How the Light Gets In

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 the 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.

And the Chief Inspector, though he could have stopped him, did nothing.

“You left me to die, then made me a joke.”

Gamache felt the muzzle of the Glock in his abdomen and took a sharp breath as it pressed deeper.

“I suspended you.” His voice was strangled. “I ordered you back to rehab, to help you.”

“Annie left me,” said Beauvoir, his eyes watering now.

“She loves you, but couldn’t live with an addict. You’re an addict, Jean-Guy.”

As the Chief spoke, Jean-Guy leaned in further, shoving the gun deeper into Gamache’s abdomen, so that he could barely breathe. But still he didn’t fight back.

“She loves you,” he repeated, his voice a rasp. “You have to get help.”

“You left me to die,” Beauvoir said, gasping for breath. “On the floor. On the fucking dirty floor.”

He was crying now, leaning into Gamache, their bodies pressed together. Beauvoir felt the fabric of Gamache’s jacket against his unshaven face and smelled sandalwood. And a hint of roses.

“I’ve come back for you now, Jean-Guy.” Gamache’s mouth was against Beauvoir’s ear, his words barely audible. “Come with me.”

He felt Beauvoir’s hand shift and the finger on the trigger tighten. But still he didn’t fight back. Didn’t struggle.

Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again.

“I’m sorry,” said Gamache. “I’d give my life to save you.”

Or will it be, as always was, / too late?

“Too late.” Beauvoir’s words were muffled, spoken into Gamache’s shoulder.

“I love you,” Armand whispered.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir leapt back and swung the gun, catching Gamache on the side of the face. He stumbled sideways against a filing cabinet, putting his arm out against the wall to stop himself from falling. Gamache turned to see Beauvoir pointing the Glock at him, his hand wavering madly.

Gamache knew there were agents on the other side of the door who could have come in. Who could have stopped this. Could stop it still. But didn’t.

He straightened and held out his hand, now covered with his own blood.

“I could kill you,” said Beauvoir.

“Oui. And maybe I deserve it.”

“No one would blame me. No one would arrest me.”

And Gamache knew that was true. He’d thought if he was ever gunned down, it wouldn’t be in Sûreté headquarters, or at the hands of Jean-Guy Beauvoir.

“I know,” the Chief said, his voice low and soft. He took a step closer to Beauvoir, who didn’t retreat. “How lonely you must be.”

He held Jean-Guy’s eyes and his heart broke for this boy he’d left behind.

“I could kill you,” Beauvoir repeated, his voice weaker.

“Yes.”

Armand Gamache was face to face with Jean-Guy. The gun almost touching his white shirt, now flecked with blood.

He held out his right hand, a hand that no longer trembled, and he felt the metal.

Gamache closed his hand over Jean-Guy’s hand. It felt cold. Like the gun. The two men stared at each other for a moment, before Jean-Guy released the gun.

“Leave me,” Beauvoir said, all fight and most of the life gone from him.

“Come with me.”

“Go.”

Gamache put the gun back in his holster and walked to the door. There he hesitated.

“I’m sorry.”

Beauvoir stood in the center of his office, too tired to even turn away.

Chief Inspector Gamache left, walking into a cluster of Sûreté agents, some of whom he’d taught at the academy.

Armand Gamache had always held unfashionable beliefs. He believed that light would banish the shadows. That kindness was more powerful than cruelty, and that goodness existed, even in the most desperate places. He believed that evil had its limits. But looking at the young men and women staring at him now, who’d seen something terrible about to happen and had done nothing, Chief Inspector Gamache wondered if he could have been wrong all this time.

Maybe the darkness sometimes won. Maybe evil had no limits.

He walked alone back down the corridor, pressed the down button, and in the privacy of the elevator he covered his face with his hands.

“You sure you don’t need a doctor?”

André Pineault stood at the door to the washroom, arms folded across his broad chest.

“No, I’ll be fine.” Gamache splashed more water on his face, feeling the sting as it hit the wound. Pink liquid swirled around the drain, then disappeared. He lifted his head and saw his reflection, with the jagged cut on his cheekbone, and the bruise just beginning to show.

But it would heal.

“Slipped on the ice, you say?” Monsieur Pineault handed Gamache a clean towel, which the Chief pressed to the side of his face. “I’ve slipped like that. Mostly in bars, after a few drinks. Other guys were slipping too. All over the place. Sometimes we’re arrested for slipping.”

Gamache smiled, then winced. Then smiled again.

“That ice is pretty treacherous,” agreed the Chief.

