How the Light Gets In

SIXTEEN

“It was, of course,” said Gamache, voicing Myrna’s thoughts, “considered a miracle. The first quintuplets to have ever survived childbirth. They became sensations.”

The Chief leaned forward and placed a photograph on the coffee table.

It showed Isidore Ouellet, their father, standing behind the babies. He was unshaven, his farmer’s face weather-beaten, his dark hair unkempt. It looked like he’d spent the night running his immense hands through it. Even in the grainy picture, they could see the dark circles under his eyes. He wore a light shirt with a collar, and a frayed suit jacket, as though he’d thrown on his Sunday best at the last minute.

His daughters lay on the rough kitchen table in front of him. They were tiny, newborn, wrapped in hastily brought sheets and dish towels and rags. He was looking at his children in amazement, his eyes wide.

It would be comical if there wasn’t so much horror in that beaten face. Isidore Ouellet looked as though God had come for dinner and burned down the house.

Myrna picked up the picture and took a close look. She’d never seen it before.

“You found this in her home, I imagine,” she said, still distracted by the look in Isidore’s eyes.

Gamache put another photograph on the table.

She picked it up. It was slightly out of focus, but the father had disappeared and now standing behind the babies was an older woman.

“Midwife?” asked Myrna, and Gamache nodded.

She was stout, no-nonsense, her hands on her hips and a stained pinafore covering her large bosom. She was smiling. Weary and happy. And, like Isidore, amazed, but without his horror. Her responsibility, after all, was over.

Then Gamache put down a third black and white picture. The older woman had disappeared. The rags and wooden table had disappeared, and now each newborn was neatly wrapped in her own warm, clean flannel blanket and laid on a sterile table. A middle-aged man, dressed head to toe in white, stood proudly behind them. This was the famous photo. The world’s introduction to the Ouellet Quintuplets.

“The doctor,” said Myrna. “What was his name? Bernard. That’s it. Dr. Bernard.”

It was a testament to the Quints’ fame that almost eight decades on, Myrna would know the name of the doctor who’d delivered them. Or not.

“You mean,” she said, going back to the original pictures, “Dr. Bernard didn’t deliver the Quints after all?”

“He wasn’t even there,” said Gamache. “And when you think about it, why would he be? In 1937 most farmers’ wives had midwives at their deliveries, not doctors. And while they might have suspected Marie-Harriette was carrying more than one child, no one could have guessed there were five of them. It was the Depression, the Ouellets were dirt-poor, they could never have afforded a doctor even if they knew they needed one.”

They both looked down at the iconic picture. The smiling Dr. Bernard. Confident, assured, paternal. Perfectly cast for a role he’d play for the rest of his life.

The great man who’d delivered a miracle. Who, because of his skill, had done what no other doctor had managed. He’d brought five babies into the world, alive. And kept them alive. He’d even saved their mother.

Dr. Bernard became the doctor every woman wanted. The poster boy for competence. A point of pride for Québec, that they had trained and produced a physician of such skill and compassion.

A shame, thought Gamache as he put on his glasses and studied the photo, that it was a lie.

He put it aside and went back to the original photograph, of the Quints and their horrified father. It was the first of what would prove to be thousands of pictures of the girls taken during their lifetimes. The babies were imperfectly wrapped in sheets soiled with their mother’s blood and feces and mucus and membranes. It was a miracle, but it was also a mess.

It was the first picture, but it was also the last time the real girls were photographed. Within hours of the Quints being born, they were manufactured. The lies, the role-playing, the deceit, had begun.

He turned the original photo over. There, scrawled in neat, rounded schoolchild letters, were the children’s names.

Marie-Virginie, Marie-Hélène, Marie-Josephine, Marie-Marguerite, Marie-Constance.

They must have been quickly wrapped in whatever the midwife and Monsieur Ouellet could find, and laid on the kitchen table in the order in which they were born.

Then he picked up the picture with Dr. Bernard, taken just hours later. On the back someone had written M-M, M-J, M-V, M-C, M-H.

No longer their full names, now they were just initials. Today it would have been bar codes, thought the Chief. He could guess whose handwriting he was seeing, and again he looked at the kindly country doctor whose life had also changed that night. A whole new Dr. Bernard had been born.

Gamache pulled one more photo from his breast pocket and placed it on the coffee table. Myrna picked it up. She saw four young women, probably in their early thirties, arms around each other and smiling for the camera.

She turned the photograph over, but nothing was written on the back.

“The girls?” she asked, and Gamache nodded.

“They all look so different,” she marveled. “Hairstyles, taste in clothing, even their bodies.” She looked over the picture, to Gamache, who was watching her. “It’s impossible to tell they’re even sisters. Do you think that was on purpose?”

