Isidore and Marie-Harriette. Side by side, their names written in stone for eternity. Marie-Harriette had died so young, at least by today’s standards. Shy of forty. Isidore had died so old. Just shy of ninety. Fifteen years ago.
The Chief tried to clear the snow from the front of the tombstone, to read the other names and dates, but there was too much of it. He looked around, then retraced his steps.
He saw the priest approaching and greeted him.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked Father Antoine.
He sounded friendlier now. Perhaps, Gamache thought, he suffered more from low blood sugar than ill temper or chronic disappointment in a God who had dropped him here, then forgotten about him.
“Sort of,” said Gamache. “I tried to look at the graves but there’s too much snow.”
“I’ll get a shovel.”
Father Antoine returned a few minutes later and Gamache cleared a path to the monument, then dug out the stone itself.
Marie-Virginie.
Marie-Hélène.
Marie-Josephine.
Marie-Marguerite.
And Marie-Constance. Her birthdate was there, just not yet her death. There was a presumption that she’d be buried with her siblings. In death as in life.
“Let me ask you this, mon père,” said Gamache.
“Oui?”
“Would it be possible to fake a funeral? And fake the registry?”
Father Antoine was taken aback by the question. “Fake it? Why?”
“I’m not sure why, but is it possible?”
The priest thought about that. “We don’t enter a death in the registry without seeing the death certificate. If that’s not accurate, then yes, I suppose the registry would be wrong too. But the funeral? That would be more difficult, non? I mean, we’d have to bury someone.”
“Could it be an empty casket?”
“Well, that’s not likely. The funeral home hardly ever delivers empty caskets for burial.”
Gamache smiled. “I suppose not. But they wouldn’t necessarily know who was in it. And if you didn’t know the parishioner, you could be fooled too.”
“Now you’re suggesting there was someone in the casket, but the wrong person?”
Father Antoine was looking skeptical. And well he should be, thought the Chief.
Still, so much of the Ouellet Quintuplets’ lives had been faked, why not their deaths too? But to what end? And which one might still be alive?
He shook his head. By far the most reasonable answer was the simplest. They were all dead. And the question he should be asking himself was not if they were dead, but if they were murdered.
He looked at the neighboring gravestones. To the left, more Ouellets. Isidore’s family. To the right, the Pineaults. Marie-Harriette’s family. All the Pineault boys’ names began with Marc. Gamache leaned closer and wasn’t surprised to see that all the girls’ names started with Marie.
His gaze was drawn back to Marie-Harriette.
Long dead and buried in another town, / my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.
Gamache wondered what the unfinished business was, between mother and daughters. Mama. Ma.
“Has anyone been by lately asking about the Quints?” Gamache asked as they walked single-file back down the narrow path he’d cleared.
“No. Most people have long ago forgotten them.”
“Have you been priest here long?”
“About twenty years. Long after the Quints had moved away.”
So this tired priest never even got the benefit of the miracle. Just the bodies.
“Did the girls ever come back for a visit?”
“No.”
“And yet they’re buried here.”
“Well, where else would they be buried? In the end, most people come home.”
Gamache thought it was probably true.
“The parents? Did you know them?”
“I knew Isidore. He lived a long time. Never remarried. Always hoped the girls would come back, to look after him in his old age.”
“But they never did.”
“Only for his funeral. And then to be buried themselves.”
The priest accepted the old keys from Gamache and they parted. But he had one more stop to make before returning to Montréal.
A few minutes later Chief Inspector Gamache pulled into a parking spot and turned the car off. He looked at the high walls, with the spikes and curls of barbed wire on top. Guards in their towers watched him, their rifles across their chests.
They needn’t have worried. The Chief had no intention of getting out, though he was tempted.
The church was just a few kilometers from the SHU, the penitentiary where Pierre Arnot now lived. Where Gamache had put him.
His intention, after he’d spoken to the priest and looked at the register, had been to drive straight back to Montréal. Instead, he found himself tempted here. Drawn here. By Pierre Arnot.
They were just a few hundred meters apart, and with Arnot were all the answers.
Gamache was more and more convinced that whatever was coming to a head, Arnot had started it. But Gamache also knew that Arnot would not stop it. That was up to Gamache and the others.
While tempted to confront Arnot, he would not betray his promise to Thérèse. He started his car, put it in gear and drove away. But instead of heading back to Montréal, he turned in the other direction, back to the church. Once there, he parked by the rectory and knocked on the door.
“You again,” said the priest, but he didn’t seem unhappy.
“Désolé, mon père,” said Gamache, “but did Isidore live in his own home until his death?”
“He did.”
“He cooked and cleaned and cut firewood himself?”
“The old generation,” smiled the priest. “Self-sufficient. Took pride in that. Never asked for help.”
“But the older generation often had help,” said Gamache. “At least in years past. The family looked after the parents and grandparents.”
“True.”
“So who looked after Isidore if not his children?”
“He had help from one of his brothers-in-law.”
“Is he still here? Can I speak with him?”
“No. He moved away after Isidore died. Old Monsieur Ouellet left him the farm, as thanks I guess. Who else was he going to give it to?”
