“I think it’ll be fine,” said Olivier.
Ruth whacked the seat beside her on the sofa, in what could only be interpreted as an invitation. It was like receiving a personalized Molotov cocktail.
Gamache sat.
“So, where’s Beauvoir?”
The Chief had forgotten that, against all odds and nature, Jean-Guy and Ruth had struck up a friendship. Or, at least, an understanding.
“He’s on another assignment.”
Ruth glared at the Chief and he held her eyes, calmly.
“Finally saw through you, did he?”
Gamache smiled. “Must have.”
“And your daughter? Is he still in love with her, or did he make a balls-up of that too?”
Gamache continued to hold the cold, old eyes.
“I’m happy to see Rosa back,” he said at last. “She looks well.”
Ruth looked from Gamache to the duck, then back to the Chief. Then she did something he’d rarely seen before. She relented.
“Thank you,” she said.
Armand took a deep breath. The bistro smelled of fresh pine and wood smoke and a hint of candy cane. A wreath hung over the mantel and a tree stood in the corner, decorated with mismatched Christmas ornaments and candies.
He turned to Myrna. “How’re you this morning?”
“Pretty awful,” she said with a small smile. And indeed, she looked as though she hadn’t had much sleep.
Clara reached out and held her friend’s hand.
“Inspector Lacoste will get all the hard evidence this morning from the Montréal police,” he told them. “I’ll drive into the city and we’ll go over the interviews. One main question is whether the person who killed Constance knew who she really was.”
“You mean, was it a stranger?” asked Olivier. “Or someone who targeted Constance on purpose?”
“That’s always a question,” admitted Gamache.
“Do you think they meant to kill her?” asked Clara. “Or was it a mistake? A robbery that got out of control?”
“Was there mens rea, a guilty mind, or was it an accident?” said Gamache. “Those are questions we’ll be asking.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gabri, who’d joined them, but been uncharacteristically quiet. “What did you mean, ‘who she really was’? Not ‘who she was,’ but ‘who she really was.’ What did you mean by that?”
Gabri looked from Gamache to Myrna, then back again.
“Who was she?”
The Chief Inspector sat forward, about to answer, then he looked over at Myrna, sitting quietly in her chair. He nodded. It was a secret Myrna had kept for decades. It was her secret to give up.
Myrna opened her mouth, but another voice, a querulous voice, spoke.
“She was Constance Ouellet, shithead.”
ELEVEN
“Constance Ouellet-Shithead?” asked Gabri.
Ruth and Rosa glared at him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” muttered the duck.
“She’s Constance Ouellet,” Ruth clarified, her voice glacial. “You’re the shithead.”
“You knew?” Myrna asked the old poet.
Ruth picked up Rosa, placing the duck on her lap and stroking her like a cat. Rosa stretched her neck, straining her beak upward toward Ruth, and making a nest of the old body.
“Not at first. I thought she was just some boring old fart. Like you.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gabri, waving his large hand in front of him as though trying to clear away the confusion. “Constance Pineault was Constance Ouellet?”
He turned to Olivier.
“Did you know?” But it was clear his partner was equally amazed.
Gabri looked around the gathering and finally came to rest on Gamache.
“Are we talking about the same thing? The Ouellet Quints?”
“C’est ça,” said the Chief.
“The quintuplets?” Gabri insisted, still unable to fully grasp it.
“That’s it,” Gamache assured him. But it only seemed to increase Gabri’s bafflement.
“I thought they were dead,” he said.
“Why do people keep saying that?” Myrna asked.
“Well, it all seems so long ago. Once upon a time.”
They sat in silence. Gabri had nailed it. Exactly what most of them had been thinking. Not so much amazement that one of the Ouellet Quints was dead, but that any were still alive. And that one had walked among them.
The Quints were legend in Québec. In Canada. Worldwide. They were a phenomenon. Freaks, almost. Five little girls, identical. Born in the depths of the Depression. Conceived without fertility drugs. In vivo, not in vitro. The only known natural quintuplets to survive. And they had survived, for seventy-seven years. Until yesterday.