How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #9) - Louise Penny Page 0,71

a look that chilled the Chief Inspector, she smiled.

It was one of those moments a homicide investigator looked for. The tiny conflict. Between what was said and what was done. Between the tone and the words.

Between Marie-Harriette’s expression and her actions. The smile, and the thrown hat.

Here was a woman divided, perhaps even falling apart. It was through such a crack an investigator crawled to get to the heart of the matter.

Gamache watched the screen and wondered how the woman who’d struggled up the steps of Saint Joseph’s Oratory on her knees, praying for children, came to this.

The Chief suspected her annoyance had been directed at the ubiquitous Dr. Bernard, trying to keep him out of the frame. To, just once, leave them alone with their children.

It had worked. Whoever she’d gestured to had backed off.

But Gamache could tell it was a rearguard action. No one that tired would prevail for long.

Long dead and buried in another town, Gamache remembered Ruth’s seminal poem, my mother hasn’t finished with me yet.

In just over five years, Marie-Harriette would be dead. And in just over fifteen years Virginie would possibly take her own life. And what had Myrna said? They would no longer be Quints. They would be a quartet, then triplets, twins. Then just one. An only child.

And Constance would become simply Constance. And now she was gone too.

He looked at the girls, laughing together in their snowsuits, and tried to pick out the little girl who now lay in the Montréal morgue. But he could not.

They all looked alike.

“Yes, these rugged Canadians pass the long winter months ice fishing, skiing and playing hockey,” said the morose narrator. “Even the girls.”

The Quints waved at the camera and wobbled on their skates out the door.

The film ended with Isidore waving merrily to them, then turning back into the cabin. He closed the door and looked into the camera, but Gamache realized his eyes were in fact slightly off. Catching not the lens, but the eye of someone just out of sight.

Was he looking at his wife? At Dr. Bernard? Or at someone else entirely?

It was a look of supplication, for approval. And once again Gamache wondered what Isidore Ouellet had prayed for, and whether his prayers had ever been answered.

But something was off. Something about this film didn’t fit with what the Chief Inspector had learned.

He covered his mouth with his hand and stared at the black screen.

* * *

“Let me ask you this,” said Thérèse Brunel. “What’s the surest way to destroy someone?”

Jérôme shook his head.

“First you win their trust,” she said, holding his stare. “Then you betray it.”

“The Cree trusted Pierre Arnot?” asked Jérôme.

“He helped restore order. He treated them with respect.”

“And then?”

“And then, when plans for the new hydroelectric dam were unveiled, and it became clear it would destroy what was left of the Cree territory, he convinced them to accept it.”

“How’d he do that?” asked Jérôme. As a Québécois, he’d always seen the great dams as a point of pride. Yes, he was aware of the damage up north, but it seemed a small price. A price he himself didn’t actually have to pay.

“They trusted him. He’d spent years convincing them he was their friend and ally. Later, those who doubted him, questioned his motives, disappeared.”

Jérôme’s stomach churned. “He did that?”

Thérèse nodded. “I don’t know if he started out so corrupt, or if he was corrupted, but that’s what he did.”

Jérôme lowered his eyes and thought about the name he’d found. The one buried below Arnot. If Arnot had fallen, this other man had fallen further. Only to be dug up, years later, by Jérôme Brunel.

“When did Armand get involved?” asked Jérôme.

“A Cree elder, a woman, was selected to travel to Quebec City, to ask for help. She wanted to tell someone in authority that young men and women were disappearing. Dying. They were found hanged and shot and drowned. The Sûreté detachment had dismissed the deaths as accidents or suicides. Some young Cree had disappeared completely. The Sûreté concluded they’d run away. Probably down south. They’d be found in some crack house or drunk tank in Trois-Rivières or Montréal.”

“She came to Quebec City to ask for help in finding them?” asked Jérôme.

“No, she wanted to tell someone in authority that it was lies. Her own son was among the missing. She knew they hadn’t run away, and the deaths weren’t accidents or suicides.”

Jérôme could see how dredging up these memories was affecting Thérèse. As a senior Sûreté officer.