“The Ouellet Quints?” she repeated. “The Ouellet Quints?” This time with the emphasis on “the.”
Gamache nodded.
“But that’s not possible,” said Albert.
“Why not?” asked Gamache.
Michaud sputtered, his brain tripping over his words. He turned to his wife. “Did you know this?”
“Of course not. I’d have told you.”
Gamache sat back and watched them try to absorb this information. They seemed genuinely shocked, but were they shocked at the news, or the news that he knew?
“You never suspected?” he asked.
They shook their heads, still apparently unable to speak. For this generation it really would have been akin to hearing their neighbors were Martians. Something both familiar and alien.
“I saw them once,” said Monsieur Michaud. “My mother took us to their home. They came out every hour on the hour and walked around the fence, waving to the crowds. It was thrilling. Show him what you’ve got, Annette.”
Madame Michaud got to her feet, and both men rose as well. She returned a minute later.
“Here. My parents bought this for me in a souvenir shop.”
She held out a paperweight, with a photo of the pretty little cottage and the five sisters in front.
“My parents took me to see them too, right after the war. I think my father had seen some terrible things and he wanted to see something hopeful.”
Gamache looked at the paperweight, then handed it back.
“They really did live next door?” asked Monsieur Michaud, finally grasping what Gamache had said. “We knew the Quints?”
He turned to his wife. She didn’t seem pleased. Unlike her husband, she seemed to remember why Gamache was there.
“Her death couldn’t have been because she was a Quint, could it?” she asked.
“We don’t know.”
“But it was so long ago,” she said, holding his eyes.
“What was?” Gamache asked. “They might have grown up, might have changed their name, but they would always be the Quints. Nothing could change that.”
They stared at each other while Monsieur Michaud muttered, “I can’t believe it. The Quints.”
Armand Gamache left the warmth of their home. The aroma of pot roast was embedded in his coat and followed him out the door and into his car.
He drove back across the Champlain Bridge, the traffic now thinned as the worst of the rush hour ended. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten any closer to the answer. Was he creating his own myth? The missing Quint? The one who rose from the dead? Another miracle.
* * *
“Where is he now?” Francoeur asked.
“He’s over the Champlain Bridge,” said Tessier. “And heading south. I think he’s heading back down to that village.”
Francoeur leaned back in his chair and regarded Tessier, but the Inspector knew that look. He wasn’t really seeing him; the Chief Superintendent was mulling something over.
“Why does Gamache keep going back to that village? What’s in that place?”
“According to his case file, the Quint, the one who was killed, had friends there.”
Francoeur nodded, but in an abstract way. Thinking.
“Are we sure it’s Gamache?” Francoeur asked.
“It’s him. We’re tracking his cell phone and car. When he left here he went to see some fellow named”—Tessier consulted his notes—“André Pineault. Then he called Isabelle Lacoste, I have the transcript here. He then returned to the home where the murder happened and spoke to the neighbor. He just left. He seems focused on the case.”
Francoeur pursed his lips and nodded. They were in his office, the door closed. It was almost eight in the evening, but Francoeur wasn’t ready to go home. He had to make sure everything was set. Every detail was taken care of. Every contingency thought of. The only blip on an otherwise clear horizon was Armand Gamache. But now Tessier was saying that blip had disappeared into that village, into the void.
Francoeur knew he should be relieved, but a sick feeling had settled into his stomach. Maybe he was so used to being locked together with Gamache, so used to the struggle, he couldn’t see that the fight was over.
Francoeur wanted to believe it. But Sylvain Francoeur was a cautious man, and while the evidence said one thing, his insides told him something else.
If Armand Gamache went over the edge, it wouldn’t be willingly. There’d be claw marks all the way over. This was a trick, somehow. He just didn’t know how.
