How the Light Gets In

NINE

Armand stepped outside into the cold, crisp night. The snow had long since stopped and the sky had cleared. It was just past midnight, and as he stood there, taking deep breaths of the clean air, the lights on the trees went out.

The Chief Inspector and Henri were the lone creatures in a dark world. He looked up, and slowly the stars appeared. Orion’s Belt. The Big Dipper. The North Star. And millions and millions of other lights. All very, very clear now, and only now. The light only visible in the dark.

Gamache found himself uncertain what to do and where to go. He could return to Montréal, though he was tired and would rather not, but he hadn’t made any arrangements to stay at the B and B, preferring to go straight to Myrna. And now it was past midnight and all the lights were out at the B and B. He could only just make out the outline of the former coach inn against the forest beyond.

But as he watched, a light, softened by curtains, appeared at an upstairs window. And then, a few moments later, another downstairs. Then he saw a light through the window in the front door, just before it opened. A large man stood silhouetted on the threshold.

“Come here, boy, come here,” the voice called, and Henri tugged at the leash.

Gamache dropped it and the shepherd took off along the path, up the stairs and into Gabri’s arms.

When Gamache arrived, Gabri struggled to his feet.

“Good boy.” He embraced the Chief Inspector. “Get inside. I’m freezing my ass off. Not that it couldn’t use it.”

“How’d you know we were here?”

“Myrna called. She thought you might need a room.” He regarded his unexpected guest. “You do want to stay, don’t you?”

“Very much,” said the Chief, and had rarely meant anything more.

Gabri closed the door behind them.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir sat in his car and stared at the closed door. He was slumped down. Not so far as to disappear completely, but far enough to make it look like he was trying to be discreet. It was calculated and, somewhere below the haze, he knew it was also pathetic.

But he didn’t care anymore. He just wanted Annie to look out her window. To recognize his car. To see him there. To open the door.

He wanted …

He wanted …

He wanted to feel her in his arms again. To smell her scent. He wanted her to whisper, “It’ll be all right.”

Most of all, he wanted to believe it.

“Myrna told us that Constance was missing,” said Gabri, reaching for a hanger for Gamache’s coat. He took the parka from the Chief and paused. “Are you here about her?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Gabri hesitated just an instant before asking, “She’s dead?”

The Chief nodded.

Gabri hugged the parka and stared at Gamache. While he longed to ask more questions, he didn’t. He could see the Chief’s exhaustion. Instead he finished hanging up the coat and walked to the stairs.

Gamache followed the immense, swaying dressing gown up the stairs.

Gabri led them along the passage and stopped at a familiar door. He flicked a switch to reveal the room Gamache always stayed in. Unlike Gabri, this room, indeed the entire bed and breakfast, was a model of restraint. Oriental throw rugs were scattered on the wide-plank floor. The dark wood bed was large and inviting and made up with crisp white linens, a thick white duvet, and down pillows.

It was uncluttered and comforting. Simple and welcoming.

“Have you had dinner?”

“No, but I’ll be fine until morning.” The clock on the bedside table said 12:30.

Gabri crossed to the window, opened it a sliver to let the fresh, cold air in, and pulled the curtains closed.

“What time would you like to get up?”

“Six thirty too early?”

Gabri blanched. “Not at all. We’re always up at that hour.” At the door he paused. “You do mean six thirty P.M., right?”

Gamache placed his satchel on the floor by the bed.

“Merci, patron,” he said with a smile, holding Gabri’s eyes for a moment.

Before changing, Gamache looked at Henri, who was standing by the door.

The Chief stood in the middle of the room, looking from the warm, soft bed to Henri and back again.

“Oh, Henri, you’d better want to do more than just play,” he sighed, and fished in Henri’s satchel for the tennis ball and a bag.

They went quietly down the stairs. Gamache put his parka, gloves, and hat back on, unlocked the door and the two headed into the night. He didn’t put Henri on the leash. There was very little danger he’d run away, since Henri was among the least adventurous dogs Gamache knew.

The village was completely dark now, the homes just hinted at in front of the forest. They walked over to the village green. Gamache watched with satisfaction and a silent prayer of thanks as Henri did his business. The Chief picked it up with the bag, then turned to give Henri his treat.

But there was no dog. Every walk, over hundreds of walks, Henri had stood beside Gamache, looking up expectantly. One treat deserved another. A quid pro quo.

But now, inconceivably, Henri wasn’t there. He’d disappeared.

Gamache cursed himself for a fool and looked at the empty leash in his hand. Had Henri gotten a whiff of deer or coyote, and taken off into the woods?

“Henri,” the Chief called. “Come here, boy.”

He whistled and then noticed the paw prints in the snow. They headed back across the road, but not toward the bed and breakfast.

