How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #9) - Louise Penny Page 0,144

yes. But worse, from Mama and Papa.

When the girls came home for their rare visits, they were treated like princesses.

It warped a child. It wore a child down, until there was nothing recognizable left. And then it twisted them. The girls might have been spoiled, but their young sibling was ruined.

That little heart filled with hate. And grew into a big heart, filled with big hate.

And when Virginie teetered at the top of those long wooden stairs, the hand shot out. It could have saved her. But it didn’t. It tipped her over the edge.

Constance and Hélène had seen what happened and chose to say nothing. Perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of a near maniacal need for privacy, secrecy. Their lives, and their deaths, were nobody’s business but theirs. Even their murders were private.

All this Gamache explained in his letter to Myrna, and now Myrna explained to those gathered in her home. Hiding in her home.

“The Chief Inspector knew he was looking for two things,” said Myrna. “Someone whose initials were MA and who’d now be in their mid-seventies.”

“Wouldn’t there be birth records?” Jérôme asked.

“Gamache looked,” said Myrna. “There was nothing in the official record or in parish records under Ouellet.”

“The powers that be might not be able to create a person,” said Jérôme. “But they could erase one.”

He listened to the story, but kept his eyes on his wife. Thérèse was silhouetted against the window. Waiting.

“In considering the case, Armand realized he’d met four people who fit the description,” Myrna continued. “The first was Antoine, the parish priest. He’d said he’d started as priest long after the girls had left, and that was true, but he’d failed to admit he’d actually grown up in the area. The Quints’ uncle said he’d played with Antoine as a child. Père Antoine may not have lied, but he hadn’t told the whole truth either. Why?”

“And the priest was in a position to alter the records,” said Clara.

“Exactly Gamache’s thinking,” said Myrna. “But then there was the uncle himself. André Pineault. A few years younger than the girls, he described playing hockey with them, and he moved in with their father and looked after him until Isidore died. All the act of a son. And Monsieur Ouellet left the family farm to him.”

“But MA would be a woman,” said Clara. “Marie someone.”

“Marie-Annette,” said Myrna. “Annette is the name of Constance’s neighbor. The only person the sisters socialized with. The only person allowed onto their porch. It sounds to us a small thing, almost laughable, but to the Quints, so traumatized by public scrutiny, letting anyone close to their home was significant. Could Annette be either Virginie, or the lost sibling?”

“But if Constance and Hélène saw her kill Virginie, would they have anything to do with her?” Gabri asked.

“Maybe they forgave her,” said Ruth. “Maybe they understood that while they were damaged, their sister was too.”

“And maybe they wanted to keep her close,” said Clara. “The devil you know.”

Myrna nodded. “Annette and her husband Albert were already in the neighborhood when the sisters moved in next door. If Annette was the sister, it suggests either forgiveness”—Myrna looked at Ruth—“or a desire to keep a close eye on her.”

“Or him.”

They looked at Thérèse. She was looking out the window, but had obviously been listening.

“Him?” asked Olivier.

“Albert. The neighbor,” said Thérèse. Her breath fogged the windowpane. “Maybe she wasn’t their sister, but he was their brother.”

“You’re right,” said Myrna, carefully placing Gamache’s letter on the table. “The Sûreté technician was sure the third DNA he’d found belonged to a man. That tuque with the angels was knitted by Marie-Harriette for her son.”

“Albert,” said Ruth.

When Myrna didn’t respond they looked at her.

“If Isidore and Marie-Harriette had a son,” she said, “what would they name him?”

There was silence then. Even Rosa had stopped muttering.

“Old sins have long shadows.” They looked at Agent Nichol. “Where did this all begin? Where did the miracle begin?”

“Frère André,” said Clara.

“André,” said Ruth into the quiet room. “They’d have named him André.”

Myrna nodded. “Gamache believes so. He thinks that was what Constance was trying to tell me, with the tuque. Marie-Harriette knitted it for her son, named after their guardian angel. A DNA test will confirm it, but he thinks André Pineault is their brother.”

“But MA,” asked Gabri. “What does the M stand for?”

“Marc. All the girls in Marie-Harriette’s family were named Marie something and all the boys were named Marc something. Gamache found that out in the churchyard. He’d have been