How the Light Gets In

ELEVEN

“Constance Ouellet-Shithead?” asked Gabri.

Ruth and Rosa glared at him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” muttered the duck.

“She’s Constance Ouellet,” Ruth clarified, her voice glacial. “You’re the shithead.”

“You knew?” Myrna asked the old poet.

Ruth picked up Rosa, placing the duck on her lap and stroking her like a cat. Rosa stretched her neck, straining her beak upward toward Ruth, and making a nest of the old body.

“Not at first. I thought she was just some boring old fart. Like you.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabri, waving his large hand in front of him as though trying to clear away the confusion. “Constance Pineault was Constance Ouellet?”

He turned to Olivier.

“Did you know?” But it was clear his partner was equally amazed.

Gabri looked around the gathering and finally came to rest on Gamache.

“Are we talking about the same thing? The Ouellet Quints?”

“C’est ça,” said the Chief.

“The quintuplets?” Gabri insisted, still unable to fully grasp it.

“That’s it,” Gamache assured him. But it only seemed to increase Gabri’s bafflement.

“I thought they were dead,” he said.

“Why do people keep saying that?” Myrna asked.

“Well, it all seems so long ago. Once upon a time.”

They sat in silence. Gabri had nailed it. Exactly what most of them had been thinking. Not so much amazement that one of the Ouellet Quints was dead, but that any were still alive. And that one had walked among them.

The Quints were legend in Québec. In Canada. Worldwide. They were a phenomenon. Freaks, almost. Five little girls, identical. Born in the depths of the Depression. Conceived without fertility drugs. In vivo, not in vitro. The only known natural quintuplets to survive. And they had survived, for seventy-seven years. Until yesterday.

“Constance was the only one left,” said Myrna. “Her sister, Marguerite, died in October. A stroke.”

“Did Constance marry?” asked Olivier. “Is that where Pineault came from?”

“No, none of the Quints married,” said Myrna. “They went by their mother’s maiden name, Pineault.”

“Why?” asked Gabri.

“Why do you think, numb nuts?” asked Ruth. “Not everyone craves attention, you know.”

“So how did you know who she was?” Gabri demanded.

That shut Ruth up, much to everyone’s amazement. They’d expected a brusque retort, not silence.

“She told me,” Ruth finally said. “We didn’t talk about it, though.”

“Oh, come on,” said Myrna. “She told you she was a Ouellet Quint and you didn’t ask a single question?”

“I don’t care if you believe me,” said Ruth. “It’s the truth, alas.”

“Truth? You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the alas,” said Gabri.

Ruth ignored him and focused on Gamache, who’d been watching her closely.

“Was she killed because she was a Ouellet Quint?” Ruth asked him.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I can’t see why,” Ruth admitted. “And yet…”

And yet, thought Gamache, as he rose. And yet. Why else would she be killed?

He looked at his watch. Almost nine. Time to get going. He excused himself to make a phone call from the bar, remembering in time that his cell phone didn’t work in Three Pines, and neither did email. He almost expected to see messages fluttering back and forth in the sky above the village, unable to descend. Waiting for him to head up the hill out of Three Pines, and then dive-bombing him.

But as long as he was here, none could reach him. Armand Gamache suspected that partly explained his good night’s sleep. And he suspected it also explained Constance Ouellet’s growing ease in the village.

She was safe there. Nothing could reach her. It was only in leaving that she’d been killed.

Or …

As the phone rang his thoughts sped along.

Or …

She hadn’t been killed when she left, he realized. Constance Ouellet had been murdered when she’d tried to return to Three Pines.

“Bonjour, patron.” Inspector Lacoste’s bright voice came down the landline.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.

“The caller ID said ‘Bistro.’ It’s our code word for you.”

He paused for a moment, wondering if that was true, then she laughed.

“You’re still in Three Pines?”

“Yes, just leaving. What do you have?”

“We got the autopsy and forensics from the Montréal police, and I’m reading through the statements from the neighbors. It’s all been sent to you.”

Among the messages hovering overhead, thought Gamache.

“Anything I should know?”

“Not so far. It seems the neighbors didn’t know who she was.”

“Do they now?”

“We haven’t told them. Want to keep it quiet for as long as possible. There’ll be a media storm when it comes out that the last Quint hasn’t just died, but been murdered.”

“I’d like to see the scene again. Can you meet me at the Ouellet home in an hour and a half?”

“D’accord,” said Lacoste.

