They waited.
A great deal of police work involved waiting. For suspects. For autopsies. For forensic results. Waiting for someone to answer a question. Or a doorbell.
It was, he knew, one of Isabelle Lacoste’s great gifts, and one so easily overlooked. She was very, very patient.
Anyone could run around, not many could quietly wait. As they did now. But that didn’t mean Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Lacoste did nothing. As they waited they took in their surroundings.
The little home was in good repair, the eaves troughs tacked in place, the windows and sills painted and without chips or cracks. It was neat and tidy. Christmas lights had been strung around the wrought-iron rail of the porch, but they remained off. A wreath was on the front door.
Lacoste turned to the Chief, who nodded. She opened the outer door and peered through the semi-circle of cut glass, into the vestibule.
Gamache had been inside many similar homes. They’d been built in the late forties and early fifties for returning veterans. Modest homes in established neighborhoods. Many of the houses had since been torn down, or added to. But some, like this, remained intact. A small gem.
“Nothing, Chief.”
“Bon,” he said. Walking back down the stairs, he gestured to the right and watched Lacoste step into the deep snow. Gamache himself walked around the other side, noting that the snow there was also unmarred by footprints. He sank up to his shins. The snow tumbled down into his boots and he felt the chill as it turned to ice water and soaked his socks.
Like Lacoste, he looked into the windows, cupping his hands around his face. The kitchen was empty and clean. No unwashed dishes on the counter. He tried the windows. All locked. In the tiny backyard he met Lacoste coming around the other side. She shook her head, then stood on tiptoes and looked in a window. As he watched, she turned on her flashlight and shone it in.
Then she turned to him.
She’d found something.
Wordlessly, Lacoste handed the flashlight to Gamache. He shone it through the window and saw a bed. A closet. An open suitcase. And an elderly woman lying on the floor. Far beyond repair.
* * *
Armand Gamache and Isabelle Lacoste waited in the small front room of Constance Ouellet’s home. Like the exterior, the interior was neat, though not antiseptic. There were books and magazines. A pair of old slippers sat by the sofa. This was no showroom reserved for special guests. Constance clearly used it. A television, the old box variety, was in a corner, and a sofa and two armchairs were turned to face it. Like everything else in the room, the chairs were well-made, once expensive but now worn. It was a comfortable, welcoming room. What his grandmother would have called a genteel room.
After they saw the body through the window, Gamache had called Marc Brault, then the two Sûreté officers had waited in their car for the Montréal force to arrive and take over. And when they did, the familiar routine started, only without the help of Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Lacoste. They were relegated to the front room, guests at the investigation. It felt odd, as though they were playing hookey. He and Lacoste filled the time by wandering around the modest room, noting the décor, the personal items. But touching nothing. Not even sitting.
Gamache noticed that three of the seats looked as though transparent people were still sitting in them. Like Myrna’s armchair in the bookstore, they held the shape of the people who’d used them, every day, for years and years.
There was no Christmas tree. No decorations inside the home, but why would there be? thought Gamache. She was planning to go to Three Pines for the holidays.
Through the drawn curtains, Gamache saw a glow of headlights and heard a car stop, then a door slam and the measured crunch of boots on snow.
Marc Brault let himself into the home and found Gamache and Lacoste in the front room.
“I didn’t expect to see you, Marc,” said Gamache, shaking the hand of the head of the Montréal homicide squad.
“Well, I was about to head home, but since you called in the report I thought I should come along, in case someone needed to arrest you.”
“How kind, mon ami,” smiled Gamache.
Brault turned to Lacoste. “We’re shorthanded. The holidays. Would you like to help my team?”
Lacoste knew when she was being politely dismissed. She left them and Brault turned his intelligent eyes on Gamache.
“Now, tell me about this body you found.”
“Her name’s Constance Ouellet,” said Gamache.
“Is she the woman you were worried about this afternoon? The one you thought might be the suicide?”