with the girls. Not after Marie-Harriette died. He blamed them.”

“And you didn’t keep in touch with your nieces?”

“I wrote to tell them their father was dead. They showed up for the funeral. That was fifteen years ago. Haven’t seen them since.”

“Isidore left the farm to you,” said Gamache. “Not to the girls.”

“True. He’d washed his hands of them.”

Gamache brought the tuque from his pocket and put it on the table. For the first time in quite a few minutes, he saw a genuine smile on André’s face.

“You recognize it.”

He picked it up. “Where’d you find it?”

“Constance gave it to a friend, for Christmas.”

“Funny kind of present. Someone else’s tuque.”

“She described it as the key to her home. Do you know what she might’ve meant by that?”

Pineault examined the hat, then returned it to the table. “My sister made a tuque for all the kids. I don’t know whose this is. If Constance was giving it away it probably belonged to her, don’t you think?”

“And why would she call it the key to her home?”

“
Câlice,
I don’t know.”

“This tuque didn’t belong to Constance.” Gamache tapped it.

“Then one of the others, I guess.”

“Did you ever see Isidore wearing it?”

“You must’ve fallen harder on the ice than you think,” he said with a snort. “That was sixty years ago. I can’t remember what I wore, never mind him, except that he wore plaid shirts summer and winter, and they stank. Any other questions?”

“What did the girls call their mother?” Gamache asked, as he got up.

“Tabarnac,”
Pineault swore. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’ve started asking stupid questions. What did the girls call their mother?”

“Well?”

“How the fuck should I know? What does anyone call their mother?”

Gamache waited for the answer.

“Mama, of course,” said André.

They hadn’t gone two paces before Pineault stopped.

“Wait a minute. You said Constance died, but that doesn’t explain the questions. Why’re you asking all this?”

Gamache was wondering when Pineault would get around to asking. It had taken the older man quite a while, but then he was probably distracted by the stupid questions.

“Constance didn’t die a natural death.”

“How did she die?” He was watching Gamache with sharp eyes.

“She was murdered. I’m with homicide.”

“Maudit tabarnac,”
muttered Pineault.

“Can you think of anyone who might have killed her?” Gamache asked.

André Pineault thought about that and slowly shook his head.

Before he left the kitchen, Gamache noticed Pineault’s dinner waiting on the counter.

A can of Alphagetti and hot dogs.

THIRTY-TWO

The snow plows were out, with their flashing lights, as Gamache drove over the Champlain Bridge, off the island of Montréal.

The rush hour traffic was bumper to icy bumper and Gamache could see a massive plow in his rearview mirror, also trapped in traffic.

There was nothing to do but crawl along. His face had begun to throb but he tried to ignore it. Harder to ignore was how it had happened. But, with effort, he shifted his thoughts to his interview with André Pineault, the only person alive who knew the Quints, and their parents. He’d created in Gamache’s mind an image of bitterness, of loss, of poverty beyond economics.

The Ouellet home should have been filled with screaming kids. Instead, there were just Marie-Harriette and Isidore. And a home stuffed with innuendo and legend. Of a miracle granted. Then sold. Of girls saved from grinding poverty and greedy parents.

A myth had been created. To sell tickets and films and meals at the Quint Diner. To sell books and postcards. To sell the image of Québec as an enlightened, progressive, God-fearing, God-pleasing country.

A place where the deity strolled among them, granting wishes to those on bended, bloody knee.

The thought stirred something in Gamache’s mind, as he watched impatient drivers try to cut between lanes, thinking they could get through the bumper-to-bumper traffic faster. That a miracle, reserved for the other lane, would suddenly occur and all the cars ahead would disappear.

Gamache watched the road, and thought of miracles and myths. And how Myrna described that moment when Constance had first admitted she wasn’t a Pineault at all, but one of the Ouellet Quints.

Myrna had said it was as though one of the Greek gods had materialized. Hera. And later, Thérèse Brunel had pointed out that Hera wasn’t just any goddess, but the chief female. Powerful and jealous.

Myrna had protested, saying it was just a name she’d pulled out of the air. She could have said Athena or Aphrodite. Except she hadn’t. Myrna had named solemn and vengeful Hera.

The question that Gamache turned over and over in his mind was whether Constance wanted to tell Myrna about something done to her. Possibly by her father. Or something she’d done, or they’d all done, to someone else.

Constance had a secret. That much was obvious. And Gamache was all but certain she was finally ready to tell it, to drop the albatross at Myrna’s feet.

Suppose Constance Ouellet had gone to someone else first? Someone she knew she could trust. Who could that be? Was there anyone, besides Myrna, Constance might consider a confidant?

The fact was there really wasn’t anyone else. The uncle, André, hadn’t seen them in years and hardly seemed a fan. There were the neighbors, who were all kept at a polite distance. The priest, Père Antoine, if Constance was inclined to a confession or an intimate chat to save her soul, seemed to consider them as commodities and nothing more. Neither human nor divine.

Gamache went back over the case. Over and over. And what kept coming to him was the question of whether Marie-Constance Ouellet was really the last of her kind. Or had one of them escaped. Faked her death, changed her name. Made a life for herself.

It would have been far easier back in the fifties and sixties. Even the seventies. Before computers, before the need for so much documentation.

And if one of the Quints still lived, could she have killed her sibling to keep her quiet? To keep her secret?

But what was that secret? That one sister still lived? That she’d faked her death?

Gamache stared at the brake lights ahead, his face bathed in the glowing red lights, and he remembered what Father Antoine had said. They’d have to have buried someone.

Was that the secret? Not that one of the sisters lived, but that someone else must have died, and been buried.

He completely forgot he was on the bridge, meters from the long drop to the slushy river. His mind was now occupied by this puzzle. Again he went back over the case, looking for some elderly woman. Almost eighty. There were a few elderly men. The priest, Father Antoine. The uncle, André Pineault. But no women, except Ruth.

For a moment Gamache toyed with the thought that Ruth was indeed a missing Quint. Not an imaginary sister, as Ruth had claimed, but a real one. And maybe that explained why Constance had visited Ruth, had formed a bond with the embittered old poet who’d written a seminal poem about the death of whom? Virginie Ouellet.

Was it possible? Could Ruth Zardo be Virginie? Who hadn’t thrown herself down the stairs, but down a rabbit hole, and popped up in Three Pines?

As much as he liked the idea, he was forced to dismiss it. Ruth Zardo, for all her snarling demands for privacy, was actually fairly transparent in her life. Her family had moved to Three Pines when Ruth was a child. As much fun as it would be to arrest Ruth for murder, he had to grudgingly give up that idea.

But then another thought settled. There was one other elderly woman on the periphery of the case. The neighbor. The one who lived with her husband, next door, and who’d been invited onto the porch for lemonade. Who’d befriended, as much as that was possible, the very private sisters.

Could she be Virginie? Or even Hélène? Escaping the life of a Ouellet Quint? Tunneling out through the grave?

And he realized they only had the neighbor’s word for it that she hadn’t been invited further into the home. Perhaps she was more than a neighbor. Perhaps it was no coincidence the sisters had moved into that home.