Gamache looked up, into the mirror behind the bar. In it he saw himself reflected, and behind him the bistro, with its Christmas decorations, and the window into the snowy village. The sun was now up, cresting the tree line, and the sky was the palest of winter blues. Most of the patrons of the bistro had gone back to their conversations, excited now, animated by the news that they’d met, in person, a Ouellet Quint. Gamache could sense the ebb and flow of their emotions. Excitement at the discovery. Then remembering she was dead. Then back to the Quint phenomenon. Then the murder. It was like atoms racing between poles. Unable to rest in any one place.

Around the fireplace, the friends were commiserating with Myrna. And yet— He’d had the impression that as he’d looked into the reflection, there’d been a movement. Someone had been staring at him and had quickly dropped their eyes.

But one set of eyes remained on him. Staring, unyielding.

Henri.

The shepherd sat perfectly contained, oblivious to the hubbub around him. He stared at Gamache. Transfixed. Waiting. He would wait forever, secure in the absolute certainty that Gamache would not forget him.

Gamache held the shepherd’s eyes and smiled into the mirror. Henri’s tail twitched, but the rest of his body remained stone still.

“What now, patron?” asked Olivier, coming around the bar as Gamache replaced the phone.

“Now I head back to Montréal. Work to do, I’m afraid.”

Olivier picked up the phone. “And I have work to do as well. Good luck, Chief Inspector.”

“Good luck to you, mon vieux.”

Chief Inspector Gamache met Isabelle Lacoste just outside Constance’s home and they went in together.

“Where’s Henri?” she asked, turning on the lights in the house. It was a sunny day, but the home felt dull, as though the color was draining from it.

“I left him in Three Pines with Clara. They both seemed pretty happy about that.”

He’d assured Henri he’d be back, and the shepherd had believed him.

Gamache and Lacoste sat at the kitchen table and went over the interviews and forensics. The Montréal police had been thorough, taking statements and samples and fingerprints.

“Only her prints, I see,” said Gamache, not looking up as he read the report. “No sign of forced entry and the door was unlocked when we arrived.”

“That might not mean anything,” said Lacoste. “When you get to the statements by the neighbors, you’ll see that most don’t lock their doors during the day, when they’re at home. It’s an old, established neighborhood. No crime. Families have lived here for years. Generations in some cases.”

Gamache nodded but suspected Constance Ouellet had probably locked her doors. Her most valued possession seemed to be privacy, and she wouldn’t have wanted any well-meaning neighbor stealing it.

“Coroner confirms she was killed before midnight,” he read. “She’d been dead a day and a half by the time we found her.”

“That also explains why no one saw anything,” said Lacoste. “It was dark and cold and everyone was inside asleep or watching television or wrapping gifts. And then it snowed all day and covered any tracks there might’ve been.”

“How did he get in?” Gamache asked, looking up and meeting Lacoste’s eyes. Around them the dated kitchen seemed to be waiting for one of them to make a pot of tea, or eat the biscuits in the tin. It was a hospitable kitchen.

“Well, the door was unlocked when we arrived, so either she left it unlocked and he let himself in, or she had it locked, he rang, and she let him in.”

“Then he killed her and left,” said Gamache, “leaving the door unlocked behind him.”

Lacoste nodded and watched as Gamache sat back and shook his head.

“Constance Ouellet wouldn’t have let him in. Myrna said she was almost pathologically private, and this confirms it.” He tapped the forensics report. “When was the last time you saw a house with only one set of prints? No one came into this home. At least, no one was invited in.”

“Then the door must’ve been unlocked and he let himself in.”

“But an unlocked door was also against her nature,” said the Chief. “And let’s say she’d gotten into the habit of keeping her door unlocked, like the rest of the neighborhood. It was late at night and she was getting ready for bed. She’d have locked the door by then, non?”

Lacoste nodded. Constance either let her killer in, or he let himself in.

Neither possibility seemed likely, but one of them was the truth.

Gamache read the rest of the reports while Inspector Lacoste did her own detailed search of the house, starting in the basement. He could hear her down there, moving things about. Beyond that, though, there was just the clunk, clunk as the clock above the sink noted the passing moments.

Finally he lowered the reports and took off his glasses.

The neighbors had seen nothing. The oldest of them, who’d lived on the street all her life, remembered when the three sisters moved into the home, thirty-five years ago.

Constance, Marguerite, and Josephine.

As far as she knew, Marguerite was the oldest, though Josephine was the first to die, five years ago. Cancer.

