“And cost them millions of dollars,” said Myrna. “The child had to be hidden. Armand thinks that’s what we were seeing, when Marie-Harriette closed the door on her daughters in the newsreel.”
They remembered the image, frozen in their minds. Young Virginie howling. Trying to get back into the house. But the door had been closed. Shut in her face by her own mother. Not to keep the girls out, but to keep the younger child in. To keep MA away from the newsreels.
“Constance only told us one personal thing,” said Gabri. “That she and her sisters liked to play hockey. But there’re six players on a team, not five.”
“Exactly,” said Myrna. “When Constance told me about the hockey team, it seemed important to her, but I thought it was just some old memory. That she was sort of testing out her newfound freedom to reveal things, and had decided to start with something trivial. It never occurred to me that was it. The key. Six siblings, not five.”
“I didn’t pick up on it either,” said Ruth. “And I coach a team.”
“You bully a team,” said Gabri. “It’s not the same thing.”
“But I can count,” said Ruth. “Six players. Not five.” She thought for a moment, absently stroking Rosa’s head and neck. “Imagine being that child. Excluded, hidden. Watching your sisters grab the spotlight, while you’re kept in the dark. Something shameful.”
They paused and tried to imagine what that would be like. Not having one sister who was a favored child, but five of them. And not simply favored by the parents, but by the world. Given beautiful dresses, toys, candy, a fairy-tale house. And all the attention.
While MA was shoved aside. Shoved inside. Denied.
“So what happened?” asked Ruth. “Are you saying Constance’s sister killed her?”
Myrna held up the envelope with Gamache’s careful writing. “Chief Inspector Gamache believes it goes back to the first death. Virginie.” Myrna turned to Ruth. “Constance saw what happened. So did Hélène. They told the other sisters, but no one else. It was their secret, the one that bound them together.”
“The one they took to the grave,” said Ruth. “And tried to bury. Virginie was murdered.”
“One of them had done it,” said Gabri.
“Constance came here to tell you that,” said Clara.
“After Marguerite died, she felt she was free to finally talk,” said Myrna.
“Matthew 10:36.” Ruth’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
* * *
Jean-Guy Beauvoir drove down the familiar road. It was covered in snow now, but when he’d first seen it, years before, it had been dirt. And the trees overhead hadn’t been bare, but in full autumn color, with the sun shining through. Ambers and reds, warm yellows. Like a stained-glass window.
He hadn’t remarked on the beauty of the place. Been too reserved and cynical to stare in open awe at the pretty, peaceful village below.
But he’d felt it. That awe. And that peace.
Today, though, he felt nothing.
“How far now?” Francoeur asked.
“Almost there,” said Beauvoir. “A few more minutes.”
“Pull over,” said the Chief Superintendent, and Beauvoir did.
“If Chief Inspector Gamache was going to set up a post in the village,” Francoeur asked, “where would it be?”
“Gamache?” asked Beauvoir. He hadn’t realized this was about Gamache. “Is he here?”
“Just answer the question, Inspector,” said Tessier from the backseat.
The van carrying the two agents and equipment idled behind them.
This was the moment of truth, Francoeur knew. Would Beauvoir balk at giving away information about Gamache? Up until now Francoeur hadn’t asked Beauvoir to actively betray his former boss, but to simply do nothing to help him.
But now they needed more from Beauvoir.
“The old railway station,” came the reply, without protest or hesitation.
“Take us there,” said Francoeur.
* * *
Myrna still held the envelope containing the handwritten letter from Armand Gamache. In it he detailed all he knew, and all he suspected, about the murder of Constance Ouellet, and the murder of her sister Virginie over fifty years earlier.
Constance and Hélène had witnessed it. Virginie neither tripped, nor did she throw herself down those stairs. She was pushed. And behind that push was years and years of pain. Of being ignored, hidden, marginalized, denied. Years and years of the Quints getting all the attention. From the world, yes. But worse, from Mama and Papa.