“But he’s not living at the farm now?”
“No. Pineault sold it and moved to Montréal, I think.”
“Do you have his address? I’d like to talk with him about Isidore and Marie-Harriette and the girls. He’d have known them all, right? Even their mother.”
Gamache held his breath.
“Oh yes. She was his sister. He was the girls’ uncle. I don’t have his address,” said Father Antoine, “but his name’s André. André Pineault. He’d be an old man now himself.”
“How old would he be?”
Père Antoine thought. “I’m not sure. We can check the parish records if you like, but I’d say he’d be well into his seventies. He was the youngest of that generation, quite a few years younger than his sister. The Pineaults were a huge family. Good Catholics.”
“Are you sure he’s alive?”
“Not sure, but he isn’t here.” The priest looked past Gamache, toward the graveyard. “And where else would he go?”
Home. No longer the farmhouse but the grave.
THIRTY-ONE
The technician handed Gamache the report and the tuque. “Done.”
“Anything?”
“Well, there were three significant contacts on that hat. Besides your own DNA, of course.” He looked at Gamache with disapproval, having contaminated the evidence.
“Who’re the others?”
“Well, let me just say that more than three people have handled it. I found traces of DNA from a bunch of people and at least one animal. Probably incidental contact years ago. They picked it up, might’ve even worn it, but not for
long. It belonged to someone else.”
“Who?”
“I’m getting to that.”
The technician gave Gamache an annoyed look. The Chief held out his hand, inviting the man to get on with it.
“Well, as I said, there were three significant contacts. Now, one’s an outlier, but the other two are related.”
The outlier, Gamache suspected, was Myrna, who’d held the hat, and even tried to put it on her head.
“One of the matches came from the victim.”
“Constance Ouellet,” said Gamache. This was no surprise, but best to have it confirmed. “And the other?”
“Well, that’s where it gets interesting, and difficult.”
“You said they were related,” said Gamache, hoping to head off any long, and no doubt fascinating, lecture.
“And they are, but the other DNA is old.”
“How old?”
“Decades, I’d say. It’s difficult to get an accurate reading, but they’re definitely related. Siblings, maybe.”
Gamache stared at the angels. “Siblings? But could it be parent and child?”
The technician thought and nodded. “Possible.”
“Mother and daughter,” said Gamache, almost to himself. So they were right. The MA stood for Ma. Marie-Harriette had knitted six hats. One for each of her daughters and herself.
“No,” said the technician. “Not mother and daughter. Father and daughter. The old DNA is almost certainly male.”
“Pardon?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent sure, of course,” said the technician. “It’s there in the report. The DNA was from hair. I’d say that hat belonged to a man, years ago.”
* * *
Gamache returned to his office.
The department was deserted. Even Lacoste had gone. He’d called her from his parked car outside the rectory and asked her to find André Pineault. Now, more than ever, Gamache wanted to speak with the man who’d known Marie-Harriette. But, more than that, Pineault had known Isidore and the girls.
Father and daughter, the technician had said.
Gamache could see Isidore with his arms out, blessing his children. The look of surrender on his face. Was it possible he wasn’t blessing them, but asking for forgiveness?
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again.
Is that why none had married? Is that why none had returned, except to make sure he was really dead?
Is that why Virginie had killed herself?
Is that why they hated their mother? Not for what she’d done, but what she’d failed to do? And was it possible that the state, so arrogant and high-handed, had in fact saved the girls by taking them from that grim farmhouse?
Gamache remembered the joy on Constance’s face as her father laced up her skates. Gamache had taken it at face value, but now he wondered. He’d investigated enough cases of child abuse to know the child, when put in a room with both parents, would almost always embrace the abuser.
A child’s effort to curry favor. Was that what was on little Constance’s face? Not real joy, but the one plastered there by desperation and practice?
He looked down at the hat. The key to their home. It was best not to leap to a conclusion that might be far from the truth, Gamache cautioned himself, even as he wondered if that was the secret Constance had locked away. The one she was finally willing to drag into the light.
But that didn’t explain her murder. Or perhaps it did. Had he failed to see the significance of something, or make a vital connection?
More and more he felt it was essential to speak with their uncle.
Lacoste had emailed to say she’d found him, she thought. Might not be the correct Pineault, it was a common name, but his age checked out and he’d moved into the small apartment fourteen years ago. So the timing fit with Isidore’s death and the sale of the farm. She’d asked if the Chief wanted her to interview Pineault, but Gamache had told her to go home herself now. Get some rest. He’d do it, on his way back to Three Pines.
On his desk he found the dossier Lacoste had left, including an address for Monsieur Pineault in east-end Montréal.
Gamache slowly swung his chair around until his back was to the dark and empty office, and looked out the window. The sun was setting. He looked at his watch. 4:17. The time the sun should be going down. Still, it always seemed too soon.
He rocked himself gently in the chair, staring out at Montréal. Such a chaotic city. Always was. But a vibrant city too. Alive and messy.
It gave him pleasure to look at Montréal.
