“The Arnot case was in all the papers,” said Thérèse, lowering her own voice. “It was a sensation. You know it already. Everyone knows it.”
It was true. Pierre Arnot was as infamous as the Ouellet Quints were famous. He was their antithesis. Where the five girls brought delight, Pierre Arnot brought shame.
If they were an act of God, Pierre Arnot was the son of the morning. The fallen angel.
And still, he haunted them. And now he was back. And Thérèse Brunel would give almost anything not to resurrect that name, that case, that time.
“Oui, oui,” said Jérôme. He rarely showed his impatience, and almost never with his wife. But he did now. “It all happened a decade or so ago. I want to hear it again, and this time what didn’t make the papers. What you kept from the public.”
“I didn’t keep anything from the public, Jérôme.” Now she was herself impatient. Her voice was clipped and cold. “I was an entry-level agent at the time. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Armand? He knew the man well.”
They both, instinctively, turned to the group gathered around the door to the television.
“Do you really think that would be wise?” asked Jérôme.
Thérèse turned back to her husband. “Perhaps not.” She stared at him for a moment, searching his eyes. “You need to tell me, Jérôme. Why are you interested in Pierre Arnot?”
Jérôme’s breathing was labored, as though he’d been carrying something too heavy over too great a distance. Finally he spoke.
“His name came up in my search.”
Thérèse Brunel felt herself suddenly light-headed. Goddamned Pierre Arnot.
“Are you kidding?” But she could see he was not. “Was that the name that tripped the alarms? If it was, you need to tell us.”
“What I need, Thérèse, is to hear more about Arnot. His background. Please. You might have been entry-level then, but you’re a superintendent now. I know you know.”
She gave him a hard, assessing stare.
“Pierre Arnot was the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté,” she began, giving in, as she knew she would. “The top position, the job Sylvain Francoeur now holds. I’d just joined the Sûreté when it all came to light. I only met him once.”
Jérôme Brunel remembered all too well the day his wife, the head curator at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal, came home announcing she wanted to join the provincial police. She was in her mid-fifties and might as well have said she’d signed up for Cirque du Soleil. But he could tell she wasn’t joking, and to be fair, it hadn’t come completely out of the blue. Thérèse had been a consultant for the police on a number of art thefts and had discovered an aptitude for solving crimes.
“As you said, this all happened more than ten years ago,” said Thérèse. “Arnot had held the top post for many years by then. He was well liked. Respected. Trusted.”
“You say you met him once,” said Jérôme. “When was that?”
Her husband’s eyes were sharp. Analytical. She knew this was exactly as he must have been in the hospital, when a particularly urgent case had been wheeled in.
Gathering information, absorbing, analyzing. Breaking it down rapidly so he’d know how to deal with the emergency. Here in Clara’s living room, with the scent of fresh baking and rosemary chicken in the air, some sudden emergency had arisen. And brought with it the mud-covered, blood-covered name of Pierre Arnot.
“It was at a lecture at the academy,” she recalled. “In the class Chief Inspector Gamache taught.”
“Arnot was his guest?” asked Jérôme, surprised.
Thérèse nodded. By then both men were already famous. Arnot for being the respected head of a respected force, and Gamache for building and commanding the most successful homicide department in the nation.
She was in the packed auditorium, just one of hundreds of students, nothing, yet, to distinguish her from the rest, except her gray hair.
As Thérèse thought about it, the living room dissolved and became the amphitheater. She could see the two men below clearly. Arnot standing at the lectern. Older, confident, distinguished. Short and slender. Compact. With groomed gray hair and glasses. He looked anything but powerful. And yet, in that very humility there was force implied. So great was his power he needn’t flaunt it.
And standing off to the side, watching, was Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.