“What do you think?” he said.

Myrna went back to the photo, but she knew the answer. She nodded.

“That’s what I think too,” said the Chief, taking off his glasses and leaning back in his armchair. “They were obviously very close. They didn’t do it to distance themselves from each other, but from the public.”

“They’re in disguise,” she said, lowering the picture. “They made their bodies a costume, so no one would know who they were. More like armor really, than a costume.” She tapped the photo. “There’re four of them. Where’s the other one?”

“Dead.”

Myrna tilted her head at the Chief. “Pardon?”

“Virginie,” said Gamache. “She died in her early twenties.”

“Of course. I forgot.” She scoured her memory. “It was an accident, wasn’t it? Car? Drowning? I can’t quite remember. Something tragic.”

“She fell down the stairs at the home they shared.”

Myrna was quiet for a moment before she spoke. “I don’t suppose it was more than that? I mean, twenty-year-olds don’t normally just fall down stairs.”

“What a suspicious mind you have, Madame Landers,” said Gamache. “Constance and Hélène saw it happen. They said she lost her footing. There was no autopsy. No obituary notice in the paper. Virginie Ouellet was quietly buried in the family plot in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu. Someone at the mortuary leaked the news a few weeks later. There was quite a public outpouring of grief.”

“Why hush up her death?” asked Myrna.

“From what I gather, the surviving sisters wanted to grieve in private.”

“Yes, that would fit,” said Myrna. “You said, ‘They said she lost her footing.’ There seems a bit of a qualifier there. They said it, but is it true?”

Gamache smiled slightly.

“You’re a good listener.” He leaned forward so that they looked at each other across the coffee table, their faces half in the firelight, half in darkness. “If you know how to read police reports and death certificates, there’s a lot in what isn’t said.”

“Did they think she might’ve been pushed?”

“No. But there was a suggestion that while her death was an accident, it wasn’t altogether a surprise.”

“What do you mean?” asked Myrna.

“Did Constance tell you anything about her sisters?”

“Only in general terms. I wanted to hear about Constance’s life, not her sisters’.”

“It must have been a relief for her,” said Gamache.

“I think it was. A relief and a surprise,” said Myrna. “Most people were only interested in the Quints as a unit, not as individuals. Though, to be honest, I didn’t realize she was a Quint until about a year into therapy.”

Gamache stared at her and tried to contain his amusement.

“It isn’t funny,” said Myrna, but she too smiled.

“No,” agreed the Chief, wiping the smile from his face. “Not at all. Did you really not know she was one of the most famous people in the country?”

“OK, so here’s the thing,” said Myrna. “She introduced herself as Constance Pineault and mentioned her family, but only in response to my questions. It didn’t occur to me to ask if she was a quintuplet. I almost never asked that of my clients. But you didn’t answer my question. What did you mean when you said the youngest Quint’s death was an accident but not a surprise?”

“The youngest?” asked Gamache.

“Well, yes…” Myrna stopped herself and shook her head. “Funny that. I think of the one who died first—”

“Virginie.”

“—as the youngest, and Constance as the oldest.”

“I suppose it’s natural. I think I do too.”

“So, Chief, why wasn’t Virginie’s death such a surprise?”

“She wasn’t diagnosed or treated, but it seems Virginie almost certainly suffered from clinical depression.”

Myrna inhaled slowly, deeply, then exhaled slowly, deeply. “They thought she killed herself?”

“It was never said, not so clearly, but the impression I got was that they suspected it.”

“Poor one,” said Myrna.

Poor one, thought Gamache, and was reminded of the police cars on the Champlain Bridge and the woman who’d jumped to her death the morning before. Aiming for the slushy waters of the St. Lawrence. How horrible must the problem be when throwing yourself into a freezing river, or down a flight of stairs, was the solution?

Who hurt you once, he thought, looking at the photo of the newborn Virginie on the harvest table, crying next to her sisters, so far beyond repair?

“Did Constance tell you anything about her upbringing?”

“Almost nothing. She’d taken a big step in admitting who she was, but she wasn’t ready to talk about the details.”

“How did you even find out she was one of the Ouellet Quints?” asked Gamache.

“Wish I could say it was my remarkable insight, but I think that ship has sailed.”

“And sunk, I’m afraid,” said Gamache.