“Maudit tabarnac, you speak the truth,” said Pineault, leading the way down the hall into the kitchen. “Beer?”

“Non, merci.”

“Coffee?” It was offered without enthusiasm.

“Perhaps some water.”

Had Gamache asked for piss, Pineault could not have been less enthusiastic. But he poured a glass and got out ice cubes. He plopped one in the water and wrapped the rest in a tea towel. He gave both to the Chief.

Gamache traded the hand towel for the ice, and pressed that to his face. It felt immediately better. Clearly André Pineault had done this before.

The older man popped a beer open, pulled out a chair, and joined Gamache at the laminate table.

“So, patron,” he said, “you wanted to talk about Isidore and Marie-Harriette? Or the girls?”

When Gamache had rung the doorbell, he’d introduced himself and explained he wanted to ask some questions about Monsieur et Madame Ouellet. His authority, however, was undermined by the fact he looked like he’d just lost a bar brawl.

But André Pineault didn’t seem to find that at all unusual. Gamache had tried to clean himself up in the car, but hadn’t done a very good job of it. Normally he’d have gone home to change, but time was short.

Now, sitting in the kitchen, sipping cool water, with half his face numb, he was beginning to feel human, and competent, again.

Monsieur Pineault sat back in his chair, his chest and belly protruding. Strong, vigorous, weathered. He might be over seventy by the calendar, but he seemed ageless, almost immortal. Gamache couldn’t imagine anyone or anything felling this man.

Gamache had met many Québécois like this. Sturdy men and women, raised to look after farms and forests and animals, and themselves. Robust, rugged, self-sufficient. A breed now looked down upon by more refined city types.

Fortunately men like André Pineault didn’t much care. Or, if they did, they simply slipped on ice, and took the city man down with them.

“You remember the Quints?” Gamache asked, and lowered the ice pack to the kitchen table.

“Hard to forget, but I didn’t see much of them. They lived in that theme park place the government built for them in Montréal, but they came back for Christmas and for a week or so in the summer.”

“Must’ve been exciting, having local celebrities.”

“I guess. No one really thought of them as local, though. The town sold souvenirs of the Ouellet Quints and named their motels and cafés after them. The Quint Diner, that sort of thing. But they weren’t local. Not really.”

“Did they have any friends close by? Local kids they hung out with?”

“Hung out?” asked Pineault with a snort. “Those girls didn’t ‘hang out.’ Everything they did was planned. You’d have thought they were the queens of England.”

“So no friends?”

“Only the ones the film people paid to play with them.”

“Did the girls know that?”

“That the kids were bribed? Probably.”

Gamache remembered what Myrna had said about Constance. How she ached for company. Not her ever-present sisters, but just one friend, who didn’t have to be paid. Even Myrna had been paid to listen. But then Constance had stopped paying Myrna. And Myrna hadn’t left her.

“What were they like?”

“OK, I guess. Stuck to themselves.”

“Stuck up?” Gamache asked.

Pineault shifted in his chair. “Can’t say.”

“Did you like them?”

Pineault seemed flummoxed by the question.

“You must’ve been about their age…” Gamache tried again.

“A little younger.” He grinned. “I’m not that old, though I might look it.”

“Did you play with them?”

“Hockey, sometimes. Isidore would get up a team when the girls were home for Christmas. Everyone wanted to be Rocket Richard,” said Pineault. “Even the girls.”

Gamache saw the slight change in the man.

“You liked Isidore, didn’t you?”

André grunted. “He was a brute. You’d have thought he was pulled from the ground, like a big dirty old stump. Had huge hands.”

Pineault spread his own considerable hands on the kitchen table and looked down, smiling. Like Isidore, André’s smile was missing some teeth, but none of the sincerity.

He shook his head. “Not one for conversation. If I got five words out of him the last ten years of his life, I’d be surprised.”

“You lived with him, I understand.”

“Who told you that?”

“The parish priest.”

“Antoine? Fucking old lady, always gossiping, just like when he was a kid. Played goalie, you know. Too lazy to move. Just sat there like a spider in a web. Gave us the willies. And now he lords it over that church and practically charges to show tourists where the Quints were baptized. Even shows them the Ouellet grave. ’Course, nobody much cares anymore.”

“After they were grown up they never came back to visit their father?”

“Antoine tell you that as well?”

Gamache nodded.

“Well, he’s right. But that was OK. Isidore and I were just fine. He milked the cows the day he died, you know. Almost ninety and practically dropped dead in the milk bucket.” He laughed, realizing what he’d said. “Kicked the bucket.”

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.