How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #9) - Louise Penny Page 0,56

from within their own household, not from outside.

And yet, he had the impression that seventy-seven-year-old Constance was returning to Three Pines, to Myrna, and bringing with her not simply the only photo that existed of the grown-up girls, but also the story of what really happened in that home.

But Constance was killed before she could say anything.

“She’d have brought it on herself, of course,” said Jérôme.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she killed her sister.”

Gamache gawked. How could Jérôme possibly know that, or know Gamache’s suspicions?

“The reason she was alone in the sac. There were almost certainly six of them, two to a sac, but the singleton would have killed and absorbed her twin,” Jérôme explained. “Happens all the time.”

“Why do you want to know all this, Armand?” Thérèse asked.

“There’s been no public announcement, but the last Quint, Constance Ouellet, was murdered two days ago. She was preparing to come down here, to Three Pines.”

“Here?” asked Jérôme. “Why?”

Gamache told them. He could tell, as he spoke, that this was more than another death to them, even more than another murder. There was an added weight to this tragedy, as though Thérèse and Jérôme had lost someone they knew and cared about.

“Hard to believe they’re all gone,” said Thérèse, then she thought about it. “But they never seemed completely real. They were like statues. Looked human but weren’t.”

“Myrna Landers said it was like finding out her friend was a unicorn, or a Greek goddess. Hera, come to earth.”

“An interesting thing to say,” said Thérèse. “But how did this get to be your case, Armand? Constance Ouellet was found in Montréal. It would be the jurisdiction of the Montréal police.”

“True, but Marc Brault handed it to me when he realized there was a connection.”

“Lucky you,” said Jérôme.

“Lucky all of us,” said Gamache. “If not for that, we wouldn’t be in this home.”

“Which brings us to another issue,” said Jérôme. “Now that we’re here, how are we going to get out?”

“The plan?” asked Gamache.

They nodded.

The Chief paused to gather his thoughts.

Jérôme knew now would be the time to tell them what he’d found. The name. He’d only just glimpsed it in the moment before he realized he’d been caught. In the moment before he’d run. Run away. Back down the virtual corridor. Slamming doors, erasing his trail. Running, running.

He’d only just glimpsed it. And, thought Jérôme, maybe he got it wrong. In his panic, he must have gotten it wrong.

“Our only hope is to find out what Francoeur’s doing and stop it. And to do that we have to get you reconnected to the Internet,” Gamache said. “And not dial-up. It needs to be high-speed.”

“Yes,” said Thérèse, exasperated. “We know that. But how? There is no high-speed here.”

“We create our own transmission tower.”

Thérèse Brunel sat back and stared. “Have you hit your head, Armand? We can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Well, beside the fact it would take months and require all sorts of expertise, don’t you think someone would notice we were building a tower?”

“Ahh, they’d notice that, but I didn’t say ‘build,’ I said ‘create.’” Gamache got up and walked to the kitchen window. He pointed, past the village green, past the three huge pine trees, past the homes covered in snow. And up the hill.

“What’re we looking at?” Jérôme asked. “The hill over the village? We could put a tower on it, but again, that would take expertise.”

“And time,” said Thérèse.

“But the tower’s already there,” said Gamache, and they looked again. Finally Thérèse turned to him, astonished.

“You mean the trees,” she said.

“C’est ça,” said Gamache. “They make a natural tower. Jérôme?”

Gamache turned to the rotund man, wedged between the armchair and the window. His back to them. Staring up and out of the village.

“It might work,” he said, uncertainly. “But we’d need someone to put a satellite dish on a tree.”

They walked back to the breakfast table.

“There must be people who work with trees around here—what’re they called?” Thérèse’s city mind stumbled over itself. “Lumberjacks or something? We could get one of them to climb up with a dish. And from that height I bet we could find a transmission tower using line-of-sight. And from there we connect with a satellite.”

“But where do we find a satellite dish?” Jérôme asked. “It can’t be a regular one. It needs to be some satellite dish that can’t be traced.”

“Let’s say we do get online,” said Thérèse, her mind racing ahead, “we’d have another problem. We can’t use the Sûreté log-ins to get into the system,