Myrna laughed. “Too true. Looking back, I realize she was a great one for hints. She dropped them all over the place, for a year. She said she had four sisters. But I never thought she meant all the same age. She said her parents were obsessed with Brother André, but that she and her sisters were told not to talk about him. That it would get them into trouble. She said people were always trying to find out about their lives. But I thought she just had snoopy neighbors, or was paranoid. Never occurred to me she meant all of North America, including newsreels, and that it was the truth. She must have been pretty exasperated with me. I’m embarrassed to admit I might never have twigged if she hadn’t finally just told me.”

“I’d like to have been there for that conversation.”

“I’ll never forget it, that’s for sure. I thought we were going to talk about intimacy issues again. I sat there with my notebook on my knee, pen in hand”—Myrna aped it for him now—“and then she said, ‘My mother’s name was Pineault. My father’s name was Ouellet. Isidore Ouellet.’ She was looking at me as though this was supposed to mean something. And the funny thing was, it did. There was a sort of vague stirring. Then when I didn’t respond she said, ‘I go by the name Constance Pineault. I actually think of myself as that now, but most people know me as Constance Ouellet. My four sisters and I share a birthday.’ I’m ashamed to say even then it took me a moment or two to understand.”

“I’m not sure I’d have believed it either,” said Gamache.

She shook her head, still in some disbelief. “The Ouellet Quintuplets were almost fictional. Certainly mythical. It was as though the woman I knew as Constance Pineault announced she was a Greek goddess, Hera come to life. Or a unicorn.”

“It seemed unlikely?”

“It seemed impossible, delusional even. But she was so composed, so relaxed. Almost relieved. A more sane person would be hard to find. I think she could see I was struggling to believe her, and I think she found it amusing.”

“Was she also suffering from depression? Is that why she came to you?”

Myrna shook her head. “No. She had moments of depression, but everyone does.”

“Then why did she come to you?”

“It took us a long time to figure that out,” admitted Myrna.

“You make it sound as though Constance herself didn’t know.”

“She didn’t. She was there because she was unhappy. She wanted me to help her figure out what was wrong. She said she felt like someone who suddenly realizes they’re color-blind, and everyone else lives in a more vibrant world.”

“Color-blindness can’t be cured,” said Gamache. “Could Constance?”

“Well, first we had to get at the problem. Not the brass band banging away on the surface, but the barb beneath.”

“And did you get at the barb?”

“I think so. I think it was simple. Most problems are. Constance was lonely.”

Chief Inspector Gamache thought about that. A woman never alone. Sharing a womb, sharing a home. Sharing parents, sharing a table, sharing clothing, sharing everything. Living in a constant crowd. People around all the time, inside the house, and outside. Gawking.

“I’d have thought what she’d crave was privacy,” he said.

“Oh, yes, they all craved that. Oddly enough, I think that’s what made Constance so lonely. As soon as they could, the girls retreated from the attention, but they retreated too far. Became too private. Too isolated. What started as a survival mechanism turned against them. They were safe in their little home, in their private world, but they were alone. They were lonely children who grew into lonely adults. But they knew no other life.”

“Color-blind,” said Gamache.

“But Constance could see there was something else out there. She was safe, but she wasn’t happy. And she wanted to be.” Myrna shook her head. “I wouldn’t wish celebrity on my worst enemy. And parents who do it to their children should be tied up by their nuts.”

“You think the Quints’ parents were to blame?”

Myrna considered that. “I think Constance thought so.”

Gamache nodded to the pictures on the coffee table between them. “You asked if I found those in Constance’s home. I didn’t. There were no personal photos there at all. None in frames, none in albums. I found those in the national archives. Except”—he picked up the one of the four young women—“this one. Constance had packed it, to bring down.”

Myrna stared at the small picture in his hand. “I wonder why.”

Jérôme Brunel closed his book.

The curtains were drawn and the eiderdown comforter lay on top of them in the large bed. Thérèse had fallen asleep reading. He watched her for a few moments, breathing deeply, evenly. Her chin on her chest, her active mind at rest. At peace. At last.

He put his book on the nightstand and, reaching over, took off her glasses and lifted the book from her hand. Then he kissed her forehead and smelled her night cream. Soft and subtle. When she went away on business trips he would spread some on his hands and go to sleep with them to his face.

“Jérôme?” Thérèse roused. “Is everything all right?”

“Perfect,” he whispered. “I was just going to turn off the lights.”

“Is Armand back?”

“Not yet, but I left the porch lights on and some lamps in the living room.”

She kissed him and rolled over.

Jérôme turned off the bedside lamp, and pulled the duvet up around them. The window was open, letting in cold, fresh air, and making the warm bed all the more welcome.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered into his wife’s ear. “Armand has a plan.”

“I hope it doesn’t involve spaceships or time travel,” she mumbled, half asleep again.