He was contemplating doing something that might prove monumentally foolish. It was certainly not rational, but then this thought hadn’t come from his brain.
The Chief Inspector gathered his papers and left, without a backward glance. He didn’t bother locking his office door, didn’t even bother closing it. No need. He doubted he’d be back.
In the elevator he pressed up, not down. Once there, he exited and walked decisively down the corridor. Unlike the homicide department, this one wasn’t empty. And as he walked by, agents looked up from their desks. A few reached for their phones.
But the Chief paid no attention. He walked straight toward his goal. Once there, he didn’t knock, but opened the door then closed it firmly behind him.
“Jean-Guy.”
Beauvoir looked up from the desk and Gamache felt his heart constrict. Jean-Guy was going down. Setting.
“Come with me,” Gamache said. He’d expected his voice to be normal, and was surprised to hear just a whisper, the words barely audible.
“Get out.” Beauvoir’s voice, too, was low. He turned his back on the Chief.
“Come with me,” Gamache repeated. “Please, Jean-Guy. It’s not too late.”
“What for? So you can fuck with me some more?” Beauvoir turned to glare at Gamache. “To humiliate me even more? Well, fuck you.”
“They stole the therapist’s records,” said Gamache, approaching the younger man, who looked so much older. “They know how to get into our heads. Yours, mine. Lacoste’s. Everyone’s.”
“They? Who’re ‘they’? Wait, don’t tell me. ‘They’ aren’t ‘you.’ That’s all that matters, isn’t it? The great Armand Gamache is blameless. It’s ‘their’ fault. It always is. Well, take your fucking perfect life, your perfect record and get the fuck out. I’m just a piece of shit to you, something stuck to your shoe. Not good enough for your department, not good enough for your daughter. Not good enough to save.”
The last words barely made it from Beauvoir’s mouth. His throat had constricted and they just scraped by. Beauvoir stood up, his thin body shaking.
“I tried…” Gamache began.
“You left me. You left me to die in that factory.”
Gamache opened his mouth to speak. But what could he say? That he’d saved Beauvoir? Dragged him to safety. Staunched his wound. Called for help.
That it wasn’t his fault?
As long as Armand Gamache lived he’d see not Jean-Guy’s wound, but his face. The terror in those eyes. So afraid of dying. So suddenly. So unexpectedly. Pleading with Gamache to at least not let him die alone. Begging him to stay.
He’d clung to Gamache’s hands, and to this day Gamache could feel them, sticky and warm. Jean-Guy had said nothing, but his eyes had shrieked.
Armand had kissed Jean-Guy on the forehead, and smoothed his bedraggled hair. And whispered in his ear. And left. To help the others. He was their leader. Had led them into what proved to be an ambush. He couldn’t stay behind with one fallen agent, no matter how beloved.
He’d been shot down himself. Almost died. Had looked up to see Isabelle Lacoste. She’d held his eyes, and his hand, and heard him whisper. Reine-Marie.
She hadn’t left him. He’d known the unspeakable comfort of not being alone in the final moments. And he’d known then the unspeakable loneliness Beauvoir must have felt.
Armand Gamache knew he’d changed. A different man was lifted from th
e concrete floor than had hit it. But he also knew that Jean-Guy Beauvoir had never really gotten up. He was tethered to that bloody factory floor, by pain and painkillers, by addiction and cruelty and the bondage of despair.
Gamache looked into those eyes again.
They were empty now. Even the anger seemed just an exercise, an echo. Not really felt anymore. Twilight eyes.
“Come with me now,” said Gamache. “Let me get you help. It’s not too late. Please.”
“Annie kicked me out because you told her to.”
“You know her, Jean-Guy. Better than I ever will or could. You know she can’t be made to do anything. It almost killed her, but what she did was an act of love. She sent you away because she wanted you to get help for your addiction.”
“They’re painkillers,” Beauvoir snapped. This too was an old argument. A grim dance between the men. “Prescription.”
“And these?” Gamache leaned forward and took the anti-anxiety pills from Beauvoir’s desk.
“They’re mine.” Beauvoir slapped the bottle out of Gamache’s hand and the pills fell to the desk, scattering. “You’ve taken everything from me and left me with these.” In one fluid gesture, Jean-Guy picked up the pill bottle and threw it at the Chief. “That’s it. All I have left. And now you want to take them too.”
Beauvoir was emaciated, trembling. But he faced the larger man.
“Did you know the other agents used to call me your bitch, because I scurried around after you?”
“They never called you that. You had their complete respect.”
“Had. Had. But not anymore?” Beauvoir demanded. “I was your bitch. I kissed your ass and your ring. I was a laughingstock. And after the raid, you told everyone I was a coward—”
“Never!”
“—told them I was broken. Was useless—”
“Never!”
“Sent me to a shrink, then to rehab, like I was some fucking weakling. You humiliated me.”
As he spoke, he shoved Gamache back. With each statement he pushed. Then pushed again. Until the Chief Inspector’s back hit the thin wall of Beauvoir’s office.
And when there was nowhere else to go, not forward, not back, Jean-Guy Beauvoir reached under the Chief’s jacket and took his gun.