The sisters had been friendly, but private. Never having anyone in, but always buying boxes of oranges and grapefruit and Christmas chocolate from the children when they’d canvassed to raise money, and stopping to chat on warm summer days as they gardened.

They were cordial without being intrusive. And without allowing intrusion.

The perfect neighbors, the woman had said.

She lived next door and had once had a lemonade with Marguerite. They’d sat together on the porch and watched as Constance washed the car. They’d called encouragement and jokingly pointed out areas she’d missed.

Gamache could see them. Could taste the tart lemonade and smell the cold water from the hose as it hit the hot pavement. He wondered how this elderly neighbor could not have known she was sitting with one of the Ouellet Quints.

But he knew the answer to that.

The Quints only existed in sepia photographs and newsreels. They lived in perfect little castles and wore impossibly frilly dresses. And came in a cluster of five.

Not three. Not one.

Five girls, forever children.

The Ouellet Quints weren’t real. They didn’t age, they didn’t die. And they sure didn’t sip lemonade in Pointe-Saint-Charles.

That’s why no one recognized them.

It helped, too, that they didn’t want to be recognized. As Ruth said, not everyone seeks attention.

“It’s the truth, alas,” Ruth had said.

Alas, thought Chief Inspector Gamache. He left the kitchen and began his own search.

Clara Morrow placed a bowl of fresh water on the floor but Henri was too excited to notice. He ran around the home, sniffing. Clara watched, her heart both swelling and breaking. It hadn’t been all that long ago that she’d had to put her golden retriever, Lucy, down. Myrna and Gabri had gone with them, and yet Clara felt she’d been alone. Peter wasn’t there.

She’d debated calling to tell him about Lucy, but Clara knew that was just an excuse to make contact.

The deal was, they’d wait a year, and it hadn’t been six months since he’d left.

Clara followed Henri into her studio, where he found an old banana peel. Taking it from him, she paused in front of her latest work, barely an outline so far.

This ghost on the canvas was her husband.

Some mornings, some evenings, she came in here and talked to him. Told him about her day. She even, sometimes, fixed dinner and brought a candle in and ate by candlelight, in front of this suggestion of Peter. She ate, and chatted with him, told him the events of her day. The little events only a good friend would care about. And the huge events. Like the murder of Constance Ouellet.

Clara painted and talked to the portrait. Adding a stroke here, a dab there. A husband of her own creation. Who listened. Who cared.

Henri was still sniffing and snorting around the studio. Having found one banana peel, there was reason to hope there’d be more. Pausing in her painting for a moment, Clara realized he wasn’t looking for a banana peel. Henri was looking for Armand.

Clara reached into her pocket for one of the treats Armand had left, then she bent down and called the dog over. Henri stopped his scurrying and looked at her, his satellite ears turning toward her voice, having picked up his favorite channel. The treat channel.

He approached, sat, and gently took the bone-shaped cookie.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, resting her forehead against his. “He’ll be back.”

Then Clara returned to the portrait.

“I asked Constance to sit for me,” she said to the wet paint. “But she refused. I’m not really sure why I asked. You’re right, I am the best artist in Canada, perhaps the world, so she should’ve been pleased.”

Might as well exaggerate—this Peter couldn’t roll his eyes.

Clara leaned away from the canvas and put the brush in her mouth, smearing raw umber paint on her cheek.

“I stayed over at Myrna’s last night.” She described for Peter how she’d pulled the warm duvet around her, rested the old Life magazine on her knees, and studied the cover. As she’d looked at it, the image of the girls moved from endearing, to uncanny, to vaguely unsettling.

“They were all the same, Peter. In expression, in mood. Not just similar, but exactly the same.”

Clara Morrow, the artist, the portraitist, had searched the faces for any hint of individuality. And found none. Then she’d sat back in bed and remembered the elderly woman she’d met. Clara didn’t ask many people to sit for a portrait. It demanded too much of her to be done on a whim. But, apparently on a whim, she’d popped the question to Constance. And been firmly rebuffed.

She hadn’t really exaggerated to Peter. Clara Morrow had become surprisingly famous for her portraits. At least, it surprised her. And it had sure surprised her artist husband.

She remembered what John Singer Sargent had said.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

Clara had lost her husband. Not because she’d painted him, but because she’d outpainted him. Sometimes, on dark winter nights, she wished she’d stuck to gigantic feet and warrior uteruses.

