“You’re talking about the Ouellet Quints,” said Clara.
“You think?” said Gabri.
“The doctor had been called,” said Myrna, her voice melodic and calm. “But he didn’t bother to go out in the blizzard to some dirt-poor farm where he’d be paid in turnips, if at all. So he went back to sleep and left it up to the midwife. But next morning, when he heard that it was quintuplets and all were alive and healthy, he got himself over there. Photos were taken with him and the girls.”
Myrna paused and looked around the gathering, holding their eyes. Her voice was low, as though inviting them into a conspiracy.
“More than quintuplets were born that day. A myth was also born. And with it, something else came to life. Something with a long, dark tail.” Her voice was hushed and they all leaned forward. “A murder was born.”
* * *
Armand Gamache sped through the Ville-Marie Tunnel. He’d considered not taking it. Going around it. But this was the fastest way to the Champlain Bridge, and out of Montréal to Three Pines.
As he drove through the long, dark tunnel, he noticed the cracks. The missing tiles and exposed rebar. How could he have driven this route so often and never noticed?
His foot lifted from the accelerator and his car slowed, until other motorists were honking at him. Gesturing to him as they passed. But he barely noticed. His mind was going back over the interview with Monsieur Villeneuve.
He took the next exit and found a phone in a coffee shop.
“Bonjour,” came the soft, weary voice.
“Monsieur Villeneuve, it’s Armand Gamache.”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Of the Sûreté. I just left your place.”
“Yes, of course. I’d forgotten your name.”
“Did the police return your wife’s car to you?”
“No. But they gave me back what was in it.”
“Any papers? A briefcase?”
“She had a briefcase, but they didn’t return it.”
Gamache rubbed his face, and was surprised by the stubble. No wonder Villeneuve hadn’t been all that anxious to invite him in. He must look like a vagrant, between the gray stubble and the bruise.
He focused his thoughts. Audrey Villeneuve had planned to go to the Christmas party. Had been excited, happy, perhaps even relieved. Finally she could pass on what she’d found to someone who could do something about it.
She must have felt a huge weight lift.
But she’d also realize that the Premier of Québec wouldn’t just take her word for it, no matter how attractive she was in her new dress.
She’d have to give him proof. Proof she’d have carried with her to the party.
“Allô?” said Villeneuve. “You still there?”
“Just a moment, please,” said Gamache. He was almost there. Almost at the answer.
Audrey might have carried a clutch with her to the party, but not a briefcase, or a file folder, or loose papers. So how did she plan to pass the proof to the Premier?
Audrey Villeneuve was killed because of what she’d found out, and what she’d failed to find. That one last step that would have taken her to the man behind it all. The very man she’d be approaching. Premier Georges Renard.
“May I come back?” Gamache asked. “I need to see what she had in the car.”
“It’s not much,” said Villeneuve.
“I need to see anyway.” He hung up, turned his car around, went back through the Ville-Marie Tunnel, holding his breath like a child passing a graveyard, and was back at the Villeneuve home a few minutes later.
* * *
Jérôme Brunel sat on the arm of Myrna’s chair. Everyone leaned forward, to catch the story. Of miracles, and myth, and murder.
Everyone except Thérèse Brunel. She stood at the window, listening to the words, but looking out. Scanning the roads into the village.
The sun was bright and the skies clear. A beautiful winter day. And behind her, a dark story was being told.
“The girls were taken from their mother and father when they were still infants,” said Myrna. “It was at a time when the government didn’t need a reason, but they provided one anyway, by having the good doctor intimate that, though good people, the Ouellets were a little slow. Perhaps even congenitally so. Fit to raise cows and pigs, but not five little angels. They were a gift from God, Frère André’s last earthly miracle, and as such they belonged to all of Québec, and not some subsistence farmer. Dr. Bernard also hinted that the Ouellets were well paid for the girls. And people believed it.”