“He has another plan,” said Jérôme, and heard her chuckle before the room fell back into silence, except for the little cracks and groans as the home settled around them.

Armand Gamache stood at the window of Myrna’s bookstore and saw the light go out in the upstairs bedroom at Emilie’s home.

He’d followed Myrna downstairs into her shop, and now she was standing, baffled, in the middle of an aisle of her bookstore.

“I’m sure it was here.”

“What was?” He turned around, but Myrna had disappeared into the rows of bookshelves.

“The book Dr. Bernard wrote, about the Quints. I had it here, but I can’t find it.”

“I didn’t know he’d written a book,” said Gamache, walking down another aisle, scanning the shelves. “Is it any good?”

“I haven’t read it,” she mumbled, distracted by looking at the spines. “But I can’t believe it was, given what we now know.”

“Well, we know he didn’t deliver them,” said Gamache, “but he still devoted most of his life to them. Probably knew them better than anyone.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think they barely knew themselves. At best the book might give you an insight into the routine of their days, but not into the girls themselves.”

“Then why’re you looking for it?”

“I thought even that might help.”

“It might,” he agreed. “Why didn’t you read it?”

“Dr. Bernard took what should’ve been private and made it public. He betrayed them at every turn, as did their parents. I wanted no part of that.”

She rested her large hand on a shelf, perplexed.

“Could someone have taken it out?” Gamache suggested, from the next aisle over.

“This isn’t a lending library. They’d have had to buy it from me.” There was silence before Myrna spoke again. “Fucking Ruth.”

It struck Gamache that maybe that was Ruth’s real name. It was certainly her given name. He considered the christening.

“What do you name this child?” the minister asked.

“Fucking Ruth,” her godparents replied. It would have been a prescient choice.

Myrna interrupted his reverie. “She’s the only one who seems to think this’s a library. She takes out books, then returns them and takes out others.”

“At least she returns them,” said Gamache, and got a rude look from Myrna. “You think Ruth took Bernard’s book on the Quints?”

“Who else would have?”

It was a good question.

“I’ll ask her about it tomorrow,” he said, putting on his coat. “You know that poem of Ruth’s you quoted?”

“Who hurt you once? That one?” asked Myrna.

“Do you have it?”

Myrna found the slim volume and Gamache paid for it.

“Why did Constance stop coming to you as a client?” he asked.

“We hit an impasse.”

“How so?”

“It became clear that if Constance really wanted to have close friends, she’d have to drop her guard, and let someone in. Our lives are like a house. Some people are allowed on the lawn, some onto the porch, some get into the vestibule or kitchen. The better friends are invited deeper into our home, into our living room.”

“And some are let into the bedroom,” said Gamache.

“The really intimate relationships, yes,” said Myrna.

“And Constance?”

“Her home was beautiful to look at. Lovely, perfect. But locked. No one got inside,” said Myrna.

He listened but didn’t tell Myrna that the home analogy was perfect. Constance had barricaded herself in emotionally, but no one got past the threshold of her bricks and mortar home either.

“Did you tell her this?” he asked, and Myrna nodded.

“She understood and she tried, she really struggled with it, but the walls were just too high and thick. So the therapy had to end. There was nothing more I could do for her. But we stayed in touch. Acquaintances.” Myrna smiled. “Even this visit, I thought maybe she’d finally open up. I’d hoped now that her last sister was dead she wouldn’t feel she was betraying family secrets.”

“But she didn’t say anything?”

“No.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked.

Myrna nodded.

“I think when she first came down it was for a pleasant visit. When she decided to return it was for another reason altogether.”

Myrna held his eyes. “What reason?”

He brought the pictures out of his pocket and selected the one of the four women.

“I think she was bringing this to you. Her most prized, most personal possession. I think she wanted to open the doors, the windows of her home, and let you in.”

Myrna let out a long breath, then took the photograph from him.

“Thank you for that,” she said quietly, and looked at the picture. “Virginie, Hélène, Josephine, Marguerite, and now Constance. All gone. Passed into legend. What is it?”

Gamache had picked up the very first picture ever taken of the Ouellet Quintuplets, when they were newborns, lined up like loaves of bread on the hacked harvest table. Their stunned father standing behind them.

Gamache turned the photograph over and looked at the words almost certainly written by their mother or father. Neatly, carefully. In a hand not used to making note of anything. In a life not very noteworthy, this was worth the effort. They’d written the names of their girls in the order in which they’d been placed on the table.

Marie-Virginie.

Marie-Hélène.

Marie-Josephine.

Marie-Marguerite.

Marie-Constance.

Almost certainly the order in which they were born, but also, he realized, the order in which they died.