“But my paintings didn’t send you from our home, did they?” she asked the canvas. “It was your own demons. They finally caught up with you.”

She considered him closely.

“How much that must have hurt,” she said quietly. “Where are you now, Peter? Have you stopped running? Have you faced whatever ate your happiness, your creativity, your good sense? Your love?”

It had eaten his love, but not Clara’s.

Henri settled on the worn piece of carpet at Clara’s feet. She picked up her brush and approached the canvas.

“He’ll be back,” she whispered, perhaps to Henri.

Chief Inspector Gamache opened drawers and closets and cupboards, examining the contents of Constance Ouellet’s home. In the front hall closet he found a coat, a small collection of hats, and a pair of gloves.

No hoarding here.

He looked at the bookshelves and mantelpiece. He got on his hands and knees and looked under furniture. From what the Montréal police could tell, Constance hadn’t been robbed. Her purse was still there, money and all. Her car sat on the road. There were no blank spots on the walls where a painting might have once hung, or gaps in the curio cabinet where a surprisingly valuable knickknack might have sat.

Nothing was taken.

But still he looked.

He knew he was going over territory the Montréal police had already covered, but he was looking for something different. Their initial search was for clues to the killer. A bloody glove, an extra key, a threatening note. A fingerprint, a footprint. Signs of theft.

He was looking for clues to her life.

“Nothing, Chief,” said Lacoste, wiping her hands of the dust from the basement. “They didn’t seem a sentimental lot. No baby clothes, no old toys, no sleds or snowshoes.”

“Snowshoes?” asked Gamache, amused.

“My parents’ basement is full of that sort of stuff,” Lacoste admitted. “And when they die, mine will be.”

“You won’t get rid of it?”

“Couldn’t. You?”

“Madame Gamache and I kept a few things from our parents. As you know, she has three hundred siblings so there was no question of it all coming to us.”

Isabelle Lacoste laughed. Every time the Chief described Madame Gamache’s family, the number of siblings grew. She supposed for an only child like the Chief, it must have been overwhelming to suddenly find himself in a large family.

“What was downstairs?” he asked.

“A cedar chest with summer clothing, the outdoor furniture brought in for the winter. Mostly that cheap plastic stuff. Garden hoses and tools. Nothing personal.”

“Nothing from their childhood?”

“Nothing at all.”

They both knew that, even for people who were rigorously unsentimental, that was unusual. But for the Quints? Whole industries had been built around them. Souvenirs, books, dolls, puzzles. He was fairly sure if he looked hard enough in his own home he’d find something from the Quints. A spoon his mother collected. A postcard from Reine-Marie’s family with the girls’ smiling faces.

At a time when the Québécois were just beginning to turn from the Church, the Quints had become the new religion. A fantastic blend of miracle and entertainment. Unlike the censorious Catholic Church, the Quints were fun. Unlike the Church, whose most powerful symbol was of sacrifice and death, the lingering image of the Ouellet Quints was of happiness. Five smiling little girls, vibrant and alive. The world fell to its knees before them. It seemed the only ones not enamored of the Quints were the Quints themselves.

Gamache and Lacoste walked down the hall, each one taking a bedroom. They met up a few minutes later and compared notes.

“Nothing,” said Lacoste. “Clean. Tidy. No clothing and no personal effects.”

“And no photographs.”

She shook her head.

Gamache exhaled deeply. Had their lives really been so antiseptic? And yet, the home didn’t feel cold. It felt like a warm and inviting place. There were personal possessions, but no private ones.

They walked into Constance’s bedroom. The bloodstained carpet was still there. The suitcase sat on the bed. The murder weapon had been taken away, but there was police tape indicating where it had been dropped.

Gamache walked over to the small suitcase and lifted items out, putting them neatly on the bed. Sweaters, underwear, thick stockings, a skirt and comfortable slacks. Long underwear and flannel nightgown. All the things you’d pack for Christmas in a cold country.

Packed between warm shirts he found three gifts, covered in candy cane wrapping paper. He squeezed and the paper crinkled. Whatever was inside was soft.

Clothing, he knew, having received his share of socks and ties and scarves from his children. He looked at the tags.

One for Clara, one for Olivier, and one for Gabri.

He handed them to Lacoste. “Can you unwrap these, please?”

While she did he felt around the suitcase. One of the sweaters didn’t give as much as it should. Gamache picked it up and unrolled the wool.

“A scarf for Clara,” said Lacoste, “and mittens for Olivier and Gabri.”

She wrapped them up again.