Gamache bent over and followed them at a jog. Across the road, over a snow bank. Onto a front lawn. Down an unshoveled walkway. For the second time that day, the Chief felt snow tumble down his boots and melt into his socks. Another soaker. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was to find Henri.

Gamache stopped. There was a dark figure, with immense ears, looking up expectantly at a door. His tail wagging. Waiting to be let in.

The Chief felt his heart simmer down and he took a deep, calming breath.

“Henri,” he whispered vehemently. “Viens ici.”

The shepherd looked in his direction.

Gone to the wrong house, thought Gamache, not altogether surprised. While Henri had a huge heart, he had quite a modest brain. His head was taken up almost entirely by his ears. In fact, his head seemed simply a sort of mount for those ears. Fortunately Henri didn’t really need his head. He kept all the important things in his heart. Except, perhaps, his current address.

“Come here,” the Chief gestured, surprised that Henri, so well trained and normally so compliant, hadn’t immediately responded. “You’ll scare the people half to death.”

But even as he spoke, the Chief realized that Henri hadn’t made a mistake at all. He’d meant to come to this house. Henri knew the B and B, but he knew the house better.

Henri had grown up here. He’d been rescued and brought to this house as a puppy, to be raised by an elderly woman. Emilie Longpré had saved him, and named him, and loved him. And Henri had loved her.

This had been, and in some ways always would be, Henri’s home.

Gamache had forgotten that Henri knew Three Pines better than he ever would. Every scent, every blade of grass, every tree, every one.

Gamache looked down at the paw and boot prints in the snow. The front walk hadn’t been shoveled. The steps up to the verandah hadn’t been cleaned. The home was dark. And empty.

No one lived there, he was sure, and probably hadn’t in the years since Emilie Longpré had died. When Armand and Reine-Marie had decided to adopt the orphan puppy.

Henri hadn’t forgotten. Or more likely, thought Gamache as he climbed the snowy steps to retrieve the dog, he knew this home by heart. And now the shepherd waited, his tail swishing back and forth, for a woman long dead to let him in and give him a cookie, and tell him he was a good boy.

“Good boy,” whispered Gamache into the immense ears, as he bent down and clipped the leash on Henri. But before going back down the stairs, the Chief peered into a window.

He saw furniture covered in sheets. Ghost furniture.

Then he and Henri stepped off the porch. Under a canopy of stars he and Henri walked slowly around the village green.

One of them thinking, one of them remembering.

Thérèse Brunel got up on one elbow and looked over the lump in the bed that was Jérôme, to the clock on the bedside table.

It was past one in the morning. She lowered herself onto the mattress and watched her husband’s easy breathing, and envied him his calm.

She wondered if it was because he really didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation, though he was a thoughtful man and should.

Or, perhaps most likely, Jérôme trusted his wife and Armand to know what to do.

For most of their married life, Thérèse had been comforted by the thought that as an emergency room physician Jérôme would always be able to help. If she or one of the children choked. Or hit their head. Or were in an accident. Or had a heart attack. He’d save them.

But now she realized the roles were reversed. He was counting on her. She hadn’t the heart to tell him she had no idea what to do. She’d been trained to deal with clear targets, obvious goals. Solve the crime, arrest the criminal. But now everything seemed blurry. Ill-defined.

As Superintendent Brunel stared at the ceiling, listening to the heavy, rhythmic breathing of her husband, she realized it came down to two possibilities. That Jérôme had not been found in cyber space. Had not been followed. That it was a mirage.

Or that he had been found. And followed.

Which meant someone high up in the Sûreté had gone to a great deal of trouble to cover up what they were doing. More trouble than a viral video, no matter how vile, warranted.

Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, she thought the unthinkable. What if the creature they hunted had been there for years, growing and scheming? Putting patient plans in place?

Is that what they’d stumbled upon? In following the hacked video, had Jérôme found something much larger, older, even more contemptible?

She looked at her husband and noticed that he was awake after all and also staring at the ceiling. She touched his arm and he rolled over, bringing his face very close to hers.

Taking both her hands in his, he whispered, “It’ll be all right, ma belle.”

She wished she could believe him.

On the far side of the village green, the Chief Inspector paused. Henri, on his leash, stood patiently in the cold as Gamache studied the dark and empty house where Henri had been raised. Where Henri had taken him that evening.

And a thought formed.

After a minute or so Gamache noticed that the shepherd was raising and lowering his front paws, trying to get them away from the snow and ice underfoot.

“Let’s go, mon vieux,” he said, and walked rapidly back to the B and B.

In the bedroom, the Chief found a plate of thick ham sandwiches, some cookies, and a hot chocolate. He could hardly wait to crawl into bed with his dinner.

But first he knelt down and held Henri’s cold paws in his warm hands. One after the other. Then into those ears he whispered, “It’ll be all right.”

And Henri believed him.