“Look at this,” said Gamache. He held up what he’d found in the center of the sweater. It was a photograph.

“That wasn’t listed in the search by the Montréal cops,” said Lacoste.

“Easy to miss,” said Gamache. And he could imagine their thinking. It was late, it was cold, they were hungry, and this would soon not even be their case.

They hadn’t been so much incompetent as less than thorough. And the small black and white photo was almost hidden in the thick wool sweater.

He took it over to the window, and he and Lacoste examined it.

Four women, in their thirties Gamache guessed, smiled at them. Their arms were around each other’s waists, and they looked directly at the camera. Gamache found himself smiling back, and noticed Lacoste was as well. The girls’ smiles weren’t big, but they were genuine and infectious.

Here were four happy people.

But while their expressions were identical, everything else about them was different. Their clothes, their hair, their shoes, their style. Even their bodies were different. Two were plump, one skinny, one average.

“What do you think?” he asked Lacoste.

“It’s obviously four of the sisters, but it looks like they’ve done all they can to make sure they’re not alike.”

Gamache nodded. That was his impression as well.

He looked at the back of the picture. There was nothing there.

“Why only four?” Lacoste asked. “What happened to the other one?”

“I think one died quite young,” he said.

“Shouldn’t be hard to find out,” said Lacoste.

“Right. Sounds like a job for me, then,” said Gamache. “You can look after the hard stuff.”

Gamache put the photograph in his pocket and they spent the next few minutes searching Constance’s room.

A few books were stacked on the bedside table. He went back to the suitcase and found the book she was reading. It was Ru by Kim Thúy.

He opened it to the bookmark and deliberately turned the page. He read the first sentence. Words Constance Ouellet would never get to.

As a man who loved books, a bookmark placed by the recently dead always left him sad. He had two books like that in his possession. They were in the bookcase in his study. They’d been found by his grandmother, on the bedside table of his parents’ room, after they’d been killed in a car accident when Armand was a child.

Every now and then he pulled the books out and touched the bookmarks, but hadn’t yet found the strength to pick up where they left off. To read the rest of the story.

Now he lowered Constance’s book and looked out the window into the small backyard. He suspected that, beneath the snow, there was a small vegetable garden. And in the summer the three sisters would sit on the cheap plastic chairs in the shade of the large maple and sip iced tea. And read. Or talk. Or just be quiet.

He wondered if they ever talked about their days as the Ouellet Quints. Did they reminisce? He doubted it.

The home felt like a sanctuary, and that was what they were hiding from.

Then he turned back to look at the stain on the carpet, and the police tape. And the book in his hand.

Soon he’d know the full story.

“So, I can understand why the Ouellet sisters might not want everyone to know they were the Quints,” said Lacoste, when they were ready to leave. “But why not have personal photographs and cards and letters in the privacy of their own home? Does that strike you as strange?”

Gamache stepped off the porch. “I think we’ll find that very little about their life could be considered normal.”

They walked slowly down the snow-packed path, squinting against the brilliant sun bouncing off the snow.

“Something else was missing,” the Chief said. “Did you notice?”

Lacoste thought about that. She knew this wasn’t a test. The Chief Inspector was beyond that, and so was she. But her mind was drawing a blank.

She shook her head.

“No parents,” he said.

Damn, thought Lacoste. No parents. She’d missed that. In the crowd of Quints, or missing Quints, she’d missed something else.

Monsieur et Madame Ouellet. It was one thing to blank out a part of your own past, but why also erase your parents?

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

“Perhaps nothing.”

“Do you think that’s what the killer took?”

Gamache thought about that. “Photographs of the parents?”

“Family photographs. Of the parents and the sisters.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” he said.

“I’m just wondering…” she said when they reached her car.

“Go on.”

“No, it’s really too stupid.”

He raised his brows, but said nothing. Just stared at her.

“What do we really know about the Ouellet Quints?” she asked. “They deliberately dropped from view, became the Pineault sisters. They were private in the extreme…”

“Just say it, Inspector,” said Gamache.

“Maybe Constance wasn’t the last.”

“Pardon?”

“How do we know the others are dead? Maybe one isn’t. Who else could get into the house? Who else even knew where they lived? Who else might take family photographs?”

“We don’t know if the killer even realized she was a Quint,” the Chief Inspector pointed out. “And we don’t know that family photos were stolen.”

But as he drove away, Lacoste’s statement grew in his mind.

Maybe Constance wasn’t the last.